Beginning on March 17, many Cornell employees received emails from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asking that they partake in a survey to aid in an investigation of antisemitism on campus. No notice of this investigation had been provided by Cornell to the community, leading many to wonder whether this was a malicious phishing attempt. The Cornell American Association of University Professors chapter contacted the Office of Civil Rights and IT@Cornell to ask whether Cornell knew of the emails and whether they were secure.

Cornell’s OCR was unaware of the emails, and after IT@Cornell confirmed that they were indeed from eeoc.gov, the AAUP pressed the president, provost, vice president for human resources and general counsel for more information. Eventually, Cornell acknowledged that it turned over information on current and former employees to the federal government sometime after August 2025, after being made aware of the investigation in July 2025. 

In doing so, the University has ignored its responsibility to notify employees in the event of a request for information from the federal government. The justification was Kafka-esque: The commitment to notify affected persons only applies in the case of individuals, not “broad data requests” that cover all employees. 

At our urging, on March 19, Cornell finally communicated information about the EEOC emails to employees. This communication leaves critical questions and issues unanswered: 

1. All evidence points to an extremely broad information request by the EEOC. It is highly questionable that such a broad survey is needed to investigate what Cornell has stated is “a bias inquiry.” The EEOC’s broad distribution........

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