A group of activists at Cornell University, consisting of students, faculty, and alumni, have published a letter demanding that the university abandon its “colorblind” approach to admissions and enact racial quotas instead, as reported by Fox News.
The letter was published on Monday, and declares that “every ‘colorblind’ event, mechanism, and process at the university – from new faculty orientations to selection of endowed positions – perpetuates racial disparities and reinforces an unjust status quo.” The letter, however, fails to give even a single example of any such alleged “disparities.”
One of the demands is that the number of black faculty be increased to 7 percent in 2025, and 10 percent in 2030. It also calls for an increase of overall “faculty of color” to 20 percent in 2025 and 25 percent in 2030.
In addition to the focus on faculty representation, the letter also demands that the university no longer consider SAT/ACT scores as criteria for undergraduate admission, claiming without evidence that standardized testing has a role “in exacerbating race/class disparities, especially given the racialized history of intelligence testing.”
The many racially-charged proposals in the letter represent the kind of race-based rhetoric and teachings that the Trump Administration is currently pushing back on, with the president banning the teaching of “Critical Race Theory” in all branches of the federal government, as well as threatening to defund any public schools that teach the New York Times-endorsed “1619 Project.”