This is what seems like a sting operation conducted on a hapless academic administrator, Cornell’s assistant dean for students, Joseph Scaffido. As originally reported by the New York Post, an investigator working for the conservative group Project Veritas posed as a prospective Moroccan student and visited Scaffido, asking if the university would be amenable to having a guest speaker from ISIS, to funding the “freedom fighters”, and, in the end, even running a training camp for students conducted by an ISIS fighter. This was all secretly videotaped. And to all of these suggestions Scaffido said, “No problem,” as you see in the undercover video below.

At first I thought Scaffido was just clueless, not knowing which “freedom fighters” the fake student was mentioning, but later the student mentions the “Islamic state,” so it should have been clear.

This video has raised a considerable ruckus, especially about Scaffido’s comparison of a proposed Cornell terrorist training camp to a sports camp. That’s just crazy. But of course such a request would never have passed the vetting of Cornell’s higher administration.

Have a look:

Yes, this dean is surely hapless and ignorant but, to give him some credit, he’s probably trying to help a “Moroccan student” feel at home on campus, and may not fully understand the nature of the “freedom fighters” discussed by the interviewer. But Scaffido really shouldn’t have expressed such enthusiasm. Do recall, though, that Project Veritas is run by James O’Keefe, who did the same kind of undercover reporting for the ACORN “scandal,” and, after doing enormous damage to that organization, was later found to have been guilty of dishonest reporting.

When the interview above became public, the president of Cornell was forced to issue a statement, as reported in the Cornell Daily Sun:

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, President David Skorton said the idea that Cornell would welcome terrorist groups such as ISIS and Hamas on campus is “ludicrous and absolutely offensive.”

Skorton described the video — which has been widely circulated online by various media outlets — as a “shameful” product of Project Veritas, which he said “has been repeatedly vilified for dishonest, deceitful activity.”

“It is shameful that any individual would pose as a student facing racial discrimination at another university, ask leading questions on hidden camera about Cornell’s tolerance for differing viewpoints and backgrounds, and then conveniently splice together the resulting footage to smear our assistant dean and our University,” Skorton said.

Skorton added that while many forms of free expression are welcome at the University, violence is not tolerated on Cornell’s campus.

“Cornell has an unwavering commitment to the free and responsible exchange of ideas,” he said. “However, we remain vigilant in maintaining an appropriate balance of freedom of expression within accepted boundaries. Of course, incitement to violence is not protected and would never be tolerated on our campus.”

It’s a pretty appropriate response, though he may have been too quick to shoot the messenger. Of course you’d want to use a Muslim-appearing student to broach the question, as those would be the students most likely to want ISIS on campus. And the president’s statement about “racial discrimination” is just a red herring designed to make Cornell look empathic. Finally, without seeing the full video, the University should not imply that its footage was dishonestly spliced.

But Skorton’s statement about free expression is good, and I, for one, would not be opposed to an ISIS speaker on campus, so long as he or she didn’t try to incite terrorism or violence (given how ISIS behaves, that would be hard to avoid). I am a bit concerned, though, about  what Skortin means by “an appropriate balance of freedom of expression within accepted boundaries.” What are those boundaries? But training camps—hell, no!

The Cornell Daily Sun published its own editorial excoriating the video down the line on grounds of “questionable journalistic practice”. I don’t think this is all that questionable, since undercover videos are a staple of modern journalism. The only thing that I see as unethical about this is whether the video was edited to put the dean in an unfair light—and perhaps how the investigator misrepresented himself. But of course lots of federal investigators misrepresent themselves in sting operations, and the interviewer reportedly represented himself as only a “prospective” student.

h/t: Steve