A pro-Palestinian group said Cornell University has banned four students from campus for three years for participating in the successful Sept. 18 disruption and shutdown of a university-hosted career fair that included weapons manufacturers.
It was the same protest over which international graduate student Momodou Taal said Cornell had threatened to effectively deport him for his participation. Last week the interim provost decided not to disenroll him, Taal said.
On Wednesday, Cornell said four students were receiving “persona non grata status,” according to the Coalition for Mutual Liberation, a pro-Palestinian group of more than 40 organizations including Jewish Voice for Peace at Cornell and the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA). In a news release, the coalition said that meant not only preventing them from being on campus but also “ceasing their degree progression.”
Atakan Deviren, a sophomore in Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and former co-chair of YDSA, told Inside Higher Ed that three of the students, including himself, were previously arrested. Deviren faces two charges: unlawful assembly and obstructing governmental administration.
His arrest report says he used “physical force to obstruct uniformed Cornell University Police officers” from preventing protesters from entering the Statler Hotel, where the career fair was being held. Deviren declined “for legal purposes” to say whether, or how, he disrupted the career fair.
“It’s a sad sight that this university has resorted to draconian measures to silence people simply protesting to end a genocide—and to end Cornell’s complicity in genocide,” Deviren said.
The coalition said Jacob Berman, president of the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, was also suspended.
A Cornell spokesperson said Thursday that the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act “protects the records of individual students and bars institutions from discussing specific conduct cases.” She provided an Oct. 10 statement from the university on the career fair disruption, which said three unnamed students were arrested.
“For those who are subject to interim measures, any action is pending full resolution of Cornell’s student conduct process that fully adjudicates any allegations of code violations,” the statement reads.
