#7: Cornell University
For decades, many premier universities have illegally prioritized race and other diversity criteria in deciding who to hire or promote for academic and administrative positions. In the 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court confirmed that such conduct stands in direct violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and struck down the use of racial preferences or “affirmative action” in admissions and hiring decisions. But Cornell University, it seems, did not get the memo.
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Wright partnered with the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) to lodge a complaint against Cornell in June. The complaint led to the EEOC investigation which could ultimately result in a lawsuit against the Ivy League behemoth.
“The evidence includes a December 23, 2020, email message from a department chair confirming that the tenure track faculty position in question would be filled through a ‘diversity hire’ process that excluded the great majority of qualified candidates because these persons lacked the targeted identity traits,” AFPI stated in its legal complaint. “Candidates were prescreened and selected, then invited one at a time, in a secret process with no advertised position opening to avoid any sense of competition on the part of the prospective candidates. Only individuals with certain favored identity characteristics (race, ethnicity, and/or sex) were considered for employment.”
AFPI goes on to describe how “a list of 20–30 preselected candidates, compiled purely based on identity screening, was used to guide the [hiring] process,” adding that “It is estimated that more than 98% of otherwise qualified applicants were excluded from employment consideration based on their disfavored identity characteristics, without these persons ever knowing an open Cornell faculty position existed.”
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“These practices violate not only the law but also the most basic principles of academic integrity and fairness,” AFPI concluded. “They also directly contradict [Cornell] President [Michael] Kotlikoff’s claims that merit governs Cornell’s hiring decisions.”
“One committee member described the process bluntly: ‘What we should be doing is inviting one person whom we have identified as being somebody that we would like to join our department and not have that person in competition with others,’” Wright described in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal
“That ‘somebody,’ who is black, was selected not because of research excellence, but because of race,” Wright added. “I was denied the chance to compete—so were other academics who might have been qualified.”
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Leigh Ann O’Neill, chief of staff at AFPI’s Center for Litigation which filed the initial complaint, described how the Cornell biology department “conspired with the Office of the Provost … to orchestrate a hiring scheme where the pool of candidates for an open position was predetermined.”
By “using a chosen preferred race as a defining factor,” she explained, Cornell was “thereby excluding all other potential candidates based on their race.” She labeled Cornell’s behavior as “by far the most blatantly unlawful hiring scheme” she’s seen.
Wright’s complaint is not the only pending suit that accuses Cornell of illegal discrimination. The university was recently forced to suspend one of its own professors for refusing to accept an Israeli student into his course on Gaza.
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The course in question is titled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance.”
Students in Chaifitz’s class will learn to “analyze Indigenous perspectives on political, social, and environmental systems,” in the context of a “global war against an ongoing colonialism,” states the course description.
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Cheyfitz “admitted to actions that violated federal civil rights laws and fell short of the university’s expectations for student interactions,” a spokesman for Cornell told the New York Post. Under pressure after this blatantly illegal faculty conduct, Cornell suspended Professor Cheyfitz pending a disciplinary investigation. The aging professor elected to retire rather than see the disciplinary procedures to their conclusion.
For its blatant discrimination against both students and faculty in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Cornell deserves its place on the list of Academic Felons.
* Original Article:
