White Biologist Sues Cornell Over Alleged Race-Based Hiring

A biologist has filed a lawsuit against Cornell University alleging it used unlawful race-based hiring practices and intentionally discriminated against qualified candidates by refusing to consider white applicants, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The lawsuit claims Cornell violated federal law while seeking to fill a faculty position several years ago.

It cites emails from the ecology and evolutionary biology department in December 2020 that allegedly said the department would make a "diversity hire" by inviting candidates from a list of "underrepresented minority scholars" without requiring them to compete with others.

Colin Wright, the plaintiff, was a postdoctoral researcher at Pennsylvania State University at the time. He said he was seeking an academic job and was well qualified for the position that Cornell allegedly filled without ever posting the job publicly, as was required by university policy.

Attorneys for the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a conservative think tank with close ties to the Trump administration that brought the case before a federal district court in New York, said that internal documents classified a list of candidates by race, ethnicity, disability status, and sexual orientation.

Emails allegedly indicated that the department deliberately avoided a competitive search and planned to approach candidates one at a time until one accepted.

Wright said he applied for similar positions in the field between 2018 and 2021. But he did not learn of the Cornell opening until last year, when whistleblowers released emails and AFPI filed a federal civil rights complaint, according to The Washington Post.

Last summer, in response to the AFPI complaint, a Cornell spokeswoman said the university strictly prohibits unlawful bias or discrimination and "strongly disputes the allegations in the America First Policy Institute complaint that references a number of outdated websites or programs that have not been in use for many years."

She said the university had "further enhanced its compliance with civil rights laws" over the past year.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bars hiring or declining to hire someone based on race, among other factors, but in the 1970s the Supreme Court carved out an exception for affirmative action programs that seek to remedy past discrimination.

Some experts said this exception was narrow, while others said it was broad enough to cover most of what universities have done in the name of diversity.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court further complicated the issue of affirmative action when it ruled that race-conscious college admissions constitute unconstitutional discrimination, although the Harvard decision did not address hiring.

Many experts see the decision as signaling that the justices would be inclined to rule against any racial considerations in hiring if and when such a case comes before the court.

Leigh Ann O'Neill, AFPI's chief legal affairs officer, noted that in the Harvard case, the court said racial discrimination in admissions was not justified even to correct historical wrongs and that Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote, "eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it."

"In this case, we're asking the court to uphold that same principle when making hiring decisions," she said.

Wright, now a fellow at the Manhattan Institute conservative think tank, said he is seeking to ensure the university complies with federal and state employment laws, as well as compensatory damages for "emotional suffering from discrimination, reputational harm, loss of employment, back pay, front pay, and lost future wages," and punitive damages.

The complaint claims he was more qualified than the person who was hired and that he lost at least $700,000 in salary.

"Cornell's practices didn't just cost me a job, unknown numbers of other qualified candidates were also robbed of the chance to even be considered," Wright said.

The lawsuit comes while the Trump administration has been attempting to end DEI efforts at colleges and elsewhere.