Cornell University has agreed to pay $60 million dollars and accept the Trump administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws in order to restore federal funding and end investigations into the school.
The agreement will restore more than $250 million dollars in research funding that the government withheld amid investigations into alleged civil rights violations.
Cornell announced on Friday that the university will pay $30 million dollars directly to the US government and another $30 million will go toward research that will support US farmers.
Here is the complete statement from Cornell University:
Dear Cornell Community,
Since April of this year, Cornell has been subject to more than $250 million in federal funding interruptions, which have disrupted the research of faculty and students across all campuses. Today I write to share that Cornell has reached an agreement with the federal government to immediately restore and continue the university’s research funding. The full text of the agreement is available here (PDF), and I encourage everyone in our community to read it in its entirety.
The decades-long research partnership between Cornell and the federal government is critical to advancing the university’s core mission and to our continuing contributions to the nation’s health, welfare, and economic and military strength. This agreement revives that partnership, while affirming the university’s commitment to the principles of academic freedom, independence, and institutional autonomy that, from our founding, have been integral to our excellence.
The agreement explicitly recognizes Cornell’s right to independently establish our policies and procedures, choose whom to hire and admit, and determine what we teach, without intrusive government monitoring or approvals. In short, it recognizes our rights, as a private university, to define the conditions on our campuses that advance learning and produce new knowledge. It reaffirms, as well, our continuing commitment to follow the law, protect everyone in our community from discrimination, and make admissions and hiring decisions based on merit — principles to which we have already independently and publicly committed — while upholding our founding principle of “… any person … any study.” I will personally certify our institutional compliance with the agreement on a regular basis, and Cornell will provide anonymized admissions data and continue to conduct campus climate surveys and carry out foreign gift and contract reporting in accordance with existing law.
Cornell has not been found in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in any of the investigations or compliance reviews of the university’s programs pending at the Department of Justice, Department of Education, or Department of Health and Human Services, and the government has agreed to close all of these investigations and reviews. The government has further agreed to restore terminated federal grants, release all withheld funds for active grants, and consider Cornell fully eligible for new grants and funding awards, without disadvantage or preference.
As the land-grant university for New York state and a global pioneer in agricultural research and innovation, Cornell is proud to lead efforts in supporting American farmers. Pursuant to the terms of this agreement, the university will invest $30 million over three years in research to strengthen U.S. agriculture and help build even more successful and productive farms. Cornell will also pay an additional $30 million over three years directly to the United States government as a condition for ending pending claims that have been brought against the university. The resolution is explicit that Cornell’s agreement to these terms is not an admission of wrongdoing.
The months of stop-work orders, grant terminations, and funding freezes have stalled cutting-edge research, upended lives and careers, and threatened the future of academic programs at Cornell. I am grateful for the dedication and resilience of the faculty, staff, and students who have found ways to continue moving critical work forward throughout these unprecedented events.
With this resolution, Cornell looks forward to resuming the long and fruitful partnership with the federal government that has yielded, for so many years, so much progress and well-being for our nation and our world.
Sincerely,
Michael I. Kotlikoff
President
