Last Friday, Cornell made a deal with the Trump administration. The settlement restores millions in federal funding while avoiding explicit limits on university autonomy. Cornell's leaders have framed the deal as a deft compromise — a way to move forward without betraying our principles.
At a town hall, President Michael Kotlikoff said, "Cornell simply, in this agreement, agreed to obey the law." Unlike other universities, he emphasized, Cornell did not accept an outside monitor or agree to provide data to the government "beyond what they are permitted by the law." Nor, he added, did Cornell agree to follow interpretations of the law that "have not been adjudicated in the courts or interpreted by judges."
But the text of the settlement tells a more complicated story. Cornell agreed to submit detailed admissions data to the government, to provide federal guidance on hiring and diversity policies as a resource in required training for faculty and staff and to certify compliance every three months under penalty of perjury.
In a statement, Cornell’s AAUP chapter observed that the pledge to share admissions data appears to go beyond what is legally required and noted the federal guidance conflicts with settled civil rights precedent. There are also concerns that the settlement provides openings for ongoing government pressure and risks chilling effects.
Meanwhile, Trump administration officials are celebrating the deal as a victory. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon called it a "transformative commitment from an Ivy League institution to end divisive DEI policies." A White House fact sheet said the president is "holding elite universities accountable," highlighting Cornell’s promise to provide "all relevant data" to "rigorously assess" compliance with "merit-based admissions."
So, is the settlement a clever negotiation or a capitulation? The answer isn’t yet clear and will play out in the months and years ahead, on campus and in courtrooms.
But to me, the deal feels like a retreat. In Sweezy v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court identified four "essential freedoms" for a university: "to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study."
Seen in this light, any agreement that allows politicians to shape admissions, hiring, or campus programming — whether directly or via indirect pressure — concedes ground that was not traditionally up for negotiation. Accepting terms that cast as suspect legitimate efforts to expand diversity forfeits one of Cornell’s greatest strengths and lends credibility to efforts that seem designed to narrow opportunity.
The sense of disappointment is especially sharp because Cornell has long led by example. Diversity and inclusion aren’t new ideas on the hill. Ezra Cornell’s promise of an institution "where any person can find instruction in any study" has guided the University since its founding. It’s what produced alumni like Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54, who made equality under the law her life’s work; Toni Morrison ’55, who transformed American literature by centering Black and women’s voices; and Claudia Goldin ’67, who reshaped economics by revealing barriers that limit opportunity. These women had few choices in the Ivies; at the time, only Penn and Cornell opened their doors to women.
The disappointment is also personal. Three years ago, my lab welcomed an Afghan scholar who was stranded after the Taliban’s return to power halted the Fulbright program. With help from a reporter at The Los Angeles Times, a friend in the State Department and then-President Pollack’s Office, he made his way to Ithaca and achieved his dream of earning a computer science degree at Cornell. Stories like his renew our commitment to Ezra Cornell’s founding vision. But his story wouldn't be possible today. With federal auditors combing through admissions decisions and the suspension of visas for Afghan students, he would never have set foot on campus.
Cornell’s leaders face difficult choices, with acute financial pressures and political crosscurrents. But this is not the first time our values have been tested. In 1874, President A.D. White was asked whether Black students would be admitted. He replied, "they may come and if even one offered himself and passed the examinations, we should receive him even if all our five hundred white students were to ask for dismissal on that account." White was willing to risk the University’s very existence to defend its core values.
Cornell was founded on a bold promise — to be a university where any person can find instruction in any study. For more than a century and a half, that idea has been our light on the hill. The University may have avoided the worst outcomes with this settlement, but there’s no way to spin it: the deal dims that light. As stewards of Ezra Cornell’s legacy, we must now strive to make it shine brightly again, even as others hope to see it extinguished.
Correction, Nov. 11 7:23 p.m.: This article has been updated to clarify that “These women had few choices in the Ivies; at the time, only Penn and Cornell opened their doors to women,” replacing an earlier version that incompletely stated that “None of these women could have studied at another Ivy, as only Cornell admitted women at the time.”
Nate Foster is a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University’s Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. He can be reached at jnfoster@cs.cornell.edu.
