Cornell Professor Who Called Hamas Attack ‘Exhilarating’ Takes Leave of Absence

The professor argued that his ‘horrible choice of words’ was meant to stress ’resistance to oppression.’

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators at a rally in Washington Square Park in New York City on Oct. 17, 2023. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A Cornell University professor who openly called the unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the Hamas terrorist group “exhilarating” is taking a leave of absence for the rest of the semester.

Russell Rickford, a history professor who “specializes in African-American political culture after World War II, the Black Radical Tradition, and transnational social movements,” had been teaching a course titled “African American History From 1865” before taking his leave, according to his faculty biography.

In an email sent to Mr. Rickford’s students and shared by the conservative student publication The Cornell Review, history professor Tamika Nunley said her colleague “will be taking a leave of absence,” and that she “will assume teaching responsibilities for this course for the remainder of the semester.”

The Ivy League school also confirmed Mr. Rickford’s leave, with a spokesperson telling the Review that the professor himself “has requested and received approval to take a leave of absence from the university.”

The professor’s leave comes amid widespread criticism over his participation at an off-campus pro-Palestinian rally, at which he spoke positively of Hamas’s brutal attack on Israeli civilians.

“Hamas has shifted the balance of power,” Mr. Rickford said in his speech, captured on camera and shared by student newspaper The Cornell Daily Sun. “Hamas has punctured the illusion of invincibility. That’s what they’ve done—you don’t have to be a Hamas supporter to recognize that.”

“And in those first few hours—even as horrific acts were being carried out, many of which we would not learn about until later—there are many Gazans of goodwill, many Palestinians of conscience, who abhor violence, as do you, as do I, who abhor the targeting of civilians, as do you, as do I, who were able to breathe!” he continued. “They were able to breathe! For the first time in years!”

“It was exhilarating, it was exhilarating, it was energizing!” the professor told the crowd. “And if they weren’t exhilarated by this, this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated!”

Mr. Rickford’s remarks spurred an online petition demanding his termination, which has garnered nearly 12,000 signatures. The university described his comments as “reprehensible” and promised to “take this incident seriously.”

In an apology published by the Daily Sun, Mr. Rickford said he recognized that “some of the language” he used in the speech was “reprehensible” and “did not reflect his values.” Still, he insisted that his “horrible choice of words” was meant to “stress grassroots African American, Jewish, and Palestinian traditions of resistance to oppression.”

‘Deeper Problem’ Within Campus Culture

The controversy also sparked further discussions about the university’s campus culture. In a call to action, Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson argued that this was but an “outward manifestation” of the Ithaca, New York, institution’s obsession with leftist identity politics.

“The campus has become balkanized by an aggressive focus on racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and other identities through an ‘anti-racist’ and ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ (DEI) agenda imposed on the campus by the senior administration,” Mr. Jacobson wrote in an open letter to the Cornell Board of Trustees.

“The ‘anti-racism’ initiative was launched in the summer of 2020, and has included or is moving towards mandatory training, education, and programming that forces everyone to view their lives and relationships through their identities,” he said. “Almost everything now is viewed through an identity lens, pitting groups against each other, pitting colleagues against one another, and pitting students against their peers.”

The DEI ideology essentially divides the society into “oppressors” and the “oppressed” based on identity, according to Mr. Jacobson. In this DEI worldview, Jews are categorically labeled “oppressors” and Israel is branded a “white oppressor colonialist entity unworthy of existence.”

“For many Jewish students, the ‘inclusion’ agenda has become exclusion,” the letter reads. “It is in such a campus culture at Cornell and elsewhere that feeling ‘exhilarated’ at the bloodthirsty Hamas attack thrives.”

Cornell administrators, who themselves have contributed to this toxic campus culture, shouldn’t be entrusted to fix the problem, Mr. Jacobson argues.

“The entire campus DEI program and agenda needs to be revisited, reworked, or removed.”