Above photo: Black Liberation Media.
Momodou Taal petition exceeds 10,000 signers.
Black students at Cornell have denounced the University’s Interim President Michael Kotlikoff for deploying “white supremacist caricatures” as he pursues a war of words against Momodou Taal, a graduate student facing deportation for taking part in pro-Palestinian protests.
Following a meeting with Kotlikoff earlier in the week, Black student groups on Wednesday said they “no longer felt safe on campus” and urged the university to “create an open forum to repair the administration’s relationship with Black students.”
It comes as a petition supporting Taal surpassed 10,000 signatures.
It also comes as Taal awaits the outcome of a final appeal lodged with the Interim Provost John Siciliano, part of a clandestine process students say amounts to a “kangaroo court”.
According to Wednesday’s statement, four student groups including Black Students United (BSU), which alone represents more than a thousand students, said Interim President Kotlikoff had resorted to “racialized rhetoric” in public statements addressing Taal.
“His statements justifying Taal’s unfair and punitive treatment are infused with language that reflects the painful legacies of enslavement, Jim Crow, and modern-day policing that continue to infect every inch of American society today,” the statement said.
According to the students, campus-wide emails sent by Kotlikoff and Siciliano on September 23 and September 30 contained language that “drew on a lineage of white supremacist caricatures of Black people”.
This included referring to Taal’s action as “aggressive,” “intimidat[ing],” “frightening,” “highly disruptive and intentionally menacing,” and “harassing”.
Taal was depicted as a “violent person who is a threat to campus security” even though “he has resorted to peaceful means to protest a violent genocide in which Cornell is complicit,” the statement said.
According to the statement, BSU left a meeting with Kotlikoff on Monday feeling “disillusioned and unconvinced by his reassurances.”
“How can we feel safe when this University has the power to silence and criminalize a powerful Black voice without due process or just cause?” said a BSU representative.
The intervention comes on the day it was revealed that Vice President of University Relations Joel Malina said on Monday in a Zoom call with parents concerned by pro-Palestine protests that he would permit the Klu KIux Klan to speak on campus.
In the call, moderated by Hillel, a campus Jewish group, Malina shared details of how Cornell would monitor a recently hired Black, female academic, Wunpini Mohammed, who had made past comments in support of the Palestinians.
Also on Wednesday, Cornell Collective for Justice in Palestine (CCJP) published a petition demanding Taal’s reinstatement with more than 10,000 signatures.
In a statement, CCJP, which includes faculty, staff and graduate workers seeking a free Palestine, said:
“We demand an immediate end to his suspension, the lack of due process, and the disproportionate persecution of campus activists.”
“Cornell is manipulating their procedures and language to erroneously portray Momodou as dangerous. In light of the university’s glaringly obvious effort to depict handheld megaphones as a tool of violence, it is clear that this is yet another way to suppress protest.”
“It has been over a week. We demand that Momodou Taal’s temporary suspension be overturned and that due process be followed.”
Last week, the Cornell Sun editorial board declared that “Cornell Unjustly Punished a Pro-Palestinian Activist,” and stridently disputed Kotlikoff’s claims, writing that Taal had been subjected to a “kangaroo court in which the provost serves as judge, jury and executioner.”