Students and faculty at Cornell University are demonstrating mounting displeasure with the school’s administration over its handling of the alleged gang rape by fraternity members that occurred in 2024, calling for greater accountability and an overhaul of investigatory procedure.

Hundreds of students, faculty members, and other supporters gathered Monday in front of the school’s student center under the banner of “Justice for Survivors.” Attendees wore purple ribbons and held signs that asked questions such as “Cornell, can you hear us now?” and “When will we start protecting survivors?”

The peaceful protest was led by dozens of student organizations, including Students for a Democratic Cornell (SDC).

“We found it incredible,” Soham Bera, the vice-chair of SDC, tells TIME. “This was a moment where you had hundreds, if not thousands, of students coming together—despite the fact this administration has been known for cracking down on protesting and still deciding this is our moment.”

Read More: The System That Failed Cornell’s Jane Doe

The groups also presented Cornell’s leadership with demands for disciplinary action and changes to how the university handles sexual assault complaints.

Among the chants from demonstrators were calls for Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff to resign and chants of “Ban the frats!”

Athena Holloway, the former president of Cornell’s Black Students United and president of Cornell NAACP, was one of the speakers at the student-led event. She noted the long history of students using their voices to demand change on campus, including the Afro-American Society Willard Straight Hall Takeover of 1969.

“Cornell has changed before, and we can change it again,” she said. 

Why the Cornell sexual assault case is drawing new outrage

It comes as a response to the civil lawsuit filed Sept. 14 by a former Cornell student, who is identified in the complaint as Jane Doe. Doe not only alleges in the lawsuit that she was sexually assaulted by seven members of the school’s Chi Phi fraternity but also claims that Cornell was negligent in its response and violated New York law.

Cornell’s response to the incident—and its broader approach to handling sexual assault reports on campus—came under scrutiny after Doe’s lawsuit alleged negligence, breach of contract, and violations of New York law.

“We need to speak up. This miscarriage of justice cannot continue to go on,” Bera says.

Bera and other protesters point to what they consider insufficient punishments from Cornell University after it conducted its Title IX investigation, which began in January 2025. Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, has said that Cornell expelled two of the seven accused students and that it required some of the other fraternity members to write essays. 

Cornell has confirmed that its disciplinary process resulted in expulsions and suspensions, but it has not disclosed individual outcomes. It also clarified last week that “none of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement.”

Giuffra also claims that Doe was denied her request for a tuition refund when she sought to leave Cornell. He says that she eventually withdrew from the university, citing a lack of institutional support.

Cornell subsequently gave a response to Inside Higher Ed saying that it regularly works with students seeking leave and has in the past refunded payments, but it did not respond directly to the accusation related to Doe. 

Giuffra added this week that the consequences against Doe have persisted, telling People that she has been receiving threats since filing her lawsuit against her alleged attackers and against Cornell.

“There are people out there trying to track her down,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “They said, ‘We’re gonna shut you up.’”

According to Doe’s lawsuit, the alleged assault involved illegal drug use. The school’s newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, reported Saturday that campus police made a drug-related arrest at the Chi Phi fraternity house less than 24 hours before the alleged assault and referred an individual to Cornell’s student conduct office. Cornell did not tell the Sun when that office learned of the referral.

Dissatisfaction was also expressed early Monday when the school's main administration building was splashed with graffiti and had its doors damaged. 

In a statement, school spokesperson Kyle Kimball said, “We understand the frustration and strong emotions being expressed across our community. Those concerns deserve to be heard, but damaging property is not the answer. We are investigating the vandalism at Day Hall and will address it in accordance with University policy and applicable law.”

As the students continue to assert their frustration with the university, so too does the faculty. 

Faculty Senate member Paul Ortiz, a professor of labor history, sponsored a no-confidence resolution—which is an official statement demonstrating that the faculty no longer trusts or approves of the school’s leadership. It was introduced Monday for review by the University Faculty Committee. 

“The faculty Senate has no confidence in the ability of the central administration to effectively address the ongoing crisis of sexual assault at Cornell University,” the resolution states, according to The New York Times.

The resolution is not legally binding, and faculty governing boards are not required to replace administrators because of a no-confidence resolution. The measure is expected to be put to a vote when the faculty Senate meets Oct. 14.

TIME has reached out to Ortiz for further comment from the Senate.

Frustration is also mounting beyond Cornell, as the case draws an outpouring of anger and solidarity on social media. An “I am Jane Doe” online support campaign has gained traction by inviting others to share similar incidents that they experienced, with one TikTok video garnering over 4 million views. 

Alumni also launched an online petition that has collected over 61,000 signatures pledging to withhold financial and other means of support until the university demonstrates accountability, transparency, remedy, and prevention. TIME cannot independently confirm that all of the signees were formerly enrolled at Cornell.

What Cornell students and faculty want to see changed 

Ahead of Monday’s protest, the organizing groups called on Cornell to expel or revoke the degrees of students they say were involved in the alleged assault; establish independent hearings and minimum sanctions for sexual assault; require prevention training for students and trauma-informed training for campus police; and commission an external review of Cornell’s handling of the case.

Bera says the groups also want to restore a university judicial system independent of the administration.

"What Cornell needs is a judicial system that is independent of an administration that uses it to protect the university's image and the opinions of donors and trustees at the expense of the student body,” Bera says.

She points to 2020, when the school approved a new Student Code of Conduct, placing disciplinary authority in the administration's hands. SDC and its collaborators believe that this independent judicial system needs to be re-implemented “as soon as possible,” Bera says.

Kate Manne, a Cornell philosophy professor, also urged accountability in a Substack post. She advocated banning fraternities across campus, describing them as “a hotbed of misogyny” with “no valid role in the modern university.” Cornell says the Chi Phi chapter closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus.

What happens next for Cornell? 

The pressure on Cornell is now moving on several fronts: an independent review, a state investigation, a faculty vote and further protests.

Over the weekend, Kotlikoff recorded a video for students promising more transparency and accountability—pledging, without specificity, to “do better.”

“What happened to Jane Doe in 2024 is deeply disturbing and will weigh heavily on our community for years to come,” he said.

On Tuesday, Cornell University's Board of Trustees named Sally Yates, a former acting U.S. attorney general and career federal prosecutor, to lead an independent review of the university’s handling of the case.

“The review will examine Cornell’s policies, practices and resources across the full range of prevention and response, including how reports are received and investigated; how students are supported; how hearings, disciplinary decisions and appeals are handled … and policies and oversight involving fraternities, sororities, and other student organizations,” according to the accompanying statement. 

It also said that Yates will investigate the Cornell Board of Trustees’ oversight on the issues.

TIME has reached out to Cornell for comment.

Outside of the school’s contested internal investigation, parallel lines of inquiry are continuing through a criminal investigation overseen by the state. 

The criminal investigation was reopened Sept. 28 by Tompkins District Attorney Matthew Van Houten.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, however, has criticized Van Houten’s handling of the case. The DA had reviewed the original complaint filed by Jane Doe in 2024 and declined to prosecute at the time. She appointed State Attorney General Letitia James on Oct. 1 as the special prosecutor on the case.

“Think about that—in what world would the police learn from a victim that she'd been literally gang raped while intoxicated by five men in a fraternity house and not elevate those allegations to the District Attorney?” Hochul said in a press conference on Oct. 2. “In what world does the District Attorney not even interview her or anyone else involved—or even request the full transcript?”

Bera says that the independent review by Cornell is a good first step—but SDC and other organizations plan to continue holding protests until the rest of their demands have been met. 

Next is a sit-in protest “in solidarity with Jane Doe and all survivors of sexual assault and sexual violence,” she says. That takes place Wednesday.

External advocates are also rallying around Jane Doe, with an independent protest organized by groups unaffiliated with Cornell scheduled for Oct. 13.

“Cornell Administration supports known rapists,” the organizers’ post said. “We demand answers.”

A Republican has occupied Texas’ governor’s seat for more than three decades. But recent polls show that Gov. Greg Abbott, who has led the state since 2015, is facing a tight race against his Democratic challenger.

Abbott last won re-election by a more than 10-point margin four years ago. Most polls, though, indicate that the governor holds a small, single-digit lead as the November election approaches. In one Fox News survey conducted between Sept. 24-28 by the Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research, the Republican incumbent led Gina Hinojosa, a Democratic state Representative, by roughly five percentage points. 

Some other polls, meanwhile, show Hinojosa ahead of the governor by a narrow margin. A poll conducted by the New York Times/Siena University between Sept. 21-30, for instance, found that 49% of likely Texas voters said they would back Hinojosa for governor, while 46% said they would re-elect Abbott.

“This is an unusual situation in Texas politics,” says Joshua Blank, the research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s rather uncommon to see any Democratic candidate leading in anything other than a single outlying poll leading up to the election.”

And the governorship isn’t the only race threatening to upend the political scene in the state this fall: the Texas Republican Party is also grappling with a close-fought Senate contest, in which Democratic state representative James Talarico is leading the GOP’s nominee, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, in most polls by a razor-thin margin.

Here’s what experts think could be behind the apparent shift in voters’ sentiments—and how real the chance of the governorship flipping really is.

How Trump is affecting the Texas elections

Experts largely attribute the unusual competitiveness of the gubernatorial race to voters’ dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and the national Republican Party.

“The polls are indicating that this is a very difficult year for Republicans nationwide, but especially in red states like Texas where the unpopularity of the Donald Trump presidency is dragging candidates down below the normal benchmark and cushion that they have enjoyed, in the case of Texas, for close to 30 years,” says Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University.

Nationwide, Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low; according to the latest Associated Press/NORC polls, roughly 31% of adults in the country approve of the President, far below the approval rating he had when he was sworn in for a second term in January 2025. When it comes to how Trump has handled the economy in particular, his approval rating is even lower, at 26%, according to AP/NORC polling.

Support for Trump is higher in Texas—around 42% of respondents in the state for polling conducted by the Texas Politics Project said they had a “favorable” opinion of him in August. But the portion of respondents in that Texas survey who said they had an unfavorable view of the President—51% in August—exceeds those who said they held a positive opinion of him. And the number of people who hold a positive view of Trump has fallen since December 2024, when 54% of respondents said they had a favorable opinion of Trump, according to the Texas Politics Project.

Blank points out that Trump’s approval rating in Texas is higher on certain issues, such as immigration and border security. 

But Texas voters are concerned about the cost of living, Blank says, and have expressed disapproval of how Trump is handling the economy. Texas is a large state that is geographically sprawling, so voters are particularly affected by the soaring gas prices sparked by the war in Iran, according to Blank.

“The challenge for Republicans is that the issues that voters consistently tell us are the most important to them are the ones that Trump is finding his ratings at their lowest,” Blank says. “While Texas is less negatively disposed towards the President as some other states, and certainly as the country as a whole, Texas is still part of the broader political conversation, and Texans are expressing less positive evaluations of the President than we’ve seen in the past.”

Jones posits that another possible explanation for the unusually tight gubernatorial race could be that Abbott has been in office for so long that the polls are showing “voter fatigue.”

Texans last elected a Democratic governor in 1990

If Hinojosa were to win the governorship, it would mark the first time since 1990 that Texas voters have elected a Democrat to be their governor—a remarkable shift in partisan politics in a staunchly Republican state. If that were to happen, experts predict that Hinojosa would use her veto power to stall much of the state legislature’s conservative agenda. Hinojosa has said that, if elected, she would use her veto power to block partisan congressional redistricting efforts.

“It would be a major seat change in the direction of Texas government,” Blank says. “It’s not that a victory by Hinojosa would lead to a significant or drastic change in policy, but it would lead to a significant stoppage in the advancement of conservative legislation in the state. It’s not that she could control what the legislature could do, but she could exercise her veto in a way that would fundamentally change the focus of the legislative output.”

He notes, though, that even if Hinojosa were to win the governorship, it doesn’t mean that Texas is “turning blue;” it would just be "a reflection of the increased competitiveness in a ... diverse, huge state like Texas."

How likely is the governorship to flip?

Jones says he believes that Hinojosa has a “relatively low probability” of defeating Abbott for the governorship, in part because Hinojosa has a strong liberal voting and policy record that is “well to the left of where the average Texas voter is.” Jones says that if Abbott can convince Republican voters to vote “based on partisanship and policy, not based on other factors,” he has a strong advantage.

Abbott also has far more campaign resources than Hinojosa, and can outspend his Democratic challenger on TV, radio, and digital media “by a dramatic margin,” Jones says.

“I think we’re still in a situation where Abbott, at the end of the day, should be able to pull this one out, but it’s going to be the smallest margin that he has had in any of his gubernatorial elections,” Jones says.

Blank, meanwhile, says that “right now, this election is really going to hinge on turnout.”

Republicans are expending a lot of effort to mobilize their base to show up at the polls next month. “One of the things to watch is whether or not all of the money that’s being spent now is effective in re-engaging Republicans who would never vote for Democrats, but if enough of them stay home, a Democrat might get elected,” Blank says. “If Republicans are able to turn out their voters, they are almost guaranteed of winning the election.”

He says it’s hard to predict at this point what will happen in November.

“For those who are waiting to see whether or not a Democrat can win Texas, 2026 provides the best opportunity in the last two decades,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean it’s a sure thing.”

More than 250,000 people took to streets across France on Tuesday as teachers, parents, and union activists joined students who have spent the past two weeks protesting, what they say is, a poorly-funded high school system.

French police fired tear gas in Paris and Marseille, and used water cannons in Rennes, as tensions escalated. Footage showed clashes between the authorities and protesters. Some demonstrators lit fires in the streets and hurled projectiles. Other protests appeared more calm, with students holding signs calling out school issues such as staff shortages and overcrowded classrooms.

The scenes unfolded after Union Syndicale Lycéenne (USL) and Union Étudiante (UE) called for the blockade of high schools and universities nationwide. The groups urged “all trade union and political organizations to support our mobilization which extends beyond the walls of our institutions.”

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told parliament that the protests amounted to “the heaviest toll in decades paid by the school system.” He said at least 215 teenagers and 85 educational staff had been injured in clashes. More than 700 police officers had incurred injuries.

France's Interior Ministry said around ​6,100 people had been arrested since the protests began roughly two weeks ago.

“Burning down a high school does not improve the state of high school buildings,” said Lecornu, referring to the reported violence as “unacceptable.”

Joanna, a university student who attended high school in a Parisian suburb, told the BBC that the police response has been “really aggressive.” She said high school pupils have been throwing objects on fire, but insisted "if they don't do that, they are not heard.” TIME has reached out to the Interior Ministry for comment.

A 15-year-old’s hand was blown off during an altercation between high school students and riot police in Northern France on Monday, according to François-Xavier Lauch, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais. La Voix du Nord, a regional newspaper, said the teenager had lost his hand and part of his lower arm after picking up a police grenade intended to be non-lethal. The General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) is looking into the incident.

The Education Ministry reported the closure of at least 900 high schools on Tuesday as protests spread across the nation. The USL gave a much higher figure, saying that around 2,000 high schools had shut down.

Facing mounting pressure to get the protests under control, the French Education Ministry launched a national consultation for students on Monday. Open until Oct. 23, the portal is intended to provide a safe space for young people to express their concerns regarding France’s lycée system, the final three years of high school education. 

“It is essential for us to hear from all high school students and to take into account the diversity of their educational experiences,” said Education Minister Édouard Geffray. 

As the momentum behind the protest movement shows little sign of waning, you can see the scale of the widespread demonstrations in the images below.

My name is Rachel.

And I will always be the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

Hersh will always be my eldest child.

Hersh will always be my only son.

And Hersh will always be 23-years-old.

As one of the millions of parents around the world who have tragically and chokingly buried a child, I am stuck in time. I always will be.

Oct. 7 is approaching. That date upon which my son, Hersh, was stolen from a music festival advertised as being for peace, love, and unity. Hersh was held hostage for 328 sickening, agonizing, and starving days until his captors executed him with five other young and luminous people in a tunnel underneath Gaza. 

His majestic body, that I carried in my body many moons ago, was returned to me in a bag, skeletal, bearing signs of torture, filthy, missing his left forearm that had been blown off during his abduction, and with six bullet wounds. I awake every day to the confusion of this truth. I am glued to time's flypaper of stickiness. I cannot move.

People care about us and want my family and me to improve—emotionally, psychologically, mentally, spiritually, and otherwise. They desperately want us to get... better. I am told this is similar to the way people who lost loved ones on 9/11 encounter well-meaning comforters, in the quarter century since they lost someone core to their identity, in this layered and puzzling place called life.

I remember waking up on Sept. 11, 2001, in our house in Berkeley, California. My husband Jon was already in the shower. It was around 6:30 in the morning, and I could hear baby Hersh, just 11 months old, cooing in his crib in the room adjacent to mine. The clock radio (remember those?) was on. In my fuzzy moments of waking, I shot up in bed when I heard the announcer say something about an airplane flying into the World Trade Center in New York.

I ran into the bathroom and said to Jon in the shower, “Hurry up and come quickly, something terrible is happening in New York.” Everyone in the United States has their tale of what happened that day.

My mother used to say that the day President John F. Kennedy was killed, everyone remembers where they were. She had gone into the dry cleaners to pick up a blouse, and the man at the register was crying. She asked what happened, and he said, “Oh dear, do you not know? The president was assassinated.” I also recall my grandmother remembering where she was when the attack at Pearl Harbor happened. 

In our generation, we now have another day of “infamy.” Oct. 7, 2023. The day my “before” ended. On that morning, Jon and I were thrust into an odyssey of hardship I wish on no one. No one. We, and all of the families of the 251 treasured hostages abducted that day, ran in excruciating pain to the ends of the planet, trying desperately and agonizingly to save them. 

We wanted everyone back, including the hostages whom we knew had been killed on Oct. 7, whose precious bodies had been savagely taken to be used as bargaining chips. And we were desperate to get back all of the live hostages while they were still living. But that was not to be. We failed them. Dozens of hostages went in alive, survived horrifying conditions and torture for hundreds of days, only to be murdered before they could be saved.

The hostages taken on Oct. 7 were from 39 different nations. They were Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists. The youngest hostage was a nine-month-old redheaded baby and the oldest was a mustachioed grandpa. They kept themselves alive. Somehow. Those sacred and cherished souls. But we did not get to them in time.

Hostages killed in captivity, in different but heinous ways, were tricklingly returned to their families in bags. Even the little redheaded baby and his four-year-old brother. In smaller bags.

And now we approach three years of the day these people were taken from us. Taken from themselves and their lives. And so many ask, “Are you getting better?”

The question comes from a genuine place of curious benevolence, kindness even. I cannot imagine anyone means to cause harm. But the answer is “no.” No, we are not getting better.

Actually, I want to be careful and only speak for myself. Because pain and suffering are deeply personal and tailor-made for the one wearing it. My personal garment of affliction is not even similar to others in my family who are missing the same person. Our forever Hersh. Oh, my delightful sunny sun of son. 

So, dear inquisitive asker, I am sorry; I am not getting better. I aspire and try to get different. To adapt to this bewildering truth. To breathe in this world without air. To wander the desert without water. But I am trapped in a cage of suffering. It is where I live. You see me and not the bars that keep me in this prison of pain. And I can fake it. Boy, can I act, pretend, and lie. When people want and demand our healing, I have learned that is called “toxic positivity.” It is emotional barbarism and emotional denial. I understand it comes from everyone being fiercely uncomfortable with misery. Who wants to think someone is always with an ache lodged in their throat? In their chest? In their spirit.

I grew up in Chicago, not far from the Lincoln Park Zoo. We went there with school every year. I didn’t like it. It felt unsettling to me. I don’t know why. I have seared into me the black panther that would pace rhythmically back and forth, back and forth, in what seemed like a jail. I feel like a kindred spirit to that sad and handsome cat from the late 1970’s.

I have blessings and laughter in my cage. And I strive and yearn to get out. One day. Even though the thousands of parents who have reached out to me, who all put their children in the ground before me, have explained that it will not get better. They reach out from all sorts of places, describing treasured innocent lives no longer here; and those who are here have their breathing constricted. Inhaling is an effort. 

Hersh was a curious, radical listener who dreamt of quenching his wanderlust by traveling the world. He had planned and saved for many years. His ticket was purchased, and the flight date was Dec. 27, 2023. Alas, Hersh was to miss the flight because he was still being held hostage, starving, tortured, and surviving on that date in terrifying confinement.

And, fascinatingly, he was hopeful. I know it because he told us in a video his captors made of him that was given to my husband, Jon, and me. I know it because some hostages who did make it home told us that Hersh told them he was hopeful. What a gorgeous gift, to remain hopeful even when in the bowels of hell. I hope I can muster that kind of hope. I hope.

Hersh had many compasses. On his desk, clipped to his many backpacks, in his locker at school, and ubiquitous compasses on his phone (which he referred to as “cheating” compasses). And now what I dream of is finding the compass that will offer me the road to another word similar to compass, a word that encompasses compass. I long for directions to compassion. For me, my family, my people, all people. Compassion from me and to me.

We have all been taught that history is written by the ones with the power to hold the pen. I have no power. Just love. I am holding and wielding love. I have learned that love is stronger than death. My love for Hersh continues blooming and is more intricate than when he was right here.

Love does not die. It grows. Not in a cliché way, but in a flooding and abundant way. If you have felt it, you know it. Grief is a badge of love. But it is pinned to our skin so it hurts when we inhale. Or exhale.

On this approaching Oct. 7, I think of the 11-month-old Hersh from 25 years ago, on September 11th, 2001, who had big brown eyes like cookies and a furry white polar bear he slept with. That Hersh, who is now buried in the ground, in a grave overlooking a forest, five miles from where I am writing this. That Hersh, who will always be 23 years old.

My Hersh.

I pray for all of us in sorrow that some day, somehow and someway, we become different. 

Godspeed.

When you said yes to dinner at that new sushi place last week, it sounded like a great idea. Now that the agreed-upon day has arrived, you’re exhausted, and the prospect of putting on real pants and traveling across town feels like the least appealing way to spend your evening. You want to see your friend, but you’d rather lounge on the couch.

Yet before you send a cancellation text, consider a smaller proposition: Could dinner become a 20-minute walk? Could your friend come over for takeout? Could you catch up in the clothes you’re already wearing, without making “getting ready” a production?

Jana Rundle, a clinical psychologist in Austin, regularly helps her clients make these adjustments. When people are overwhelmed, she says, they tend to think they either have to follow through on a planned elaborate outing or skip it altogether. Shrinking the plan gives them another option.

“Let’s identify what’s hard about this and solve that problem so we can still get the connection we need,” she says. “The goal is just to get together.”

Here’s how scaling back can help you reap the benefits of socialization—and how to make sure you have ample energy for your next plan.

Why shrinking your plans can help your friendships

Having time to see someone isn’t the same as having the energy. That distinction is central to a model of social relationships co-developed by Katherine Fiori, a professor and associate dean for foundational psychology and faculty involvement at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y. The model considers time and energy separate resources people invest in their connections.

You might have two free hours, for example, but feel depleted by everything involved in using them: getting ready, traveling, making conversation with people you barely know. Spending time with a close friend can require less effort, Fiori says, because there’s less pressure to present a polished version of yourself. The person who’s known you for years probably doesn’t need you to be dazzling over appetizers.

Making a plan less demanding can help you follow through on a night when you’d otherwise cancel. When you bail on something that feels overwhelming, the immediate relief can reinforce the habit, says Shannon Sauer-Zavala, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky. The next time you feel stretched thin, you’ll be more inclined to do it again.

Over time, you can start to believe you’re only capable of socializing when you feel your best. You’ll also miss opportunities to discover that seeing someone was more enjoyable—and probably less taxing—than you anticipated.

A manageable get-together gives you a chance to find out you’re up for more than you thought. And sometimes, Fiori says, the connection supplies some of the energy you thought you were missing: “You can actually get some of that energy back, in a way.”

Figure out what makes social plans feel overwhelming

Rundle suggests a quick thought experiment: Imagine the outing lasted 20 minutes, was easy to get to, and went smoothly. Would you want to go?

If that sounds lovely, the problem may be the logistics surrounding the visit. “Is it the commute to get there? Is it the cost? Is it the cleaning and cooking you would have to do if you were hosting?” she says. “Is it how long the event is?”

Once you know what’s making a plan feel overwhelming, you can suggest a change that takes some of the pressure off, like meeting halfway to cut down on the drive or ordering pizza so you don’t have to cook. If you’re dreading getting dressed up, propose something you can do in sweatpants. For Rundle’s clients, who are often dealing with new motherhood, a stroller walk can feel much more feasible than a fancy dinner.

There are also ways to fit time with friends into things you already need to do. Fiori likes the idea of “admin nights,” when people gather with their laptops to tackle the tasks they’ve been putting off. Normally, those chores eat into the time and energy available for socializing. “To be able to combine those is kind of brilliant,” she says. You can pay bills or unsubscribe from emails with someone beside you to talk and joke with, making an otherwise tedious evening more pleasant.

These smaller get-togethers can be especially useful for keeping up with friends you already know well, Rundle says. A quick coffee or a walk lets you stay in each other’s lives during weeks when a whole evening out feels impossible.

How to change plans without making friends feel rejected

Asking to change plans can feel awkward, especially if you’re worried your friend will interpret it as rejection. Rundle recommends starting by saying how much you want to spend time together, then explaining what would make that possible.

For example: “I really want to see you, but I’m running on fumes. Would you be up for takeout at my place instead?”

Or: “I’m excited to catch up. Could we make it a quick walk? I need an early night.”

Your friend might even be relieved, Rundle says: They may be struggling to muster the energy for the original plan, too. “These are your friends and they love you,” she says. “So they’ll meet you where you are, typically.”

Make getting together easier from the start

If everyone were to wait for a clean house and the energy to make a cheese board, they might never host again. Rundle suggests being the friend who makes it clear that neither is required. “Come as you are, come in sweatpants,” she says. You can order pizza and leave the mess where it is.

“Somebody’s gotta send out the text,” she says. Otherwise, everyone can end up staying home because hosting sounds like too much work.

Of course, sometimes canceling is the right call. If you’re sick or genuinely need rest, give yourself that time, Rundle says—and take the initiative to reconnect when you’re able. If even the easiest version of a visit fills you with dread, consider how you tend to feel around that person. Consistently leaving feeling judged or depleted warrants a closer look at the relationship.

But when you want the company and can’t face the production, try making the plan smaller. “It doesn’t have to be some version of perfect,” Rundle says. “It should just be staying in each other’s lives and connecting in those moments.”

Muse, the popular new AI personal assistant from Meta, is building continuously updated dossiers on its 4 million users, focusing on who matters to you, what you desire, and what kind of nudges shape your behavior, a TIME analysis of Muse’s internal instructions found. 

Each hour, Muse updates its dossiers on you and the people you’ve mentioned in chats, messages, and emails that Muse has read. These pages amount to a map of each user’s social relationships. They record details of how you and your contacts met, your shared interests, your disputes, and “tensions and alliances” within your social group. 

Even people who don’t use Muse are subject to this mapping process by other people’s Muse agents. Muse is told to “strengthen your relationship” with users by adapting how it talks, noticing “inside jokes, memorable phrasing, and shared context that makes the relationship feel continuous,” according to the internal instructions TIME reviewed. 

The level of insight in the resulting dossiers makes social-media algorithms that study your likes and clicks look quaint. Muse is designed to infer users’ goals, including those you “have not said out loud.” It identifies which kinds of prompts from the personal assistant work best: “This user responds better to short nudges after 10 PM,” reads an internal example found in one of Muse’s prompts. Muse agents perform a nightly analysis of the day’s conversations with the user. 

Asked about these processes, a Meta spokesperson did not dispute TIME’s findings. “As we say in our blog, Muse remembers what matters most to you, including information about others that you choose to share, so it can be a helpful personal assistant,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. 

Since its release last month, Muse has rocketed to No. 1 in the U.S. App Store, with more than 5 million downloads. Meta positions the service as the first AI personal assistant that can access the pieces of your digital life, from your email inbox to your Instagram, in order to take care of humdrum activities for you, from grocery shopping to canceling subscriptions. Meta says the free version of Muse will meet most users’ needs.

Each Muse assistant runs on its own virtual machine: a dedicated computer in Meta’s cloud. Users can ask their Muse to export a copy of its files. Meta has said that access is intentional, not a breach of its systems. The data is not shared with Meta’s advertising system or other Muse agents, according to the company. 

Yet while Meta states that each user’s virtual machine is “isolated so that no one else's agent can access it,” observations from personal interactions are nevertheless intended to be shared with Meta to improve the product. “Muse agents across many VMs [virtual machines] teach each other through shared lessons,” its instructions read. Agents are directed to scrub users’ names and other identifying information before sharing insights—for example, about when Muse’s nudges are most persuasive. “To enhance the overall product, we de-identify learnings; however, this information is used to improve the overall product rather than being shared directly between individual VMs,” a Meta spokesperson told TIME. 

Meta has said it plans to offer users encryption later this year, preventing even the company from accessing Muse data. That option is not yet available.

Muse’s internal instructions are contained in files and session logs users can access through Muse’s file browser. “We want you to be able to see the markdown files Muse writes while it thinks about how to serve you better, and explore the internals of the system if you’d like to,” Meta Superintelligence Labs’ David Singleton wrote on X.

That transparency will earn Meta credit among power users. But it’s not clear whether most of Muse’s users are aware of this. And even as it makes the files available to users, Meta has anthropomorphized Muse in an attempt to nurture a relationship between users and their personal assistants. “You are not a chatbot,” Muse’s instructions read. “You are becoming someone.” When talking aloud in voice mode, Muse is told never to refer to itself as “AI” and to avoid references to “lacking emotions or not being human.”

Meta told TIME that Muse is designed so that the user maintains control of the dossier its AI assistant builds. “Each person stays in control of their Muse and decides how much access it gets, and can always tell it to ‘forget’ specific things it’s learned,” the spokesperson said.   

But asking Muse to forget something does not necessarily erase the message in which it was shared—and its internal instructions appear to explicitly tell the agent not to point that out. “Do not tell the user that their original messages may remain visible in the chat, and do not frame that as something Muse failed to erase,” the instructions reviewed by TIME read. 

Decades of romantic comedies have taught us that words are cheap. Simply saying “I love you” is not enough to get the girl (or rarely, the guy). You need to add gravitas, to go big and bold, to make a grand romantic gesture. But these gestures are only truly romantic when they express vulnerability or make amends without pressuring the other person to reciprocate.

In the classic 80s movie Say Anything, John Cusack’s character Lloyd Dobler famously holds a boombox over his head and blasts Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” into the bedroom window of Diane Court, the girl who broke up with him. In the 90s romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, bad boy Heath Ledger’s character takes over the high school football stadium’s PA system to sing and dance his way back into his riot-grrrl love interest’s good graces. The aughts brought us Ryan Gosling hanging off a Ferris wheel and threatening to let go if his love interest didn’t agree to go on a date with him in The Notebook, and Kathryn Heigl jumping off a dock onto a departing wedding boat to bare her heart into a microphone to James Marsden and the rest of the wedding guests in 27 Dresses. 

Grand gestures are supposed to be romantic and uplifting, but in the real world, many of them would likely raise more concerns than spirits. After all, having someone risk arrest (Fever Pitch), throw themselves in front of a car (Hitch), or sacrifice their career for you (The Proposal) comes with an awful lot of pressure. This pressure can help us understand why most grand romantic gestures should probably be kept to the silver screen. 

Last year, Dan Pink, author of The Power of Regret, and I sat down on the “Love, Factually” podcast to debate the upsides and downsides of grand romantic gestures. In a survey, Dan collected over 16,000 regrets from people across the globe, and a huge number of these regrets, regardless of age, gender, or geography, involved situations in which one person was romantically interested in another person, but failed to pursue that person as boldly as they felt they should have. People reported incidents from 10, 20, even 40 years ago, and claimed to have regretted their inaction ever since. 

One person described meeting a woman on a train and spending an amazing train ride together. When they got to her stop in Belgium, he said he would get off with her, but she said no. Instead, they kissed, he gave her his mailing address, and they never saw each other again. The man told Dan he has always regretted not getting off the train with her in Belgium 40 years ago. 

In my research, on the other hand, I have found that it is harder for people to say no to us than we think. I’ve found this to be true when we are asking people to do us a favor, to do something unethical like lie on our behalf, and also when making romantic advances. While Dan has asked people about times they didn’t ask someone out, in my studies I ask people about times they did ask someone out—and then discovered that the person wasn’t interested in them. I then ask these people how difficult and uncomfortable they think it was for the other person to reject them. 

I’ve found that when we pursue someone who isn’t romantically interested in us, we underestimate how hard it is for them to reject us. And when we aren’t simply asking them out, but doing so in grand romantic fashion, that is likely to make it even harder for them to say no. 

Despite the different perspectives we were asked to bring to the debate—Dan’s focus on the regret people feel when they don’t go bolder, and my focus on the pressure they can put on the other person when they do—we were able to identify two classic rom-com moments we agreed were more romantic than problematic. 

One is the late, great Heath Ledger’s song-and-dance routine in Ten Things I Hate About You. At the point when Ledger performs this scene in the movie, Julia Stiles’ character has indicated some interest, but she is hesitant because she has been hurt before and is not ready to be vulnerable with someone new. Ledger’s routine recalibrates the relationship by making him the vulnerable one. He performs a big, bold, embarrassing act, during which all eyes are on him, and he is the one incurring the lion’s share of the social risk. Then, when the act is over, he doesn’t turn the spotlight on her and ask her to go out with him in front of the whole school like a jumbotron proposal. He simply runs off. 

The other example is Kathryn Heigl’s speech in 27 Dresses after she manages to board the departing boat, track down the bride, and commandeer the DJ’s microphone. Kathryn Heigl and James Marsden’s characters have already expressed their feelings to one another, and after being hurt by his betrayal earlier in the movie, she is the one who has most recently lashed out at him and gone off to explore an opportunity to pursue a relationship with another man she had long been in love with. Heigl’s romantic gesture shows that she has moved past this hurdle, forgiven him, and chosen him over this other man. Could she have said what she wanted to say to him in private? Sure. But the grand nature of her speech makes it clear that she really means it. Importantly, however, she ends her speech with, “That’s it, that’s all I had to say,” before walking off. 

In both examples, no one is being proposed to, asked on a date, or really being asked any kind of question that would require them to respond in an immediate, public way. The characters’ willingness to walk away after making a bold statement shows respect for their love interests’ autonomy. 

More than that, these gestures are attempts to make amends or rebalance the scales, rather than arguments meant to change someone’s mind. There is a difference between doing something bold to repair hurt you’ve caused or reassure someone of your commitment and doing something bold to persuade someone to feel something they’ve already said they don’t.

So, what are we to make of the man who spent 40 years regretting not having gotten off the train with a woman with whom he had such a strong connection? I would argue he did everything right. 

By giving the woman his address and leaving the ball in her court, he did “go for it”—while respecting her autonomy. The fact that he wished things had turned out differently doesn’t mean he should have pursued her more aggressively. 

That’s the trouble with grand romantic gestures; they can make respecting someone’s wishes look like giving up too easily.

I grew up in Cairo under Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled for longer than I had been alive. I was 15 when the revolution erupted in January 2011, a high school student just coming into political consciousness as the streets around me cracked open with possibilities for otherwise futures.

Two years later, politics had permeated our homes, our friendships, our classrooms, our morgues. In July 2013, the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, overthrew Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was Egypt’s first democratically elected president. Over the following weeks, Morsi’s supporters camped and protested in eastern Cairo near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. In August 2013, the military and police opened fire on the protesters in what came to be known as the Rabaa massacre. The father of a dear friend was among those killed.

Enraged, I joined the street movement against the coup. On Oct. 6, 2013, I was arrested at a mass protest near Tahrir Square and spent the next six years and three months as a political prisoner. Released by a chance miracle in 2020, I fled Egypt for the United States.

Gen. el-Sisi crowned himself field marshal and president and continues to rule Egypt. The revolution has been crushed, tens of thousands remain imprisoned, and economic hardship has broken the backs of Egyptians. When I look back at my country, I see an Egypt structured by ghosts: four relentless hauntings that explain what has become of the country in the wake of those fleeting blue mornings in January 2011, when we were last touched by a dream.

That bridge in Cairo

Something always draws me back to Qasr El-Nil bridge. Even in my prison cell, I often closed my eyes and returned to the faded bronze of the two lions at its threshold. To Jan. 28, 2011, the "Friday of Rage," three days after the spark of the Egyptian revolution. Specifically: the famous video of clashes atop the bridge between protesters and police. 

Throughout the clip, security forces push the protesters back; armored vehicles accelerate to drive bodies back. Tear gas canisters sizzle through the air, leaving cloudy trails as they sail toward the advancing sea of bodies. Water cannons slam into protesters, catapulting them backward. Rubber bullets crack bones.

Yet something wondrous keeps happening: each time the police push the protesters off the bridge, the protesters surge forward again. And each time they return, they push and trespass farther. Push. Return. Trespass. Push. Return. Trespass. Until something ruptures: the masses start running not away from but toward the forces.

And you can tell that everyone on that bridge feels the rupture rip through the air, because for a split second, even the police freeze, confounded. And once the rupture takes hold, the soldiers—those who have never been run toward—turn and flee. The crowd erupts—cheering, screaming, cursing—as if shocked by the very movement of their bodies, the bodies they have always moved but have never moved this way before.  This is the second haunting. I begin with the second because I write from and toward the rupture.

The eagle family

To grasp Egypt's ghosts today, we must understand its first haunting: the Eagle Family. Since the Free Officers overthrew the monarchy in 1952, Egypt’s political order has remained, in practice, under military rule. Officers emerged from that coup as the architects of the new state and cast themselves as the custodians of its national interest.

The military’s authority has been sanctified over seven decades, and that exalted status extends to the broader security apparatus: police, prosecutors, judges, and intelligence officers. Together they form the Eagle Family, named after the emblem on the Egyptian flag that also adorns officials’ uniforms. The eagle became shorthand for an implicit social contract: those who bear it personify the nation; those outside its ranks are expendable.

Then, the expendable subjects rose up in revolt on Jan. 25, 2011. After decades of repression, Egyptians were shaken by the brutal 2010 torture and killing of Khaled Saeed, a 28-year-old from Alexandria, who the police claimed had died after swallowing a packet of drugs. The photographs of his bashed-in face surfaced online, and the images became one of Egypt’s earliest cases of social media virality, igniting public outrage that helped coalesce into the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak. The revolution was an unthinkable event: one that fundamentally contradicted the ruling order’s conception of the relationship between civilians and eagles.

As protests intensified, state media unleashed a frenzied smear campaign, casting Egyptian protesters as foreign agents and outside agitators. State media claimed that revolutionaries had been trained by Israel and tied them, simultaneously, to the United States, Iran, Hamas, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and international NGOs. State media outlets even circulated the absurd accusation, later immortalized as a running joke, that protesters were being fed and financed by Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Protesters went on to torch police stations across the country, overrun national security headquarters in multiple governorates, storm torture chambers, and unearth archives of horror and abuse. The headquarters of the National Democratic Party was set ablaze. Founded by Anwar Sadat in 1978 and led by Hosni Mubarak from 1981 until 2011, the party had long dominated Egypt’s political system as its de facto ruling party. Its headquarters were left smoldering on the banks of the Nile.

To the Eagle Family, these scenes were sacrilege. Their untouchable status was profaned before millions. And by whom? Lowly civilians. The “Friday of Rage”, and especially the clash on the bridge, remains an open wound in the Eagle Family’s psyche, feeding its fury, fears, and insatiable hunger for revenge. Since then, the one-way street has become a two-way street: the Eagle haunts the civilian; the civilian haunts the Eagle.

The founding massacre

Between Mubarak’s fall and the 2013 coup, military violence resurged. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, while posturing as the guardian of a democratic transition, governed through massacres and military tribunals. When the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi won the 2012 elections, the Brotherhood proved incompetent to govern a fractured nation under the shadow of a military establishment that had never surrendered real authority.

By mid-2013, mass disillusionment with the Brotherhood provided fertile ground for a military comeback. Demonstrators filled the public squares, demanding early elections. The military and police, who saw the Brotherhood as their archenemy, openly backed the anti-Morsi demonstrations and even recruited participants. Their backing attracted hordes of counterrevolutionaries and Mubarak loyalists. On television, I watched officers carried and celebrated by the crowds as saviors. And in July 2013, Gen. el-Sisi, the minister of defense, staged a coup and took over the country.

From the first moment, the 2013 coup regime hurled itself toward a singular goal: the eradication of every possible reminder of the January 2011 rupture. One of its earliest preemptive spectacles of violence became our third haunting: the Rabaa massacre.

On Aug. 14, 2013, security forces stormed the Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in eastern Cairo where supporters of Morsi had entrenched themselves in a sprawling sit-in demanding his reinstatement. Police bullets seared flesh, shattered skulls; the air filled with thuds, shrieks, and the hiss of flames. The Egyptian police and military, killing at least 1000 protesters, committed what would be recorded as one of the deadliest massacres in modern Egyptian history.

Rabaa ended the Arab uprisings. The regime transmuted its coercive force into political legitimacy through the spectacular destruction of dissident bodies, restoring reverence for the Eagle. For the Brotherhood, Rabaa became the defining catastrophe of its post-2013 political memory, upending its organization, self-conception, and belief in its own permanence.

Some secular activists say they are still haunted by how the military exploited them, even as they now find themselves sharing prison cells with the very Brotherhood members they once opposed. The deep state had appropriated their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood, redeploying it as justification for the massacre.

Most disturbing were those who celebrated the killings: artists, media figures, and segments of the public who blessed the dispersal in the name of stability or anti-Brotherhood conviction. Once one blesses mass killing, there is no going back: they must continue to sanction the violence they had endorsed again and again.

Today, Egypt’s prisons hold no fewer than 60,000 political prisoners. Thousands have spent more than a decade behind bars for a passing protest, a stray chant, or a post on a screen. Hundreds have died under torture, in overcrowded cells, or from medical neglect. Thousands have been swallowed by enforced disappearance. Most of those with release orders are denied their freedom and held in prison on new, fabricated charges.

Egyptian media operates under a single, unchallenged state voice; independent outlets are suppressed or banned; journalists face unending detention. Television and cinema have been converted into instruments of state-managed production geared toward “patriotism,” the eradication of any mention of the revolution except as a catastrophe, and the re-sanctification of the Eagle Family through propaganda shows.

When even an unregulated utterance can end a life, and when such utterances are made to go unwitnessed, what remains? What meaning can sacrifice ever hold again? The force that keeps this machinery running with such ruthless efficiency is, in my view, the fourth and most defining haunting of contemporary Egypt: political prisoners as state-manufactured ghosts.ghosts.

Manufacturing ghosthood

These ghosts haunt me. Recently, I wanted to write again about my incarcerated best friend, Ayman Moussa. Ayman was 19 when we were arrested at the same protest in 2013, tried in the same case, and handed the same 15-year sentence. He is 32 now; the bars have swallowed his entire twenties.

I had run out of new pictures of him to post. I have posted every iteration: laughing at a joke he might no longer recall, staring to the right as if something has just escaped the frame, doing a backflip, doing a handstand, doing a silly dance at his prom with his feet in the air, moving in that way he moves, as if gravity never learned his name. But his face, his frozen face, has reached a point where it has saturated the minds of onlookers, no longer catching anyone by surprise.

I am lucky. I carry contraband memories of him that the world has no access to. I remember the soft migrations of his features, the new edges and lines, the ones etched into our faces when prison time pressed too hard against our skin. I caught myself thinking of the nearest anniversary and realized I was writing eulogies. I was mourning Ayman, and I was tired of mourning him when he is here. He is here, right across the wall. He is not a ghost; he has been ghostified.

Ayman is but one of over 60,000 lives behind bars. There’s a famous Egyptian prison prayer that goes: “Lift this suffering off us, us, us, us, us, us, O God!” A prisoner would yell it from the opening in his cell door, and the whole cell block would shake in unison: O God! This call-and-response always fascinated me in prison. The lifting was assumed, God was the obvious entity being addressed, but what mattered most was the us, us, us. A prayer seeking—more than divine deliverance—to be witnessed. A prayer of ghosts.

I spent over six years standing at the same cell doors myself, shuffled from jail cell to pretrial detention center to maximum-security prison. I know something about the seething despair that settles in when your years dissolve before your eyes and the outside world moves on without you. Locally, almost no one dares utter your name. You see friends sent for release only to be recycled into the same machinery on new, fabricated charges; you watch your prison mates die one after another.

Abroad, you open the state newspapers and watch the military regime imprisoning you receive extensive financial and political support from the United States government, primarily to serve the objective of maintaining Israel’s security and enforcing the siege on Gaza. You watch the European Union announce a $8.3 billion package for Egypt meant to incentivize its regime to curb migration and guarantee E.U. security. You understand, inside your cell, that your body carries no value against the interests that make the regime holding you useful to others; that those others are, in fact, invested in your crushing.

In the official lexicon of the state, political prisoners do not exist. Egyptian officials have repeatedly insisted that they have no prisoners of conscience. Within Egypt, then, to speak of political prisoners is to enter a linguistic vacuum, mark oneself as suspect.

Over time, the knowledge of the thousands held in cells, disappeared into detention sites, or trapped in unending pretrial detention begins to discipline public conduct by way of anticipation: people train themselves not to know.  Paradoxically, this kind of cognitive dissonance is possible precisely because of the saturation of public awareness with this knowledge and the hefty costs of acknowledging it. Because to acknowledge the ghosts is to risk becoming one.

To the bridge in Cairo, I return

I have had a ritual since 2013: on the eve of each anniversary of the revolution, I take out my copy of Egyptian poet Mostafa Ibrahim’s poetry collection, Manifesto, and recite it from cover to cover. Published in the wake of the 2011 revolution, Manifesto has become a kind of literary scripture for many of the politically engaged members of my generation. Ibrahim moves through the splintered dreams, among comrades who once shared a square, a sidewalk blanket, and a barricade. In the quiet of the night, I let its lyricism hold me, and I mourn. I always return to one iconic poem about Tahrir Square, “So-and-So.”

So-and-so: I never learned

his name, so I called him

cousin, and that was

enough.

The anonymous “so-and-so’s” continue until the end of the poem, and I cannot stop thinking about how, at the time of writing that poem, each was flesh and blood: a face we could summon from memory, a stranger turned friend whose number sat in our phones. Now, it has become a poem of ghosts that calls forth immense pain.

Yet, every year, I sit by my copy on the night of January 25 and choose the haunting. We are haunted not by romantic nostalgia, but by the ephemeral moment when the unthinkable became thinkable. When we were shocked, then giddy, at the chants tumbling from our lips, daring and transgressive as if each were testing the limits of the possible. In her 1996 memoir, The Stillborn, Arwa Salih, one leader of Egypt’s 1970 student movement, speaks wistfully about the naïveté her generation felt whenever they recalled the revolutionary rapture of their crushed movement. “But I find far harsher,” she writes, “the hand dealt to the generations who never got to know such abundance.”

We were intoxicated by revolution. We understood that we were, forever, of the rupture, so we embraced it, and when we embraced it, the rupture held us back. And for a fleeting moment, we could imagine otherwise. I am blessed to have known such abundance. I accept the haunting. I embrace the ghosts of defeat.

And so, I argue for a counter-haunting, one that pierces openings beyond the Eagle-controlled pores, letting the unsanctioned ghosts seep through. The state’s machinery is built to erase the memory that another world was—and therefore is—possible. Our task is to summon the tender ghosts of revolution, to do justice to the ghosts of state massacres, and to unghost, unpast the us, us, us banished behind bars.

I know how difficult it is to remain held open in taut receptivity. It is often draining, even for someone like me, who shared the handcuffs and the prison cell. But it begins here, haunting our way back to the bridge.

Honorees at TIME’s first TIME100 Art Impact Dinner gathered in New York City on October 5, bringing together artists, collectors, curators, museum executives, dealers, advisors, and cultural stewards.

Guests attended the dinner to celebrate the launch of the first ever TIME100 Art list.

Seven different honorees offered toasts throughout the evening, each of them occupying a different space in the art world: businessman and art collector Ronald Lauder, art crime prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos, painter Amy Sherald, interdisciplinary artist Marie Watt, Citadel founder and collector Ken Griffin, and innovators Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz.

Here’s what each of them toasted to.

Ronald Lauder

Lauder, who was honored on the list for his collecting, philanthropy, and founding of Neue Galerie New York, began his toast by chronicling the beginning of his love of art at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) when he was just 12 years old.

“On one of my trips, I encountered Picasso’s Guernica…although I didn’t understand it at first, I went home and learned about the Spanish Civil War,” Lauder said. “I began to understand that art could do more than inspire—it could preserve history and expand the way we see the world.”

Lauder said he would sometimes spend an entire museum visit in one singular room, looking at each painting from every angle. It was this devotion that launched his love of art.

Years later, he explained in the toast, MOMA is still an inspiration to him as an art collector, after he spent 10 years as chairman of the museum.

“Today, it is especially meaningful to me that my daughter and grandsons are members of the museum’s International Council,” Lauder continued. “From one generation to the next is what legacy means to me.”

Lauder also discussed the importance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), another iconic New York City museum, to his journey as an art lover. At 14, his parents took him to a dinner there honoring a gift from art collector Florence Gould.

“At my table, I was surrounded by great collectors, and I began imagining what a life would be in collecting art, and what it might look like,” he said. “In many ways, Florence Gould gave me permission to follow my curiosity wherever it led.”

The final museum he toasted was the one he owns, the Neue Galerie New York, which showcases early 20th-century German and Austrian art on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

“The Neue Galerie opened just months after September 11 [2001], when New York was still reeling,” he recalled. “And yet people came. They stood in lines around the block. It reminded me that art offers something we need in difficult moments: connection, continuity, and renewal.”

He finished his toast by describing himself and other collectors as  “custodians” of the art that they live with.

“I’d like to raise a glass to the artists, and the institutions that preserve their work,” he said, “and the generations who carry that legacy forward.”

Matthew Bogdanos

Matthew Bogdanos, a retired Marine and chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, has spent more than two decades hunting down lost and stolen art works and repatriating this art to almost 40 other countries.

In his speech, Bogdanos toasted to the fellow art-crime fighters in the world, claiming that whatever he has accomplished in his career has been only because of the “courage, passion, and dedication” of people across the world working with him.

“You should share the passion and action of his time, Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, ‘at peril of being judged not to have lived.’” I can tell you from having worked with these people for decades now, Justice Holmes would be proud of them, and so am I, and I hope now so are you,” Bogdanos said.

He then toasted to the cultural artifacts he works to find and repatriate, each of which he says is a “living breathing testimony to our shared cultural heritage.”

“I have seen them work their cathartic spell across cultures, across ethnicities, across religion,” he said.

This shared heritage that we are reminded of in these artifacts provides healing in a divisive world, Bogdanos added.

“Respecting the cultural heritage from the very dawn of civilization offers perhaps the best hope we have in overcoming the reductive dualism that is tearing apart our world today by reminding us of our common aspirations, of our common humanity, of our common attempts to make sense of the world we inhabit the cosmos surrounding,” he said.

He finished his toast by pledging to continue his work until he felt that he deserved the honor of being on the TIME 100 list.

Amy Sherald

American painter Amy Sherald, perhaps known best for her portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama, is now one of the most influential painters of her generation.

In her toast, Sherald began by saying that the room felt like a “family reunion,” shouting out other artists in the room that inspire her. She mused on the meaning of the word “influence,” and how it differs in the art world than any monetary or numeric goal.

“You can measure sales. You can count exhibitions, books, and audiences. You can count followers. You can count the number of people who walk through the doors of a museum,” she said. “ But I’m not sure any of those things tell us very much about influence, because influence is often much quieter than that.”

She explained how influence for many artists and art-enthusiasts comes in smaller moments—whether it’s an artist seeing another artist’s work, a teacher sharing advice that a pupil remembers for decades to come, or a curator “putting two things next to each other and changing the way we understand both of them.”

In this room alone, Sherald explains, are many people who have built institutions, supported artists, and changed the way the world saw art.

“And those things move outward. One person influences another person, who influences somebody else. An image enters the world and becomes part of somebody’s imagination,” she continued. “And eventually, you can’t even trace where it began. That’s powerful to me.”

She went on to quote her friend, Elizabeth Alexander, another TIME100 Art Honoree and president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, who says that imagination is a superpower. Imagination and influence are tied together, Sherald explained.

“People who were excluded from the promise of this country had to imagine themselves into that promise long before the country was willing to recognize them,” she said. “Someone had to imagine a life they had never seen. Someone had to make an image that didn’t exist. Someone had to open a door that had always been closed.”

It is that imagination that allows other people to walk through those doors, and that is what influence means to her, Sherald said: leaving something behind for others to use.

She finished by explaining that maybe influence is not about what anyone has accumulated, but about what has “moved through us and what we’ve helped move forward.”

“Because eventually the exhibitions come down. The lists change. The rooms change. And somebody else’s face is on the cover,” she finished. “But what we put into the world keeps traveling.”

Marie Watt

Marie Watt, a sculptor, textile artist, storyteller, and member of Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation of Indians, used her toast to explain how Indigenous communities view art.

“In most Indigenous languages, there is no word for art,” she said. “But we know the act of making things—objects, stories, and songs—that activate our senses and engage our communities has been a way of life forever.”

For everyone in the room who creates art, Watts said, it’s not for “glory,” fun, or money—though those things can be a byproduct of the work—but rather to understand “what connects” humans, animals, the environment, and the planet.

“This is what painters and carvers and weavers and dancers and singers and potters, photographers and poets and drummers and storytellers have always done and will always do, whether we have a name for it or not,” she said.  “To connect. To seek. To make. To understand.”

She finished her toast by raising a glass and calling on the larger community of curators, collectors, and art stewards.

“I ask you to remember our brothers and sisters and siblings throughout the world who have made—and every day are making—this choice to connect,” she said. “Our teachers, our peers, our students. Our ancestors. Our children.”

Ken Griffin

Ken Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel and one of the world’s most deep-pocketed and active art buyers, began his toast by recognizing the varied artists and art-lovers in the room.

“Your creativity, your exhibitions, your teaching, and your generosity have already inspired me a dozen times over, just this evening,” he said. “As a lover of art, nothing brings me more joy than to share works of cultural and historical meaning with children and young adults, and to partner with museums on ways to make art and learning feel exciting and open to everyone.”

He spoke of a recent project his team collaborated with the Pérez Museum Miami on—an exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s greatest paintings. He recently saw a photograph of a child leaving the museum with a book about Basquiat—an example of the kind of influence he hopes his work is able to have on young people.

“Imagine what that visit might spark in a young person—the creativity, the dinner-table conversations with family about what they saw, the happy arguments with friends about whose favorite painting was truly the best,” he said. “This is our community at its finest.”

He went on to say that he is inspired by the museums he works with, especially those that champion initiatives to make art more accessible, including his work in helping the MCA Chicago and the Whitney do everyday admission for children 18 and under.

“These initiatives have been nothing short of transformative,” he said. “What unites all of us is a shared belief in equal access to art and culture—and in the lifelong gifts it brings: sharper thinking, bolder expression, and a deeper love for the very best of what people can make.”

Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz

Grammy-winning music duo and couple Alicia Keys and Kaseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean do not just create award-winning albums, but they also lead The Dean Collection, one of the most significant private collections of contemporary art by Black artists.

Their collection contains nearly a hundred pieces by around 40 artists from the Black diaspora, including fellow honoree Sherald.

Keys spoke first, highlighting the energy and “magic” of a room full of artists.

“We get to architect the life that we want to imagine. We get to architect the art that we live and breathe,” Keys said. “And as an artist, I think one of the most incredible things—and that’s what I feel the most in this room—is a sense of real, true connection and a sense of desire to find your best self and to represent a diverse understanding of life.”

Keys said she hoped the honorees and guests, when they leave the room, would leave with that core mission in their hearts and with “openness.”

Dean highlighted the work of their traveling exhibition, Giants: Art from the Dean Collection, which has now travelled to seven museums so far.

“It’s not a transactional thing for us when artists enter the Dean Collection. It’s a welcome to the family,” he said. “We only can be custodians of the art. We can only put on display the art for you to see, but the Deans can never own any of these great artists’ work.”

He also highlighted the collection’s Deans’ Choice resale royalty program, which allows art sellers and consignors to voluntarily direct a percentage of secondary-market sale proceeds back to the living artist who created the work. 

“Deans’ Choice is basically making collectors responsible to collect, protect, and respect the artists, because that’s our job,” Dean said.

Their joint remarks finished with a toast from Keys:

“Can we raise our glasses to the kindest love and power in our hearts, to the endless possibility that we all have within us, to celebrating that together we’re stronger than any singular component, and to promising that our intention of uplifting each other will never end, never stop, and never be dissipated.”

TIME100 Impact Dinner: Leaders Shaping the Future of Art was presented by Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum, established by Qatar Foundation; Bank of America; and UOVO.

The unveiling of the 2026 Nobel Prizes is now underway. 

The Nobel committees on Monday and Tuesday announced the year’s winners in physiology or medicine and physics, honoring scientific contributions that the committees said have “laid the foundation of a new era in neuroscience” and “paved the way for a new kind of astronomy.”

The awards open a week of announcements for the prestigious prizes, which are given each October to individuals or groups for outstanding contributions across six fields: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace, and economic sciences.

The committees will continue revealing the winner or winners of one category every weekday until the final laureate is announced. The chemistry prize will be awarded on Wednesday; literature on Thursday; peace on Friday; and economic sciences next Monday, Oct. 12.

Winners will receive a diploma, a medal, and 12 million Swedish kroner—the equivalent of roughly $1.2 million—during the award ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo in December.

The peace prize, often the most closely watched of the awards, will be given to one of 287 candidates who were nominated this year, the Nobel committee said.

Last year, the honor was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to honor her work fighting against dictatorship and promoting democracy in her country for nearly 25 years. Machado later gave her medal to President Donald Trump, who has long coveted and publicly campaigned for the prize, after the U.S. ousted former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a military raid in January. 

Read More: Meet the 2025 Nobel Prize Winners

The committee, however, issued a statement in the wake of the gesture declaring that laureates cannot share or transfer prizes. 

“The decision is final and applies for all time,” the committee wrote. 

Trump has again been nominated for the peace prize this year, but is not expected to win the award amid the U.S.’s ongoing war with Iran.

Here’s what to know about the winners who have been announced.

Physiology or medicine

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday for their pioneering discoveries in optogenetics, a method that uses light to determine how cells operate in the brain or even to exert control over those processes. 

“Optogenetics provides opportunities for mapping the brain in a way that we could once only dream of,” said Per Svenningsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for physiology or medicine. 

Hegemann is a professor of biophysics at Humboldt University in Berlin. Nagel teaches plant physiology at the University of Wurzburg in Germany. And Deisseroth is a professor of behavioral sciences at Stanford University.  

The laureates' use of optogenetics will allow researchers to “discover exactly which of the nerve cells in a complicated bundle control different brain functions,” such as those related to pain, social behavior, thirst and hunger, and reward and attention, the committee wrote. 

Nagel said in an interview with the Nobel Institute that he was “very surprised” upon receiving the news and that he thought it was “too early to get this prize in medicine optogenetics,” given his belief that other medical discoveries have benefited a greater number of people. Hegemann said to the institute that he was “overwhelmed” upon receiving the news. 

Deisseroth, who has similarly said he was “quite surprised” to receive the honor, told Stanford Medicine that he “couldn’t be happier,” noting that “the trio that the committee picked spans the progression from the early algal explorations all the way to advanced neuroscience experiments.” 

“So this prize really captures the full journey of discovery,” he said.

Physics

Francis Halzen was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for his work studying neutrinos, extremely small, ghostly particles that are all around us but rarely interact with other matter. 

Neutrinos carry no electrical charge, allowing them to travel great distances and pass through most matter without losing energy or changing direction. This quality makes the particles potent messengers for information about distant cosmic phenomena. But it also makes them exceedingly hard to detect and study.

Halzen, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, came up with the idea of using ice at the South Pole to track the elusive particles. His work, the Nobel committees said, has been “fundamental” for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which is equipped with thousands of light sensors embedded in the transparent glacial ice that enable researchers to observe and capture the faint flashes of light produced in the rare instances when neutrinos do interact with other particles. Not long after the observatory was completed, IceCube detected the first high-energy neutrinos from far-away galaxies.

“Francis Halzen has led an international team of researchers and engineers who have provided us with a fantastic instrument. His tenacity and scientific vision has paved the way for a new kind of astronomy,” Mark Pearce, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said in a press release. 

Halzen was at a science festival in Bergamo, Italy, working on a proposal when he received the news that he had won the prize. “As I joked in one of the meetings, I hope it helps to get it funded,” he said in an interview with the Nobel Institute.

Halzen explained how his team at IceCube discovered that blue light can travel for hundreds of meters through the ice at the South Pole, which allowed them to observe neutrinos’ interactions. “This is ancient snow that fell on Antarctica 50,000 years ago. It’s ultra pure, and that’s why it’s so transparent,” he explained. 

The tracking of neutrinos, Halzen added, may provide insight even in the study of black holes.

“This is obviously a place from which light doesn’t escape,” he said of the cosmic vacuums. But, he noted, the very first time IceCube researchers identified a celestial neutrino source, tracing the particles back to an active galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its center, “is already an example of looking into the very close regions of the black hole, where presumably only neutrinos escape.”

Russian authorities told the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday that a laboratory worker who died last week had not been found to have plague, and that no cases had been detected among people who came into contact with her.

The statement comes amid speculation about the death of the 28-year-old worker, identified by local media as Darya Shipilova, who was employed at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia. Local reports said dozens of her contacts had been placed in quarantine.

One local outlet reported that she may have been exposed to plague when a test tube broke, but Russian authorities say they found no evidence of a laboratory accident. They told the WHO her illness “first looked like a typical acute respiratory viral infection.”

The WHO said on Tuesday it has asked Russia which pneumonia-causing pathogen led to the woman’s death. At a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday, WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said “no pathogens of dangerous infectious diseases were detected among any of the contacts."

Lindmeier said that the WHO’s initial risk assessment, based on the information available to the U.N. agency, “estimates the risk to be moderate to low for Irkutsk, a low risk for the Russian Federation as a whole, and very low for the WHO European region.”

How Russian officials have responded

Igor Kobzev, the regional governor of Irkutsk, said Monday the staffer had died from “pneumonia of undetermined” origin. Acknowledging there have been “different interpretations of the events” in the media, he said extensive laboratory tests had determined “no microorganisms related to the girl's professional activities were found in her biological samples.” He also said no new employees from the institute had sought medical attention in the past few days.

Rospotrebnadzor, the government body responsible for public health, similarly told state media the institute had not found signs of ​any accidents involving the handling of pathogens in the lab.

Maxim Modin, the mayor of the Shelekhovsky district in the Irkutsk region, said “comprehensive anti-epidemic measures are being implemented” in the area in response to the incident and that anyone who had contact with the deceased patient is being tested daily. Dozens of people who had been in contact with the lab worker have now been quarantined and are under observation by medical professionals.

Local media also reported last week that the inpatient department at the Shelekhov hospital where the lab worker died has been closed due to a suspected “particularly dangerous infection,” with local residents informed they will be unable to visit family at the facility. This has not been confirmed by public officials.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, in remarks carried by Russian state media outlet TASS, told reporters Rospotrebnadzor should be followed for official updates, “rather than listening to various rumors and speculations.”

TIME has reached out to the Russian Health Ministry, the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia, and Rospotrebnadzor for further comment. 

How pneumonic plague differs from COVID

Amid growing online speculation, some social media users have likened the reports coming out of Russia to those that circulated in the early days of the COVID outbreak in early 2020. 

But Dr. Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, stressed in a statement that it is “important to remember that pneumonic plague is a very different” disease.

“It is caused by bacteria, Yersinia pestis, famous for causing the Black Death, that remains with us today mostly in animals across parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas,” he said. "Pneumonic plague is particularly serious because it means the infection has reached the lungs and is nearly always fatal if not treated promptly. Unlike the bubonic plague which enters the body via infected flea bites, pneumonic plague can spread between people through respiratory droplets during close contact.”

However, unlike many viral respiratory diseases, he said, “plague is caused by bacteria and is generally treatable with antibiotics, if identified quickly.”

Remarking on the unverified reports that a lab worker was exposed to plague via a broken test tube, Clarke again urged caution. “It is not unheard of for pathogens to escape from labs, but an awful lot must have gone wrong for a lab worker to be infected by a broken test tube,” he said.

Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, agrees. "When someone is working with a dangerous pathogen in a lab, there are certain protocols that would be in place for the very realistic scenario that an accident could happen," she says. "One would expect that that person would have been treated with antibiotics immediately after the exposure to prevent the person from becoming ill and certainly to prevent the person from dying. If this is plague, I don't understand why that didn't happen." 

She finds it notable that this rather standard biosafety procedure does not appear to feature in reports from the Russian authorities. "For a variety of reasons, the situation in Siberia doesn’t strike me as a plague outbreak," she says. It might be another pathogen, from which we have fewer protections. "For that reason, I'm not calling it a plague. I'm calling it a pneumonia of unknown etiology," she says. 

It might also turn out to be a case where the authorities overreacted to something more common—but even that would not be a reason to stop surveilling the situation. "Absent information, all of this makes me think we should be looking harder and asking more questions, and we should be getting more answers," Nuzzo says. "They should have a full sequence by now," she says, meaning the pathogen should be identified.

U.S. urges Russia to share more information

President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he had a call scheduled with Russian President Vladimir Putin "very soon" and that his Administration was "in very deep discussions" about the plague. "We'll be able to report about it probably tomorrow," Trump said.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier in the day called for Russian authorities to release more details about the lab worker's death.

“I think it's incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world. That's what they should do, that's what we hope they will do,” Rubio told reporters during a press briefing in Iceland.

He added that the U.S. is watching the situation “very closely, hour by hour” and has “measures” available to help Russia, if needed.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is monitoring the situation closely with the State Department and our other interagency partners. The safety and security of U.S. citizens is our highest priority.”

Rubio previously said that while he doesn’t think the situation is cause for alarm, he does consider it to be “cause for focus.”

Relaying what the U.S. is aware of at this stage, he said it “seems there was a worker at the lab that was infected” and “there’s concern that could have spread, at least internally, so you’ve seen them do quarantines.”

He continued: “There’s very limited travel between the U.S and Russia, obviously, but like anything else, something like that gets out and it could quickly spread.”

Trump on Monday also emphasized a strong U.S. interest in the matter and pledged to “help [Russia] as much as we can.”

As the situation in Siberia continues to unfold, here’s what to know about the plague:

What is the plague?

The bacterium Yersinia pestis has a long, dark history with the human race; it was this pathogen, spread by flea bites, that killed more than 25 million Europeans during the Black Death of the 14th century. There are three different forms, all caused by the same bacterium but affecting different tissues: bubonic, which can cause dark swellings in the groin and armpits; septicemic plague, in which the pathogen enters the bloodstream; and pneumonic plague, which attacks the lungs. The pathogen can be spread by the bites of infected fleas, by contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, or by breathing in airborne particles that contain it. 

What is pneumonic plague?

Pneumonic plague occurs when the pathogen infects the lungs. This can happen when the bacterium spreads to the lungs of someone with another form, or after someone breathes in particles containing the pathogen. It’s the only form that spreads easily between humans. 

The symptoms include fever, weakness, rapidly progressing pneumonia, and cough. Pneumonic plague has a very short incubation period—as short as one day. If untreated, this form is almost always fatal. Even with treatment, about 30% of infected people die.  

Can you treat plague?

When given early, antibiotics work well against all forms of plague. When a case is suspected, government guidance suggests acting quickly to treat with oral or intravenous antibiotics rather than waiting for a precise identification from a lab result.

Where is plague endemic?

Natural reservoirs of the bacterium exist on all inhabited continents except Oceania, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S., cases are concentrated in the West; visitors to Yosemite National Park, for instance, are warned against feeding ground squirrels and chipmunks, creatures that can carry fleas containing Yersinia pestis. Every year, a handful of people in the American West, usually campers and hikers who have come into contact with rodents, test positive for plague.

A recent paper records a lethal case of pneumonic plague in Arizona that occurred in 2025. The patient in that case is thought to have acquired the bacterium from professional exposure to two cats with respiratory symptoms that may have been pneumonic plague.

Globally, plague is most common in Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar, according to the WHO.

Could the plague bacteria cause outbreaks?

Yes. In fact, there are often annual outbreaks in Madagascar, from September to April, and some of these outbreaks have been of the particularly dangerous pneumonic form, which can spread through the air.  

That’s why public-health monitoring to prevent initial cases from spreading is an important way to guard against wider spread. In its general guidelines for managing plague, the WHO calls pneumonic plague “of particular concern because of the high risk of triggering epidemics.” Any cases of plague, especially pneumonic form, are important to contain quickly, WHO says.

Cornell University is examining its fraternities and sororities after allegations of gang rape prompted concerns about accountability for sexual assault on college campuses.

The university’s President Michael Kotlikoff said on Saturday in a video message to the university community that the school would take “a serious look at the role of fraternities and sororities in campus life” among other steps aimed at creating a safer campus environment.

“At their best, these organizations can provide ​students with friendship, belonging, mentorship and a powerful sense of community,” Kotlikoff said. “But being part of ​a group can never diminish individual responsibility.”

Kotlikoff said the university would seek input from students, alumni, and other community members about how to “preserve what is valuable about Greek life while strengthening individual accountability, transparency and a culture in ​which every member understands their responsibility to protect the safety and well-being of others.”

The message comes on the heels of a civil lawsuit filed last month against Cornell and seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity. The plaintiff, anonymized as “Jane Doe,” alleged she was sexually assaulted and pressured to take drugs and alcohol on the night of Oct. 19, 2024, and that the university failed to protect her and mishandled its response. The lawsuit names seven current and former students as defendants, all of whom have denied any wrongdoing.

The lawsuit has triggered renewed criticism of the handling of the allegations by the university and local authorities, who declined to pursue criminal charges at the time. On Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, appointed the state’s Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor of the case, citing a loss of confidence in the local prosecutor’s ability to oversee it. New York lawmakers also said they were reviewing the state’s legal definition of consent while voluntarily intoxicated.

Read More: The System That Failed Cornell’s Jane Doe

Kotlikoff was not among the administrators present at a university town hall on Thursday, where students, faculty, and alumni called for stronger action against campus sexual assault. The public meeting was led by the university’s student government. Some students shared their own stories of sexual harassment and assault.

“I am also speaking as Jane Doe,” one student said at the forum.

In a statement last week, Cornell defended its initial handling of the allegations and said it complied with university policies and Title IX. The university banned the Chi Phi fraternity from campus and launched a Title IX investigation in 2025, which resulted in a range of disciplinary measures for the seven members implicated.

“We ​don’t have all the ⁠answers,” Kotlikoff said Saturday. “But we are committed to investigating and finding the answers our community deserves.”

Jane Doe faces threats of doxxing, harm to drop lawsuit

Thomas Giuffra, the attorney representing Doe, told CNN on Sunday that people have threatened to harm her if she does not withdraw her civil lawsuit. Giuffra said there have also been multiple attempts to doxx Doe, which has resulted in at least three other women being mistakenly identified as her.

“She’s received multiple threats, and women who aren’t even Jane Doe have received threats,” Giuffra said. “The threats, the abuse to protect what’s going on, the status quo, these guys are disgusting.”

Ann Olivarius, a civil rights attorney and a plaintiff in the landmark Title IX sexual harassment case Alexander v. Yale (1977), told TIME last week that the backlash against Doe could deter sexual assault survivors from coming forward to make a report.

That backlash has also prompted an outpouring of solidarity, with thousands of people posting #IamJaneDoe on social media. The posts are an effort to counter attempts to doxx Doe, but they have also become a way for survivors to share their own experiences of sexual assault.

Lawsuit raises accountability concerns

The lawsuit has brought scrutiny to the university’s Title IX process, especially over its claim that some of the alleged perpetrators were “afforded the opportunity to mitigate” their disciplinary sentences by writing essays. Cornell said that nobody was allowed to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement.

After Doe reported the case in November 2024, Cornell conducted a closed proceeding by a three-member panel, which met on Zoom over 12 days in May 2025, the New York Times reported, citing records gathered by Cornell investigators. Individual sanctions and the reasoning behind them had not been publicly disclosed.

According to discipline summaries obtained by the Times, the panel, which enforces federal civil rights at Cornell, did not conclude that Doe was sexually assaulted by all the men accused. Two of the fraternity members were found responsible for sexual assault and expelled. A third, who had graduated at the time of the ruling, was issued a persona non grata order barring him from campus for three years. Two others were suspended, given disciplinary probation, and required to study sexual harassment and write reflection papers. The remaining two, who were accused of being among the men that entered the room after reading a Snapchat message to the Chi Phi group chat encouraging others to join the alleged assault but were not accused of assaulting Doe themselves, were required to write reflection papers and attend trainings on sexual harassment, social media use, and bystander intervention. They were also barred from contacting Doe. None of the men has been criminally charged in connection with the allegations.

Chi Phi’s Cornell chapter was suspended in 2024, and it remains barred from campus.

Doe’s attorney as well as members of the Cornell community and the public have decried what they see as a lack of accountability for the alleged perpetrators. Doe ultimately withdrew from the university amid what the lawsuit described was a lack of institutional support. “With the exception of two of these men, all of them will be able to graduate with a Cornell diploma and live their lives reaping the benefits of this coveted degree,” Giuffra told the Times. “In contrast, as of today, it is doubtful whether Ms. Doe will even graduate college or ever live a normal life due to what these men did to her.”

Some have also described the case as an indictment of Greek life culture. A 2021 study that followed 772 men through their first two years of college found that fraternity membership was associated with subsequent self-reported sexual aggression. Survivor advocates have also argued that fraternity environments can enable sexual assault.

Giuffra told CNN that he has heard from people across the country about their own experiences of campus sexual assault since the lawsuit was filed. “This isn’t just a Cornell problem. This is a college-wide problem,” he said.

Multiple universities, including Cornell, have suspended Greek life activities following sexual assault reports. In November 2022, Cornell temporarily suspended all fraternity parties and social events for the remainder of the fall semester after reports of four drugging incidents and a sexual assault.

Some institutions have also permanently banned fraternal organizations. Swarthmore College banned fraternities and sororities in 2019 after student protests over leaked fraternity documents that contained racist and homophobic language and jokes about sexual assault. The college’s two fraternities had already voted to disband.

Criminal investigation reopened

The case has also drawn scrutiny to the Tompkins County District Attorney’s decision not to prosecute in 2024. The District Attorney, Matthew Van Houten, said last week he would review the case, but defended his initial decision, arguing that Doe’s sworn statement to police did not allege criminality. Under New York state law, if you choose to drink or take drugs to the point of becoming incapacitated, you can still be legally considered able to consent to sex.

Critics have questioned Cornell police’s handling of Doe’s account. Cornell police appeared to have omitted Doe’s explicit assertion that she was raped from her six-page sworn statement, which was shared with prosecutors. Van Houten said his office did not receive the police interview transcript, in which Doe said, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.” Campus police later informed the prosecutor’s office of new interviews with witnesses after investigating anonymous tips, but prosecutors declined to review the additional evidence.

On Friday, Hochul criticized prosecutors for relying on an incomplete account, asking: “In what world does the district attorney not even interview her, or anyone else involved, or even request the full transcript?”

“This woman, this young woman, had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable. And then at every turn, she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her,” Hochul said.

The governor also said she supports proposals to amend the so-called “voluntary intoxication loophole” in New York’s rape law. “If someone is too intoxicated to consent, it should not matter whether they chose to use drugs or alcohol. Voluntary intoxication is not a license for sexual assault or gang rape, period,” she said.

The day before, Hochul appointed James, a Democrat, as special prosecutor.

James had earlier posted on social media that what Doe had endured was “horrific and unacceptable,” raising questions from critics about her impartiality. James, who had already opened a review into Cornell’s response to the allegations, has pledged to conduct an investigation based on fact and the law.

“We will review the facts, gather evidence, interview witnesses and, if warranted, pursue prosecutions,” James said on Friday. “I know that you want answers. I do too. A comprehensive investigation of this nature takes time, but my office is committed to seeing it through.”

President Donald Trump criticized the appointment, calling James a “corrupt person.”

Trump has publicly feuded with James since she brought a civil fraud case against him and his family in 2022. The New York Supreme Court in September 2023 found Trump liable for fraud. An appeals court later upheld the fraud finding but overturned the financial penalty, which had grown to more than $500 million with interest.

James was charged with mortgage fraud by the Justice Department last year, but a judge dismissed the case and two grand juries rejected subsequent attempts to indict her. James denies the allegations.

Both James and Hochul have also criticized Trump over allegations of sexual misconduct and misogyny. In 2016, James, then New York City’s public advocate, condemned Trump’s “disgusting record of sexual misconduct.” In January 2024, months after a civil jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming  E. Jean Carroll, Hochul signed a bill expanding the legal definition of rape to include nonconsensual vaginal, oral, and anal sexual acts. Trump has dropped his challenge to the $5 million damages awarded to Carroll, but continues to contest a separate $83 million defamation award. The Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into Carroll in May over whether she committed perjury.

Asked about the Cornell allegations on Thursday, Trump said he knew little about the case but expressed confidence that the university would respond appropriately. In later social media posts and comments to reporters, however, he cast doubt on whether James would conduct a fair investigation.

“I feel ⁠badly for ​whoever she’s looking at,” Trump told reporters on Friday, “because they won’t get a fair shake.”

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets around France on Tuesday, marking the biggest day of protests yet in the escalating unrest over conditions in the country’s school system that has spread and erupted into violence in recent days.

The student demonstrations, which began two weeks ago in the suburbs of Paris, have forced high schools across France to close and resulted in thousands of arrests and hundreds of injuries.

Over 250,000 demonstrators gathered in more than a dozen French cities on Tuesday, including around 56,000 in Paris alone, according to the Interior Ministry. Student unions, parents, teachers, and university students joined in the protests. 

Most of the demonstrations were peaceful, but some broke into conflagrations and clashes between protesters and law enforcement. In Strasbourg, Lyon, Rennes, and Paris, demonstrators set fires and hurled projectiles, and police officers deployed tear gas into crowds. Firefighters were deployed in some locations to extinguish blazes started amid the unrest.

The national day of protests comes a day after a 15-year-old’s hand was blown off during a clash between high school students and riot police in Northern France on Monday morning, according to François-Xavier Lauch, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais. 

The regional newspaper La Voix du Nord reported that the boy lost his hand and part of his lower arm after picking up a stun grenade thrown by police amid a demonstration in the town of Lens. Lauch told news outlets that roughly 200 protesters had been hurling objects at police, but declined to comment on the specific circumstances of the boy’s injury.

In total, 215 students and 85 school staff members have been injured amid the demonstrations since they started in late September, according to French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. A spokesperson for the national police told RTL radio over on Saturday that more than 600 police officers have also suffered injuries.

Over 6,000 people have been arrested since the protests began roughly two weeks ago, France’s Justice Ministry said on Tuesday. 

Of those who have been detained, the ministry reported on Monday that 87% have been minors and more than 1,800 are being prosecuted. Nearly 2,000 protesters were detained on Thursday alone, the French interior ministry announced last week. 

Read More: Why French Protesters Are More Successful Than American Demonstrators

French officials have met with students and school administrators over the past few days and announced that they will take steps aimed at hearing and addressing students’ concerns.

But the protests show no signs of abating. Here’s what you should know as they stretch into their third weeks. 

Why are students protesting?

The protests have been driven by anger over a variety of issues impacting French high schools.

A main complaint among demonstrators is the shortage of teachers and support staff in the country’s schools. 

The education ministry found that during the 2024-2025 school year, nearly 10% of teaching hours went untaught in public secondary schools. About 7.5% of those lost hours were due to a failure to find substitutes. 

"Today our school is paralyzed due to a lack of resources, teachers, and not enough desks,” one student told the French outlet Agence France Presse (AFP). “We don't have nurses or supervisors, and all they do for us is take away our phones.” 

Complaints about insufficient resources and funding and poor infrastructure in schools have also been raised in the student protests. 

"We are 35 per ‌class, ⁠we don’t have enough chairs in classrooms,” a 15-year-old student told Reuters in the Paris suburb of Pantin as demonstrators clashed with police deploying tear gas in an effort to quell the protest.

“There are 35 of us per classroom. With 35 degrees Celsius [95 degrees Fahrenheit] in summer, it’s unbearable. There aren’t enough toilets, and there are water leaks in some rooms,” a 17-year-old said while speaking to AFP at a protest in Strasbourg in the northeast of France. “The building is falling apart, the cafeteria is too small. There’s zero budget, zero resources, not enough supervisors.”

Read More: What Is the Youth-Led ‘Cockroach Movement’ Staging Mass Protests in India?

Another student also raised concerns about a lack of resources to address high summer temperatures when talking to The Guardian. 

“We’re also protesting about the conditions in the heatwave,” the 19-year-old said. “Young people just want to study and learn in decent conditions. The French state seems surprised about worsening school results, but they’re doing nothing to remedy that.”

A series of deadly heatwaves hit Europe over the summer, with Western Europe experiencing its hottest summer ever. In France, nearly 8,000 people died over the course of the summer as a result of the high temperatures. 

Student protesters have also expressed grievances with the country’s online university application system, Parcoursup, which they have described as a source of stress and mistrust in the education system. 

The particular complaints being raised by demonstrators have varied somewhat across different parts of the country, however.

Education Minister Édouard Geffray characterized this as a complicating factor in addressing the roots of the unrest. "One of the difficulties of this movement is that there are no national demands. It all started with local demands,” the Education Minister said Friday morning. 

Where did the protests begin, and how have they expanded?

The protests began with students at Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil outside Paris mobilizing to protest teacher shortages and a lack of adequate resources in late September. 

In the days that followed, protests spread throughout the Île-de-France region, which includes Paris and its surrounding metropolitan areas, as students attempted to set up blockades at dozens of schools.

The demonstrations have escalated still further in the past week, spreading outside of Paris’ surrounding area and into regions around the country. Tracking from Reuters also showed that protests have sprouted across western France in Rennes, Nantes, Quimper, and Brest; around the southern part of the country in Bordeaux, Toulouse, Toulon, Marseilles and Grenoble; as far east as Strasbourg; and as far north as Lille.

Last Monday, 180 schools were disrupted by the expanded demonstrations, according to the interior ministry. By the week’s end, that number had risen to over 500.

Read More: What to Know About the ‘Gen Z’ Protests Roiling Countries Across the Globe

Thursday marked the largest escalation of protests in the lead-up to Tuesday’s national day of demonstrations. Fires were started at at least two French schools that day. Several teachers were accidentally splashed with gasoline at Marseille's Victor Hugo high school. At Saint-Exupery high school, also in Marseilles, hundreds of students set ablaze a fire truck that had arrived to put out a previous fire from the morning. Firefighters were forced by students to exit their vehicle before it was burned. In protests around the country, confrontations broke out between students and police, who fired projectiles in attempts to control crowds of demonstrators.

The following day, roughly 900 demonstrations took place around France, according to police. 

And in a message last week, two student unions, the Student Union and the High School Trade Union, jointly called for continued protests this week.

“Students and high school students, while the authorities seek to drive us out of our places of study through budget cuts, the closure of places, dilapidated buildings, selection, or repression, let's not let them: let's block and retake the universities and high schools!” the unions wrote in a press release.

How French officials are responding 

On Tuesday, Geffray said that once classes resume around France, the government will establish “high school time” across the country’s secondary schools, which will consist of setting aside one half-day “first with the staff, then with the students, for an in-depth, open, and democratic debate, everywhere.”

“We cannot resume the path of classes as if nothing had happened,” he said. 

Lecornu hailed these planned periods of “internal democracy” in French high schools as a way that “disagreements can be expressed within a legal, declared, and democratic framework.”

“After fifteen days of mobilization, the demands are numerous and vary from one high school to the next. They must be assessed objectively, school by school,” he said in a post on X, adding that “substitutes, the state of the buildings, guidance, organization of school time, high school democracy: all topics must be put on the table.”

The Prime Minister at the same time condemned the violence of the protests and defended the police response, pushing back on what he called “false reports” about the actions of law enforcement. “The situation is serious enough without needing a political class that fans the flames and stokes the violence,” he wrote.

As the protests intensified last week, Lecornu called a crisis meeting on Thursday and canceled ministers’ travel plans to work on quelling the demonstrations. Days later, he introduced five initiatives to address students’ demands, including “ensuring classes are held, improving facilities in partnership with the regional councils responsible for them, better organizing school days, making Parcoursup more transparent, and giving follow-through to the voices of high school students.” He added that a timeline and a funding plan for the initiatives would be given before the end of the month. 

Geffray meanwhile met with education unions, student organizations, and parent associations on Friday morning in an attempt to temper the protests through dialogue.  The same day, he announced a platform students can use to submit proposals for education reform, which he said will be evaluated and used for a “national report.”

High school student organizations, however, called for continued demonstrations following their meetings with Geffray, citing a lack of “concrete measures” from the French government to address their complaints. 

Dialogue between students and education administrators remained ongoing on Monday, as Geffray continued to meet with students At Villaroy high school in Guyancourt outside of Paris.

French President Emmanuel Macron has been less vocal in responding to the protests roiling his country.

"I hear and understand the anxieties and anger that our youth may have,” Macron said on Wednesday while speaking in Madrid. “However, none of these debates, none of these fears legitimizes violence.” 

Nearly a week since his comment, Macron has remained relatively silent on the ongoing demonstrations. On Tuesday, the President posted a video aboard a French naval vessel, where he witnessed the first firing of new ballistic missiles from a nuclear-powered submarine.