This article is the third and final part of a series on Cornell’s approach to race in the last several years. Part I identified the college faculties as the key in deciding Cornell’s new admissions policy following the fall of affirmative action. Part II covered the related debate of what requirements should be imposed on students to learn about race relations after they arrive on campus. This installment covers the proposed anti-racism center and the battle over diversity course content.
Recall that, following the killing of George Floyd in 2020, a group called DoBetterCornell demanded a centralized anti-racism center to teach a required course on diversity to all students. However, various branches of Cornell began fighting for autonomy over diversity course requirements.
During much of the 2020-2021 Faculty Senate debate, centralized control over the student course content was assumed, even though graduation requirements are generally decided by the faculty of individual colleges. This is because the primary function of the proposed anti-racism center would be to teach a large required lecture class to finance the center’s other proposed activities.
Proposed Anti-Racism Center Has Gone Quiet
Cornell faces a Chicken-and-Egg dilemma in launching its anti-racism center. It is hard to raise the large donations necessary to fund the center without a “super-star” director to head the center. But “super-star” academics in the anti-racism field are in very high demand and do not want to come to Cornell without Cornell offering funding.
In a July 2022 letter, Deputy Provost Avery August announced that “a national search [for a director] was underway.” Day Hall’s silence to date indicates that neither large donations nor a “super-star” director have been successfully recruited to date. The University Faculty reports indicate opposition to the center siphoning off funding from other existing academic programs, such as the Africana Studies and Research Center.
If Cornell establishes an anti-racism center, it will not be bootstrapped using the funds generated by a required large survey lecture class.
Who Decides What Will Be Taught?
The 2021 Faculty Senate vote left student anti-racism education in the hands of the individual colleges. Both the Arts College and CALS instituted their “distribution requirements” prior to the 2021 Faculty Senate actions.
Hence, existing classes in both schools are designated to meet the requirement in a wide variety of topics from AMST 1595, African-American History to EDUC 2200 Intro to Adult Learning. As with all Cornell classes, each faculty—once assigned to teach a class—is free to select the assigned reading list and to write his or her own syllabus.
However, the WG-S working group recommended:
The framework is designed to meet the following learning outcomes:
The Literacy Outcome. The student understands that structural racism, colonialism, and injustice, and their current manifestations have a historical and relational basis. This requires engagement with scholarly content in the tradition of liberal arts education. We also strongly recommend an intersectional approach that works across current categorizations of race and ethnicity, and takes hierarchies around gender, class and other markers into account.
The Skillset Outcome. The student learns how to communicate and advocate across the differences that they will encounter throughout their lives and careers. This leads to the creation of more inclusive learning environments for all students across all disciplines at Cornell throughout their time here.
The literacy and skill components are both necessary and equally important, but cannot supplant each other
Although the first-year writing requirement promotes specific skills (for organizing ideas and writing clearly) that are encouraged in all writing seminars, the WG-S is actually proposing something that is unprecedented.
Although Arts and CALS specifically offered a menu of classes as a college-level “distribution requirement”, the current proposal would recast any class offered under those plans to add anti-racism “skillset outcomes.”
In other words, every student who already had 2.5 hours of Intergroup Dialog Project (IDP) training on a non-credit basis as part of new student orientation would be subject to coercive additional training in order to pass a 3-credit hour class that is required for graduation.
In the meantime, CALS currently defines the skillset as:
The following learning outcomes are assessed as part of the course: After taking the course, students will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge and awareness of the cultural practices, values, and beliefs of diverse groups of individuals.
- Demonstrate understanding of systemic oppression at multiple levels.
- Assess one’s own cultural perspective and the potential for associated biases.
Deputy Provost Avery August reported to the Faculty Senate on May 10 that Cornell has organized a new Implementation Committee consisting of representatives from each undergraduate college to supervise the program and develop the skillset.
Their working skillset definition is “The student is able to describe or apply research-based skills to recognize how to interrupt bias in order to remedy inequities, whether it be at the individual, interpersonal, group, organizational, societal or global levels.”
He noted that “the Faculty Committee on Program Review of the Faculty Senate, as well as Middle States Review or other accrediting bodies, national accrediting bodies of particular programs” would evaluate and monitor the adequacy of each course.
The IDP and the Center for Educational Innovation will provide training and support for faculty and teaching assistants, and there would be financial grants available to faculty to compensate them for developing this curriculum.
Prof. Ken Berman asked August whether there were still plans to have one university-wide course, and August said a central course was no longer planned.
The notion of a central committee passing judgment on the political skillset that a Cornell professor must incorporate into his class raises serious academic freedom issues. As noted in the AAUP 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure:
“Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.”
Under Vice Provost August’s current plan, an outside group will judge whether each professor teaching a menu course was sufficiently successful in producing anti-racism advocates through in-class political indoctrination.
August’s committee is proposing to define the skillset and measure how it is adopted by students without having either the college faculties or the Faculty Senate take further debate or formal actions.
This is contrary to A.D. White’s policy that “no professor, officer or student shall ever be accepted or rejected on account of any religious or political views which he may or may not hold.” Under the new plan, to graduate from Cornell, every student must pass a class that forces the student to show mastery of a “skillset.”
A traditional faculty member could define the necessary skillset as 1) understanding that correlation does not prove causation, 2) learning enough statistics to avoid misanalysis of data regarding bias and 3) development of critical thinking skills. But the WG-S would probably not want such skills to be taught. That Cornell is rolling out this graduation requirement without a transparent definition of the skillset is frightening.
Who Benefits?
If Cornell “follows the law” and assigns graduate students to be teaching assistants in these classes in a colorblind manner, the DoBetterCornell goal of increasing black graduate student and postdoc support will not be realized.
In general, given Cornell’s formula for allocating tuition funds, there will be a net transfer of funds from the Engineering College to Arts and Sciences and a transfer from the STEM departments of Agriculture and Life Sciences to social science oriented departments. However, given that students have historically taken elective classes outside their majors, it is not clear how much of a financial impact the new requirement will be.
The Provost’s Office has promised to allocate funds toward IDP to develop new materials on “skills,” whatever those really are. These funds are in addition to whatever the department will receive for teaching those credit hours.
Conclusions
This three part series shows that Cornell is at an important cross-road, just as the death of George Floyd and the Supreme Court’s end to affirmative action are pushing society in conflicting directions.
The University Bylaws place both the decision over admissions policy and the anti-racism course requirements under the control of the individual college faculties. Yet, to date, the debate is being held by a 15-member admissions task force and a 12-member Implementation Committee for Undergraduate Educational Requirements on Race & Equity. These vital matters require open and honest discussion among all stakeholders.
The Harvard and UNC cases have serious implications beyond just affirmative action in college admissions. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court appears eager to extend those holdings to bring a colorblind approach to all areas of discrimination law, with a shift in focus from identity groups to individual merit.
If Cornell is to prepare its graduates to enter current American society, it must recognize the importance of this shift in viewpoint. Within the bounds of academic freedom, with scholars free to test every assumption, the “human difference” classes would be better off studying the work of Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, and former Cornell economist Thomas Sowell than those of Ibram X. Kendi.
Rereading today the arguments of DoBetterCornell and the WG-S working group in light of the Harvard decision renders them overly simplistic and artificially elevating racial identity groups over individual merit. Before Cornell devotes more resources to this project—and forces all undergraduates to devote precious elective credit hours—everyone should take the time to read the Supreme Court decisions in full and then close the door on the fever of 2020 and instead embrace the new era of post-woke higher education.
The Trustees, who adopted Cornell’s Bylaws, gave the college faculties the decision-making power to decide both admissions policy and requirements for graduation.
Neither the Deputy Provost nor an implementation committee of college Deans has that authority. Such college actions are not subject to a Presidential veto, and any effort to remove these powers from the colleges would be fraught with appeals to our accreditor Middle States as well as challenges from the AAUP as serious breaches of academic freedom and shared governance.
Finally, other than President Pollack’s statement on the day of the Supreme Court decision, Cornell has maintained absolute radio silence on these issues. In contrast, the University of Virginia, has issued a detailed and thoughtful statement.
Greater communications and transparency is needed from the Admissions Task Force, the Implementation Committee and the college faculties as they rethink their approach in light of the Supreme Court’s teachings.
