Universities Sued Over Racial Discrimination in Hiring

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | October 8, 2025 | George Leef

[karpov]

So strong is the desire for “diversity” (at least racial diversity) in higher education that school and college officials often turn a blind eye to the law against racial discrimination in employment. The 1964 Civil Rights Act forbids racial discrimination in employment. It does not read that racial discrimination is illegal unless you think you have a good reason for doing so. Unfortunately, education leaders often act as if it does, engaging in blatant discrimination against candidates who don’t have the desired ancestry.

A complaint recently filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Cornell University shows how audacious its leaders were in ignoring the law.

Dr. Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist. He had long desired to pursue a career in science, earning his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara followed by a postdoctoral position at Penn State. Wright won a competitive National Science Foundation fellowship and published many papers in peer-reviewed journals. One would think that he’d be an excellent candidate for a tenure-track position at any leading university. In 2019 and 2020, he applied to numerous universities with faculty openings. Among them was Cornell University, for a position in its neurobiology and behavior department—but Wright was not considered for it.

Several years later, he found out why.

Cornell wanted to hire a biologist but was looking only for black candidates. Since Wright is not black, he had no chance. Cornell officials wanted to keep their racially restrictive search a secret.

Fortunately, the truth eventually came to light when a whistleblower leaked several internal emails showing that the department had engaged in a “diversity hire,” meaning that only black candidates would be invited to apply.

[Bon of Babble]

Hope any college/university that engaged in race-based hiring is sued and those passed over for positions closed to their race receive large settlements.

Victor Davis Hanson reports that he has sat in on hiring committees at Stanford where the first order of business was to announce the open positions in question were closed to White applicants.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

This crap happened — and still happens — all the time. It will take a lot of lawsuits, but the ship eventually will get turned around.

[fwdude]

I'm almost to the point that conservative groups need to hire white male college applicants for the express purpose to incite such illegal discrimination, so that a tsunami of lawsuits will overwhelm them.

After all, that's what the left has been doing to US for several generations.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

Lefty academic types don't think ordinary laws apply to them. They actually get offended when they get informed otherwise.

A few years back, there was a rather well-known defamation lawsuit filed by a local bakery against Oberlin College based on defamatory statements made by administrators there, accusing the bakery of being racist, etc.. When sued, they were incredibly arrogant about it, and refused to acknowledge having done anything wrong.

The jury disagreed, to the tune of $30+ million. Heh.

[Savage Beast]

Is Cornell more bonkers than the other universities, or do we just hear about it more?

[Savage Beast]

Lefty academic types don't think the law applies to them, but that's true of lefty types in general.

When Martin Luther King said that one has an obligation to disobey an unjust law, he also said that one must be prepared to take the consequences of disobeying it. Lefties merely disregard the latter admonition but claim the former. They don't recognize, or more likely choose not to recognize, their own moral and intellectual mediocrity.

[mak5]

I observed this situation at the college where I previously taught. The Provost openly stated that he wanted to hire a Black man for one position, while the Athletic Director mandated that all women’s teams must be coached by women (but that one was a pretense to get rid of one coach she didn’t like).

[faithhopecharity]

Stanford has had problems with hiring AND also with student admissions AND financial aid discrimination.

Maybe it isn’t as bad there as it is back east but it has been very clearly a problem at Stanford for many years.

Such as, professional schools sometimes not even granting admissions interviews to top-ranked candidates. Such as, professional schools sometimes “reserving all available financial aid for persons of” other, favored racial or religious groups.

It is so sad to see that this problem hasn’t been cleaned up at Stanford given it is always ranked in the top tier world class universities (and especially several of its professional schools).