Latest news with #hiringpractices
Fox News
31-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
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 2020, 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. In 2020, 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 study — but kept the hiring process under wraps. The America First Policy Institute released 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. According 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 $16 million National Institutes of Health-funded program called the Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) program. 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 case. That's exactly what Cornell did—except I'm White." In response to a WSJ editor's inquiry, Cornell provided the editor with a link to a previously issued statement from June 27, claiming, "Cornell strictly prohibits unlawful bias or discrimination." The statement was issued in response to a previous, informal complaint filed by the America First Policy Institute to several federal agencies. In the statement, Cornell said the university "strongly disputes the allegations" 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 case 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. "Race-based hiring practices have harmed countless qualified scholars and demand serious scrutiny," Wright concluded. "Let my case serve as a warning that there is a price for violating civil rights." When asked for comment, a representative for Cornell referred Fox News Digital to the previously mentioned statement from June 27.
Associated Press
30-07-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Army secretary directs West Point to rescind appointment of Biden-era cybersecurity director
NEW YORK (AP) — The Secretary of the Army on Wednesday directed the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to review its hiring practices, bar outside groups from choosing employees and remove a newly announced hire who led the nation's cybersecurity agency under President Joe Biden. The directive, shared on the social platform X by Secretary Dan Driscoll, came just a day after Jen Easterly was announced as the Robert F. McDermott Distinguished Chair in West Point's social sciences department. It demonstrated how vigorously President Donald Trump's administration has sought to wield control over the ideology and leadership of higher education and the military during the president's second term. It also highlighted how deeply concerns about censorship have seeped into the Republican Party and the Trump administration. As the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, Easterly faced harsh criticism from Republicans who argued that her work to counter misinformation about elections and the COVID-19 pandemic amounted to censorship. CISA secures the nation's critical infrastructure, including the nation's dams, banks and nuclear power plants. It also secures voting systems — work that became controversial as Trump has made false claims to create doubt about the integrity of elections in recent years. Easterly has denied claims that her agency censored anyone and said last fall that 'allegations against CISA are riddled with factual inaccuracies.' She said in January she hopes the agency will be allowed to continue its election-related work despite 'contentiousness' around that part of its mission. Driscoll's directive came after far-right activist Laura Loomer posted about Easterly's new role on X, saying 'Biden holdovers' at the Defense Department were 'undermining' Trump's administration. Loomer has frequently urged Trump's administration to purge staffers she deems insufficiently loyal to his agenda, and on multiple occasions, they have been fired. The memo directs West Point to terminate Easterly's agreement with the institution and 'immediately pause non-governmental and outside groups from selecting employees of the Academy, including instructors, professors, teachers and shaping academic or developmental lectures.' It also requests an immediate review of the military training academy's hiring practices. Asked for a reason for the memo, an Army spokesperson said in a statement that ahead of the new academic year, 'we are crafting a deliberate approach to ensure that our future officers are best prepared to meet the demands of the modern battlefield.' Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell was more blunt about the reasoning in a post on X. 'We're not turning cadets into censorship activists,' he said. 'We're turning them into warriors & leaders. We're in the business of warfighting.' Easterly, an Army combat veteran and West Point graduate, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. ___
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
DOJ investigating George Mason University's hiring practices over alleged discrimination
The Justice Department is investigating whether George Mason University (GMU) engaged in discriminatory hiring practices. According to the department, it is focused on determining whether GMU violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. "It is unlawful and un-American to deny equal access to employment opportunities on the basis of race and sex," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a statement. "When employers screen out qualified candidates from the hiring process, they not only erode trust in our public institutions—they violate the law, and the Justice Department will investigate accordingly." Doj Investigating Minnesota Hiring Practices In Latest Clash With Walz In a letter to GMU Board of Visitors Rector Charles "Cully" Stimson, Dhillon wrote that the DOJ has "reason to believe" that race and sex were used as "motivating factors in faculty hiring decisions" under GMU President Gregory Washington. Dhillon stated that on July 23, 2020, Washington emailed a GMU faculty listserv in which he said he planned to create a process for "renewal promotion and tenure" that would benefit "faculty of color and women." Furthermore, Washington allegedly also said in the email that he aimed to "develop specific mechanisms in the promotion and tenure process that recognize the invisible and uncredited emotional labor that people of color expend to learn, teach, discover, and work on campus." "I have authorized a full investigation to determine whether GMU is engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination as set forth above. We have not reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation," Dhillon wrote. Read On The Fox News App University Of Virginia President Resigns Amid Pressure From Trump Admin Over Dei Initiatives The investigation into GMU comes just weeks after University of Virginia President James Ryan resigned due to pressure from the Trump administration. "To make a long story short, I am inclined to fight for what I believe in, and I believe deeply in this University. But I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job. To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld," Ryan wrote in a statement. The Trump administration has made tacking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, particularly in government and educational institutions, a priority. As part of the DEI crackdown, the Education Department launched the "End DEI" Portal in February 2025. It allows parents, students, teachers and even concerned citizens to submit reports on what they believe to be DEI in publicly funded K-12 schools. President Donald Trump has issued multiple executive orders aimed at ending DEI. This includes "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing" and "Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity." Fox News Digital contacted Mike Fragoso of Torridon Law PLLC, who is handling inquiries on behalf of George Mason University, but did not get a response in time for article source: DOJ investigating George Mason University's hiring practices over alleged discrimination
Fox News
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
DOJ investigating George Mason University's hiring practices over alleged discrimination
The Justice Department is investigating whether George Mason University (GMU) engaged in discriminatory hiring practices. According to the department, it is focused on determining whether GMU violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. "It is unlawful and un-American to deny equal access to employment opportunities on the basis of race and sex," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a statement. "When employers screen out qualified candidates from the hiring process, they not only erode trust in our public institutions—they violate the law, and the Justice Department will investigate accordingly." In a letter to GMU Board of Visitors Rector Charles "Cully" Stimson, Dhillon wrote that the DOJ has "reason to believe" that race and sex were used as "motivating factors in faculty hiring decisions" under GMU President Gregory Washington. Dhillon stated that on July 23, 2020, Washington emailed a GMU faculty listserv in which he said he planned to create a process for "renewal promotion and tenure" that would benefit "faculty of color and women." Furthermore, Washington allegedly also said in the email that he aimed to "develop specific mechanisms in the promotion and tenure process that recognize the invisible and uncredited emotional labor that people of color expend to learn, teach, discover, and work on campus." "I have authorized a full investigation to determine whether GMU is engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination as set forth above. We have not reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation," Dhillon wrote. The investigation into GMU comes just weeks after University of Virginia President James Ryan resigned due to pressure from the Trump administration. "To make a long story short, I am inclined to fight for what I believe in, and I believe deeply in this University. But I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job. To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld," Ryan wrote in a statement. The Trump administration has made tacking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, particularly in government and educational institutions, a priority. As part of the DEI crackdown, the Education Department launched the "End DEI" Portal in February 2025. It allows parents, students, teachers and even concerned citizens to submit reports on what they believe to be DEI in publicly funded K-12 schools. President Donald Trump has issued multiple executive orders aimed at ending DEI. This includes "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing" and "Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity." Fox News Digital contacted Mike Fragoso of Torridon Law PLLC, who is handling inquiries on behalf of George Mason University, but did not get a response in time for publication.
Reuters
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
US probes Minnesota, George Mason University over DEI, hiring practises
WASHINGTON, July 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Thursday announced probes into hiring practices and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives by the state of Minnesota and Virginia's George Mason University. It was the latest crackdown on such programs by President Donald Trump's administration. The U.S. Education Department said it opened an investigation into George Mason University over its DEI practices. The department alleges that they violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars racial discrimination in U.S. education programs that receive federal funding. The U.S. Justice Department said its civil rights division opened an investigation into Minnesota, including the Minnesota Department of Human Services, to determine whether it has engaged in race- and sex-based discrimination in its state employment hiring practices. George Mason University said it received a department letter on Thursday morning and would "work in good faith to give a full and prompt response," adding it did not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. The Education Department statement cited a complaint from some professors at the university. "According to the complaint, GMU leadership have promoted and adopted unlawful DEI policies from 2020 through the present, which give preferential treatment to prospective and current faculty from 'underrepresented groups' to advance 'anti-racism,'" the department said in its statement. The Minnesota Department of Human Services said it followed all state and federal hiring laws. "Justification of non-affirmative action hires for some vacancies has been required by state law since 1987," it said in a statement. The Trump administration has threatened educational institutions and some U.S. states with federal funding cuts over DEI practices, climate initiatives, transgender policies and pro-Palestinian protests against U.S. ally Israel's military assault on Gaza. Trump has signed multiple executive orders aimed at dismantling diversity initiatives, and has cast DEI as anti-merit and discriminatory against white people and men. Civil rights advocates say DEI practices help address historic inequities for marginalized groups like women, the LGBT community and ethnic minorities. Separately, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Thursday it would no longer consider a farmer's race or sex in many of its farm loan, commodity and conservation programs, ending a longstanding effort to address the agency's history of discrimination.
