Trumps Cornell University deal leaves a zombie DEI agenda ready to rise from the dead

Cornell University’s deal with President Donald Trump, announced Friday, ended the administration’s civil rights investigations into the school — and left Cornell’s destructive Diversity, Equity and Inclusion agenda diminished, but not destroyed.What remains of Cornell’s DEI apparatus now resembles a zombie: It exists but is not quite alive.And it could yet resurrect itself.Each side benefits from the deal: Cornell, where I have taught law for 18 years, will get hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of federal grants that were put on hold as the government probed the campus response to the Oct.7 massacre in Israel and the harassment of Jewish students.Cornell will pay a $30 million penalty and invest another $30 million in agricultural research — rounding errors, given its $6 billion annual budget.The federal investigation was well founded.One now-former student is serving prison time for threatening Jews on campus; a Cornell professor set off an Internet firestorm when he said he felt “exhilarated” by the Hamas rampage; anti-Israel activists called for an Intifada, set up encampments, and disrupted university events.Many Jewish students — including some who testified before Congress — felt under siege.Cornell now gets to crow that it upheld “principles of academic freedom, independence, and institutional autonomy.”Indeed: That unfettered independence created a faculty monoculture of leftism that brewed those toxic campus incidents, and it remains unchanged.Here on campus, of course, we’re hearing howls of anger that the school has bent the knee to the Orange Man.But Cornell’s president and trustees had a duty to protect the university that faculty, students and internet trolls don’t have, and for administrators this is Mission Accomplished.The White House also touted the deal as a win, saying it ensures Cornell “upholds merit-based standards, complies with Federal law, and fosters an environment of academic excellence and safety ...