Scientist claims racial discrimination by Cornell during hiring process, files government complaint

Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright claimed that Cornell University racially discriminated against him during the hiring process for a tenure-track position at the university in and has since filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EEOC Wright who is White and a self-proclaimed liberal published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday detailing his fight to hold Cornell responsible for its allegedly discriminatory hiring practices which he says have prevented him and other qualified scientists from being considered for positions at the university This isn t a political stunt or publicity grab It s a last resort in response to a gross injustice that destroyed the career I spent more than a decade building It s about holding accountable a powerful institution that violated the law abandoned its principles and discriminated against me because of my race Wright stated INQUIRY FINDS RI CONSTITUENTS SCHOOL DISTRICT OFFERED PUPIL LOAN FORGIVENESS TO ONLY NON-WHITE TEACHERSIn Wright applied for a tenure-track position in the university's Neurobiology and Behavior department Unknown to him at the time Cornell had initiated a separate search for a faculty member in evolutionary biology his exact field of assessment but kept the hiring process under wraps The America First Plan Institute published internal emails from Cornell last month which revealed the university's efforts to recruit what the hiring committee referred to as a diversity hire One member of the committee candidly described the hiring process 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 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 claimed CORNELL UNIVERSITY HIT WITH FEDERAL CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLAINT OVER ALLEGED DISCRIMINATORY DEI PRACTICESAccording to the disaffected evolutionary biologist Cornell's discriminatory hiring practices were conducted in coordination with the university's Office of the Provost which at the time was by current Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff Wright claimed that these practices violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act which prohibits employment discrimination by race He alleged that alongside their discriminatory hiring operations Cornell orchestrated other racially filtered hiring pipelines including a million National Institutes of Health-funded scheme called the Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation FIRST project The initiative's stated goal is to enhance compositional diversity by requiring faculty members to revise applicant pools repeatedly until they are deemed diverse enough Imagine if the races were reversed Suppose a whistleblower uncovered internal emails showing that a university had run a secret search to ensure that qualified Black applicants were excluded from consideration Wright proposed Suppose the school selected only White candidates to produce a racially predetermined outcome There would rightfully be national outrage It would be a landmark civil-rights circumstance That s exactly what Cornell did except I m White CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTUREIn response to a WSJ editor's inquiry Cornell provided the editor with a link to a previously issued comment from June claiming Cornell strictly prohibits unlawful bias or discrimination The declaration was issued in response to a previous informal complaint filed by the America First Plan Institute to several federal agencies In the message Cornell noted the university strongly disputes the claims made in the June complaint Cornell also declined to comment on Wright's formal EEOC complaint In closing the evolutionary biologist called on the Trump administration to consider his situation as evidence that the racially discriminatory hiring practices at universities run much deeper than they may expect and to take this into account when prosecuting them for civil rights violations CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Race-based hiring practices have harmed countless qualified scholars and demand serious scrutiny Wright concluded Let my situation serve as a warning that there is a price for violating civil rights When inquired for comment a representative for Cornell referred Fox News Digital to the previously mentioned report from June