Within hours of Sundial publishing “The ‘Cornell Seven’ Is Really About Liberalism,” authors Christina Ma BC ’28 and Nikos Mohammadi CC ’28 had received death threats. On Sidechat, students vowed to burn copies of Sundial. The Columbia Political Review’s editorial board demanded that Sundial publicly account for its editorial process; the Columbia Open Discourse Alliance (CODA), ostensibly “dedicated to strengthening the structural conditions that enable open discourse,” canceled a panel on press freedom our editor-in-chief was scheduled to appear on; and a group of Sundial’s own staffers petitioned on Instagram for the publication to “cease organizational operations” and aired their grievances to the Columbia Daily Spectator.
I want to start by saying that Christina and Nikos are my friends and colleagues. I opposed their argument, voiced concerns to them directly, and entertained writing a response. I also think Sundial had the right to publish it, and the past four days have vindicated that decision. The authors warned that campus discourse on the “Cornell Seven” had devolved into a “frenzy” that vilified dissent. Their critics then inadvertently proved their point.
Much of the outrage surrounding the article was warranted, particularly with regard to its treatment of consent. Although it never explicitly asserts that consent cannot be withdrawn, the authors’ logic is predicated on the assumption (one they concede) that Jane Doe was responsible for the predicament in which she found herself. That may be a defensible reading of New York state law, under which voluntary intoxication alone does not establish incapacity; reformers term it the “intoxication loophole,” which public officials have used to explain why no charges were brought.
I am not interested in relitigating the facts of the case. What I will say is that I believe a person can rescind consent at any moment, and that someone too intoxicated to understand what is happening to them is in no position to grant it. On this, I am largely repeating Jayna Rohslau’s GS ’27 take, who penned a response to Nikos and Christina, which Sundial published on the same day.
Nikos and Christina’s essay frames Doe’s underage alcohol and ketamine use as proof of adults’ “freedom to make bad decisions.” It cites feminist social critic Camille Paglia’s claim that a woman who goes upstairs with a man at a party is tacitly consenting to sex. Paglia’s caveat that imposing oneself on someone is wrong does not mitigate the damage of making that argument in an essay about an alleged gang rape. The authors warn against “armchair verdicts,” before inviting readers to consider the implications if this was “a reasonably consensual but regrettable encounter.” Nor does it help that “hysteria” was a needlessly charged descriptor of female critics, many of whom deeply resonate with the case.
There is also Christina’s account of her own relationship, which I would like to approach with care. She spoke of her 19-year-old self’s involvement with an older man, and her anxiety over seeming like a “prude.” The age gap itself suggests a latent power imbalance, one that blurs the line between choice and coercion.
The first time I read the essay, I found it, for lack of a better term, “triggering.” Two days ago, an anonymous submission to the Columbia Confessions Instagram account read:
Shame on all of you. I can only hope that you might one day mature enough to understand the effect of your words. Until then, I hope you sit in the discomfort of the backlash you are rightfully receiving and realize that, even then, you are experiencing only a fraction of the pain, torment, and degradation that Jane Doe has been experiencing in every moment since that night.
I don’t have to imagine. As a “Jane Doe” myself, Christina and Nikos’ essay provoked immense frustration and rage. Anyone who finds this subject too painful to read about has every right to refrain from doing so, and I would never think less of them for it. But that is a personal choice, not a license to decide for others.
I did not call my friends “rape apologists” or question their morals. I contacted them, and we had a series of difficult, and often painful, conversations. We did not change each other’s minds. But all of us came away understanding our arguments better. Nikos told Spectator that anyone with concerns should bring them to him and Christina directly. Almost no one has, which is telling.
To quote former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ concurrence in Whitney v. California: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
Sundial applied that remedy expeditiously. Jayna’s rebuttal has received a fraction of the attention it deserves. Nor was it an afterthought, as some commenters insinuated. It would not have been possible to write and edit a nearly 2,000-word op-ed in the three hours that separated the two pieces’ publication. Sundial ran both because the Cornell case has consumed our campus and social media discourse; publishing only one would have been an abdication of our mission to amplify new and often underrepresented ideas, especially when Nikos and Christina’s position falls well within the national Overton window.
Consider our critics, beginning with the loudest. On Sidechat and Instagram, students condemned not just the essay but Sundial en masse, declaring every writer on the masthead, including those of us who disagreed with the piece, complicit in “rape culture.” Much of the online fury also made it painfully obvious that many students had not read the essay in full; they often attacked arguments it didn’t make and drew conclusions it overtly rejected.
Sundial was inundated with accusations of censorship for turning off comments on our Instagram post. One student told Spectator that Sundial practices “free speech on their terms,” referencing this decision and the subsequent cancellation of CODA’s panel.
The comment section was disabled by the Sundial managing board after death threats and other abusive remarks were made. Meanwhile, the Substack comment section remains open, topped by one calling the piece “bullshit.” As for the panel, Sundial had no say in CODA’s cancellation of the event, and our editor-in-chief was among the scheduled speakers.
The Columbia Political Review writes that it is “alarmed by this article’s sourceless retelling of the history of sexual liberation,” and contends that with responsible sourcing, the article “would have looked quite different.” Christina and Nikos’ essay cites numerous primary documents and news reports, from Doe’s lawsuit and the Tompkins County district attorney’s statement to coverage in The New York Times, CBS, and ABC. Their claims about the sexual revolution and its aftermath are interpretations. The essay went through Sundial’s four rounds of editing, two of them copy edits. The Political Review may dislike the result, but it cannot credibly insist the process was careless. In fact, Nikos and Christina’s piece received the most extensive editorial scrutiny since Sundial’s founding in 2024—and understandably so.
Spectator’s coverage describes “concerns” about the essay’s “factual accuracy,” and states that the staff petition “draws on claims” from the Political Review’s letter. Yet neither the Political Review, nor the petition, nor Spectator, identifies a single factual error in the essay.
The Political Review’s concern for “facts” also appears limited to facts its leadership would like to hear. The letter asserts that “the movement towards sexual freedom has always been accompanied by rigorous, robust calls for consent.” Always? Including the 1970s liberationists who campaigned to abolish age-of-consent laws? Or the Weather Underground, a militant offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society that bombed government buildings, and whose “smash monogamy” campaign pressured members into sexual arrangements as a test of revolutionary commitment?
The Political Review declares that Christina and Nikos’ essay “perpetuates a culture of campus violence, rape, and assault.” It faults them for not discussing fraternities and disciplinary processes, which amounts to criticizing an op-ed for failing to be a different op-ed. It reproaches the authors for presuming Jane Doe’s state of mind, then devotes the rest of the letter to assuming our staff’s motives, informing readers that Sundial “willingly omitted” standards of respect.
The more fundamental problem, however, is that the letter equates questioning an allegation with tolerating assault. It is a standard the Political Review applies selectively.
Nowhere is this more evident than in their treatment of Christina. The board declares that no one—not even Christina herself—may characterize her situation as not constituting rape “without substantiating the claim with overwhelming evidence.” As previously mentioned, I have reservations about how she deployed that anecdote. But that does not change the fact that an editorial board claiming to speak for survivors demanded evidence from a young woman about her own sexual history. You may reject the conclusions a woman draws from her experience, but you may not demand she “substantiate” it to you and still call yourself an “ally” to survivors.
The board’s charge is guilt by association: that by publishing the essay, Sundial and its staff are complicit in “rape culture,” which the letter does not care to define. Every opinion page in the country runs on the principle that publication does not imply endorsement—the Political Review included. If printing the essay means Sundial sanctions “rape culture,” platforming Jayna’s rebuttal made us its opponents.
The Political Review called on Sundial “to formally re-evaluate their publishing guidelines and their commitment to public safety and publish a response detailing the formal decision-making process that allowed for this article to be released.”
The Political Review’s letter “reflects the majority opinion” of its editorial board. A majority. Who dissented? How was the vote taken? What objections were overruled? The Political Review has not published the “formal decision-making process” behind its own letter, and when Spectator asked, the board declined to comment.
No publication hands its internal correspondence to a rival on demand. Privacy allows editors to deliberate freely behind closed doors without subjecting every disagreement to adjudication by whoever is angriest.
The Political Review’s sudden enthusiasm for transparency is also curious. Its submissions page invites anonymous and pseudonymous pieces, recommends burner email addresses, and promises that contributors’ identities “will not be shared with anyone.” That is their prerogative. The last time the Political Review attacked Sundial, in December 2025, they alleged that our general policy against anonymity was an attempt at “moderat[ing]” discourse at Columbia.
So, a publication that shields its own writers from scrutiny demands that we submit to it, and wishes to police campus discourse in the meantime. Transparency, it seems, is virtuous only when it serves the prosecution.
The same letter announces that the Political Review will now refuse “any article that upholds or recreates cultures and systems of rape, sexual assault, or violence,” and urges all Columbia publications to follow suit. They do not explain what this encompasses. Their board demands that we divulge our guidelines while unveiling an arbitrarily vague speech code of its own. This is the same board that, in April 2024, condemned the University’s “intrusion on student discourse” (removing students who unlawfully occupied campus spaces) and promised to fast-track pitches from anyone defending the protestors. In other words, “intrusion” on speech only betrays Columbia’s values when the “speech” was an anti-Israel demonstration the Political Review sympathized with.
Finally, the Political Review invokes “public safety,” writing that “we understand our role in protecting our campus and our community.” Protecting the campus is Public Safety’s job. What is a political magazine’s purpose, if not to publish arguments?
If the Political Review’s letter was a failure of logic, CODA’s response was a failure of nerve. On Wednesday morning, its executive board posted a statement affirming that CODA exists to defend “the open exchange of ideas, including ideas we disagree with,” then declaring that this particular idea “promotes rape culture,” “works to silence survivors,” and was “not a contribution to debate but a step backward.” It announced its panel that evening, “Who Gets to Tell the Story? Press Freedom and the Public Square,” would not proceed. CODA answered the titular question of the event before its panelists even had a chance to speak.
CODA’s president, Aum Desai CC ’28, told Spectator that their board canceled the event “not in spite of, but because of our commitment to free expression.” He explained that if survivors might not feel comfortable speaking up in a space, that possibility was “in and of itself” enough to cancel the panel. By that standard, no event on any contested subject at Columbia can ever take place, since someone may always feel uncomfortable.
CODA also disclaimed twice that Nikos and Christina are “not affiliated” with the “free-speech” organization, though no one to my knowledge had suggested they were. (Nikos is a former executive board member.) A pro-free-expression group that instinctively distances itself from controversy reveals how little pressure its principles can bear. It cited “the safety and wellbeing of [its] attendees.” Safety from whom? The only danger this week came from those targeting Nikos and Christina, and canceling an event effectively handed them a heckler’s veto. Across three slides about safety and survivors, CODA never once mentioned the death threats and ad hominems. It closed by promising a community where no one must “choose between speaking up and staying safe.” Nikos and Christina faced precisely that choice this week. CODA had nothing to say to them.
A common refrain I’ve heard from those who support free speech in theory, they assure me, is that this essay was “beyond the pale.” But where was this line after October 7, 2023? In the days and weeks following Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians, Columbia students hailed terrorism as “resistance.” In April 2024, protesters outside the gates chanted “burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” one held a sign reading “Al-Qassam’s next targets” pointed at Jewish students, and encampment leader Khymani James was exposed for saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live” on an Instagram Live. Many of those now confidently asserting that some speech goes too far called all of that “free expression,” or stayed conspicuously silent as their Jewish and Israeli classmates were harassed.
On this campus, posters of kidnapped Israeli hostages were torn down and vandalized, and testimony from survivors and first responders about sexual violence they endured at the hands of Hamas was readily dismissed as “propaganda.” Where were the editorial boards demanding that campus publications “redefine what we refuse to publish”? Some of the students now posting about “rape culture,” spent the past three years liking and sharing posts from accounts that legitimized rape as a weapon of war.
It would be easy to end my response here now that I’ve laid our detractors’ hypocrisy bare. But that would be dishonest. It’s also widely known that some of the pressure to retract Nikos and Christina’s essay came from within. A group of Sundial staffers circulated a petition calling for the publication to “cease organizational operations” until leaders address concerns about our editorial process.
The petition’s central complaint is that the essay ran “without full-staff discussion.” That is by design. Sundial is not, and has never been, a bottom-up publication. No serious magazine puts every op-ed to a staff vote. Editors call the shots and answer for them, as Sundial’s editor-in-chief, Nick Baum, has commendably done. While he wrote to the entire staff that the members of the managing board “agree there could have been more transparency and that this may have reasonably come as a shock,” he was correct to also state that, “with a topic as real, serious, and upsetting as this, we always exercise a great degree of deliberation as to how to proceed.” It’s entirely understandable that the decision to publish opposing pieces on a topic this fraught rested with leadership. There was also no effort to “hide” Nikos and Christina’s piece from the rest of the staff, as the link to the draft was available on Sundial’s Slack throughout the editing process.
Disagreeing with an editorial choice does not authorize a staff member to sabotage the entire publication, and those who believe they are entitled to do so should resign. In April, I vehemently objected to Sundial publishing an anonymous piece written by a student protester under the pseudonym “Colloquious.” The article, in my view, was little more than an activist tirade that did not live up to our standards on tone and factual rigor. I consider it the worst editorial decision Sundial has made to date. Yet I fought it internally, because that is how disputes ought to be handled.
If this controversy has a silver lining, it is twofold. It has reminded us why Sundial exists: to publish perspectives many students don’t hear, or don’t want to hear. And it has prompted our managing board to have serious conversations with staff about how the publication is run. I’m glad these discussions are happening. But they belong inside Sundial, where they can strengthen the institution instead of tearing it down.
So Sundial will not “cease organizational operations.” We will continue publishing arguments that many of our own editors reject and find offensive, alongside rebuttals, this one included. We cannot let mob rule dictate what gets printed. And we will keep asking our critics to do what they have so far declined to do: write. If you think Christina and Nikos, Jayna, or I am wrong, make your case under your own name, and send it to Sundial.
Ms. Aufzien is a junior at Barnard College and the Jewish Theological Seminary, majoring in history and Jewish text. She is a staff editor for Sundial.
While the views in this piece are the author’s own, the Sundial managing board supports the author’s statements on the publication and its course of action.
Great points Shoshana, I really appreciate you writing this piece. It’s imperative that we uphold the principle of free speech!