It’s Thursday, October 8. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Josh Code hits the campaign trail with the long-shot Republican trying to unseat Letitia James. Patrick McGee on the problem with Jensen Huang’s AI optimism. Eli Lake on Zohran Mamdani’s sinister October 7 statement. Everything you need to know about the Russian plague story. And much more.
But first: The Cornell case and a culture in crisis.
The lawsuit accusing seven former members of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity of gang-raping a classmate, allegations they deny, will ultimately be decided in court. But for college students across the country, the consequences are happening in real time. Frannie Block and I talked to Chi Phi members at schools hundreds of miles from Ithaca who have never met the accused, yet find themselves deemed guilty by association.
Online trolls have attacked Chi Phi chapters, harassing members simply for wearing their letters in public. Meanwhile, pledges are walking away. One finance executive said he planned to blacklist any members of the fraternity in his hiring. The fraternity’s national headquarters has even become a target, with strangers flooding staffers’ inboxes and voicemails with death threats and violent messages. “I hope you and your loved ones get brutally raped and killed,” one caller told a female staffer. Read our piece on this latest example of mob justice.
Back in Ithaca, Cornell senior Jared Lederman thinks the debate over his school has overlooked something important: what it actually teaches students about sex. The same university that urges students to drink less and sleep more has embraced an approach to sex education that he says is shocking in its lewdness. See why he argues the school’s embrace of “sex positivity” may be hurting the very students it claims to protect.
—Madeleine Long
|
|
Jensen Huang May Be the Most Dangerous Man in AI |
|
 |
|
While many tech CEOs are sounding the alarm about the risks of artificial intelligence, Jensen Huang, whose Nvidia chips power the AI boom, says there’s “zero percent chance” the technology ends the world by 2030. Is this a refreshing change of tone from the doomsaying? Or irresponsible? Patrick McGee gets into it in his latest column. | |
|
|
|
What Happened Inside Russia’s Plague Lab? |
|
 |
|
A young researcher in Siberia has died of pneumonic plague, and Moscow has released few details. Former arms control envoy Marshall Billingslea joins Aaron MacLean on “School of War” to fill in what the Kremlin is keeping mum on, from the institute that defectors say tried to make the disease resistant to antibiotics to the growing bioweapons programs in Russia and China. Don’t miss their conversation on the weapons that worry him more than nukes. | |
|
|
|
Mamdani’s October 7 Smear |
|
 |
|
On the third anniversary of October 7, New York mayor Zohran Mamdani offered a few lines of grief for the victims of the massacre, then quickly pivoted, accusing Israel of a genocide in Gaza. In his column, Eli Lake argues Mamdani has shattered the illusion that he’s mellowed in office, and that the stakes go well beyond the mayor’s relationship with New York’s Jews. | |
|
