Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: eflon via Wikimedia Commons
“The Cornell Daily Sun” building at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
(JNS) — A Jewish columnist for the Cornell Daily Sun says that the student paper, which recently retracted an image that it ran of a Star of David and Nazi SS bolts on a Palestinian’s back, holds him to a different standard than its other writers.
Ezra Galperin, a junior at Cornell studying government and Jewish studies, told JNS that the same publication that initially ran the “Nazi imagery” pushed back when he wrote in a column that pop singer Kehlani is antisemitic, “despite me listing pretty much everything she ever said in the article.”
The private Ivy League school in Ithaca, N.Y., canceled the singer from headlining its annual “slope day” celebration on the last day of classes. Michael Kotlikoff, the university president, stated at the time that he had heard “grave concerns” that the performance would “feature a performer who has espoused antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments in performances, videos and on social media.”
Galperin’s op-ed ran in the end. “I have to be assertive if I want to get anything done,” he told JNS.
Julia Senzon, the student paper’s editor-in-chief, told JNS that Galerpin’s concerns “have not been raised internally to editors” and that the Sun “recruits and accepts columnists with a strong emphasis on representing a diversity of campus perspectives.”
“All columns are edited to the Sun’s standards prior to publication,” she said. “We welcome columns and guest pieces in response to all of our pieces, including editorials.”
Galperin, who has written columns for the paper since the end of last semester, told JNS that the Sun retracted the illustration with the Nazi imagery, “because it was the most basic thing to do in that situation.”
“All they could say was it didn’t meet their editorial standards,” the New York native said. “They basically have not acknowledged it otherwise since then.”
It’s typical for Sun columnists to send in their own images with their writing, but “the reason we have editors is to make sure it meets standards worthy of being published,” he said. “That obviously failed.”
“It’s the result of the fact that such things have really been normalized over the past couple years,” he added. “It doesn’t occur to them that it may be hateful toward Jews.”
Galperin told JNS that he intends to keep trying his best as a columnist for the paper but that he’s been “held to a wildly different standard.”
Though the climate for Jews has improved on campus since the early days after Oct. 7, some opinion writers at the paper “are trying to sow an environment similar to what it was back when the war started,” he said. “Things have gotten better, but no thanks to the Cornell Daily Sun.”
A representative at-large for the Cornell Student Assembly, Galperin told JNS that being involved in student government is “one of the more difficult parts of my life.”
A few weeks ago, the assembly voted 21 to 2 to pass a resolution denouncing Cornell for giving students too little say, it said, in the disciplinary process. Anti-Israel rioters at a school career fair in 2024 pushed for the measure, claiming they were arrested just for protesting, according to Galperin.
Video footage suggests that they were arrested for shoving police officers, he added.
“On the one hand, maybe students should have more of a say. On the other hand, what I can’t have is a system where people are just there to look out for those who they agree with politically,” Galperin said.
“When I tried to raise those concerns, I just had people yelling, ‘Shame!’ at me when we voted on amendments,” he said. “Of course, the Cornell Daily Sun did endorse that resolution.”
