A search for “cornell nytimes.com” yields a full page of results related to students having purportedly engaged in various sex acts on campus back in 2024:
Nothing newsworthy other than one night of sex has occurred at an Ivy League institution with 26,500 students and more than 3,000 faculty members. How is that possible? Catherine Liu, a professor at UC Irvine, explains in Virtue Hoarders:
For as long as most of us can remember, the professional managerial class (PMC) has been fighting a class war, not against capitalists or capitalism, but against the working classes.
The culture war was always a proxy economic war, but the 1960s divided the country into the allegedly enlightened and the allegedly benighted, with the PMC able to separate itself from its economic inferiors in a way that seemed morally justifiable. It was after 1968 that the PMC gradually shifted its allegiance from workers to capital. Since that time, the most successful and visible segments of the PMC have brazenly put their smarts at the service of the bosses.
As a class, the PMC loves to talk about bias rather than inequality, racism rather than capitalism, visibility rather than exploitation. Tolerance for them is the highest secular virtue—but tolerance has almost no political or economic meaning.
How can the elites in the PMC serve their capitalist overlords? Distract people from serious attempts to confiscate and transfer wealth from the most successful capitalists, e.g., the billionaires who can’t buy Bernie, to the deserving working class. What’s a good distraction? College students having sex.
Under the Obama administration, the state became intensely involved in the enlightened regulation of sex. From 2008, PMC triumphalism under the well-spoken and well-read president channeled the collective energy of liberals to focus on sex in one of the most important sites of class formation: university campuses, especially elite university campuses. Instrumentalized obsession with sexual violence and sexual excess is an important part of American Puritanism: moral and virtuous superiority in the sexual enlightenment makes up an important part of the countercultural inheritance of the PMC. Rather than focusing on economic malfeasance, an ascendant PMC elite under Obama pursued sexual crimes—not at work or in the workplace but on college campuses—with a zeal that liberals reserve for any policy that diverts attention away from economic redistribution. In short, rather than break up the banks or reform the financial sector after he took office, Obama wanted to use his electoral victory to eliminate sexual violence on college campuses. In 2011, his Department of Education Office for Civil Rights sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to more than seven thousand universities warning them that if they did not take action to prevent and remedy sexual violence and sexual assault on their campuses, they would risk losing their rights to all federal funding.
At the same time, sensational stories of sexual violence and sexual abuse on college campuses emerged in the mainstream media, as if to confirm the necessity of the Obama administration’s stringent new policies. In 2015, at the height of the Obama-era sex panic, Kirby Dick’s The Hunting Ground was released by—wait for it—the Weinstein Company. Dick’s documentary presented college campuses as terrifying places for young women to live. Dick, with the help of Harvey Weinstein, pandered to his liberal audience’s thirst for stories about campus sexual violence. In 2016, Amber Frost cited the National Crime Victimization Survey numbers showing that non-college-going women were 1.2 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than their college-going counterparts. Sexual violence on college campuses attracted liberal PMC elites to a new front in the culture wars, far away from inequality, oppression, and workplace sexual harassment and discrimination. Fighting sexual violence on campus allowed the PMC to reinforce its belief that white-collar professionals and lawyers like Atticus Finch were the true heroes in low-risk struggles against anything but economic abuse.
Fifty years after the Summer of Love, college-going women were armed with more information and more sex education than any generation before them, but they seemed less capable of assuming sexual agency and more in need of protection than previous generations of women, who had had to deal with sexual autonomy and male desire without the help of university Title IX officers.
The bankers whose “tails I win; heads you/taxpayers/shareholders lose” risk-taking caused the Collapse of 2008 skated free/rich while Black college athletes and fraternity meatheads were pursued (see Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (a.k.a. majoring in partying and football) and “A Rape on Campus”).
Please don’t take this post as an opinion regarding what kind of sex occurred at Cornell, who was at fault, if anyone, etc. I haven’t followed the case beyond the headlines (though with the Governor of New York State hunting for the fraternity guys with a special prosecutor, I assume that the guys will be found guilty and imprisoned). My personal opinion is that as the U.S. welcomes more Muslim immigrants, the kind of situation that gave rise (so to speak) to the situation will disappear. Women will once again be a defined category and they won’t be permitted to gather with unrelated men, consume alcohol, etc. No woman will be able to file a civil lawsuit seeking monetary damages after being raped in a fraternity house because, without a male relative escort, no woman will be able to enter a fraternity house at any time of the day or night.
The complaint does have one interesting angle. The plaintiff says that she was 20 years old at the time the events occured and also that “Plaintiff was in [her sorority’s] care, custody, and control” (essentially, that she was a child or maybe a slave to the sorority).
Though eligible to vote, she characterizes herself as a “minor” (if 20-year-old students are, in fact, minors, should they have the right to vote laws into place?): “Plaintiff, as a minor under 21 years old,”.
One more interesting tidbit from the book is an explanation for the popularity and acceptance of intellectually fraudulent activities such as the New York Times’s 1619 Project (primarily organized by Nikole Hannah-Jones, who has been in the news recently).
The authors of the Project reject all criticism of it: they believe that their findings do not depend on the research consensus and archival evidence sorted through by a scholarly community of historians. Using her new clout and massive audience, Nikole Hannah-Jones led the way in dismissing the accepted scholarship that had been done on colonial America as simply the highly biased work of white males. Lifetimes of careful, empirical research were simply no match for massive foundation dollars backed by one of the largest media companies in the world. It is clear that powerful financial and media interests are behind the promotion of the 1619 Project and its bold attempt to change the way we understand American history and historical research itself. The Project is on top of everything, a bold attempt to eliminate historical materialism from the teaching and writing of American history while destroying the possibility of solidarity in the American working class.
Liberals have abandoned history, because they have to believe they are superior to elites of the past and the contemporary working class at the same time.
We are appalled, but not surprised, by this blog’s continued downplaying of the assault epidemic at Cornell. Over 1,200 sexual assault cases were filed at Cornell from 2018 to 2024, and 35% of undergraduate women reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/09/29/cornell-sexual-assault-rape-expelled-data-exclusive/92007157007/
CWG, here’s a very different perspective:
https://x.com/rawdogmillionar/status/2105292799944052845
Camille nails it!
Witchfinder, the USA Today article on “sexual assaults” at Cornell doesn’t mention a single person who was charged by police and/or convicted. Can you please let us know how many of these 1,200 cases resulted in anyone: 1) Being charged by Ithaca police; 2) Found guilty in a court of law?
Sadly, not a single case resulted in criminal charges or a guilty verdict. This only proves that the Ithaca police are an old-boy network. The notion of an impartial court of law is inherently patriarchal and outdated.
L&O: The cited USA Today article says “More than 1,200 incidents of sexual assault, dating and domestic violence and stalking”. I agree with C W-G that the police and prosecutors certainly are negligent if they can’t arrest, try, and convict at least some men of these three categories of crime. So much to choose from!
Witchfinder, perhaps instead of castigating the Ithaca police and New York courts without providing us any substantiation, you might consider that Camille Paglia’s comments (above) are on target.
Thoughts, by the authority vested in me by Emperor Obama, I hereby declare that Camille Paglia is not a real woman. Her (his) opinions are immediately and retroactively void.
(From what I have seen, campus police could really be pretty useless beyond writing parking tickets. For serious crimes, the more experienced city police should be involved as well. It could be a mess.)
Is it not a giant red flag that this Cornell student waited 2 years to file this lawsuit? What am a missing?
Suspect whether or not sex was allowed in college didn’t matter to this blog audience of 80’s computer science students. It wasn’t exactly the path to riches & women, in those days.
Phil, I see there is a lot of discussion about the thousands of abominable gang rapes at Cornell and I wanted to let you know that no one is better equipped to Imprison these Vile Perpetrators than Letitia James. She didn’t study Black Studies Plagiarism like me, but instead focused on the Rigorous Discipline of Social Work at the Top Ranked City University of New York. Still, I can assure you that there is no one in New York government that is Smarter than “Tish.”
If you have any doubt that she means business here, see her post below. These Cornell Rapists need to report to prison yesterday.
It’s one thing to attack Jews at Harvard (context), but another thing entirely when young underage girls ingest drugs and alcohol to excess and then have sex with multiple men at parties. We call that Rape for a reason and I’m sure Jussie Smollett would agree with me.
https://x.com/AlecLace/status/2106089079360426318
Claudine, so wonderful to hear from you! You don’t sound like your usual self today… a lot angrier and rougher. Now I did read in the Wall Street Journal that you are back at Harvard – hooray!
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/harvard-university-claudine-gay-class-cf6ce2c3
Has having had to work taken a toll on you recently? I know it must be a change from the other matters you’ve been attending to. World Mental Health Week is in 2 weeks, so if you could just hang on a little longer…
samue, so Wonderful to hear from you! What a special day. Yes, indeed I have stepped back into Harvard (Larry Summers is still “stepping away” with William Henry Gates III and their young lady friends on a small Caribbean island). I had hoped Larry would be available as a guest lecturer to regale the students about the Late and Great Jeffrey Epstein, but no such luck.
I’m teaching an Advanced Course called: “What is a University?” Honestly, this is a question that I’ve never really thought about before, so it was super exciting to take on such a Weighty and Important Question that has relevance to Scholars like me worldwide. I didn’t spend any time preparing for the course, since I like to lecture extemporaneously (and, I was still on enjoying my brief 18 month fully paid “vacation”!). But, after the first week my mind was frazzled and I realized we had covered all the material I could think of, so I decided to let the Wonderful students pursue self-study for the remainder of the semester. And, of course they all earned As as befitting anyone who studies with me (you may have seen that Harvard has tried to limit the awarding of A grades to 20% of the total, but of course there was a special carve-out for Exceptional Scholars like me!).
https://www.foxnews.com/us/inside-explosive-cornell-rape-allegations-7-men-accused-conflicting-accounts-political-firestorm
“According to her lawsuit, Doe began the evening drinking vodka at her Tri Delta sorority house before attending a sorority social event at a downtown Ithaca bar. She later went to a second bar before leaving alone around 11 p.m… By the time she arrived at Chi Phi, Doe was visibly intoxicated and had consumed roughly 10 standard drinks over three hours, according to her own complaint.”
I wonder why the news media and officials tend to highlight the most muddled cases where all parties are bad, irresponsible, contributory etc. There is almost never a “clearly right” and “clearly wrong” group; it’s all gross gray like this. I’ll sit this one out and wait for the next news cycle item in 2 weeks.
samue: I would love to be able to drink 10 drinks in 3 hours and still be able to walk. I wasn’t able to do that at age 20 and I’m not able to do it now. Maybe I’ve had 4 drinks in 3 hours at some point in my life, but I also might weigh a lot more than Jane Doe (6′ tall and 170-200 lbs. depending on the point in my life).
>why the news media and officials tend to highlight the most muddled cases
Because in clear-cut cases, there is a swift arrest, trial, conviction, and sentencing. There is nothing for people to be performatively outraged about. For example, when Bill Cosby’s son was killed by a white guy, the system simply worked as intended.
Mikhail Markhasev was a Ukranian immigrant out looking to rob a drug dealing acquaintance when he happened upon Ennis Cosby and robbed and shot Cosby in the head.
No doubt, Ennis Cosby, Bill Cosby, and his racist White-hating wife strongly supported all liberal policies & politicians and voted over and over for the kinds of people that would support the immigration of a worthless Ukranian immigrant. And look what it got them.
Bill Cosby was merely a rapist, not a strong liberal. That would be a step too far.
Markhasev immigrated in 1989 under the Reagan/Bush administration. He might have arrived claiming Jewish heritage on account of mother’s maiden name, Victoria Gorenshtein, under a policy that both liberals and conservatives strongly supported.
https://www.newsweek.com/just-random-crime-170606
Phil, could you remove the third level comments? Sex acts at universities are fascinating, but I can’t follow anything around here anymore. Oh, and be sure to vote “Yes” on both recreational marijuana initiatives on the Florida ballot. “Keep Florida Tokin’!” I promise if either measure passes, I’ll move to Key West and not next door to you in Albacoa, your 2,055-acre, master-race-planned mixed-use community built around the concepts and principles of Traditional Neighborhood Development. I’m sure your “Anti Hippy” private patrol wouldn’t let that happen anyway. If you see a Lambo painted with a flower-power motif on I-95, that’s most likely me visiting a honey up in Stuart. Peace.
When I first heard of this sexual attack I wondered how I might have reacted when I was a college student. I would like to think I would not have joined in. I like to believe that I have too much respect for women to fuck one who was so incapacitated by drugs and alcohol. Of course, who knows how I would actually react in such a situation. I suppose that same question applies to the FlyDubai airplane hijacking. Would I have joined that group of men who attacked the co-pilot and helped regain control of the aircraft? Who knows? True courage can only be measured in real time.
Based on my own observation of the people who frequently reply to Phil’s diatribes, I tend to believe many commenters could easily have been Cornell fraternity brothers and would have joined in to take advantage of free pussy. Their views of women as expressed on this site are so often so illiberal. That holds true for Phil himself. It’s just so sad when smart people with high IQs respond like they do with their stupid comments or act like they do when faced with a rape opportunity.
The original post: “Please don’t take this post as an opinion regarding what kind of sex occurred at Cornell, who was at fault, if anyone, etc.”
(Since you’ve characterized the events of 2024 as “this sexual attack”, I think you’d be most welcome on the jury that NYS’s governor and attorney general are assembling. With the correct jury, perhaps the trial could be kept to no more than 1 day (evidence in the morning, break for lunch, verdict before coffee break).)
“When faced with a rape opportunity” reveals more about the poster than the commenters…
What a sentence, man! This whole comment is intense. I am sure you are thankful you are anonymous?
Samue, your comment totally captures the depravity of anon. Also notable is how he denigrates women with his comment that he would need to consider whether to “fuck one.” Total lack of self-awareness that he has unmasked his warped view of women.
@Anonymous, I cannot speak for everyone, but I would argue that most posters and commenters on this blog would take action to stop a rape if they witnessed one, much like the passengers aboard FlyDubai did. The “woke,” on the other hand, would be more likely to pull out their smartphones, record the rape, and even livestream it rather than intervene.
If Anonymous were on that flight, he’d probably join the befuddled cabin crew trying to free the tied-up terrorist. Tying Moslems up with headphone cords isn’t very liberal.
It is especially bizarre to characterize this blog and its readers as supporters of whatever typically happens on college campuses when a mixed-gender group gathers to consume alcohol. I’ve been on record at least since 2016 as saying that alcohol should be prohibited for Americans of all ages: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/06/11/reintroduce-prohibition-for-the-u-s/
(“What about Prohibition? It didn’t work very well 100 years ago, but the modern police state is much more sophisticated. Americans are packed much more tightly together and subject to more surveillance. Getting truckloads of alcohol across the border from Canada doesn’t seem as practical today as it was in 1920.”)
That wasn’t simply a one-time post, either. See also https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2022/11/30/the-cdc-supports-my-neo-prohibitionist-philosophy/
The U.S. becoming dramatically more Islamic since 2016 only adds to my argument that American priorities, e.g., safety, are incompatible with alcohol being widely available. (The Muslim population of the U.S. is 3X what it was on 9/11/2001; see https://manhattan.institute/article/islam-in-america )
Just reading this post and all the comments and the words that come to mind on anon’s comments are: ugly, uninformed, sick, gratuitous, fraud.
Ugly because he is clearly a misogynist (“rape opportunity” and “fuck one” and “free pussy”).
Uninformed because if you watch Camille Paglia’s video, read the lawsuit (all here in this post) and the other posts/news stories, it’s not all clear that this woman’s story holds together at all.
Sick, gratuitous and a fraud because his commentary makes it clear that he inhabits a sick world (“rape opportunity”, “fuck one” and “free pussy”) despite pretending to be a good guy.
Ugly: You raise a good point. The people whose public statements are the most sanctimonious often don’t distinguish themselves via their private behavior. Harvey Weinstein, for example, was friends with all of the righteous “pro-women” Democrats, including the Clintons, Kamala Harris, et al., while at the same time running a casting couch. Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, sanctimoniously preached about the victims of Fat Harvey (the lithe young actresses who couldn’t run away from the elderly morbidly obese producer and were, therefore, easy to rape). It was later discovered that he was choking and slapping his own girlfriends. Then who can forget Doug Emhoff, husband of Kamala Harris and slapper of females. Returning to New York State politicians, Andrew Cuomo was a loud proponent of “women’s equality” and “zero tolerance for sexual harassment in the workplace”. Then the young women who worked for him complained about being groped.
There must be something in the water in New York. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/15/us-womens-rights-campaigner-accused-of-sexual-harassment is about a professor at Stony Brook University who was “vocal advocate for women’s rights” and was also seeking sex from female grad students.
Neil Gaiman was all-in on #MeToo and then “In July and August 2024, five women accused Gaiman of sexual assault and abuse” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman#Sexual_assault_and_misconduct_allegations ).
Democrat Saint Al Franken was accused by eight different women of various misdeeds.
Maybe the latest douche-in-the-news is Graham Platner, a major spewer of public support for various progressive female political goals. Despite being 100% disabled, however, he was accused of various acts of assault/rape while banging his way through all of the progressive females of Maine.
By contrast, consider a redneck who fails to follow modern rhetorical style in referring to female adults as both strong/independent and delicate flowers. Due to his hateful speech, progressive females never get close enough to the redneck to be propositioned or touched.