Author: Jon Parmenter
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Cornell University’s Mineral Rights in Wisconsin: A Legacy of the 1862 Morrill Act
The following research is apart of a broader CU&ID project, “Visualizing the Land Grab,” conducted by Jon Parmenter (History Department, Cornell University), Marina Johnson-Zafiris (Information Science, Cornell University) and Dusti Bridges (Archaeology, Cornell University) – with the support of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program and the Cornell University Grants Program for Digital Collections.…
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Cornell University & the Blue Hills (WI) Pipestone Quarry: A Perspective from Anishinaabewaki
Lecture by Dr. Rick St. Germaine. Monday March 25th, 2024 at 5:00 pm EST. In-Person (G22, Goldwin Smith Hall) + Livestreamed (lecture video & slides available below) Cornell University owns a severed fifty-percent mineral interest on 155,340 acres of land in twelve northern Wisconsin counties – a legacy of the public lands allocated by the…
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Reading Grist’s ‘Misplaced Trust’: The Vantage from Cornell
by Professor Jon Parmenter Cover Photo from “Misplaced Trust: Stolen Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system. Climate change is its legacy.” (Ahtone et. al, Feb. 7 2024). After Cornell University took center stage as the land-grant university that reaped the greatest financial windfall from the Morrill Act of 1862 in the…
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Confronting Cornell University’s Origins in Indigenous Dispossession
by Professor Jon Parmenter In this contribution to a forum on “The End of Early America” the author discusses his research-in-progress on Cornell University’s historical entanglement with the proceeds of Indigenous dispossession stemming from the Morrill Act of 1862. Analysis of the parcels of Morrill Act acreage located, entered, and subsequently managed by Ezra Cornell…
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Assessing Cornell University’s Response to Recent Revelations Concerning the Origins of Revenues Obtained from the Morrill Act of 1862
by Professor Jon Parmenter Cornell University, chartered in 1865 as New York State’s designated recipient of federal land-grant university status, received approximately ten percent of the acreage allocated nationally by the Morrill Act of 1862. By 1900, nearly one-third of the total Morrill Act land-grant revenues generated by all the states had accrued to Cornell University. In March…
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A Land Grant University: Cornell’s Legacy
The following is taken from the Present Value podcast, founded in fall 2017 by two Cornell MBA students. This episode was originally released on February 22, 2021. In this episode, with host María Castex, Professor Jon Parmenter discusses his research on indigenous dispossession and Cornell University’s legacy as a land grant institution. In October of 2020, Parmenter wrote…
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From Bad to Worse: Ithaca Common Council Rewrites History to the Detriment of Us All
by Professor Jon Parmenter On October 7, 2020, Ithaca’s Common Council voted to remove from DeWitt Park an historical monument erected in 1933 by the (now-defunct) local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. This marker commemorated the “First White Settlers” in Ithaca: two Revolutionary War veterans alleged to have erected cabins near what is now DeWitt Park. …
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Flipped Scrip, Flipping the Script: The Morrill Act of 1862, Cornell University, and the Legacy of Nineteenth-Century Indigenous Dispossession
by Professor Jon Parmenter Abstract New York State received nearly one-tenth of the “public land” granted by the 1862 Morrill Act, the income from which was to constitute an endowment for at least one college in the state providing instruction in agriculture and the “mechanic arts.” The subsequent administration of those resources by Ezra Cornell…