By Townhall Chicago News Staff
Cornell University’s Faculty Senate passed a no-confidence resolution against the administration’s handling of an alleged gang rape case involving students, known as the Cornell 7 case. Victoria Zaka, an assistant professor of music at Cornell, spoke at the Faculty Senate proceedings and described the case as symptomatic of a campus culture of white supremacy and patriarchy.
Zaka’s faculty biography describes her as a “Black feminist sound theorist and abolitionist educator” whose research combines musicology, Black feminist theory, sound studies and abolitionist pedagogy. She came to Cornell after a postdoctoral fellowship through the Black Studies Collaboratory in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
At the Faculty Senate proceedings, Zaka says she believes the alleged victim. Independent journalist Michael Tracy raised text message evidence suggesting part of the encounter was consensual and questions about the legal provenance of the related civil complaint. Zaka declines to engage with those points, saying, “I don’t get my information from lawyers.”
Zaka calls for institutional power at Cornell to be redistributed and for protection from administrative retaliation for students, faculty and staff who speak out on the case. Her exchange with Tracy was recorded during the Faculty Senate proceedings and later aired on Chicago radio.
