Nick Freitas Champions Traditional Ethics Amid Cornell Seven Controversy
On Wednesday, October 28, 2026, Nick Freitas, a conservative social media influencer who previously served as a Green Beret in the U.S. Army and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, spoke to a crowd of students in Willard Straight Hall on the Cornell Seven controversy. His lecture was coordinated by the Cornell Republicans and Young America’s Foundation, and he was introduced by Eben Hill, president of the Cornell Republicans.
The Speech
Mr. Freitas opened his talk with a defense of the university, saying that “Cornell has a long and storied history” and that present controversies “shouldn’t mar that history.”
Drawing on an ethics class he took during his time in college, he transitioned into speaking about a systemic moral failure in modern society. Mr. Freitas explained that postmodernism is the greatest ethical issue, since from its premises, “follow that there is no such thing as objective morality, no such thing as objective truth,” which robs us of the mechanism to say what is right and wrong by reducing all of morality to perspectives.
Instead, Mr. Freitas argued, we as a society have to return to the traditional ethical framework, wherein we may have had disagreements over certain particulars but never disagreed that objective moral standards were necessary.
Mr. Freitas emphasized the importance of drawing clear moral lines. “If somebody raped my daughter, I would kill them,” he said, adding, “when I say it, I know of what I’m speaking.” Connecting this to the University’s situation, Mr. Freitas argued that, if the allegations against the men are true, “the punishment should be swift and the punishment should be brutal.” However, Cornell’s policy and New York state law have different standards, and many people appeal to personal ethical standards when talking about the situation that “not too long ago they said were archaic” and “backwards.”
“With or without consent, I find what happened to be atrocious,” Mr. Freitas said.
He connected traditional moral standards with the idea of Chesterton’s fence, which, to briefly summarize, is a principle stating that one should not change or remove something until one has learned the reason for its existence.
Mr. Freitas contrasted traditional values with American society’s “social experiment” in reducing sexual ethics to just consent. “Nobody is happy” with the results of this revolution, he said. Instead, traditional ethics work better for both men and women. For example, when he was in the state assembly, he had a rule that, if there was ever a woman in his office, the door would stay open for the safety of both parties, saying, “We know that some men will physically force themselves upon women. We also know that some women will lie about it.”
Mr. Freitas also emphasized that, while men and women are morally equal, they are not the same, and as such do not have the same duties. “I think men and women absolutely have equal moral value,” he said. However, he added the fact that “we’re different” and, as such, have different duties towards each other.
“Maybe it’s old fashioned,” he added, “but I was raised to believe that, as a man, I have an obligation to protect women and the innocent.” He noted that the Left always backs itself into a corner with their arguments on topics like this: they either presume that men and women are the same, which would make the men in the Cornell Seven case no less victimized than the girl, or that men and women are not the same, which undercuts the premise of modern feminism and moral equality. Regardless of which they argue, they never stop to consider that biblical traditional ethics may have been right all along.
Turning to sexual ethics specifically, Mr. Freitas expressed his frustration at society’s tendency to treat sex as “no big deal,” to reduce it to something cheapened and casual that two adults do together for fun. Observing that everybody knows deep down that rape is a much graver offense than a mugging, he rhetorically asked the audience, “is it the time to consider that we’ve been lied to about sexual ethics?”
Consent cannot be the only moral criterion, he argues, and that fact can be known through our own reactions. He addressed the young ladies in the audience and asked them if their opinion of a young man they were in love with would change if they found out that, earlier in his life, he had participated in an event like that described in the Cornell Seven case. He asked the young men in the audience the same question in the reverse. Left implicit was the notion that it would obviously change their perspectives. He followed this with the assertion that, if he found out that his son was one of the Cornell Seven “and said ‘no Dad, it’s alright, it was consensual,’ I would beat him.”
Mr. Freitas then shifted to his own family. “I love being a husband, I love being a dad,” he said. He told a number of stories about his eldest daughter, such as the difficulty navigating her first mention of a boy and seemingly small events surrounding her marriage.
When he asked his then-fifth-grade daughter if she knew why he forbade her from dating until she was 18, she replied that dating was for marriage, and she was too young at that point to have a relationship oriented toward that end. He replied that, although that is true, the real reason is that “I want you to have everything your mother and I have” when she does meet the right gentleman. He doesn’t want her to have to list “a long history of what came before him.”
Years later, a month before Freitas’ daughter’s now-husband asked Mr. Freitas for her hand, the now-husband asked her what she would do if Mr. Freitas said “no.” She replied, “I’d be heartbroken because it’d be over,” because she trusted that Freitas saw something she did not. Mr. Freitas maintains that this is the greatest compliment he has ever received.
He concluded his talk with a call for men and women to behave as they ought in accordance with traditional biblical moral values. There is, “nothing quite so powerful as us just assuming our proper responsibilities as mothers and fathers” and raising our sons and daughters to be good men and women in a morally bankrupt culture.
“There’s no greater pride than looking at your son and realizing he’s going to be a better man than you,” he said. Mr. Freitas continued, claiming that “when we put sex in its proper place” and understand “that it’s something sacred,” it not only leads to better moral results but also a better life.
“That’s my hope for all of you,” he said. “Understand that all of this can be stopped by changing our perspective.”
The Q&A
Victoria Reiter ’24 D.V.M. ’27 began the Q&A by asking Mr. Freitas what his thoughts were regarding Cornell’s actions with regard to fraternities. He replied that group punishment is “walking on dangerous territory.” While recognizing that the University has the right to set its own rules, he noted that it is not fair to all of the fraternities that had nothing to do with the Cornell Seven issue and that it implies moral corrosion is only a fraternity problem. He added that those in positions of authority generally have to be careful about precedent because if rules are seen as unequally applied, then those rules lose their credibility.
Another student asked Mr. Freitas how to exist as a conservative in an extremely hostile environment. He replied with the two things he says to those who accuse him of extremism: “what is the definition of extremism?”, and “what did I say that’s extreme?” He notes a time when he was called racist during a 2nd Amendment debate.
Labels like “racist” and “sexist” are designed to remove “moral credibility,” he claimed; however, labels like “fascist” and “threat to democracy” give moral justification for violence against conservatives.
“I’m happy to have a debate over anything,” he added, as long as his opponent admits that there is an objective truth; otherwise, they are just arguing over opinion. Opponents need to be willing to reconsider, change their minds, or walk away not convinced but with broadened perspectives. “I will treat you with respect, and I demand it in return,” he said.
When asked if the “implicit biases” of politicians contribute to the controversy, Mr. Freitas noted that everybody has “a lens through which we view reality.” In other words, everybody is biased; it merely depends on how you control your biases.
With regard to the Cornell Seven, “this is one of those situations where it could look one way and be the exact opposite, or it could be exactly what you thought.” We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, he added; “it takes discipline,” but he continued to say that people need to be willing to take a step back and wait for more facts before chiming in, especially those in influential positions.
Andrew Liu ‘29 asked the final question of the night. He asked Mr. Freitas what caused the moral decline Freitas spoke about, what we can do to remedy it, and how much of it is due to feminism.
Mr. Freitas tackled the first of these questions first, saying that there are always “multiple conditions and a catalyst” that cause these major changes. In this case, people rightly noticed that men often got away with sexual immorality in ways that women could not. The proper response, he argued, would be for men to be more sexually moral; however, what actually happened is that women came to match men in their depravity.
He notes that Marx and Engels saw the family as one of the greatest obstacles to their “socialist utopia,” and that feminists have been aiding this social revolution.
Mr. Freitas also expressed concern about the fact that men and women are so busy competing with each other that they forget their complementary roles, and people are happiest when they deny that aspect of the culture, using himself and his wife as an example.
He continued that the best way to remedy these issues is to show others the goodness of the family and to outwardly show the fact that you are happy and fulfilled. Although he acknowledges that there certainly are abusive family relationships, Freitas couldn’t “think of a monetary or career objective that holds a candle to the feeling when my kids come through the door.”
“You couldn’t convince me to trade that for anything,” he said.
Below are some pictures from the event
