JTA — Cornell University’s Jewish president will not be penalized for a recent campus altercation with pro-Palestinian protesters who had surrounded his car following a campus debate on Israel, an investigation by the university concluded Friday.

The Ivy League school’s Board of Trustees issued a statement of support for Michael Kotlikoff following an investigation into the April 30 incident. Kotlikoff had recused himself from the investigation, which wrapped after eight days.

“President Kotlikoff has shown a steadfast commitment to Cornell’s values and principles, and we are confident he will continue to lead with integrity,” a Friday statement from the board’s ad hoc investigation committee concludes.

The investigation also cleared the protesters, a mix of students and non-students, of any wrongdoing, even as it found that their actions “are inconsistent with university policies governing expressive activity and our standards for respectful conduct, safety and the prohibition of intimidation.”

Kotlikoff will not be pursuing any complaints against the students involved, Cornell’s board said. The president himself did not immediately release a statement on the investigation’s results, and a spokesperson for the university declined to comment further.

The report’s release sought to quickly close the book on a whirlwind controversy at the Ithaca, New York, university, as long-simmering tensions between Kotlikoff and the campus’s pro-Palestinian contingent boiled over into a rare physical altercation between students and a college president.

The incident that prompted the investigation was the second part of a two-session debate on Israel, sponsored by the non-partisan Cornell Political Union. Kotlikoff was present to introduce the guest speaker, Jewish anti-Israel academic and activist Norman Finkelstein.

Multiple video sources from the Finkelstein event showed that, following the talk, members of the protest group Students for a Democratic Cornell followed the president to his car and appeared to try to block its path. When he did edge his way out of his parking spot,........

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