The Cornell American Studies Dept. has announced that Aziz Rana, Professor at the Boston College Law School will deliver the Daniel W. Kops Lecture on Monday, September 8, 2025 from 12 pm to 1 pm. Rana’s topic is “The Constitution in Crisis: how Americans came to idolize a document that fails them”.
According to the event’s coordinator, it will be held in 106 White Hall, which has a 40 seat capacity, and will not be livestreamed. Prof. Rana will not appear in any other campus event during his visit.
In 1990, Daniel W. Kops ‘39 and his wife Nancy gave a sizable donation to Cornell, endowing an honorarium for an annual lecture. Despite the prevalence of the recent funding cuts, Cornell has not disclosed how this year’s Kops Lecture was affected by its austerity plans.
The stated topic of the Kops Lecture was “freedom of the press.” Freedom of the press is a particularly timely subject because of campus unrest in recent years and the current president’s criticism of mainstream media as “the enemy of the people.”
Past Kops lectures included New York Times columnist Tom Wicker, addressing “Privacy in the Age of Media” in 2000; Annenberg School Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson discussing “Advocacy Advertising and the First Amendment” in 1998; Juan González, New York Daily News columnist discussing “How Long Must We Wait? The Struggle for Racial and Ethnic Equality Within the American News Media” in 2004; and Gail Collins, the editorial page editor of The New York Times addressing “How Women Got Their Voice” in 2002. These talks, from a variety of viewpoints, all addressed the issue of press freedom.
The selection of the lecturer is based upon a vote of all faculty in the American Studies Program. Historically, campus conservatives have promoted attendance at the Kops Lecture and advocated for keeping the lecture relevant to freedom of the press. As campus unrest increases and debates around free speech persist, this lecture has taken on a heightened significance and can illuminate how Cornell views freedom of the press.
