A “contentious” Cornell Student Assembly meeting on Thursday evening ended with the narrow defeat of a measure which would have a created a task force to “investigate and increase faculty ideological diversity.”
One might think that at a university where “diversity” is of paramount import, especially one where 96% of school faculty donations went to Democrats, such a resolution would be a no-brainer.
Nope.
Check it: Assemblymember Traciann Celestin, for instance, complained that the proposal “would take away from efforts to increase other kinds of diversity among faculty” that, in her view, should be a priority. She neatly couched her concerns, however, by claiming more racial and economic diversity “would likely result” in greater ideological diversity.
Anyone buying that?
From The Cornell Daily Sun:
“We are a severe political minority on campus,” Cornell Republicans Chairwoman Olivia Corn ’19 said, referring to Republican-leaning students. Corn and others in favor of the resolution frequently cited the majority of liberal-leaning professors in several departments.
Assemblymember Richard Wang ’17 added an amendment to the resolution identifying conservative perspectives that sponsors of the bill were trying to increase, citing what he said were the “intentions of the authors during the meeting.”
[Resolution sponsor Mitchell] McBride told The Sun after the meeting that he saw the addition of that amendment, which passed 14 to 4, as a “poison pill amendment to kill the bill.” He maintained that the lack of conservatives among Cornell faculty is a problem and said it was “disheartening and demoralizing” that the resolution did not pass.
“If we are truly going to live up to our university motto, we must have free and diverse thought, and this requires professors who come from different perspectives, in order to foster that critical thinking which is the purpose of a university,” he said.
Ms. Corn is the student who claims she was assaulted for her political beliefs the night after Election Day.
She would, however, do well to avoid co-opting the language of campus progressives: “We need to create a safe environment for every student,” Corn said, “and I don’t have that environment when I walk into the classroom and a teacher tells me that ideology is violent and oppressive.”
In the article comment section, a person who identifies as a member of the Cornell faculty asks “Do students seriously want their professors selected not just because of their expertise in their chosen fields but because of their politics? How would such hiring be done?”
The first response to this query: “Your question, Faculty member, could as well be asked about diversity of skin color […]”
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