Cornell students call for action against Russell Rickford
Cornell University students called on administrators to take action against a professor who said he was “exhilarated” by Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel that left more than 1,400 people dead.
The comments were made by associate professor of history Russell Rickford Sunday at an off-campus rally connected to Cornell’s Students for Justice in Palestine group, according to one attendee.
Netanel Shapira, 21, a student with dual Israeli citizenship, filmed the viral clip of the off-campus rally. Shapira said he attended the event in an effort to “hear both sides” and to take the temperature of denizens of the leafy liberal college town of Ithaca, NY.
Shapira, who studies economics and government at the university, said he had heard from fellow students that associate professor of history Russell Rickford was “not shy about his extremism” in the classroom, but was unprepared for his apparent full-throated endorsement of Hamas’ massacre.
“This guy essentially outright said that he was happy, exhilarated, excited, energized, right, by the murder of innocent civilians. The massacre of civilians and the raping of women,” Shapira said.
“There’s no place for that anywhere for any group of people, then of course in that video at the end of it the crowd starts chanting ‘From the River to the Sea’.. itself an antisemitic and genocidal chant.”
Shapira and his friend left the rally soon after the “small” crowd began calling for the eradication of Israel.
“How can you possibly feel safe? That’s like textbook, the first steps to the incitement of violence.”
Amanda Silberstein, 21, was “deeply disgusted” when Rickford’s remarks first circulated in the university’s Jewish community groups.
Follow along with The Post’s live blog for the latest on Hamas’ attack on Israel
“Seeing that video, my initial reaction was ‘this is a professor, this is an educator, you know, students are supposed to internalize and respect, you know, the words their professor says,’” said the Englewood, NJ native, who is studying hotel administration and hospitality.
“It was really really shocking and his words have meaning. This isn’t some far-away idea; we’ve been seeing it at happen on Columbia’s campus, at Harvard, at NYU,” she added, referencing other embraces of terrorism at top-tier schools in the region.
“If your professor is commending a group for doing something, you might look up to that group and think it’s the right course of action.”
Neither Rickford nor Cornell SPJ responded to a request for comment from The Post, but the controversial professor did speak Monday to The Cornell Daily Sun, where he refused to walk back his rhetoric.
“What I was referring to is in those first few hours, when they broke through the apartheid wall, that it seemed to be a symbol of resistance, and indeed a new phase of resistance in the Palestinian struggle,” Rickford reportedly said.
Looking to help? Donate here to UJA-Federation of New York’s emergency fund to supply critical aid to the people of Israel, working with a network of nonprofits helping Jewish communities around the world.
“We are acutely aware of the devastation, the daily destruction and degradation caused by Israeli policies, caused by Israeli apartheid, caused by the occupation. So in that context, this act of defiance of boring across the wall was a significant symbol,” said the professor, while adding he “abhor[s] the killing of civilians.”
Silberstein said that she was also “mourning” the 3,000 people in Palestine who had been killed amid retaliatory airstrikes, saying “nobody wants innocent civilians to be murdered.”
However, she said it was “impossible to equate the IDF’s retaliatory actions with Hamas’ brutal terror, adding, “while the IDF’s sole mission is to protect the people of Israel, Hamas terrorists seek to eliminate all Jews.”
Rickford’s words “can only exacerbate the risk of further violence and foster more animosity against the Jewish community,” Silberstein said, also taking issue with the group’s “Free Palestine” chant.
“I think that calling for the destruction of Israel is calling for the destruction of all of its people, the displacement of its people,” she said.
“My grandfather was a Holocaust survivor and the dream of a Jewish state is quite literally what kept him alive through Auschwitz and the death march. Being able to see that dream realized [in 1948] made all his suffering worth it for him.”
Silberstein called on Cornell to “reevaluate [Rickford’s] position,” while also bashing the university for a “morally repugnant” initial email that was sent to all students by President Martha Pollack, which compared the terror attack with the recent “terrible earthquake in Afghanistan” without condemning Hamas.
Sam Aberman, the Cornell student who posted a clip of the speech on X that had garnered some 12 million views by Tuesday afternoon, told The Post that “allowing professors and other people in positions of power to support, promote, and even celebrate a hateful terrorist group, like Hamas, after they committed indescribable atrocities on innocent people creates an unsafe environment on college campuses.”
Shapira was more direct in his message to administrators, who labeled Rickford’s remarks “reprehensible” in a statement to The Post Tuesday afternoon.
“To me, this university cannot act in any other way other than firing [Rickford.] There’s no other solution that will satisfy,” he said.
“Any members of our community who have made such statements do not speak for Cornell; in fact, they speak in direct opposition to all we stand for at Cornell,” said Pollack and Board of Trustees Chair Kraig H. Kayser.
“The university is taking this incident seriously and is currently reviewing it consistent with our procedures.”
Read the full article Here
