In their history of Cornell since 1940, Glenn C. Altschuler and
Isaac Kramnick examine the institution in the context of the
emergence of the modern research university. The book examines
Cornell during the Cold War, the civil rights movement, Vietnam,
antiapartheid protests, the ups and downs of varsity athletics, the
women's movement, the opening of relations with China, and the
creation of Cornell NYC Tech. It relates profound, fascinating, and
little-known incidents involving the faculty, administration, and
student life, connecting them to the "Cornell idea" of freedom and
responsibility. The authors had access to all existing papers of
the presidents of Cornell, which deeply informs their respectful
but unvarnished portrait of the university.
Institutions, like individuals, develop narratives about
themselves. Cornell constructed its sense of self, of how it was
special and different, on the eve of World War II, when America
defended democracy from fascist dictatorship. Cornell s fifth
president, Edmund Ezra Day, and Carl Becker, its preeminent
historian, discerned what they called a Cornell soul, a Cornell
character, a Cornell personality, a Cornell tradition and they
called it freedom.
The Cornell idea was tested and contested in Cornell s second
seventy-five years. Cornellians used the ideals of freedom and
responsibility as weapons for change and justifications for
retaining the status quo; to protect academic freedom and to rein
in radical professors; to end in loco parentis and parietal rules,
to preempt panty raids, pornography, and pot parties, and to
reintroduce regulations to protect and promote the physical and
emotional well-being of students; to add nanofabrication,
entrepreneurship, and genomics to the curriculum and to require
language courses, freshmen writing, and physical education. In the
name of freedom (and responsibility), black students occupied
Willard Straight Hall, the anti Vietnam War SDS took over the
Engineering Library, proponents of divestment from South Africa
built campus shantytowns, and Latinos seized Day Hall. In the name
of responsibility (and freedom), the university reclaimed them.
The history of Cornell since World War II, Altschuler and
Kramnick believe, is in large part a set of variations on the
narrative of freedom and its partner, responsibility, the
obligation to others and to one s self to do what is right and
useful, with a principled commitment to the Cornell community and
to the world outside the Eddy Street gate."
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