Politicians are denouncing the university. People are demanding to know how students were disciplined. Headline after headline points to the school’s mishandling of ugly, complicated events.

We could be talking about Cornell, where the university’s handling of a sexual assault allegation is under intense scrutiny. But we could also be talking about Harvard in the 2024 academic year. Both provide an important lesson for higher ed leaders — although I’m skeptical that much will change in the rigid, corporate-like environments in which college administrators operate.

As a refresher, Harvard’s problems started on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel. Student groups co-signed a statement that held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” without acknowledging the horrors committed against Israeli civilians. The statement sparked international outrage, with politicians and high-profile donors expressing their disgust. Harvard administrators then bungled a series of public statements that attempted to contain the growing firestorm but only added fuel.

Cornell’s administrators are now experiencing their own disastrous PR situation. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has asked state attorney general Letitia James to investigate a case involving a former Cornell student who alleges in a lawsuit filed last month that in 2024 she was sexually assaulted by a group of Chi Phi fraternity brothers over several hours while incapacitated by alcohol and drugs. The victim, known publicly only as Jane Doe, alleges that after a night of drinking she went to the house to see a friend, where she was encouraged to drink more alcohol and take ketamine.

Jane Doe, who later dropped out of college, told Cornell police that she could say “with 100 percent confidence I was raped.” Two of the men involved were expelled while others faced lighter discipline; the fraternity was shut down and banned from campus. Last month student journalists published the names of seven men who allegedly participated in the sexual assault or witnessed it, prompting mass outrage and questions about the handling of the case by Cornell and law enforcement, including why the district attorney never received Doe’s rape allegation from campus police.

In an attempt to address the growing fury, Cornell administrator Kyle Kimball put out a bloodless statement that chastised Cornell’s critics for pushing a “false narrative.”

“Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” Kimball wrote. “A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences in this case is irresponsible, will make survivors feel less safe and supported, and will perpetuate the underreporting of sexual assault.”

Rather than expressing empathy for the former student, Kimball made Cornell look defensive and detached.

The backlash was swift. The university, as Harvard did in 2023, tried again about a week later with another public message. This time they put Cornell president Michael Kotlikoff on camera, perhaps to remind people that there is indeed a human being working at the university who is capable of expressing an ounce of concern for a former student who alleges she was gang raped by other Cornell students, including some who will reap the benefits of their Ivy League diploma for the rest of their lives.

Kotlikoff did express empathy for Doe, calling the allegations deeply disturbing, but his words were not enough to win back angry community members. Journalists at the Cornell Daily Sun reported Monday that campus activists had smashed windows and sprayed graffiti on a building to bring attention to their dissatisfaction with the university’s handling of Doe’s allegations.

The missteps at Cornell are particularly disappointing to see after Harvard’s crisis. These universities should have gotten the message by now: The public wants to know that these very expensive institutions that put tens of thousands of applicants and families through the wringer each year will treat the lucky few who gain admission with dignity once they arrive on those immaculate campuses.

Too many students, and I have heard from enough of them over the years to know, carry traumatizing stories about how the institutions that they once revered turned their backs on them the moment they needed help. Jane Doe’s attorney says she wanted to leave the university and recover at home after the alleged assault but Cornell refused to refund her tuition so she stayed on campus for another semester, where she had to see her abusers.

Meanwhile, students experiencing mental health crises describe cold administrators who routinely advise students to take leaves of absence from campus, regardless of a doctor’s advice. Survivors of sexual assault describe an incredibly painful process that is clinically legalistic. Under the federal Title IX system, which became law in the 1970s to address sex discrimination, college administrators run investigations, on top of their day jobs, that really should be handled by law enforcement officials who specialize in working with traumatized victims.

Too often students who need help are treated as liabilities by university administrators who are indoctrinated by risk managers, attorneys, and communication specialists. It is quite obvious that the ultimate goal of this bureaucratic nightmare is brand protection.

In this moment of reckoning for higher ed, university boards need to do some soul searching. First, they need to empower college presidents and other administrators to express human emotion. Then they need to seriously examine the horribly unhelpful processes that administrators have to follow in ugly, complicated cases such as sexual assault, bullying, and mental health crises. When it comes to the broken Title IX system, the members of elite college boards, who are titans of industry, need to put their heads together and impress on lawmakers the need for change. And they should bring professors who study sexual assault into the reform process.

Two months after Harvard’s messaging problems, president Claudine Gay, not even half a year into the role, was dragged in front of a Republican-led Congressional hearing where she and two other university leaders were interrogated for hours, ostensibly in the name of combatting campus antisemitism.

Claudine Gay at the congressional hearing in 2023.Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg

I was in the room covering the hearing and, perhaps naively, I kept waiting for one of the presidents to confidently articulate why universities, like all human endeavors, are so messy but are capable of course correcting, and why free speech is essential for a serious academic institution. If anyone could model for the rest of society how to discuss the terribly divisive Israeli-Palestinian conflict, surely it would be the wise leaders of the world’s best universities.

Instead, the presidents stuck to their legalistic talking points handed to them by their advisers. Gay fell directly into a trap set by Harvard alum Elise Stefanik; she was out of the president’s office a few weeks later.

If only Cornell had learned the important lesson that when crises hit and students are hurt, it’s important to talk like a human.

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