Cornell bans radical student after university president was held hostage in car over Israel debate clash
By Nicholas McEntyre
Published June 5, 2026, 1:16 a.m. ET
A Cornell student activist who hounded the Ivy League school’s president, Michael Kotlikoff, in a parking lot following an Israel-Palestinian debate has been banned from campus.
Aiden Vallecillo is prohibited from attending any events at the Ithaca institution for one year after he was a part of a larger group of students who surrounded and filmed Kotlikoff, demanding to talk with the administrator as he walked to his car on April 30, according to WBNG.
Vallecillo, who graduated from the elite upstate university in May, was labeled a persona non grata by university police at his off-campus apartment on May 28, five days after graduating from the school.
“I think that they deliberately timed this to be at a point where students are off campus, where people are thinking about recent graduation, about post-grad plans and not about kind of how to support their fellow students,” Vallecillo claimed to the outlet. “They’ve done it at a time when national media attention has also died off.”
https://nypost.com/2026/06/05/us-news/cornell-bans-radical-student-after-university-president-was-held-hostage-in-car-over-israel-debate-clash/
