Talk:Ezra Cornell

Origin
Was he a Jew? --Brand спойт 12:00, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Are you basing that question on his Old Testament first name, his unstoppable work ethic, and his commitment to his community? Cranston Lamont 15:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
 * (Let's, in the spirit of WP:AGF, chalk up the question's wording ("A Jew" is sometimes chosen to cmmunicate at least disregard for nuanced differention among religious affilation, ethnic origin, and excuse for hostility, as compared to the less charged "Jewish".) to impatience or ignorance.) No, at that point in Anglo-American history, it's unlikely he was Jewish either ethnically or by parental fiat (let alone personal coversion). I haven't checked for Cornell (surname but it sounds likely to derive from the Norman conquest and the name Corneille or the like, and unlikely to have come over from France with a Jewish warrior. Ezra, surely from the Old Testament. presumably was a name conferred on Christian children at a time when Christians took those religions' Jewish roots more literally than many today would, and would have been quite suitable in either Puritan or Quaker circles in the Britain or America of his day. --Jerzy•t 18:14, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Cornell wasn't born in Westchester County--he was born in DeRuyter, near Cortland.

A Modest Proposal
The Religious Society of Friends is a curious entity, featuring many curious (in both senses of the adjective) people. While i spent something on the order of two decades thinking of myself as a Friend (as my best buddy among Friends, the Quaker-history and -theology scholar Geoff Kaiser put it, it's simply a question of whether you "own" them and they "own" you -- using a valuable but recently somewhat neglected sense of that word -- and i have disowned mostly the outward actvities but not the style-of-mind of the Society, for over a decade (since 9-11, FWIW), i remain among the Peculiar people to a great extent.  The accompanying article struck me in several aspects as having been written not for the English[-language] Wikipedia, but for a notional WP written in the Quaker-English dialect or jargon. (No doubt that notion will offend some Quakers: perhaps many at my erstwhile employer, FUM headquarters in Richmond and perhaps, some of those in Indianapolis or Pomona, New York.)   My notion of the QE WP as  a language variant is probably fully quixotic, but i want to seriously suggest that WMF be open to considering (perhaps as a facility provided on a one-off basis -- i.e., with no intention of providing the same accomodation to any other wiki )  Hmm, here i shall break off, and mull offline,  considering whether my notion actually requires any WMF  accomodation beyond our fundamental open-source approach to our content & engine. --Jerzy•t 12:23, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

"educational administrator" or "educator" or "university founder"?
Hi all,

I am just curious the first paragrah says he is "educational administrator". If he is founder of Cornell, shouldn't the title be called "educator" or "university founder"?

Xinbenlv (talk) 22:15, 26 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Good point. My understanding is that Cornell left the actual running of the University to Andrew Dickson White. Cornell donated the money and the land, and handled the political maneuvering to secure the land grant money. But White was the the University's first president, the guy who actually ran the place. The article History of Cornell University suggests as much: "Cornell oversaw the construction of the university's first buildings, starting with Morrill Hall, and spent time investing the federal land scrip in western lands for the university that would eventually net millions of dollars, while White ... began making plans for the administrative and educational policies of the university." . - Kzirkel (talk) 23:07, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Land grant management
I just rewrote the paragraph on managing the University's land grant program. This is a complex topic, but my goal was to make Ezra Cornell's innovations more clear without going into too much detail. The previous version cited a source that has a good reputation, but I did not use it because I don't happen to have access. For future reference, that source is: My understanding, the 2011 edition is a reprint with new illustrations. Condensinguponitself (talk) 20:21, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

30,000 letters?
The statement "Cornell University has made the approximately 30,000 letters in the Cornell Correspondence available online" seems plausible, but I was unable to verify. Presently, the library's web site contains the less specific claim that the whole collection, correspondence and other items, occupy 60 cubic feet. Also, the more modest statement, "much of the collection has been digitized". So I added a "citation needed" tag to the statement. Condensinguponitself (talk) 14:26, 28 October 2021 (UTC)