Cornell President Hits Protesters With Car at Low Speed

Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff struck a student and recent graduate with his car Thursday night in what he described as an incident of harassment and intimidation against him.

The low-speed incident, which did not yield any serious injuries, according to The Cornell Sun, happened after an Israel-Palestine debate on campus where Kotlikoff offered introductory remarks. As Kotlikoff left the event, he was followed by protesters. Videos obtained by the student newspaper show several people following Kotlikoff to his car and asking him about speech and disciplinary policies. After Kotlikoff entered his car, he backed into the individuals behind it. Although he accused protesters of banging on his car, that is not seen in videos published by the newspaper.

In a message following the incident Kotlikoff condemned the actions of the protesters.

“The behavior I experienced last night is not protest. It is harassment and intimidation, with the direct motive of silencing speech. It has no place in an academic community, no place in a democracy, and can have no place at Cornell,” he wrote in an email to campus Friday.

Kotlikoff also alleged that the group that followed him out of the event included both students and nonstudents who are “known to Cornell for their past conduct, including a long history of ongoing verbal and online abuse toward numerous members of Cornell’s administration and staff, as well as disruptive protest resulting, in the case of two individuals, in bans from campus.”

Kotlikoff did not acknowledge hitting protesters in his message to campus, though he wrote that he “waited until [he] saw space behind the car” to back out of the parking spot.