Key Takeaways
- Cornell University is under investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission following a complaint by the America First Policy Institute, which alleges that the university's hiring processes excluded qualified white candidates in favor of a 'diversity hire.'
- Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, who applied to Cornell in 2020, claims internal emails reveal he was denied a fair opportunity due to his race, contradicting civil rights protections.
- Cornell strongly denies the allegations, asserting that misunderstandings in hiring policies can occur.
Cornell University is facing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation after allegations lodged against the Ivy League institution that faculty search committees deliberately excluded highly qualified white applicants.
America First Policy Institute first lodged the complaint in June, citing internal emails that spelled out how candidates were passed over as part of Cornell’s “diversity hire” process. In mid-July, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission launched an inquiry into the matter.
In late July, evolutionary biologist Colin Wright joined the battle against Cornell, stating he applied there in 2020 but now understands, thanks to those whistleblower emails, he never stood a chance because he is white.
Wright’s complaint is just the latest headache for Cornell, which saw more than $1 billion in federal funding frozen by the Trump Administration in April in part due to allegations of civil rights violations.
The administration is currently in negotiations with Cornell to resolve the allegations. Cornell has publicly denied the allegations.
“The EEOC has been extraordinarily vigilant and dedicated to addressing discrimination, and we are grateful for their seriousness in this matter,” said Leigh Ann O’Neill, chief of staff at AFPI’s Center for Litigation.
“Cornell, by contrast, has been stonewalling,” she told The College Fix on Tuesday. “We submitted our client’s demand on August 1, and here we are on September 9 with no accountability whatsoever from the university.”
Wright’s administrative EEOC complaint is the first step before he can file a lawsuit.
‘I was denied the chance to compete’
“America First Policy Institute released internal Cornell emails showing the university conducted an effort to recruit what the search committee referred to as a ‘diversity hire.’ 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 wrote in a July 30 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
“That ‘somebody,’ who is black, was selected not because of research excellence, but because of race. I was denied the chance to compete—so were other academics who might have been qualified,” Wright wrote.
He argued the search committee violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin,” as per the EEOC’s website.
Wright, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, did not respond to multiple requests from The College Fix seeking comment.
‘Misunderstandings of policies can occur’
Cornell denies the employment claims lodged against it by the institute.
“The university strongly disputes the allegations in the America First Policy Institute complaint,” which relies on outdated websites and programs that are no longer in use, spokesperson Monica Yant Kinney told The College Fix via email.
Kinney also referenced a statement by the university in late June that stated: “In thousands of hiring decisions in hundreds of departments and units, misunderstandings of policies can occur. If discrimination or bias is observed at any stage in any hiring process, it should be reported and will be corrected.”
But AFPI’s O’Neill told The College Fix that the internal university emails reveal the school engaged in “a deliberate scheme within at least one Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) academic department to exclude potential tenure-track faculty candidates based on race and sex.”
Orchestrated hiring scheme
Asked how the AFPI obtained internal documents, O’Neill told The Fix “they were provided to us by our clients, who received them directly from personnel within Cornell.”
She said they show a process in which an academic department “conspired with the Office of the Provost … to orchestrate a hiring scheme where the pool of candidates for an open position was predetermined.”
O’Neill said in “using a chosen preferred race as a defining factor,” Cornell was “thereby excluding all other potential candidates based on their race.”
O’Neill also told The Fix that “this is by far the most blatantly unlawful hiring scheme” she’s ever witnessed.
“It doesn’t get more blatant than that. And this is just the instance we’re aware of — it’s hard to imagine it’s the only one,” she said.
In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Wright noted he is an “evolutionary biologist, a liberal and a first-generation college graduate.”
Over a 12-year career, he earned a doctorate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and completed a postdoctoral position at Pennsylvania State University. He was also awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and published almost 30 peer-reviewed papers in academic journals.
MORE: Civil rights complaint filed against Cornell includes bombshell whistleblower emails
