A professor of philosophy is issuing a dark vision of academia’s future: Ivy towers populated by politically partisan faculty, milling out intellectually dull apparatchiks.
If that sounds an awful lot like the current state of academia, Jennifer M. Morton doesn’t let on. Morton, a professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, aired her thoughts on “viewpoint diversity” in an op-ed for The New York Times.
Morton’s headline warns that “hiring professors with conservative views could backfire on conservatives.” This, in light of the Trump administration’s letter to Harvard University demanding “viewpoint diversity in admissions and hiring,” lest the government revoke federal funding.
Could admitting conservatives possibly “backfire” in more spectacular fashion than the current admissions and hiring practices of elite universities? Those practices certainly appear to privilege the applications of non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual individuals above all others. (RELATED: Harvard Goes Down With The DEI Ship)
most universities & colleges surely have faculty members who are contrarians? liberals & progressives are always quarreling with one another; “the left eats its own”; hiring conservatives per se will result in very lop-sided resumés especially in the sciences. really, research… https://t.co/61GEK35e3c
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) July 10, 2025
Turn to Cornell University for a case study.
One whistleblower from the university spoke to Chris Rufo, detailing two ways by which Cornell discriminated against non-leftists.
In the first place, via “diversity statements.”
“As pre-planned as a best practice, we first did a pre-screening of just the [DEI] statements submitted by the candidates; all were read by two committee members, and any that were flagged as highly suboptimal were also reviewed by a third committee member with high DEI expertise,” an internal email from December 2022 allegedly reads. Rufo claims the email was sent by a professor in one of the school’s science departments.
“In the end, we dropped just one candidate from further consideration because their [DEI] statement was so seriously and unambiguously weak that we could not imagine them being a finalist. That same process led us to identify a few others who also had weak [DEI] statements.”
In the second place, via “diversity hires.” Rufo cites an email allegedly sent by a member of the hiring committee in Cornell’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He claims the department searched for candidates without issuing a public notice, then made their aims explicit.
Cornell administrators were actually writing down their plans to racially discriminate and putting “diversity hire” in the subject line of their emails. Imagine being the person who ended up with the job—you show up to the office and everyone knows you’re a “diversity hire.” pic.twitter.com/Tvktgd1Yqe
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) June 27, 2025
“I have been having extensive e-mail and verbal discussions with Chelsea Specht, [College of Agriculture and Life Sciences] Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, and Yael Levitte, Associate Vice Provost and Avery August, Vice Provost in the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity, about our hoped-for diversity hire,” the email allegedly reads.. “Chelsea feels that the best [approach] is to invite just one person. She is concerned about us having a Search dynamic. 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.”
Morton offers no acknowledgement of such practices. Though one needn’t look far, nor obtain internal documents, to glean that universities were highly concerned about an applicant’s sex, race, and political persuasion. Most made their priorities abundantly clear through the materials on their websites.
Morton instead frets that “a policy of hiring professors and admitting students because they have conservative views would actually endanger the open-minded intellectual environment that proponents of viewpoint diversity say they want. By creating incentives for professors and students to have and maintain certain political positions, such a policy would discourage curiosity and reward narrowness of thought.” (RELATED: Trump Quashes Elite University’s Endless Summer Vacation)
Certainly, hiring professors or admitting students principally on the basis of their conservative views is not ideal. But the myth of a neutral institution is just that.
This is the original seal for Harvard, translated from Latin it says – “Truth for Christ and Church”.
Most of the elite universities in America were founded to pass down Christianity from one generation to the next. pic.twitter.com/Tc2mLeiWYn
— Jeremy Wayne Tate (@JeremyTate41) July 10, 2025
Harvard University’s original motto was “All for the Glory of Christ,” according to The Crimson. That became “Truth for Christ and the Church” in 1836, then, in 1880, simply “Truth.”
Columbia University, formerly King’s College, bears the motto, “In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lumen.” It’s a Latin translation of Psalm 36:9, according to the university’s website, meaning “In your light we see the light.” In whose light? God’s, of course. Columbia now offers an alternative interpretation: “in the light, ideas, and brilliance of our students and community, we see the light, or way forward.”
These changes in motto and interpretation are not the supplanting of Christianity for neutrality. Nor for science. They are evidence of a crisis of faith which left a vacuum filled by a still-emerging post-Christian, post-modern dogma. A university student may quarrel with the precise application of that dogma, but one may not question the unyielding articles of faith: Equality is good; Progress is good; Progress means more equality for some people than others.
Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatalieIrene03
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