INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun 16 Pages – Free
Vol. 141, No. 6
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2025 n ITHACA, NEW YORK
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Cornell activists spoke to The Sun about their frustration with a lack of clarity in the suspension process. | Page 5
Emma Robinson ’28 discusses her favorite book formats and weighs the differences between them. | Page 15
Men’s Hockey handled Brown and Yale, securing a crucial six points ahead of the ECAC playoffs. | Page 16
HIGH: 19º LOW: 12º
He Was Accused of Workplace Bullying, Ousted From Nonprofit, Then Elected to Ithaca’s Common Council By MAX TROIANO and GABRIEL LEVIN Sun Staff Writer and Editor-in-Chief
Feb. 18 — From storming out of two Ithaca Common Council meetings to the mayor warning he could be “severely sanctioned,” Alderperson David Shapiro’s tense encounters with his colleagues in City Hall have spilled into public view several times in the past year. But even before his election to Ithaca’s Common Council in November 2023, he was accused of workplace bullying and verbally abusive leadership at two nonprofits he led, The Sun has learned after interviewing former employees and obtaining internal documents,
including a 2022 whistleblower report. After employees raised concerns about his conduct, the board of directors of one of the nonprofits that Shapiro led, Family Services of Chemung County, voted unanimously in 2022 to not renew his contract, citing low morale and high employee turnover in a memo to staff that The Sun obtained. Shapiro denied many of his former employees’ accusations in an interview with The Sun. He often declined to discuss specific allegations. “I’m not going to re-litigate my entire career,” he said. But he did acknowledge that as a nonprofit leader, he had felt it was necessary to make “very urgent” and “assertive decisions”
JASON WU / SUN FILE PHOTO
Shapiro stands | Common Council member David Shapiro objects to a Palestinian flag present at a March 6, 2024 meeting during which the Council discussed a new ceasefire resolution.
in which he did not “always have the right amount of time to include everybody in the decision-making and in the thought process.” “I’ve done a lot of really good work in my career,” Shapiro said, “including helping organizations that were failing miserably turn themselves around so that they could become high-functioning organizations.” Family Services of Chemung County’s decision to move on from Shapiro came after a former employee submitted the 72-page confidential whistleblower report to the board of directors in March 2022, accusing Shapiro of creating a “culture of fear, distrust, and burnout.” The Elmira-based nonprofit provides mental health services and support for families and youth. Shapiro had taken over as CEO of the nonprofit in 2019. Shapiro displayed “a troubling pattern” of “creating dismissive and difficult working conditions — serious threats to the organization’s viability and success,” the former employee’s report warned, describing staff members in “professional crisis” and an atmosphere of low morale. When asked about the internal tensions that led to his exit from Family Services of Chemung County, Shapiro said, “That’s none of your business why I’ve left jobs. But I’ve left jobs for very personal reasons, and all of those personal reasons were very much my own choices.” Working under Shapiro “was really a traumatic time for a lot of us,” said Corinne Shanahan, who served as director of operations
and quality management at the organization. She said Shapiro was often “verbally abusive” and suppressed dissent in his role. Shanahan said Shapiro had retaliated against her by removing her position from the budget in December 2021 and offering her the choice to leave or be demoted after she raised concerns about him to her co-workers. She said she chose to leave. Asked about Shanahan’s claims, Shapiro wrote in an email statement that he could not freely discuss human resources issues, but that decisions to fire people were made by a team and included consultations with human resources staff and the board. Shapiro added that most former employees who lost jobs were unhappy about it, and many “looked for someone to blame, and that was usually me.” Shanahan said that she met with Family Services of Chemung County’s board twice after she left the group and that about two dozen other employees had also shared their experiences with the board. “After intense deliberations, we have voted not to renew David Shapiro’s contract as CEO of Family Services,” the nonprofit’s board wrote in the June 1, 2022, memo to staff. “The vote was unanimous with one abstention.” To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com. Max Troiano and Gabriel Levin can be reached at mtroiano@cornellsun.com and glevin@cornellsun.com.
Investigation Flags $18.7M in Cornell Funding
Led by Sen. Ted Cruz, the search identified grants advancing ‘neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda’ By JULIA SENZON Sun Managing Editor
Feb. 18 — U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-T.X.) released a database of over 3,400 grants awarded by the National Science Foundation that he is requesting the agency conduct “significant scrutiny” of for “promot[ing] Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanc[ing] neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” detailed a Feb. 11 press release. Of the listed projects, 22 were from Cornell, accumulating $18.7 million in NSF funding. This database was the “backbone” of Cruz’s October investigation into “how the Biden administration politicized scientific research,” according to the press release. The committee analysis named “Division. Extremism. Ideology.” found that more than 10 percent of NSF grants, or over $2.05 billion in federal dollars, funded projects advancing DEI tenets or “pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.”
According to the press release, the investigation relates to Trump’s executive orders issued on Jan. 20 and Jan. 21 urging the elimination of DEI programs, offices and positions. In response to Trump’s executive order, The NSF paused grant review to reassess the process’s compliance with new policies. However, it has since resumed proposal processing and review activities and worked to reschedule canceled panels. The database classified awards under five categories — status, social justice, race gender and environmental justice. Of the Cornell projects listed, 18 were labeled under the status category, meaning they “described persons based on their membership in a population deemed underrepresented, underserved, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or excluded” and “described communities as oppressed and science as a tool for continued oppression, rather than advancing science,” the investigation states. See CRUZ page 10