August 22, 2024
Dear Cornellians,
I’m delighted to welcome all of you to the beginning of the 2024-2025 academic year at Cornell. Whether you are a student, faculty, or staff; new to our community, or a veteran Cornellian—I’m glad to have you with us as we embark together on a new year of teaching and learning, exploration and discovery, ambition and achievement.
Cornell has been my home for the last 24 years. It is the place where I have run a research laboratory, led a department and the veterinary college, and served as University Provost. I am honored and humbled to be greeting you this year in the role of Interim President, and I look forward to seeing many familiar faces and new ones around campus in the months ahead. My wife, Carolyn, and I have been accompanying our new incoming undergraduates along their first days at Cornell, moving into Donlon Hall with them for the week, and joining them at meals. I’ll also be attending many events across campus in the coming days and weeks, and hope to have the chance to meet as many of you as I can.
All of us are part of a very special community—one that stretches back to the founding of this university and includes the many generations of students, faculty, and staff who have called themselves Cornellians. Whatever our role at Cornell, each of us is part of Cornell’s larger institutional mission: to discover, preserve, and disseminate knowledge; educate the next generation of global citizens; and promote a culture of broad inquiry.
As Cornellians, each of us inherits the privileges and obligations that come with being part of that mission, and part of this institution—a tradition described by Cornell historian Carl Becker as one of “freedom and responsibility.” In this beautiful, creative, and welcoming community, we find the freedom to pursue our interests, follow our curiosity, and advance our knowledge. We also accept the responsibilities that come with those freedoms: the obligation to conduct ourselves in ways that respect and advance our community and our shared academic mission.
In contentious times, it is particularly important that each of us understand and honor the freedoms and responsibilities that we have as Cornellians: to listen to and respect each other’s views, and to build a community where everyone feels they belong. Early next week, you will receive another message affirming our community standards to ensure that everyone’s rights are fully respected, and that all members of our community are able to pursue their individual and collective goals in an environment of collegiality and respect.
The standards and expectations of our community are essential to our research and engagement, essential to equipping our graduates to address the world’s most complex challenges, and vital as well to safeguarding the civil society and democratic values on which our academic institution depends. I look forward with all of you to the work ahead, and to continuing to ensure that Cornell is a place “where any person can find instruction in any study.”
Sincerely,
Michael I. Kotlikoff
Interim President
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