The Cornell Review
Encyclopedia
The Cornell Review is an independent, conservative newspaper
published by students of Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York
. It usually adheres to a fortnightly tabloid format, publishing six issues a semester. While the ideological makeup of its staff shifts over the years, the paper has consistently accused Cornell of adhering to left-wing politics
and political correctness
, delivered with a signature anti-establishment
tone.
Primary funding for the Review comes from alumni donations and major grants from the Collegiate Network
, a syndicate of conservative campus newspapers funded by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
. The Review does not receive any funding from Cornell.
inspired conservative students at other institutions to found similar newspapers. The Institute for Educational Affairs, founded in 1978 to assist conservative academics, created The Collegiate Network in 1984 to offer these groups technical and financial assistance.
Jim Keller, a government major, founded The Cornell Review during his senior year in the spring of 1984. The paper drew immediate and critical attention for its discordant rhetoric and "shock journalism." Ann Coulter
, then an undergraduate in the history department
of the College of Arts and Sciences
, served as its editor during the fall of 1984.
During the 1980s the Review targeted affirmative action
, gay rights, communist
sympathizers, abortion
, and anti-apartheid activists, while defending the Reagan Administration
, the Greek system
, and the university administration (against striking
workers). It notably criticized university-sponsored ethnicity-oriented residential communities, known as "program houses," as segregationist
.
In 1986, leftists voiced their opposition to the paper by seeking out and shredding nearly every copy of one issue at a multitude of locations on campus during the early morning hours after delivery.
The Review was embroiled in several controversies in the 1990s. In 1991, an editor was accused of inappropriately directing student funds to support the Review, although the allegation was dropped. In 1993 its funding was threatened again after it printed a cartoon
critical of President
Bill Clinton
's move to permit gays in the U.S. military
which was widely called homophobic
.
In 1997, the Review printed an anonymous editorial lampooning the Oakland, California
school district's move to mainstream so-called Ebonics
. Entitled "So U Be Wantin' to Take Dis Class," it presented a mock catalogue of courses taught in African-American Vernacular English, but in highly stereotyped language, for instance "Da white man be evil an he tryin' to keep da brotherman down. We's got Sharpton
and Farrakhan
so who da...man now, white boy." A student protest followed in which a number of copies of the Review were burned. The editors defended the editorial as satire
and criticized the burning as suppression of free speech.
The Review historically prints pieces that bring great debate and controversy. In the autumn of 2002, Cornell Review Online published a column by Elliott Reed whose Good Vibrations piece exposed a coverup of vibrator
s to be sold at the campus health center. Reed discovered an email to a feminist listserv
which claimed the health center had agreed to sell vibrators and solicited comments from female students. The university claimed the email "jumped the gun," as no decision had been made at that time. The Review was awarded a "Campus Outrage" nod from the conservative organization, Accuracy in Academia
, for the piece.
In December of 2008, The Cornell Review took a greater online presence by beginning the newspaper's first blog, Cornell Insider, and creating the first online website version of the newspaper. Originally started by two Review writers, the Insider now hosts many of the newspaper's contributors and serves as a day to day forum for Review writers.
In 2003 and 2004, successive editors began a controversial revamp of the Review, swinging it toward a more libertarian
conservatism and a more neutral editorial position. In response, former Review writer and activist Ryan Horn resurrected a new Cornell American to take up the social conservatism
from which the Review had distanced itself. The Cornell Review and the Cornell American had switched roles: the Review had become the calmer and lower profile paper, and the American the more traditional.
Rivalry between the Review and the American began to die down during the ensuing years as the staffs of the respective papers changed and the editorial positions of both papers began to converge. In April 2007, students from the Review and the American agreed to merge the two papers in the interest of preserving a conservative voice on campus. The newly formed paper is called The Cornell Review and assumed the Americans slogan: "Limited Government, Traditional Values, America First." The merger took effect in August 2007.
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
published by students of Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
in Ithaca, New York
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...
. It usually adheres to a fortnightly tabloid format, publishing six issues a semester. While the ideological makeup of its staff shifts over the years, the paper has consistently accused Cornell of adhering to left-wing politics
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
and political correctness
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
, delivered with a signature anti-establishment
Anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda...
tone.
Management and funding
The Review incorporated in 1986 as The Ithaca Review, Inc. The editorial staff is headed by an undergraduate editor-in-chief, while the business staff is headed by an undergraduate president, overseen by a six-member board of directors, generally Review alumni, and an advisor who is a member of the Cornell faculty.Primary funding for the Review comes from alumni donations and major grants from the Collegiate Network
Collegiate Network
The Collegiate Network is a non-profit, non-partisan tax-exempt 501 organization that provides financial and technical assistance to student editors and writers of almost 100 independent, conservative and libertarian publications at leading colleges and universities around the country. The project...
, a syndicate of conservative campus newspapers funded by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
. The Review does not receive any funding from Cornell.
History
The unanticipated success of the Dartmouth Review at Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
inspired conservative students at other institutions to found similar newspapers. The Institute for Educational Affairs, founded in 1978 to assist conservative academics, created The Collegiate Network in 1984 to offer these groups technical and financial assistance.
Jim Keller, a government major, founded The Cornell Review during his senior year in the spring of 1984. The paper drew immediate and critical attention for its discordant rhetoric and "shock journalism." Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter
Ann Hart Coulter is an American lawyer, conservative social and political commentator, author, and syndicated columnist. She frequently appears on television, radio, and as a speaker at public events and private events...
, then an undergraduate in the history department
Cornell University Department of History
|- valign="top" ! style="border-top: solid 1px #aaaaaa;" | College | style="border-top: solid 1px #aaaaaa;" | Arts and Sciences |- valign="top" ! style="border-top: solid 1px #aaaaaa;" | Department Chair | style="border-top: solid 1px #aaaaaa;" | Barry Strauss...
of the College of Arts and Sciences
Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences
The College of Arts and Sciences is a division of Cornell University. It has been part of the university since its founding, although its name has changed over time. It grants bachelors degrees, and masters and doctorates through affiliation with the Cornell University Graduate School...
, served as its editor during the fall of 1984.
During the 1980s the Review targeted affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
, gay rights, communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
sympathizers, abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
, and anti-apartheid activists, while defending the Reagan Administration
Reagan Administration
The United States presidency of Ronald Reagan, also known as the Reagan administration, was a Republican administration headed by Ronald Reagan from January 20, 1981, to January 20, 1989....
, the Greek system
Fraternities and sororities
Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
, and the university administration (against striking
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
workers). It notably criticized university-sponsored ethnicity-oriented residential communities, known as "program houses," as segregationist
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
.
In 1986, leftists voiced their opposition to the paper by seeking out and shredding nearly every copy of one issue at a multitude of locations on campus during the early morning hours after delivery.
The Review was embroiled in several controversies in the 1990s. In 1991, an editor was accused of inappropriately directing student funds to support the Review, although the allegation was dropped. In 1993 its funding was threatened again after it printed a cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
critical of President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
's move to permit gays in the U.S. military
United States armed forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...
which was widely called homophobic
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
.
In 1997, the Review printed an anonymous editorial lampooning the Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
school district's move to mainstream so-called Ebonics
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
. Entitled "So U Be Wantin' to Take Dis Class," it presented a mock catalogue of courses taught in African-American Vernacular English, but in highly stereotyped language, for instance "Da white man be evil an he tryin' to keep da brotherman down. We's got Sharpton
Al Sharpton
Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton, Jr. is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election...
and Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan
Louis Farrakhan Muhammad, Sr. is the leader of the African-American religious movement the Nation of Islam . He served as the minister of major mosques in Boston and Harlem, and was appointed by the longtime NOI leader, Elijah Muhammad, before his death in 1975, as the National Representative of...
so who da...man now, white boy." A student protest followed in which a number of copies of the Review were burned. The editors defended the editorial as satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
and criticized the burning as suppression of free speech.
The Review historically prints pieces that bring great debate and controversy. In the autumn of 2002, Cornell Review Online published a column by Elliott Reed whose Good Vibrations piece exposed a coverup of vibrator
Vibrator
Vibrator may refer to:* Vibrator —a device for massage or sexual pleasure.* Vibrator —a class of devices which create mechanical vibrations for uses such as signaling annunciators, doorbells, or industrial uses such as compacting gravel, transporting materials, cleaning, etc.* Vibrator —an...
s to be sold at the campus health center. Reed discovered an email to a feminist listserv
LISTSERV
LISTSERV was the first electronic mailing list software application, consisting of a set of email addresses for a group in which the sender can send one email and it will reach a variety of people...
which claimed the health center had agreed to sell vibrators and solicited comments from female students. The university claimed the email "jumped the gun," as no decision had been made at that time. The Review was awarded a "Campus Outrage" nod from the conservative organization, Accuracy in Academia
Accuracy in Academia
Accuracy in Academia is an American organization that seeks to counter perceived liberal bias in education.- Mission :AIA is described as non-profit organization, watchdog group and think tank that “wants schools [i.e., colleges and universities in the United States] to return to their traditional...
, for the piece.
In December of 2008, The Cornell Review took a greater online presence by beginning the newspaper's first blog, Cornell Insider, and creating the first online website version of the newspaper. Originally started by two Review writers, the Insider now hosts many of the newspaper's contributors and serves as a day to day forum for Review writers.
Merger with Cornell American
In 1992, before the Review had backed down from its more controversial positions, a deliberately unsensational rival publication began printing called The Cornell American. It became the demesne of social conservatives until it ceased publishing in 1996.In 2003 and 2004, successive editors began a controversial revamp of the Review, swinging it toward a more libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
conservatism and a more neutral editorial position. In response, former Review writer and activist Ryan Horn resurrected a new Cornell American to take up the social conservatism
Social conservatism
Social Conservatism is primarily a political, and usually morally influenced, ideology that focuses on the preservation of what are seen as traditional values. Social conservatism is a form of authoritarianism often associated with the position that the federal government should have a greater role...
from which the Review had distanced itself. The Cornell Review and the Cornell American had switched roles: the Review had become the calmer and lower profile paper, and the American the more traditional.
Rivalry between the Review and the American began to die down during the ensuing years as the staffs of the respective papers changed and the editorial positions of both papers began to converge. In April 2007, students from the Review and the American agreed to merge the two papers in the interest of preserving a conservative voice on campus. The newly formed paper is called The Cornell Review and assumed the Americans slogan: "Limited Government, Traditional Values, America First." The merger took effect in August 2007.
External links
- The Cornell Review Official Website
- Cornell Insider blog
- Cornell American, Cornell Review Merge
- Hentoff, NatNat HentoffNathan Irving "Nat" Hentoff is an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media and writes regularly on jazz and country music for The Wall Street Journal....
. "Setting Fire to Offensive Ideas," The Village VoiceThe Village VoiceThe Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, September 24, 1997 - Ruby-Sachs, Emma and Waligore, Timothy. "A Once-Bright Star Dims," The Nation, February 17, 2003.
- The Cornell American: Taking a positive course
- To Do a New Review
- Cornell Review's Decline
- Chalkings Offend Ujamaa Residents