Cornell Student Assembly Calls for Mandatory Faculty Diversity Training

On Thursday Cornell’s undergraduate Student Assembly passed a resolution by a 22-1 margin calling for mandatory faculty diversity training.

The resolution, titled “Towards a More Inclusive Learning Experience,” was based on a letter Cornell Black Students United (BSU) delivered to University administrators late last year.

The letter read in part: “We want all employees of the university, academic and otherwise — including tenured professors — to have appropriate, ongoing training that deals with issues of identity, such as race, class, religion, ability status, sexual and romantic orientation, gender and citizenship status. We want this coursework to be explicitly focused on systems of power and privilege in the United States and centering the voices of oppressed people.” You can read it in full here.

The Student Assembly (SA) resolution quotes the above paragraph and recommends the Faculty Senate work with BSU and the SA to implement the mandatory diversity training. The resolution also recommends that reach undergraduate college tailor “best practices as they pertain to diversity and how they can be better implemented” and “employees and faculty collaborate to create a comprehensive diversity training program to that promotes the best teaching practices as they pertain to racial, gender, sexuality and ability identities in a teaching setting.”

The resolution was sponsored by BSU co-president and SA Minority Liaison At Large Samari Gilbert ’17, SA Executive Vice President Emma Johnston ’16, and incoming SA Minority Liaison At Large Traciann Celestin ’19.

A report in the Cornell Daily Sun included this quote from BSU co-president Carlton Burrell ’16: “Ideally, the training will have the dual role of serving to make the environment more inclusive for students as well as other faculty members by offering training on microaggressions, systems of oppression and issues around gender, socioeconomic status, race, religion and disability status.”

A Legal Insurrection report on the topic had this quote from Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson (who is also the faculty advisor of the Review):

“I welcome a vigorous faculty senate and campus-wide examination of the lack of political diversity on campus, and ways in which we can expand understanding of the intellectual foundations of Western Civilization, constitutional liberty and free-market capitalism. But somehow I doubt that’s what they have in mind.”

It’s not surprising at all that the resolution passed and with the margin that it passed by. It’s certainly characteristic of the members of the Student Assembly, and many Cornell students for that matter, to have the gall and arrogance to believe they are in a position to dictate to faculty what they should be thinking and what they should say. But it’s always interesting to see the Ivory Tower come under assault from the very students whose progressive worldviews it works very hard to shape.