And then there were five — five remaining Ivy League presidents, that is, with Cornell’s Martha Pollack announcing her resignation after the ousters of Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Elizabeth Magill.

Making the unexpected announcement via email, Pollack wrote to her fellow Cornellians, “I understand that there will be lots of speculation about my decision, so let me be as clear as I can: This decision is mine and mine alone. After seven fruitful and gratifying years as Cornell’s president — and after a career in research and academia spanning five decades — I’m ready for a new chapter in my life.” The announcement happens to coincide with ongoing anti-Israel protests at the school, an institution that has already dealt with multiple instances of explicit antisemitism in the past year. Between past controversies, current protests, and the school’s having to reimplement its standardized-testing requirements (an indictment of Pollack’s DEI-focused policies), it’s not all that surprising that the computer-science-professor-turned president is, according to the official line, making as graceful an exit as she can manage.

Stephanie Saul reports on the current Cornell encampment for the New York Times:

Dr. Pollack, 65, leaves at a time of controversy over disciplinary action Cornell has taken against pro-Palestinian student protesters. While Cornell has not summoned outside police forces to its campus in Ithaca, N.Y., it has taken what some professors called draconian measures against six protesters. Critics have found the disciplinary actions particularly disturbing coming in a school year when Dr. Pollack launched a campus free-expression initiative.

Though the students’ protest remained peaceful, the university invoked a provision calling for “immediate temporary suspension,” a measure intended for situations where the safety and health of the community were threatened, according to Risa L. Lieberwitz, a Cornell professor and the campus president of the American Association of University Professors.

“It is not intended to be used where the university is unhappy about the fact that you have an encampment and chanting,” she said.

Professor Lieberwitz called on Dr. Pollack to revoke the students’ suspensions — penalties that could erase their academic credits for the semester — as a parting presidential act that would ease tensions on campus.

Pollack should uphold these students’ suspensions. To Lieberwitz’s complaint, one can do all sorts of illegal things peacefully if law enforcement isn’t allowed to enforce the law. The encampment, and the disregard it shows for the students and staff at Cornell, is the rightly punished offense. Pollack should say as much while loading her diplomas, books, and tchotchkes into bank boxes.