AFPI Sues Cornell University Over Racially Discriminatory Hiring Practices

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) announced today that it has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Cornell University on behalf of Dr. Colin Wright, a qualified evolutionary biologist who was excluded from consideration for a faculty position solely because he is white.

Internal documents obtained by AFPI reveal that Cornell secretly reserved the position in its Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology for candidates who satisfied a “diversity axis”—a term used in faculty emails to classify applicants by race, sexual orientation, and disability status. Notably, Cornell never publicly posted the job opening, as required by its own policies, and kept the hiring process hidden from potentially qualified applicants.

“This was a racial litmus test administered in secret,” said Leigh Ann O’Neill, AFPI’s Chief Legal Officer. “Cornell’s own emails reveal they intentionally excluded white candidates, classified applicants by race, and ignored institutional hiring rules in pursuit of a so-called ‘diversity hire.’ That’s illegal, and this lawsuit will make that clear.”

The complaint includes direct quotes from senior Cornell administrators and faculty acknowledging their intention to avoid a “search dynamic” and to offer the job only to preselected minority candidates—without competition. An internal spreadsheet ranked candidates based on how well they met “diversity” qualifications, listing race and identity markers alongside academic credentials.

Of all candidates given consideration, none were white.

Dr. Michael Shires, Vice Chair for Education Opportunity at AFPI and an academic leader with decades of experience in faculty hiring, emphasized the broader implications of the case:

“I’ve been on both sides of the hiring table. There are lawful ways to pursue inclusion and representation. But what Cornell did here was illegal. When a university decides that some candidates don’t even deserve to know a position exists because of their skin color, that’s discrimination.”

This is not Cornell’s first encounter with federal scrutiny. In November 2025, the university agreed to pay $60 million in penalties to the U.S. Department of Education over unrelated Title VI and Title IX compliance issues. That agreement did not cover the violations alleged in this case.

“Cornell wants all of this behind them — because the more you look, the more wrongdoing you find,” O’Neill added.

Dr. Wright, who earned his Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara and had published more academic research than the candidate ultimately hired, was actively seeking a faculty position at the time but was never informed of the Cornell opening. He learned about the race-based hiring process only in 2025, after an internal Cornell email was made public.

The case, Wright v. Cornell University, was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York.