Freedom with Responsibility
I look back at my college years at Cornell with great fondness, particularly as I see the current disruptions that are affecting current and prospective students who are missing the campus and community experience. Many of the lessons and classes have become fuzzy over the last 30 years, but I distinctly recall a Cornell credo that has stuck with me: Freedom with Responsibility. This succinct and powerful guiding principle seems especially apt in this current environment of restricted freedom, limited activity, shutdowns, and social distancing. The founding of our country was triggered by the tyranny of a distant and unresponsive leader, whose unilateral actions affected the cost and availability of essential products, the tax levels of our thirteen colonies, the freedom of expression of our residents, and freedom of assembly. By our very nature, as Americans, we are driven by an implicit thirst for liberty—broadly defined as freedom from oppressive restricti...