Cornell president and students clash over car incident after Israel-Palestine debate

Tensions over the Israel-Palestine war spilled from a Cornell debate hall into a confrontation outside campus buildings Thursday evening, after students said President Michael I. Kotlikoff struck them with his vehicle and Kotlikoff said he was boxed in by people following him.

Kotlikoff said he introduced the debate series event in Goldwin Smith Hall and described it as a “vigorous and civil” discussion hosted by the Cornell Political Union and co-sponsored by Cornell Progressives, Cornellians for Israel and Students for Justice in Palestine. In a statement sent to the Cornell community on May 1, he said several individuals, including students and non-students, followed him across campus, and that some had a long history of disruptive conduct and bans from campus. Kotlikoff said the group shouted questions, recorded on phones, surrounded his car, banged on the windows and blocked him from leaving before he slowly backed out using the car’s rear pedestrian alert and automatic braking system.

Students gave a sharply different account. The Cornell Daily Sun reported video footage showing Students for a Democratic Cornell members Aiden Vallecillo ’26 and Hudson Athas ’27 being struck by the car. According to the paper, the students said no one touched the vehicle before it moved into them, and one said the university had not contacted them afterward. The Sun also reported that a Cornell spokesperson said the university still stood by Kotlikoff’s statement even after being shown the video.

The dispute lands in a campus climate already shaped by more than a year of upheaval over Gaza. Cornell’s pro-Palestinian encampment on the Arts Quad began on April 25, 2024, and led to disciplinary action and suspensions by late April before ending 18 days later in mid-May without arrests or a negotiated deal. Cornell later said free expression remains a core value, but that protests must respect the rights of others and comply with anti-discrimination and anti-harassment rules.

The episode also revives questions about executive accountability at a university where leadership has already been tested by the war. Then-president Martha E. Pollack said on May 9, 2024 that she would retire, citing the “enormous challenges” posed by the Gaza war, antisemitism and Islamophobia. At Cornell, as at other Ivy League campuses, the fight over Gaza has become a test not only of speech and protest rights, but of whether university leaders can keep order without deepening distrust.