Cornell restores website's DEI language after brief removal amid federal scrutiny
Cornell University has reimplemented references to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) after it initially removed them from its website, potentially bringing it into conflict with the Trump administration’s directives.
According to The Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell removed references to DEI from its 'Equal Education and Employment Opportunity Statement' on March 19, only to restore them days later.
Cornell University in New York has reimplemented references to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) after it initially removed them from its website, potentially bringing it into conflict with the Trump administration’s directives.
According to The Cornell Daily Sun, Cornell removed references to DEI from its “Equal Education and Employment Opportunity Statement” on March 19, only to restore them days later.
As of publication, the page on Cornell’s website contains multiples references to diversity, stating that the school affirms “the value of diversity,” “embraces diversity,” and has a “history of diversity and inclusion.”
A Cornell University spokesperson asserted that the temporary elimination of DEI references was due to a “clerical error.”
”Cornell regrets any confusion caused by a recent clerical error in updating the Equal Education and Employment Opportunity Statement on our website,” the spokesperson told The Cornell Daily Sun.
The restored version of the website is not identical to the previous statement, however, as it does not contain any references to “affirmative action,” which prior versions of the website did, according to The Tampa Free Press.
An archived version of the page from Feb. 17 shows that the statement used to describe Cornell University as an “affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.”
The Supreme Court ruled that race-based affirmative action in college admissions was unconstitutional in the 2023 case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, where the court asserted that “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
Cornell’s recent policy reversal bucks the recent trend of universities who have increasingly removed DEI policies in the wake of a “Dear Colleague” notice sent out by the U.S. Department of Education.
The Feb. 14 letter said that DEI had been used to smuggle in “racial stereotypes” and “explicit race-consciousness” into university “training, programming, and discipline,” and threatened to revoke federal funding from schools that continued to utilize DEI policies and programs.
“But under any banner, discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is, has been, and will continue to be illegal,” the notice stated. “If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.”
Since the notice, universities throughout the country began scaling back DEI, including the University of Virginia, University of Cincinnati, and the University of Southern California.
Campus Reform has contacted Cornell University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
