Overview

• University of Pennsylvania professor Jennifer Morton argues that appointing faculty for their conservative views could stifle intellectual curiosity and create ideological echo chambers.
• The Trump administration threatened to revoke federal funding for Harvard unless it increased conservative viewpoint diversity among its professors.
• A whistleblower alleges that Cornell University’s faculty search committees pre-screened diversity statements and excluded candidates with weak DEI responses.
• Internal emails claim Cornell’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department pursued an unadvertised “diversity hire” by inviting a single candidate to fulfill demographic goals.
• Supporters of merit-based hiring cite Robert Nozick’s nonpartisan appointment as crucial to his intellectual development and warn against politicizing academic recruitment.