With all the ‘noise’ surrounding political pushback, legal challenges, and a volatile social climate, it's hard to separate what’s true from what’s trending. Join DEI expert Janet M. Stovall, CDE, and legal scholar Kenji Yoshino next Friday the 31st at 1:00pm EST for a critical webinar that cuts through the noise and equips you with the essential truths for navigating this complex landscape. They'll guide you through: - The political landscape, separating policy from politics to uncover the true impact of current political actions on your organization. - The social reality, distinguishing between performative allyship and genuine DEI commitment. - The legal outlook, unpacking the evolving legal framework and the role of the Supreme Court. Gain the clarity you need to: - Mitigate risks and ensure your DEI efforts are legally sound. - Build organizational resilience in the face of uncertainty. - Foster a workplace where all employees are empowered to deliver their best.
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Ariel Roldan: Welcome back to another week of your brain at work. Live! I'm your host, Arielle Roldan, for our regulars. We're happy to have you back, and for our newcomers. Welcome. We're excited to have you here with us today. For the 1st time
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Ariel Roldan: in this episode we are separating fact from fiction with all the noise surrounding political pushback, legal challenges, and a volatile social climate. It's hard to separate what's true from what's trending. We are thrilled to be joined by Dei, Expert Janet M. Stovall, and legal scholar, Kenji Yoshino, to help us cut through the noise, get to the essential truths, and pick up strategies to gain clarity as we navigate this complex landscape.
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Ariel Roldan: Now, as I quickly share some housekeeping notes, drop in the chat or the comments box on social, and let us know where you're joining in from today.
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Ariel Roldan: We suggest you put your phone on. Do not disturb and quit your email and messaging apps. So you can get the most out of the show today, and it helps with the quality of the audio and video. We love interaction. So feel free to share your thoughts and comments in the chat
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Ariel Roldan: time to introduce our speakers for today. Our 1st guest is the Chief Justice, Earl Warren, Professor of Constitutional law at Nyu School of Law, and the director of the Meltzer Center for diversity, inclusion, and belonging a graduate of Harvard, Oxford, and Yale. He specializes in constitutional law anti-discrimination, law, and law and literature. He received tenure at Yale Law School, where he served as deputy dean before moving to Nyu.
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Ariel Roldan: He has published in major academic journals, including the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. He has authored 4 books and written for popular forums, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post. A warm welcome to Kenji Yoshino.
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Ariel Roldan: Thank you for being here with us today.
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Ariel Roldan: and our moderator for today is equally as impressive. She is the global head of Dei at the Neural Leadership Institute and the founder of pragmatic diversity, a Dei consultancy, a global speaker, facilitator, author, and consultant. She helps businesses, dismantle systemic inequity to leverage the power of diversity.
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Ariel Roldan: A long history of driving change in building culture, in large complex organizations has given her deep expertise around Dei practices and principles, especially in the area of communications.
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Ariel Roldan: In fact, she broke barriers as one of the first, st and for a long time only, Black Sea level speechwriters in the Fortune 100.
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Ariel Roldan: Her 3 Ted presentations challenging business to get serious about inclusion have collectively nearly 3 million views. She is co-author of the Amazon, bestselling the conscious communicator the fine art of not saying stupid stuff, her superpowers applying objective solutions to solve subjective Dei challenges, building actionable Dei frameworks and strategies and brokering honest Dei conversations among top leaders. A warm welcome to Janet M. Stovall.
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Ariel Roldan: Thanks for being here today, Janet, and passing it over to you.
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Janet Stovall: Thank you, Ariel, and thank you everybody for joining us today. It is such an honor to be with you all here today and with Kenji. I want to start by acknowledging the tragic air disaster that happened Wednesday night in Washington, DC. The loss of 67 lives is a devastating event, and we offer our deepest condolences out to the victims, their families, and to all of those who are affected by this terrible incident.
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Janet Stovall: Now this tragedy has sent shockwaves throughout our nation.
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Janet Stovall: but it also entered the political discourse surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion. When senior officials of the administration made public statements attributing the crash to Dei initiatives, raising even more questions and concerns about the future of these efforts. This politicization of Dei has created a complex and challenging environment for organizations and people anybody committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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Janet Stovall: However, I believe it's precisely in this moment, in times like this that we need to reaffirm our commitment to Dei. We need to cut through the noise, separate fact from fiction, and chart a path forward that's grounded in both science and compassion.
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Janet Stovall: So with that in mind, I'm grateful to have Kenji Yoshino to join us today. His expertise on the legal landscape and the path forward for Dei is going to be invaluable as we navigate these very, very challenging times.
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Janet Stovall: So let's start with the things we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about where Dei is being impacted politically, socially and legally, and we might as well start with the political landscape. So, Kenji, can you give us an overview of the sort of the key political actions that are surrounding Dei, and what their potential impact might be.
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Kenji Yoshino: Yeah. So 1st of all, thank you so much for having me, Janet, and hello to all of you joining today. Thank you so much for being part of this extraordinary community. It's a honor and privilege to be here.
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Kenji Yoshino: To begin with, the sort of political headwinds facing Dei. I think we could really begin where you left off with the comments around this tragedy, where the President and the leader of the free world attributed, without any kind of substantiation, the tragedy that occurred of a helicopter crashing into a jet plane to Dei. And so I think that that is the most concerning aspect of this from a political view of clearly
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Kenji Yoshino: he and his colleagues think that it is appropriate and useful to them politically to keep blaming everything that is wrong with America on diversity, equity, and inclusion
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Kenji Yoshino: that has kind of manifested across the executive orders that we saw in his 1st week in office, including one shutting down Dei and the Federal Government, as well as thinking about ways in which the Federal Government could use its power to pull on levers that would touch, perhaps even the private sector. So those are the kind of political headwinds where Dei has just become a boogeyman.
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Kenji Yoshino: And oftentimes, if you ask Americans what they think of equality or inclusion, or civil rights, they'll be wildly for that, in fact. Still, a majority of Americans are in favor of Dei. But if you actually explain it. That number goes up significantly higher. And so part of this is that people are not unpacking what the acronym means, and are just conflating Dei with affirmative action
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Kenji Yoshino: rather than thinking about Dei as a whole set of practices that include affirmative action, but extend far beyond it. So the thing that puzzles me is when Dei is called anti-meritocratic, because, as I experience, Dei Dei is trying to remove biases that would prevent merit from shining through. And so there's actually nothing more meritocratic than Dei. But that's a message that we need to convey more strenuously now that the political headwinds are there.
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Janet Stovall: The way. I always say it is that if we really did hire and function on meritocracy we wouldn't need Dei in the 1st place now, would we? So you know what we're hearing and what we're seeing with the executive orders that recently happened. A lot of people are saying, well, that has had a huge, huge effect, a chilling effect on the public sector.
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Janet Stovall: Is it really a threat to the private sector? And we'll talk a little bit more about that specifically. But is it a threat? And how much of a threat is it at this point to the private sector.
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Kenji Yoshino: It's a really important question, because there's so much misinformation about this. So my center's phone has been ringing off the hook because we are the only Dei center that operates out of a law school. So we hold both the expertise in the law and the expertise in Dei, and people are reacting to things like the gender ideology, you know executive order by saying, Do I need to shut down my gender neutral bathrooms? Or, you know, can I actually give health care to trans employees. And the short answer is, you absolutely can.
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Kenji Yoshino: So the initial thing to understand about what an executive order is
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Kenji Yoshino: is that it is a very specific kind of law. It does have the force of law, but it is not an act of Congress, and, in fact, to issue an executive order. The President has to be operating either under his constitutional powers or under statutory power that's been granted to him by Congress, and Congress has given him no such warrant, nor does the Constitution to reach into the private sector and to meddle with its operations. And, in fact.
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Kenji Yoshino: I teach this in a different part of my constitutional law class. But there's a canonical case called Youngstown versus sheet and tube where President Truman tries to reach into the steel industry to stop a strike through an executive order, and that is struck down by the Supreme Court as exceeding his, you know, powers as commander in chief or through any Congressional authorization.
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Kenji Yoshino: So the really important thing to keep in mind is that these executive orders, as you say, really do impact the Federal sector, because the President is the boss of the Federal sector. So if he wants to shut down every Dei office or every Dei initiative within Federal government. He has the authority to do that under the Constitution and under, you know, collateral Congressional statute. He does not have a comparable power to reach into the private sector and to do the same thing.
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Kenji Yoshino: So I'm not at all underselling, nor do I think you are. How much of an impact this has had. The Federal Government is the largest employer within the United States. So this is a deeply consequential thing that he has done. But it doesn't actually trickle over or jump the gap into the private sector.
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Janet Stovall: No, it doesn't. And what we've seen is that the threats are there. But the effect is that it scares people, and I mean, I think there's probably some intention behind that. And you know you and I talked about this even last year with the Scotus Affirmative Act decision while it was still just a threat. Even then
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Janet Stovall: the house of diversity and inclusion, the house of the office of Diversity, the house office of diversity, equity, and inclusion closed, get that straight? And so, when we saw then even that the threat was having a chilling effect on the private sector.
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Janet Stovall: because, as you just said, as goes, government often goes business.
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Janet Stovall: Unfortunately, then, the threat was real, it came true, but even then we said to the private sector, You can do something different. We predicted that companies would not back down. We cited the work that you and David Glasgow did to identify the 3 types of programs which you're going to talk about a little bit later that might be targeted and 3 types that probably would survive
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Janet Stovall: legally. And we'll talk about those. And we suggested 3 things that any organization, public or private, had to do to actually move the needle. And we kind of encapsulated in saying, interrupt bias integrate, inclusion, improve systems. And we're going to lean in a little bit on that 1st one about bias as well.
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Janet Stovall: But now that we're facing even more more threats and more serious threats. It's affecting more organizations than before. According to a recent report, by resume.org, which is the most recent one I could find around one in 8 companies are planning to rework or eliminate their diversity programs. 8% are cutting Dei budgets and 40% are like shifting their Dei money to other areas like operations or even AI.
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Janet Stovall: But like before.
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Janet Stovall: we still believe, the private sector has the power to do something different. And, as you said in many ways it is 65% of companies are sticking with Dei. They're either keeping or raising their Dei budgets. So the threat is real. But it's still a threat.
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Janet Stovall: However, every day we see another company that backs down.
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Janet Stovall: but not for political reasons, more for social reasons or so it seems. If the headlines are to be believed. So when we were getting ready for this webinar, you and I had a conversation, and you're doing some fascinating research on what companies are actually doing? What can you tell us about that?
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Kenji Yoshino: The companies are withdrawing in a very limited way. So one of the things I do
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Kenji Yoshino: worry about is that the media narrative is so much more interesting if you say man bites dog rather than dog bites man. And so, of course, the media until lately, has jumped on the bandwagon and said, Oh, Walmart or Meta, or you know this company or that company is withdrawing from Dei.
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Kenji Yoshino: and my center has this attitude of like, just look at the facts. And so we pulled every single one of these statements and ran a fine tooth comb over all of them, and we found only one statement that was a categorical withdrawal from Dei, and that is tractor supply.
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Kenji Yoshino: Every single other company issued a statement that was much more equivocal than what was articulated in the press.
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Kenji Yoshino: So if you say, you know, Walmart says we're going to withdraw from Dei. Well, they withdraw from more controversial aspects of Dei like participation and the human rights campaigns, you know, corporate equality index. But they don't pull out of creating an inclusive environment. For you know, all workers. And
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Kenji Yoshino: what have you? And so, if you actually read the statements themselves, you see that Dei is evolving and morphing rather than dying right in these organizations. And I think that's a really key and underreported
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Kenji Yoshino: point, because, you know, 480 something companies still have Dei statements, you know, on their websites, and even the companies that are withdrawing in the fortune 500 have a much more equivocal withdrawal than media accounts would suggest.
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Janet Stovall: Well, it's interesting. You say that because I remember back last year, when Microsoft was in the headlines, Microsoft shuts down its entire Dei operations and the Cdo. Of Microsoft, Lindsey. Ray Mcintyre is a very good friend of ours, and you know, because we've done panels together. She came out
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Janet Stovall: publicly and said, No, we're not. That was just. It was a small impact. It was somebody who said something. It's not true. So she defended what Microsoft was doing. However, some of these companies seem to be allowing this misperception to continue. Why would they do that? Why would they allow themselves to be perceived as shutting it down when they're not actually doing it.
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Kenji Yoshino: I think it's a really good question. I'm afraid it leads me into cynical or perhaps simply realist territory, where I actually think that companies have a lot of interest in having the media report out the stories that they have
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Kenji Yoshino: in the way that they've been reported out. So if they issue an equivocal statement, and then they get described as having withdrawn from Dei altogether. That gets the Anti Dei activists off their back. So you know, the Robbie Starbuck, or the Edward Bloom, or the Christopher Ruffo of the world, Stephen Mitchell of the world, will not go after them.
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Kenji Yoshino: But then, when their people rise up and say, How dare you? Which is what happens in every single one of these organizations?
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Kenji Yoshino: Withdraw something that we view as a critical aspect of our professional life, you know, and our community life within this organization. Because, particularly if you look at younger generations, Gen. Y. Gen. Z. Are unionized figuratively as a generation around the expectation that Dei will be sort of respected, you know, in their workplace. But then, when they get pushback from the pro Dei constituency, they can point to the statement and say, Look, it's not our fault. We were totally misrepresented in the press.
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Kenji Yoshino: so I can't sort of substantiate this, except for through kind of experientially right, and looking at these companies and having contacts within these companies. But there does seem to be this dual messaging, and I'm not ascribing ill intent to it. But I am saying that it is a very natural course of action to say, Oh, this is fantastic, because the media is misreporting that we've withdrawn totally. That gets all the Anti Dei people off our back. But then we still have this corporate statement, where, if you actually take the time to read the statement. It says we are defending Dei.
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Kenji Yoshino: I think there's only a limited time where that strategy will work, because I think people will get smarter. You know we have an OP-ed coming out on this in the next few days about just being able to parse these statements and to figure out what exactly is going on. So I think it's going to be, you know, an increasing. These these statements are going to face increasing scrutiny. And the media hopefully will get savvier as time goes on.
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Kenji Yoshino: The other thing that Janet and I think would be really remiss not to talk about this is that this is not just a 1 way street anymore, that the early messaging was all you know. Lowe's Home Depot. These companies are withdrawing for their Dei, commitments forward, etc, etc. But now we have very courageous sort of laudable movements from companies not just Costco, but also at Davos, Jpmorgan, Chase and Goldman Sachs.
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Kenji Yoshino: You know, Microsoft, you mentioned luxury, Mcintyre, many, many other companies Apple saying that they stand by their Dei values so ultimately, I think we're going to get like a spread of companies that are for and against Dei. And this is going to be a moment that matters. No administration lasts forever. And so this will be a testing moment to see which companies stood for
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Kenji Yoshino: values and which companies didn't. The one thing that we do know about America is that there is an irreversible secular trend towards meaning, secular, not meaning religious but secular meaning. You know unidirectional trend towards as opposed to cyclical unidirectional trend towards greater diversification of the polity. So you know, by 2042 will be a majority minority nation. More than 50% of college educated workers are now, women like 20% plus of
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Kenji Yoshino: Gen. Z. Self identifies as Lgbtqia plus. So in my mind, there's no question as to which side is going to win in the long run. So which side do you want to be on? Both morally and predictably, like the pro or anti Dei side? Right? So I think we need to actually contextualize this moment as a moment that
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Kenji Yoshino: you know we've been in before, as Frank Dobbin at Harvard describes in the 19 sixties, we had this field of diversity management that was quite unpopular, and so they shut it down. They morphed it into what's known as diversity equity inclusion. Today I think we're going through another morphing moment. But the underlying values are not going anywhere.
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Janet Stovall: But do you think that this is a different moment? You know, I always think about how we think about the civil rights movement? That was a huge social movement we think about, you know, as when Dei 1st came into the workplace that was a pivotal moment. This moment feels different.
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Janet Stovall: and I'm not sure whether it is the
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Janet Stovall: impact of social media that makes it bigger and always on. And we see it in a way. So, as my mother used to say she wasn't very she was. She died when she was 90, but she'd learned how to figure out how to use Facebook if nothing else, and she said to me one day she sat there and she said, You know what I get about social media, and I was like, no mom what she goes. Fools find each other.
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Janet Stovall: And that was her thing. She says. You know, people used to be kind of crazy in their own spots. But now, when people are adamant about something, or believe in something, whether it's right or wrong, they find each other. So it spreads
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Janet Stovall: that. And what's going on now, sort of in the political sphere where the quiet part is being said out loud, this feels different.
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Janet Stovall: And what do you think from a legal standpoint. Does that mean that?
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Janet Stovall: Well, we elected. We elected, you know, politically, we elected a President in the middle of that. Who said point blank, that that's what was going to happen? Does this feel different? And if so.
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Janet Stovall: what do you think the different outcome might be? You mentioned it being cyclical when we go through this. But might this cycle somehow indifferently.
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Kenji Yoshino: It remains to be seen, and I want to give, you know, full credit to former Eoc Commissioner Jenny Yang, who came and gave the Korematsu lecture here at Nyu just a couple of nights ago, and one of the things that she said was, so much of this depends on how we respond to this particular moment. So if we go back and we look at the 1st trump administration where social media was a force, you know, in that administration as well and arguably, was one of the reasons why he was voted into office. In the 1st place.
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Kenji Yoshino: she said, we saw, you know black lives matter, you know, explode across the nation, and we saw the Me, too. Movement and her hypothesis was when government wasn't protecting individuals. People rose up and started their own social movements about social justice. So a lot of this is going to depend on whether individuals feel similarly assuming that her hypothesis is correct in this moment, where again, government is not in favor of diversity, equity, inclusion, but turning against it. Whether or not the ordinary American will say, enough is enough.
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Janet Stovall: Well, so much, and we'll come back to this when we talk about Scotus a little bit. But what has changed? I think this time is 1st of all, the Supreme Court is definitely moved to the conservative side. More and a lot of the
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Janet Stovall: moves against diversity, equity, and inclusion came towards the end of the trump administration the 1st time, whereas this time he came in strong, I mean it was been a week, and so much has happened already in a week. Do you think that, having more time
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Janet Stovall: and clearly more thought, because a lot of these things, you know, project 2025, Dismantle Dei act. Those things were not built yesterday. They've been thought about. They've been worked on.
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Janet Stovall: There's been some thought put into that. Do you think that the readiness this time, and the longer runway, and having a Supreme Court that seems to be favorable to the Administration. What do you think the effect of that might be.
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Kenji Yoshino: I think it could be huge, so I don't want to at all sugar coat this or underestimate that, but I really think it's important to think about where the threat to Dei is most
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Kenji Yoshino: going to come from, and that is from the United States Supreme Court. So there's a reason that you know. The 1st Trump administration only attacked Dei towards the end. Right? And here it's doing it at the jump.
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Kenji Yoshino: because the Supreme Court and the June 2023. Decision of students for fair admission versus Harvard and unc abolished affirmative action on the basis of race for universities and for institutions receiving Federal funding, and it gave us such a clear window, a really anti Dei window, into how it was thinking about race discrimination, where it said, regardless of whether the disadvantaged race, or presumably gender or other protected classification, is the dominant or the subordinated one.
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Kenji Yoshino: These kinds of distinctions are Nvidia, so it's only a matter of time before we'll port that over to Title 7, and which regulates employment relationship and section 1981, which regulates contracting, and so therefore would touch on supplier diversity programs or fellowships, or the like. And we've already seen all that activity in the lower courts, whether it was the law firms that got sued, or whether it was the Fearless Fund litigation, or what have you? So
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Kenji Yoshino: I want to say that the threat is real, but I want to say that the you know Supreme Court is the dog here right? And it's wagging the tail of the executive branch, not the other way around. So the Executive branch can intensify the litigation. But the ultimate standard that's going to be applied is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, right and the ultimate interpreter of that act is going to be the United States Supreme Court.
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Kenji Yoshino: So the reason this moment feels differently is because of the Supreme Court's actions in the Sffa case, and that Supreme Court will continue to be the central player in these anti-dei initiatives. Even if the intensity with which these lawsuits are brought picks up the ultimate standard is going to be set by statute and interpreted by the Supreme Court.
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Janet Stovall: And I know I sound like, you know, I'm putting a very negative picture on this, and I don't want to do that. But, like you said. Let's be realistic. You talk about your Supreme Court and the Civil Rights Act.
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Janet Stovall: Correct me. But
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Janet Stovall: doesn't the Dismantle Dei act? Doesn't it take aim at the Civil Rights Act? Or have I got that wrong?
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Kenji Yoshino: Yeah, it does. But, interestingly enough, what the dismantled gi act, which is just a bill, right? So it has not been enacted yet.
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Janet Stovall: Right.
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Kenji Yoshino: It does
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Kenji Yoshino: purport to or aim to adjust or amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But it doesn't take out the central premise, right? So the central premise of the Civil Rights Act is that you can't discriminate here. I'm looking at Title 7 in employment right on the basis of 5 characteristics which are race, color, national origin, religion, and sex.
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Kenji Yoshino: And since the 2020 Bostock case, sex has been interpreted to encompass both gender identity and sexual orientation. So those 7 classifications.
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Kenji Yoshino: what the Dismantle Dei act, even though it
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Kenji Yoshino: sort of seeks to shut down various aspects of Dei, it actually doesn't touch that sort of central beating heart of like, you can't engage in these forms of discrimination, and you can see why that would be because that would be counter to its meritocracy narrative. So it's still saying right? We believe in meritocracy, and therefore we don't want to allow for race bias against anybody, including people of color still in the workplace.
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Kenji Yoshino: So so long as that part of the Civil Rights Act remains intact, which I believe it will, there's certainly nothing in the dismantled Dei Bill, you know that would change that. It's still going to be up to the Supreme Court to interpret those provisions, and as we can talk about. There are lots of ways in which to advance. Dei. That would be fully legal under the worst case, slash, most likely case scenario where the Supreme Court exports the view of discrimination that articulated in the Sffa case over to Title Vii. And Section 1981.
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Janet Stovall: Okay, and we're going to go. We're going to go dig a little deeper into some of those things that the 3 things that we really should be looking at one of the things that comes up for me, though even thinking back to what we were saying about the way companies, private industry is talking about this and then doing things is that you know as the Nli, we of course, focus on the brain. And what happens? And one of the questions that has come up a lot for me is
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Janet Stovall: as an organization devoted to brains and behavior. What happens when there's a significant disconnect between what an organization says or doesn't say and what it does, because we know that our brains crave consistency, and that when we see these contradictory actions and statements, there's cognitive dissonance, and that erodes trust and engagement.
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Janet Stovall: But in the end it's really all about accountability, and leaders have to be accountable for this. They have to model the behavior they have to champion it when and where they can and when they do, the accountability can scale because organizations get more accountable.
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Janet Stovall: But one of the things that I've also also heard is that
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Janet Stovall: if we dismantle Dei, this comes up when you mentioned the point about what happens if they go after Title 7, they don't want to do that, because that goes against the meritocracy argument.
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Janet Stovall: Would it not be true that if you said it was okay to discriminate on the basis of race or gender.
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Janet Stovall: Wouldn't that make it okay to discriminate against the dominant group? So is that what you mean when you say that they don't want to mess with that, because that flies in the face of meritocracy.
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Kenji Yoshino: Exactly so. It not only flies in the face of their narrative of meritocracy, it also flies in the face of their constituencies. Who are, you know, members of dominant groups who are saying we don't want. We believe Dei initiatives discriminate against us. Of course you know, as you know as well as anyone. So many Dei initiatives have nothing to do with giving preferences or bumps or affirmative action. So what I'm really fighting right now is this conflation of Dei
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Kenji Yoshino: with the affirmative action that was struck down in the students for fair admissions case, because the 2 things are not the same. And so I recently had a bipartisan debate, so I was representing the pro Dei side, and my party opposite was representing the Anti Dei side, and we're from different sides of the political aisle, and we were having this debate. I thought, you know, what can I accomplish right in this hour? Really, it was a kind of closed door. Chatham House rule kind of
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Kenji Yoshino: event, so I won't name the person. But you would recognize the person if I named the individual, and I thought, I'm not going to persuade this person to change their view. Right? You know they're as entitled to their view as I am to mine right? But I can sort of get a win here if I can persuade him that not all forms of Dei are illegal, which is what he had been going around, saying, he's a very, you know, influential person. So people were listening to him.
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Kenji Yoshino: So I began our exchange by saying, I need your help with this hypothetical, which is a not so hypothetical hypothetical because it actually happened. But I said, in 1970, only 5% of symphony orchestras were women.
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Kenji Yoshino: and in 19, in 2016 that number had risen to 35%. So by Dni standards, a fairly significant increase in a relatively short period of time.
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Kenji Yoshino: And this was studied, and what the orchestras had done to get this kind of rocketing up of women in symphony orchestras was to implement a very simple fix, which was to have all editions occur behind a screen.
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Kenji Yoshino: So if you can't discriminate between one person and another, you can't discriminate against one of them. So if you can't tell the difference between a man and a woman auditioning, you can't discriminate against women or men.
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Kenji Yoshino: So I said, is that illegal? And he said, No, of course not, Kenji, that's, you know, like don't insult my intelligence like that's, you know, de-biasing. You're literally gender blind. You're taking bias out of the system and allowing a pure meritocracy to shine through.
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Kenji Yoshino: And I said, I think you have to make a choice here, because I've heard you say in public many, many times that all Dei is illegal, and I just heard you say that the project that I just described the orchestra steam project is legal.
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Kenji Yoshino: So now I need you to make a choice as to which is true, because the orchestra, street and study study is a form of Dei. So many forms of Dei are exactly that attempt to de-bias environments so that everybody gets a fair shake
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Kenji Yoshino: right? So. But auditioning behind a screen is something that you can only do to a limited extent. I actually do have my students, as all most law schools do, take their exams without revealing their identity. So that protects me, and that protects them. So that would be an example of how that could be used in a professional environment.
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Kenji Yoshino: But you know, let's face it. Many of the people listening today could not implement. Like, you know, I'm not going to know the identity of the person who's applying for this promotion, or what have you? But there are lots of other strategies that are all di strategies, like structured interviewing, or, you know, combing bias language out of job descriptions or performance evaluations and the like that are all about taking bias out of the system.
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Kenji Yoshino: So he did concede that point. So I actually viewed that to be an enormous victory, which is to say that he has now stopped saying, All Dei is illegal, and he says there are legal and illegal forms of Dei, but I feel like those of us in the pro Dei camp have to do a better job about explaining and messaging what Dei is.
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Kenji Yoshino: and one of the ways I want to think about that is to move from lifting Dei to what we call my center leveling Dei.
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Kenji Yoshino: So lifting, Dei is affirmative action like you take a historically subordinated group and you target that group and you lift them up so that they can actually have an opportunity to thrive. I actually, you know, total confession, you know, still support that view of anti-subordination and inclusion. But I know that that is now illegal. And so I don't advocate for that anymore. And in broad strokes it's illegal, at least legally risky.
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Kenji Yoshino: If I take the same policy, and I can justify it according to a leveling language which I equally believe, which is to say, talent is everywhere. But opportunity is not, and Dei is what closes the difference.
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Kenji Yoshino: That is not an anti-meritocratic view. That is a purely meritocratic view that says, you know, we want to take bias out of the system. No Supreme Court and no Federal civil rights statute is ever going to hold anyone liable for taking bias on the basis of race or gender out of the system. In fact.
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Kenji Yoshino: you know, Chief Justice Roberts said in the Sfa. Decision writing for the court. Eliminating race discrimination means eliminating all of it. I was like, I want to take you at your word, which is to say anything where you're taking bias out of the system should be absolutely constitutional and legal, even beyond the constitutional frameworks that he's been discussing. In that case.
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Janet Stovall: Well, you know you talk about the legal, the law of the you know.
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Janet Stovall: the the legal point of it.
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Janet Stovall: but so much of this, and some of it is a misinformation. But then so much of this is driven by things that are completely not legal. So to your point where you said leveling.
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Janet Stovall: Dei is about saying that
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Janet Stovall: what's not equal is the opportunity. But there are people who will argue all day that yes, we have equal opportunity. The opportunity is there you have the equal right to get to it, and the minute you try to say that's not the case, then you start getting into it becomes a whole different issue. So how do you talk about this? In a way? I mean, I'm a big one for being objective.
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Janet Stovall: A. Because I don't like to argue. And B, because, you know, I think data tells you what you need to know. But
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Janet Stovall: data can help with an argument. But where? Where? How far will the law take us? I mean, actually, what is out there now? Legally, that we do need to be afraid of that, because, either because people have twisted to the point that it might actually get pushed through legally, or where do we draw the line between what's legal and what's opinion? Where should we really be worried at this point.
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Kenji Yoshino: I generally have the view that the law doesn't spring from nowhere. And so what's legally true is usually at some level, what's culturally true.
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Kenji Yoshino: So the upside of that is that if we can actually thread the needle and get our Dei programs to the aperture that the law has created in general. That will also be something that will play well in American culture, and not lead to these boycotts or these lawsuits? Certainly not. These lawsuits or other forms of social backlash.
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Kenji Yoshino: So what do I mean by that? I mean that you know when Chief Justice Roberts is writing this Sffa opinion? He's not sort of making it up out of his own head. Right? He's sort of reasoning out of a underlying culture that believes that in order to be truly meritocratic. You have to be colorblind, right? Forgive the ableist language, but that's the common parlance that you know the court itself uses.
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Kenji Yoshino: So you know, that is coming out of a broader underlying culture. But the silver lining in that is, if I can design a program that's going to pass legal muster. It's generally going to pass cultural muster as well.
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Kenji Yoshino: So if I come in with a program that says, this is a de-biasing program, this is the orchestra screen. This is blind. Grading exams like this is, you know.
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Kenji Yoshino: structured interviewing, a practice that gives fairness to everybody that will be perfectly legal, but it will also be socially popular, because no American can say that's anti-meritocratic, because, I say I can respond by saying what is not meritocratic about this like if I don't know the identity of somebody. Then, of course, right, I'm just going to give them the grade that you know is not. Give them a grade that is not attached to their identity.
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Kenji Yoshino: and that can do an enormous amount of good right. And I think we underestimate how much of Dei is that, and how much of Dei can be effective if it goes further down that path.
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Janet Stovall: You just brought up a good point when you said you know the language that we're hearing the Supreme Court use are terms like colorblind which those of us in this work, when we hear that we just kind of recoil. So when that type of language gets into the law, and you know. Let's be real. The Supreme Court has been both
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Janet Stovall: the reason for advances that we've made and the reason we have been we've gone backwards. They do both. It depends on who's sitting there. But when that type of language, color, blindness, which is very much a social and a
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Janet Stovall: which is very much a social construct and a social kind of word. When that gets into the legal realm, what happens? Does that not distort? What does that not drive some legal issues that maybe we do need to be afraid of.
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Kenji Yoshino: No, I mean, I would be the 1st to say that I really hate this trope of colorblindness, not just because it's ableist, but also because it's a terrible metaphor that you know. For example, if I'm medically colorblind, I literally will not be able to tell the difference between red and green.
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Kenji Yoshino: But if I'm socially colorblind or legally colorblind, that doesn't mean I can't tell the difference between an Asian American individual and a Caucasian person, that means that I can see the difference, but I wish I couldn't, and so I pretend that I can't.
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Kenji Yoshino: and that project of suppression is always going to be fraught and incomplete, and it's going to lead to its own pathology. So my 1st objection to color blindness is really across the board. It's not a legal objection. It's just an objection to the metaphor, because I think it's a terrible and extraordinarily damaging metaphor, no matter where it arises
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Kenji Yoshino: when we get to the law, though I don't think it's a metaphor that's creating the problem. I think that it is this anti-classification view that the Supreme Court has embraced. So we leave these legal webinars all the time out of my center, very similar to the one that we're having now. And one of the things that we keep driving over and over again is this difference between anti-subordination and anti-classification views of discrimination laws.
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Kenji Yoshino: So let me just briefly describe the difference, because I think it's salient for every single person on this call. The anti-classification view is the view that Sffa ushered in which is anytime you use race as a classification. That is a terrible thing, because it teaches us to see each other as members of a particular racial group. It balkanizes society that prevents us from achieving a colorblind ideal.
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Kenji Yoshino: whereas the anti-subordination view which had prevailed for decades before Sffa, starting with the backy case in 1978, which upheld affirmative action programs generally, even though it struck down a particular program at Uc. Davis.
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Kenji Yoshino: The anti-subordination view says it's not classifications that are themselves pernicious. It's a use to which they're put. So don't come. Complain about the fact that a racial classification has been used, you know, complain about the fact that the racial classification has been used in an actually harmful way. So the race-based classification is being used to subordinate a historically subordinated group like Jim Crow. Then obviously we should all set our face against it.
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Kenji Yoshino: But, as the late great Justice, John Paul Stevens said, there's like a world of difference
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Kenji Yoshino: between Jim Crow and affirtive action on the basis of race, because the first, st he said, was a No Trespassing sign, whereas the second was a welcome map.
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Kenji Yoshino: And he said, if you think that there's a moral and legal equivalence between those 2 ideas, then I don't really know what more to say to you. Right? So that's the anti subordination view which is to say, we see sort of centuries of rank, subordination of certain groups in our society, and affirmative action is the attempt to make.
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Kenji Yoshino: you know good on giving individuals who have been suffering from 12 generations of subordination and slavery in the case of African Americans, that we've only had 3 or 4 generations to reverse the course of that. Obviously, that's not going to happen overnight. And so that's the anti-subordination view.
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Kenji Yoshino: What was critical about Sffa was that it upended 4 decades of jurisprudence. To say the anti-subordination view is no longer the view that we're going to take of non-discrimination law. It's the anti-classification view, and it's only a matter of time before it exports that view
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Kenji Yoshino: from the equal protection and title Vi. Context, in which Smfa was decided to title Vii, and Section 1981 which regulate the employment relationship. And so that's really what's going to endanger the affirmative action programs.
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Kenji Yoshino: So sorry, Dei program. So it's not the executive that's going to be driving the bus here. It's going to be the judiciary, so don't pay too much attention to the misdirection that President Trump and others are engaged in the ultimate decider. Here is going to be the Supreme Court so long as the Congress doesn't repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So that's thought number one. But thought Number 2 is, I'm less worried about the metaphors, and I'm more worried about like hard, rigorous black letter law.
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Kenji Yoshino: So I'm less worried about. Oh, they use the word colorblindness, and that's offensive. And I'm much more worried about the analysis where the framework has shifted from an anti-subordination framework in which Dei initiatives would obviously be legal right to an anti-classification view. Where anytime you utter a peep about race or gender, or what have you? You have to be looking over your shoulder.
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Janet Stovall: So what can survive? I mean, I said a couple of times we get to it. But you've been writing about this ever since Scotus that there are 3 main types of Dei work that will survive, and we were doubling down on one of them to biasing. But
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Janet Stovall: of the of all 3. What are the 3 that you think will survive that will survive the legal challenges? We don't know what they're going to do. But at this point. What we know will survive the legal challenges that we see coming.
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Kenji Yoshino: Yeah, I would rather frame it as the 3 elements that all need to be present before a program is even, you know, arguably risky. So there needs to be a preference
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Kenji Yoshino: for a protected group
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Kenji Yoshino: with regard to a palpable benefit where title 7 is concerned. So we call this the 3 P's of Sffa, and this is, I hope, a really useful mnemonic for everybody, you know on this call, because you can take any given policy. If you're questioning whether it's legal or not, and strain it through this analysis, and it has to have all 3 of those elements to be illegal under title 7.
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Kenji Yoshino: So let me take you through each 1. 1st of all, there has to be a preference. So anything that is a de-biasing initiative
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Kenji Yoshino: would fail that factor. Right? So if I say, everyone in the company has to go through unconscious bias training, that's a pretty aggressive intervention. But it's never going to be an illegal intervention, because if the training is meant to remove bias from the system rather than putting out the thumb on the scale for any group based on race or gender. Right? Then it's not a preference, right? You're removing preferences that would be illicit preferences based on race or gender.
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Kenji Yoshino: And so you're creating a level playing field. No preference. So therefore, perfectly fine, that's lifting to leveling.
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Kenji Yoshino: And the second one is, it has to be a protected group.
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Kenji Yoshino: So you know, race is a protected group. Gender is a protected group, you know, as I mentioned, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, identity, religion, are all protected groups under title 7 at least since 2020, when Bostock interpreted sex to encompass gender identity and sexual orientation.
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Kenji Yoshino: But there are lots of groups that are of Dei concern right that are not covered. So protections for veterans, protections for 1st gen individuals, protections based on low socioeconomic status even. And this is actually a interesting debate that Justice Kavanaugh had with the litigant who was representing Sffa and the oral arguments. In that case.
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Kenji Yoshino: even if you had a program that benefited the descendants of slaves. Right? That would be perfectly permissible, because that's not a race-based classification. A white individual could be a descendant of slaves and be the beneficiary of that program.
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Kenji Yoshino: So the 1st thing about protected groups is like, if there's no statute on point, you're going to be fine, right? So you know, use those classifications even explicitly, like you can have a fellowship that's only open to first.st Gen. You know college graduates, and that is going to be perfectly legal right so long as important, caveat. It's not simply a pretext for engaging in race based, you know, classification. So one of the things that makes me tear my hair out is when
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Kenji Yoshino: very well meaning colleagues say, Oh, all we need to do is to find a workaround around sfa, so we'll toggle over from race to ses. Or 1st Gen. Was like, please don't say that right, even though one or 2 people need to say that before we can't go to trial. So don't say that.
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Kenji Yoshino: But if it's a genuine attempt to benefit people of low socioeconomic status, the fact that many of those individuals are going to be people of color is absolutely fine, right? Because there are all these adjacencies in our society of, you know, between race and class, or between race and educational opportunity. And so long as you're targeting the right thing that is not race and not touching that classification, you're going to be fine.
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Kenji Yoshino: The other thing that's a bit of a sleeper is that even if there is a statute on point, some of these statutes are asymmetrically worded in order to protect them against this anti-classification view. So if you look at the Americans with Disabilities Act, or if you look at the Age Discrimination Employment Act.
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Kenji Yoshino: they both say you are allowed to engage in protections of people who are individual disabilities or people over 40. And so the statute itself bakes in the anti subordination view, saying, you don't need to treat these 2 classes differently, because that would confuse a No Trespassing sign with a welcome man so long as the statute does that there's nothing the court can do interpretively to remove that. So you're also perfectly free to have
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Kenji Yoshino: affirmative action right for people with disabilities, and for people who are over 40.
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Kenji Yoshino: And then finally, probable benefit is the last P. Which is, it can't just be that I'm a busybody that objects to these programs. It can't be that, you know. Oh, there's a woman's continuing legal education luncheon, and I'm
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Kenji Yoshino: a man, so I can't go, and I feel offended by that, you know. So I'm going to bring a lawsuit. The Supreme Court has told us that you need to suffer some adverse employment action, so it's not enough that my feelings were hurt, or it morally offends me, that you know I was excluded on the basis of my gender. I actually have to show some harm right that touches on my professional career.
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Kenji Yoshino: Last April the court took up this Muldrow case, and we were all sort of watching it on pins and needles. I'm sure you were as well. But the question was, are they going to lower this barrier of harm to 0 and to 0 it out and say, no, you don't need to show harm. We're going to rescend. You know our view that some adverse employment action is required, and Justice Kagan, writing for the court said, we're not going to 0 this out to nothing.
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Kenji Yoshino: We're also not going to say it needs to be significant or material harm. We're going to do a Goldilocks theory behind this. I think she was just saving this to get her colleagues to sign on to this.
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Kenji Yoshino: where some harm needs to be present, so she didn't lower it to 0. She did lower it right. But you know you still need to show that there was a palpable you know harm to you rather than saying, Oh, this hurt my feelings, or Oh, I object to this right. So remember, all 3 of those elements have to be present. So if you have a program that flunks one of those 3 elements, you're perfectly fine. So we do traffic light coding at our center, like, if you
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Kenji Yoshino: flunk one of those elements, you're in the green zone. If you hit all those elements you are in the Red Zone, if it's like, if there's a maybe in one of those columns, and the other 2 columns are yeses, and you're in the Yellow Zone, depending on how the maybe works itself out so happy to talk through examples of each of those. But that's the framework.
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Janet Stovall: Well, that's and that's incredibly helpful. Because, you know, of course, at Nli we're big fans of do biasing work and using neuroscience to understand and mitigate unconscious bias, because we do believe that that is sort of the root, a root cause and a root.
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Janet Stovall: a root solution to this problem, because everybody you know, what do we say? You have a brain, you have bias. So if we work at it from that level, we are working at it from a level that is just a human level. And you know, the things we build are designed to do that. And we're hoping that organizations will move into that space even when they are a little nervous about using the language, or
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Janet Stovall: in many cases have been told that they can't even buy solutions that are Dei solutions. De-biasing is something that like you said, no matter what nobody's ever going to say that you want, they might think it. They might want it. But they're never going to say. And they're going to have a hard time legislating bias into systems, no matter what they call the work.
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Janet Stovall: The other thing that we very firmly believe at the Neural Leadership Institute is that organizations are going to have to start being more objective about this, and they're going to have to start making, not just the business case, but the impact case, no matter whether it's public or private sector, they've got to show. Just like you said. You've got to show some harm to justify why, you have been harmed by something. We believe that for Dei to survive, you're going to have to show the benefit, the objective benefit.
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Janet Stovall: I have a little ditty that I like to throw out there. That I say diversity isn't a problem to solve. Diversity solves problems. Inclusion isn't feeling valued. Inclusion is being able to deliver value, and equity isn't fair people. Equity is fair systems, and that's what you were talking about when you were saying taking the bias out of systems. So I think we are kind of on the same page with this. So we're getting sorted for time now. But
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Janet Stovall: thinking about all of this, what are the things that you know? If you were to say to the public sector, we say to the private sector, what are sort of the basic things that we can say in this moment that you would say in this moment to people who are really genuinely concerned, some from the threat that what might happen, some from the reality of what is happening, what can we say about
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Janet Stovall: what the path forward can be, and what we can do now to put us on the right path forward.
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Kenji Yoshino: Yeah. So you know, I'll limit myself to 3 things on real 3 grounds. So the 1st thing is that all of us, as people who are committed to Dei need to educate ourselves about the law, so I don't care if you're a lawyer. I don't care if you're not a lawyer like, we really need to spend some time skilling up, because this is a newly regulated field.
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Kenji Yoshino: So I used to think about laws of floor that gave us basic equality and dignity, and Dei as a cultural work that builds above that floor.
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Kenji Yoshino: Ever since the Supreme Court's opinion in 2023 the law is now operating like a ceiling that's dropping on the entire enterprise. So if we don't know the law, we're not going to be able to see the rubble that's falling towards us. So with that in mind, and I'll put this in the chat. We have an initiative available for free at our center, called the Advancing Dei initiative. That looks at all of the cases filed in Federal court against Dei, and explains all of the cases and all the issues in those cases.
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Kenji Yoshino: in plain English. So you do not need to be a lawyer to understand this. We created it for you, not for you know other lawyers right? And so hopefully, that will be a friend and a resource to you. As more and more of these cases, you know, hit the lower courts, and one of the things that we're really committed to is upskilling people on this, because I think most people only pay attention when it hits the Supreme court. But if you keep
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Kenji Yoshino: close eye on the lower courts, you know exactly not just what's being litigated, but what the judges are saying, and what the outcomes of particular claims are so. The 1st one is just know the law.
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Kenji Yoshino: The second one is, understand that that's a necessary but not sufficient condition. You could be totally legally compliant. But you know, getting to something that you were saying earlier, you also need to be able to talk about this socially in a way that is appealing and attractive to most Americans. So I have said, yes. If you pass through the legal aperture, you most likely have passed through the cultural aperture as well. But that still means that we need to be able to communicate this
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Kenji Yoshino: about this. So if I say, like diversity is everywhere, opportunity is not like, and Di closes the gap.
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Kenji Yoshino: Then, you know, it's really hard for someone who's like pounding on the table about meritocracy, and has Dei is anti-meritocratic to complain about that, because I've just made the case for why Dei is meritocratic.
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Kenji Yoshino: So if that person that my interlocutor doesn't believe that talent is everywhere, you know, because there are real differences between men and women are real differences between people of different races. Then we're having a totally different conversation that can promise you they do not want to be having right. So, knowing how to communicate in this incredibly sort of pithy, like compelling way, is something that we also are going to need to upskill on. So we need to be better lawyers. And
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Kenji Yoshino: we need to be better Comms people.
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Kenji Yoshino: And then finally, and I think this is, you know, a leaf out of your book, Janet, because you said, I want us to be sort of rational about this. I really want us to be cool headed about this to not only see the risks from what I'll call the right, the anti-dei side, but also the risks from the left, right, so we would never, if we were launching a product together, say.
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Kenji Yoshino: Oh, like, you know, our lawyers have identified some new legal risks in this area. And so therefore, we're going to shut the whole thing down. We wouldn't say that we would say, Okay, what are the risks from the other side, right? And then all of those risks taken into account together, like, what is the impact of this?
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Kenji Yoshino: You know a product. And if the impact outweighed the legal risk, we would go forward with it. Right? So it's a much more holistic analysis than just reacting to the last person that you talked to and saying, Oh, I read this executive order, I'm terrified. So I'm pulling out.
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Kenji Yoshino: or I read the Supreme Court opinion. So I'm terrified, and I'm pulling out. It's a much more holistic analysis. So that if someone says, Oh, you know, there are risks now, right to having these Dei programs. So we're going to shut them all down. I really do want us all to ask people like, what about the risks from the other side? Because I can promise you that these companies that are publicly backing away from their Dei commitments.
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Kenji Yoshino: I think, are going to be in for a world of pain because they are going to get traditional lawsuits filed against them by women by people of color that say, you know, you didn't give me a fair shake, or your policies, even if not inactively with ill intent, had a disparate impact on us as a protected group.
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Kenji Yoshino: and the 1st line of defense that those organizations used to have where their Dei policies to say, this is our commitment to a fair workplace. You know we've done our best in keeping our kind of noses clean on this issue. But if you've gotten rid of all those Dei policies, then the risk from the left is much greater.
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Kenji Yoshino: and it's hard to get really good data on this, so don't hold me to it. But if you ask your general counsel what percent of your cases are coming from the left versus from the right. They will tell you that the vast super majority are still coming from the left rather than from the right. The one study of occp statistics said, and it was limited. So again, I don't want to rest too much on it said 85% of lawsuits
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Kenji Yoshino: come from the left, right by traditional plaintiffs, women, people of color, and only 15% are reverse discrimination claims brought by, you know, members of dominant groups.
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Kenji Yoshino: So against that risk analysis, like, even if you're thinking about just the legal risk you need to think about legal risk holistically from both sides. I also think social risk has to be understood on both sides. So there's social risk to keeping your Dei programs. But as we were talking about earlier, there are deep social risks and letting go of your Dei programs because you face down your Gen. Z. Or Gen. Y. Workers and tell them that you're getting rid of all their Dei programs right?
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Kenji Yoshino: And you tell me how they're going to react. So I recently addressed a group of 30 Ceos in the room at one time, and I was really struck by how they were very, very fearful about the risks from the left, the social risk from the left. They said to me, in some ways, Kenji, the legal risk, even though this is very edifying, is.
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Kenji Yoshino: you know, not something we worry about, because we have people that we can turn to, and the lawyers will tell us what to do to be safe. The harder one is, you know, the social risk, because I just don't know like what is going to occasion this backlash. But I'm shaking in my boots about what's going to happen if we pull away from Dei in any way with regard to those individuals on social grounds who are going to resist.
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Kenji Yoshino: So for every Elon musk, there's a Mark Cuban, right? I mean, there are people on both sides of this issue. And so it can't just be that you're listening to the risks that are the loudest in this particular moment, because any game that we are playing has to be a game for the long haul.
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Kenji Yoshino: So those are maybe 3 like, educate yourself about the law. Learn how to communicate more effectively about your Dei policies, and then finally engage in a rational holistic analysis of both risk and impact.
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Janet Stovall: That's perfect, and thank you so much, for this has been, and I knew it would be. This has been such a great discussion. And
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Janet Stovall: 1st of all, thank you for joining us, and thank you for bringing this, and I feel better. It's crazy times, but I feel better, and I appreciate your dropping. I hate to ask you to drop it, but if you're dropping the piece that you mentioned in the chat that'd be great, and while you're doing that.
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Janet Stovall: We're already thinking about how we need to keep this conversation going. So one of the things we're considering is a follow up Webinar that's focused on some practical strategies for fortifying your Dei position in this very challenging environment, and it could be everything from building the impact case to, as Kenji mentioned, confidently communicating your Dei strategy. So if you're interested in that, if you're interested, if you would be interested in joining a very focused session like that.
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Janet Stovall: I want you right now to type. Fortify Dei and your company name in the chat.
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Janet Stovall: and we will figure out if there's enough interest, and if there is, we'll make it happen. And if there's enough interest, we may even consider making this something that we explore in an in-person event and get people sort of in a like, you say, you know, sort of a Chatham house rules of interest. So you can really be open and talk about this. So put that in the chat right now, if you want. If you're interested in this, and also right about now, there should be a poll coming up on the screen, or shortly
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Janet Stovall: thereafter. And what we'd love for you to do is tell us what else you're interested in, because our commitment to you is to continue to meet you wherever you are. So please fill that out for us as well. So, Kenji, I want to express my sincere gratitude to you for joining us today, and for sharing your invaluable expertise on the legal landscape and giving us hope that there's a path forward.
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Janet Stovall: So thank you for that, and I hope we'll see you back soon, and now I will turn it back over to Ariel for some final comments. Thank you, everybody.
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Ariel Roldan: Thank you so much, Janet and Kenji, for today's discussion. We appreciate your time and all that you've shared today. Now for closing. If you haven't already. Please take a look at the poll, and let us know how Nli can help you in the future. That Poll will stay up for a few more moments, so share a few more announcements. We do have a few upcoming events to call out first, st we have our brain-based design and facilitation workshop
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Ariel Roldan: for anyone looking to amplify how they design learning whether it's virtual, live, and in person or asynchronous. This workshop will provide you with an inside. Look into how we use a brain-based approach to our own design.
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Ariel Roldan: The next event like this will begin February 12th as a virtual workshop over 3 separate sessions, and we'll be likely to host one near you in person soon. Next we have our C-suite brain lab for C-level or senior executives looking to get an inside look into their own brain as they learn the critical habits for leaders. We are designing a 3 day brain lab of effective habit activation seminars
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Ariel Roldan: and real-time. Eeg, scanning participants, will walk away with insights into their own brain as it faces complex challenges.
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Ariel Roldan: Next, we have our insider exchange specifically for senior executives. If you enjoy your brain at work, live, you'll love our Nli insider program. We invite you to join this exclusive opportunity where you can enjoy benefits such as 1st looks at new research, roundtable discussions with leading executives and researchers and helping us craft new innovations at work to apply, follow the link shared in the chat.
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Ariel Roldan: Finally, our podcast if you enjoyed today's conversation, you'll love the podcast show. So make sure, you subscribe. You can hear the past Friday webinars on demand. Look for your brain network wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts like spotify. Now, this is where we officially say farewell for the week on behalf of today's guests, the Nli team behind the scenes. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you back here same time next week. Have a great weekend bye.