Martin Luther King delivering his “I Have a Dream” Speech in 1963 (Wikimedia commons)
On January 16, 2024, the Gallop Survey on Black Voices released a poll about views on the Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court decision. According to Gallop, the American public generally supports the end to race-based affirmative action in college admissions. This contrasts with Cornell’s response to that decision which found ways to circumvent last summer’s decision.
Survey Findings
Gallop conducted a survey of 12,433 adults over the age of 18 nationwide during October and November 2023. The margin of error is 1.9 percentage points. The survey gave results overall and divided by certain ethnic groups.
In general, Americans of all identity groups view the Supreme Court decision as “Mostly a good thing”, including a majority of Black adults.
A sizable group expects that the Supreme Court’s decision will have a positive impact, but Black adults are more pessimistic than other groups.
Unlike other groups, Black adults see the Supreme Court decision as making it harder for Black applicants to attend college. It is possible that this question would have drawn different responses if asked about “elite universities” or historically black college and universities (HBCU), but the question was presented as quoted below:
The survey also asked about impact on “diversity of college campuses” without defining that term.
Cornell’s Response
Although President Pollack established a task force in November 2022 in anticipation of a Supreme Court decision. Cornell delayed releasing the task force report until the fall, preventing wide-spread public input prior to the Trustee discussion of its recommendations.
The task force recommended increasing the staffing of the Admissions Office to expand Cornell’s recruitment of under-represented students and to expand Cornell’s processing of admission essay questions on applications. Cornell also added a new question to its undergraduate applications:
When creating the university in the aftermath of the Civil War, Ezra Cornell wrote, “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.” We remain committed to the importance of diversity in our educational mission. Explain how your life experiences, particularly with a community that is important to you, will enrich our “… any person …” ethos. We encourage you to think about community broadly. This could include family, school, or larger social circles.
A problem with this question is the meaning of the word “diversity.” The Supreme Court saw “viewpoint diversity” as an important educational goal. But woke advocates twisted the Supreme Court language to reduce “diversity” into just a code word for race.
Conservatives certainly would agree on “the importance of diversity in our educational mission.” However, that is much more than just counting students based upon skin color. Does Cornell’s student body have a balance of conservatives and liberals? Of rural and urban students? Of aspiring STEM majors and humanities majors? Of athletes and musicians?
Now, if an applicant were to respond to the essay question by echoing the views in this posting, the student would have zero chance of being admitted to Cornell, because the Admission’s Office is looking for answers that refer to an under-represented group and a heroic effort to overcome societal prejudice against that group.
Celebrating Martin Luther King Day
Congress established Martin Luther King Day in recognition of his role in leading America toward a color-blind society. In King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he memorably said:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”
Rather than celebrate this holiday of national unity in the spirit of color-blindness, Cornell called on Africana Studies Professor Michell Chresfield to reinterpret King as a “critic of capitalism.”
By claiming that Cornell will use the new essay question to give students from under-represented groups (except for Asians and Jews) a boost in their chances for admissions, Cornell is rejecting a “color blind” approach to admissions.
By the end of the year, we will learn the ethnic composition of the new entering class and whether Cornell has implemented the intent of the majority Supreme Court decision as well as the popular will reflected in the Gallop survey.
But if Cornell evades the mandated end to race-based admission it is only harming its students. First, many Cornell students suffer from the “Impostor syndrome” where they believe that they are not adequate to the challenges of a Cornell education. Cornell’s public statements revealing non-merit based admissions only reinforces that issue with incoming black students. Second, the more that the Cornell admissions process departs from color-blind merit, the less prestige and value a Cornell degree will carry with the general public and especially with employers. Finally, by ignoring the broad-based public support of the Supreme Court decision, Cornell is placing its students in a bubble that does not reflect the values of society at large.
Now that an admission cycle has been processed following the Supreme Court’s decision, it is time to rethink Cornell’s admission policies and to bring them more in line with Dr. King’s vision of a color-blind society.
