President Kotlikoff Wins Benson Award
On August 29, 2026, the Steamboat Institute presented President Michael Kotlikoff with the Bruce D. Benson Courage in Education Award at its annual Freedom Summit held in Beaver Creek, CO.
The Benson Award is granted each year to “an institution or member of academia who demonstrates an unwavering commitment to open inquiry, free speech, and intellectual diversity – traditional ideals of higher education that have been usurped in recent years in favor of identity politics and free speech restrictions.”
This award is named for Bruce D. Benson ‘64, President of the University of Colorado (2008-2019), the longest-serving CU President in the past 65 years. Benson was awarded the inaugural Courage in Education Award in 2016. Benson studied Geology at Cornell and served as President of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
In Kotlikoff’s acceptance speech, he said:
“To quote John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’: ‘All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.’
And to silence discussion is to declare the search for knowledge and truth at an end.
This is, in part, why Cornell has, for 161 years, steadfastly defended the rights of all to speak — even of those with whom we may deeply disagree, on topics we may find deeply offensive.
In recent years, the university has welcomed more than a few speakers who have kept our public relations team very busy – from Ann Coulter to Angela Davis; from Tzipi Livni to Norman Finkelstein. And we’ve defended, in our own community, the right to express views diametrically opposed to our university’s core values.”
Kotlikoff then commented on the current challenges facing research universities like Cornell:
“Today, this priceless American asset faces dual threats. An internal threat, from those on our campuses who see the university merely as a vehicle for their own social and political agendas; and an external threat, from those in our government who also see in universities a means to political ends.
The tools of the former are disruptive protest, silencing other voices, and activist scholarship. The tools of the latter are threats to scientific funding and unwarranted legal actions.
I have spent the last several years working to protect the rights of everyone on Cornell’s campuses; enforcing our policies to prevent certain members of our community from suppressing the rights of others, while expanding the intellectual breadth of our scholarship. And I have confidence that other universities and other presidents are acting similarly.
But I am less sanguine about the politicization of scientific research, and the use of funding and legal threats as leverage to pressure American universities to conform to a particular political agenda. And I am deeply concerned about our ability to continue welcoming the world’s best talent; and our government’s continued commitment to evidence-based decision-making and science policy, including through the funding of scientific research.”
It is always good to see that others beyond Cornell appreciate Cornell’s and Kotlikoff’s values.
Here is a video of Kotlikoff’s acceptance speech:
