By Douglas Belkin
A conservative think tank with deep ties to the Trump administration has targeted Cornell University with a civil rights complaint, alleging the Ivy League school has used DEI practices that the group says are discriminatory in its faculty hiring and student scholarships.
The complaint alleges that Cornell placed "an illegal identity-based ideology above equal opportunity and merit" that discriminated against job candidates and created a hostile environment for people who disagreed with that ideology.
The complaint comes as the Trump administration ramps up its battle against diversity, equity and inclusion practices at schools, including at the University of Virginia, whose president resigned last week amid tension with the government.
The Cornell complaint was brought by the America First Policy Institute, a research group that was chaired by Linda McMahon before she became President Trump's education secretary. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is a former chief executive of the organization. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi also held a post there.
Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department's civil-rights division, said her office "will investigate all serious allegations of identity-based admissions, hiring, and student benefits."
"Discrimination by American colleges and universities must come to an end," she said. "Cornell is no exception to this rule."
A Cornell University spokesperson said the school's hiring policies focus on merit and prohibit discrimination.
"The university will promptly review any complaints about past hiring practices and take appropriate action if our anti-discriminatory hiring policies were not followed," the spokesperson said.
The complaint cites a 2020 email about conversations among faculty and administrators discussing a plan to make "our hoped-for diversity hire." The email says: "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."
A second email included in the complaint, dated 2022, says one candidate was dropped from further consideration "because their D&I statement was so seriously and unambiguously weak that we could not imagine them being a finalist."
The university didn't dispute the emails were real, but said across "thousands of hiring decisions in hundreds of departments and units misunderstandings of policies can occur."
The emails were written as many universities and companies were ramping up their diversity efforts in the wake of the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
The complaint also alleges the Ithaca, N.Y., school has used racial considerations in awarding scholarships, including for students who are Latino or Black.
A university spokesperson said the complaint cites outdated websites. Over the past year, Cornell has hired outside law firms to audit changing policy and practices and taken "swift corrective action where necessary," the spokesperson added.
Trump has targeted elite universities since taking office, taking aim at DEI practices as well as antisemitism.
In February, the education department's office of civil rights laid out its interpretation of federal discrimination law, explaining that it considered any use of race to be illegal in hiring and admissions decisions. The advisory letter warned colleges they would risk access to federal funding if they promoted racial preferences in hiring or admissions.
Trump also issued executive orders attempting to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs at federal agencies.
The Trump administration has sent 140 stop-work orders to Cornell totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a spokesperson. Cornell was among 60 schools warned in March by the U.S. Department of Education of potential consequences if they didn't adequately protect Jewish students on campus. Trump has said that antisemitism proliferated on some campuses in recent years partly as an outgrowth of the progressive ideology behind DEI.
Even before Trump took office, a 2023 Supreme Court ruling struck down the use of racial preferences in university admissions. Lawsuits have challenged the use of race in scholarships as well as a federal program designed to funnel tens of millions of dollars to colleges and universities with large percentages of Hispanic students.
Write to Douglas Belkin at Doug.Belkin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 30, 2025 12:58 ET (16:58 GMT)
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