Cornell Official Tells Undercover Reporter ISIS/Hamas Club Welcome

An undercover Project Veritas reporter convinced a Cornell assistant dean that it would be a worthwhile endeavor to start an “ISIS training club” on the institution’s New York campus.

Joseph Scaffido, Cornell’s assistant dean for students, welcomed into his office someone he thought was a new student from Morocco.

“I think maybe, [it would] be nice to start a humanitarian group that supports distressed communities, a humanitarian group in the Middle East, northern Iraq and Syria,” the undercover reporter told the dean.

Advocating for a student group that would aid the terrorist movement, the fake student added:

I think it would be important for especially these people in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the families and the freedom fighters in particular and their families. I think it would be important maybe just probably educate, but to maybe send them them care packages whether it be food, water electronics.

Scaffido responded, “There are a lot of our student organizations that do things like that all over the world,” endorsing the idea.

The undercover journalist then asked if it would be “a problem” to also support Palestinian terror group Hamas in his proposed student group.

“The university is not going to look at different groups and say you’re not allowed to support that, because we don’t believe in them or something like that,” said the dean, again endorsing supporting a terror group as acceptable on campus. “I think the university wants the entire community to understand what’s going on in all parts of the world,” opined Dean Scaffido.

The dean went on to describe Cornell as a very accepting, “very liberal community” that would allow for an ISIS representative to educate his students, and that there would even be “funding sources on campus” available to support the fake Moroccan student’s terrorist advocacy group.

After reviewing the tape, Joel Malina, Cornell’s vice president for university relations, told the New York Post that the dean’s comments about training ISIS terrorists do “not reflect university policy.”