The “Cornell Seven” Is Really About Liberalism

The Instagram storm began on Monday, September 28. “I did not go to Cornell. I went to a different Ivy in New York. Title IX betrayed me there too,” posted one Columbia graduate turned pro-Israel influencer. Another widely liked and shared post highlighted Emma Sulkowicz, the since-graduated Columbia student who says she was raped on campus; throughout 2014 and 2015, she carried a mattress from class to class as a form of protest. (Columbia’s Title IX office found no evidence for that claim, and no charges were brought either by the police or the Manhattan District Attorney.)

Another Instagram post, with over 350,000 likes as of this piece’s publication and first reported in UnHerd, calls to “remove their heads in a public setting,” showing the likenesses of the “Cornell Seven.” And everywhere, far beyond Columbia’s gates and our student bodies’ bespoke social media algorithms, women are gender-warring and declaring, “I am Jane Doe.”

We believe that this collective frenzy is deeply unproductive, neglects any and all facts of the case which disagree with the “preferred” narrative, and infantilizes women. It has also ushered in a climate on campus in which it is difficult to disagree with the maximalist position on what happened on October 19 and October 20, 2024, to one “Jane Doe” at Cornell’s Chi Phi frat house. (The woman bringing forth the allegations is doing so anonymously; “Jane Doe” is the pseudonym she uses in her September 16 lawsuit.)