Internal Documents Suggest Cornell Hired Based on Race
“A Cornell whistleblower pointed to two problematic features of the university’s hiring system.”
This has been going on for so long at so many institutions. No more.
City Journal reports:
Cornell Hired Based on Race, Internal Documents Show
In recent months, Ivy League universities have changed their tune on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Under pressure from President Trump, these institutions have renamed DEI departments, scuttled unpopular programs, and assured the administration that they are following the law. As Cornell president Michael Kotlikoff explained in February: “Just as we do not exclude anyone at Cornell for reasons irrelevant to merit, neither do we . . . hire or promote employees, award chairs or tenure, or make any other merit-driven decisions at Cornell based on race, ethnicity, or other attributes.”
Kotlikoff’s statement was unequivocal, but according to a trove of internal documents we have obtained, it was also untrue. In fact, whistleblowers at Cornell describe a system of intentional discrimination in faculty hiring that rewards and punishes individuals according to their ancestry, rather than their ability.
Like the other Ivies, Cornell was captured by racialist ideologies in the wake of the BLM movement. In 2020, then-president Martha Pollack announced a spate of DEI initiatives, including mandatory cultural competency training for staff, a “Community Book Read” of critical race guru Ibram X. Kendi, and the development of a “for-credit educational requirement for all undergraduate students on racism, bias and equity.” More quietly, administrators redesigned the hiring process to filter applicants by race and tip the scales in favor of “diversity hires.”
A Cornell whistleblower pointed to two problematic features of the university’s hiring system. The first was its use of “diversity statements,” which allow applicants to express their commitment to left-wing racial ideology. In December 2022, a Cornell professor in one of the scientific departments wrote an email to colleagues explaining that the hiring committee would pre-filter applicants solely based on diversity statements.
“As pre-planned as a best practice, we first did a pre-screening of just the [DEI] statements submitted by the candidates; all were read by two committee members, and any that were flagged as highly suboptimal were also reviewed by a third committee member with high DEI expertise,” the email reads. “In the end, we dropped just one candidate from further consideration because their [DEI] statement was so seriously and unambiguously weak that we could not imagine them being a finalist. That same process led us to identify a few others who also had weak [DEI] statements.”
The email makes clear that DEI statements were used to reject candidates who were insufficiently committed to “diversity.”
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Comments
DEI statements are an effective method for eliminating all conservatives, moderates, and Republicans from consideration. Also, I bet there is evidence that some of the positions were reserved for “diverse” candidates, and all white males were dropped from the applicant pool. I saw that done at my school.
“Like the other Ivies, Cornell was captured by racialist ideologies in the wake of the BLM movement.”
Actually, Cornell was captured by racialist and other leftist ideologies in the wake of the 1969 building takeovers.
Search for images of “willard straight hall building takeover”.
NO punishment for those gun toting pranksters in 1969 as they had the “right” skin color.
The “punishment” was that they were provided with the segregated living spaces and leftist curricula they demanded.
I am curious about the term “DEI expertise”. I suspect this is a euphemism for DEI advocacy. Because if one delves into the concept of DEI, one soon discovers that it is derived of a particular value set rather than some principles of proven academic effectiveness. Handing a CV and diversity statement for review to a committee with “DEI expertise” is a kin to being reviewed by the Inquisition for satisfactory adherence to the faith.
Agree. The whole regime of “experts” that started under Obama was an excuse to bring into influence, people we would have called uncultured retards. Now they were appointed experts. The key word is “expert”. When they insisted on an “expert”, it meant one of those far leftist enforcers.
And so we know how Cornwallis’ army felt as marched onto their boats, defeated, at Yorktown, his band playing “The World Turned Upside Down”. But here we have a chance to turn it right side up again.
These “experts” will pretend to be experts in their made-up fields of expertise, and make a big fuss about it. We just have to tell them no. That’s happening.
In other news, the sun rose this morning.
What comes next, unless it’s stamped out, could be more insidious than DEI statements. I think it was well known among those clever enough to be faculty candidates at Cornell that you need certain things in a DEI statement, and you need good writing of a certain sort. As we see, most were able to pass that rather obvious filter. I am sure it didn’t stop there, but at least part of the DEI game was relatively easy to survive.
One could argue that if a candidate couldn’t write (whether fiction or fact) well enough to pass that hurdle, they would also not be very good at writing grant applications, the lifeblood of most STEM faculty.
If it survives with elements of that hidden among the weeds, things will get worse rather than better.