Cuomo’s comments about chancellor inexplicable and disgraceful

Dear Editor,

Syracuse University has been grappling with a grotesque series of racist slurs and threats that have convulsed the campus in the last few days. Students, faculty and staff have been shaken by these events. Many students, not surprisingly, feel unsafe as the search for the perpetrators continues. But as Chancellor Syverud’s letter to the community on Tuesday demonstrates, the university is effectively responding to this crisis.

The several specific calls for action from students all have been accepted, and the chancellor has detailed how the university will act and which administrators will be accountable for the implementation of changes.

The last thing SU needs in this difficult hour is the uniformed intervention by the State Governor Andrew Cuomo, in our judgement, knows next to nothing about SU. Yet on Tuesday, he made an outrageous attack on Syverud, a vote of no confidence in the chancellor that Cuomo knew would become a national news story. He even called on the Board of Trustees to replace the chancellor in leading the response to this crisis. We were pleased to read the board’s strong endorsement of Syverud’s stewardship of our university and its rejection of Cuomo’s wholly unwarranted attack.

We have been SU faculty members for over five decades, and while now we are emeritus professors, each teach a class in Maxwell this semester. We have been deeply involved in the life of this institution, served for so many years in the Senate, as department chairs and on so many university committees. This is not the first crisis to deeply affect members of the campus community, but the university has continued to grow and prosper. And, like so many colleagues, we can attest how Syracuse has changed across the years, including the ways in which diversity and inclusion have become a central mission of the institution, reshaping so many departmental curriculums and adding so many units and personnel to the administration and staff.

What students have called for is just a continuation of what has been happening here. Under Syverud, Syracuse has grown and prospered. Its reputation, its new financial stability, the breadth of its curricular offerings, the increasing strength of its faculty and of its student body have made all of us who care about SU proud.

What Cuomo did is inexplicable and disgraceful. Yet SU, as in the past, will move beyond this crisis. With the leadership of the chancellor, and the active involvement of students like those at the Barnes Center and other members of the community, SU will continue to prosper.

Sincerely,

David H. Bennett,

James Roger Sharp

Emeritus Professors of History