Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is William A. Jacobson, Clinical Professor of
Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell
Law School and founder of Legal Insurrection the Great website,
joining us to talk today about excising DEI diversity, equity
in inclusion initiatives and programs from America's colleges and universities.
Professor Jacobson is also founder of the Equal Protection Project,
devoted to the fair treatment of all persons without regard
to race or ethnicity. The project will not only investigate
racial preference programs, but also litigate when necessary. I found
that of course at the Cornell Review. Gets your copy today.
Professor Jacobson, thank you so much for joining us on
this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. We have spoken in the past about all kinds
of government abuses, this is certainly one area of government
abuse that has absolutely exploded over the last several years
in this country. You told Tucker Carlson not too long ago,
this our highest ideal as a society is enshrined in
the Constitution, the fourteenth Amendment and federal, state and local law,
which is, you do not discriminate on the basis of
race or ethnicity. And we are seeing that, unfortunately, under
the concept of equity, that there is outright discrimination on
the basis of race. It is an interesting time in
this country, a country that truly has dealt with the
scourge of racism, discrimination and bias, a country though, that
has moved away from the idea of equality into equity.
Let's start there. What does the left mean when it
says or uses the term equity.
Speaker 2: Well, equity they distinguish from equality. So equality is where
everybody receives equal treatment. Equity in their minds is outcome
driven that you have to have equal results as opposed
to equal opportunity and equal resources. In the context of diversity,
equity and inclusion, it has a very racial tone to
it racial aspect to it. And so if outcomes, if
outcomes from a test, if outcomes from whatever the competition
happens to be, if outcomes from admissions do not reflect
the racial mix that they believe it should be, they
believe that that reflects necessarily racism, and so their idea
of equity is to manipulate the race of students, to
manipulate racial and ethnic factors to reach what they consider
to be the ideal racial mix. So equity is equal results.
But in the context of what we normally talk about
it on campuses, it really is a racial quota system.
Speaker 1: It is assolutely contrary to meritocracy. Is it not.
Speaker 2: Well, Yes, because it's not looking at how a particular
person performs. It does not treat individuals as individuals. It
treats individuals as proxies for identity groups could be racial
identity groups, could be ethnic identity groups, could be sexual
or sexual orientation or sexual self identification identity groups. But
my main objection to DEI in general has been that
it is a group identity ideology at its core, and
you can't get away from that. People and students are
proxies for whatever their group is.
Speaker 1: Well We certainly have experienced the dangers of groupthink in
this country of late and certainly over the history of
this country at times as well. But these terms, diversity, equity, inclusion,
they all come with the subjective salt or seasoning of
a left that has been for years trying to control
the language, control of the definitions of the language. These
are are these not wide open terminalogy subject to change
to whatever the political necessity is, if you will.
Speaker 2: The terms themselves are essentially meaningless. It depends what you
do with them. And you need to understand that what's
referred to as diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI are
simply the action agenda of a critical race perspective, so
critical race theory that we heard so much about two
three years ago, and the left decided we need a
debate over what does it really mean? And it's just
a law school course, they would say, it's just you know, theoretical,
et cetera. And to a limited extent, they're right. It
is a law school legal concept that our legal systems,
in our structures are meant to preserve a racial hierarchy
and racial preferences, and there is no real search for truth.
There is no real law. It's all just a power play.
So critical race theory does that in a racial context.
It grew out of critical legal theory, which was a
more Marxist class sort of perspective that these structures in
society are meant to maintain the class structure, and they
substituted race for class in that classical Marxist paradigm. But
what has happened is DEI is how critical race concepts
are put into action. So DEI is the action item
to implement critical race theory. And that's why you get
into these definitional arguments and you get into these things,
and why it's very much in flux. It is whatever
the particular university department or professor or bureaucrat wants it
to be. There's no definite structure to it. But what
it almost always means, if not always, is it is
a group identity ideology that does not treat people as individuals,
treats them as proxies for their group. And that's why
you have training, you have classes, you have admissions practices
that treat people by group identity. So there is no
definitive definition of what DEI is other than it is
a group identity approach to implement the concepts from critical
race theory.
Speaker 1: And as you say, by design that terminology is in flux.
And this is something of course that has gone back
a long time. I mean, we think about DEI in
some ways popping up feels like overnight into the lexicon
into the general conversation over the last few years in
this country. But as you know, a critical race theory,
anti racism, all of these sorts of viewpoints that America
and Americans, particularly white Americans Americans are systemically racist. You know,
that's a viewpoint that goes back sometime. I remember being
an undergraduate at the University of Milwaukee many many years ago,
back in the early nineteen nineties, and I remember if
they weren't using this terminology, they certainly were employing the
ideology of it. How far does this stuff go back.
Speaker 2: Well, it goes back quite a way. As you say,
this is not something new. What happened was these ideas
percolated throughout academia. A lot of the practices took place
in academia. Maybe they weren't called diversity, equity inclusion, but
very race based focus on admissions. We've been litigating admission
affirmative action for decades now, and so these concepts were there,
the ideology was there. What changed and what made a
lot of people think it came out of nowhere was
post George Floyd that changed everything. It was almost like
they had plans on the shelf to push this very
deep into education and into society, but needed the excuse,
needed the spark, and the George Floyd death was the
spark the weaponization of black Lives Matter. Now, black Lives
Matter had existed and it's something we followed since before
it was even an organization. It was created. The hashtag
black Lives Matter was created after the Trayvon Martin death
and the George Zimmermann trial, which was an absolute valid
case of self defense, but that's when they created the hashtag.
And it was after the Michael Brown shooting that they
created the formal organizations and there are several of them,
but the formal organizations of Black Lives Matter based on
the false claim that Michael Brown was shot with his
hands up saying don't shoot. And so there was a
period of several years at least of Black Lives Matter
activism of those concepts, but they never really caught on
as much as they did after George Floyd when they're
burst out everywhere, and universities fell all over themselves to
virtue signal. Same with corporations. Corporations and foundations pledged fifty
billion that's b with a billion with a B, not million.
Fifty billion dollars to racial justice movements. Most of it
probably wasn't paid, but they pledged it, and campuses implemented
anti racism programs. And I witnessed that first hand to Cornell.
I teach at Cornell Law School, and in July, I
think it was or in June of twenty twenty, so
George Floyd died the end of May. In June of
twenty twenty, the president, then president of the university, Martha Pollock,
assigned Ibram Kendy's book How to Be An Anti Racist
as summer reading for the university. Not mandatory, you aren't
going to be tested on it, but every summer there's
one book that the university selects as recommended reading for
the entire university and which will be subject for undergraduates
to seminars and other programming in the fall. And they
selected Ibram Kennedy's book How to Be An Anti Racist
it was offered free online to anyone with the Cornell
ID and so I read it online for free, and
it was pretty horrifying. It really instilled the concept of
reverse racism, of retaliatory racism, and it was pretty horrible.
And then in July she announced unilaterally announced a campus
wide anti racism initiative based on the Kenny Book, which
forced onto the campus essentially Kendy's theory and staff was
immediately required to start attending trainings and seminars as part
of their employment requirement, and they were going to be
judged based on how well they did at implementing anti
racism in their jobs. And Kenny's most famous saying is
that current discrimination is justified to remedy past discrimination, and
future discrimination is justified to justify to remedy current discription.
So basically, it is an anti constitutional, anti Fourteenth Amendment,
anti Civil Rights Act ideology that was implemented on Cornell's campus.
The president was able to do that to the staff
because that's administrative. She was also wanted it imposed on
students and faculty. For that, she actually had to go
to the faculty Senate, where, surprisingly to me, shockingly to me,
there was some pushback about that. But that's what you
saw at campuses everywhere. You saw purges of professors who
criticized that. There was a fairly significant attempt to get
me fired because I criticized the rioting and the looting
of Black Lives Matter and the Black Lives Matter ideology.
So it seemed like it came out of nowhere. It
was erupting everywhere, every campus, every corporation, every government entity
was jumping on this Ebram Kendy style anti racism paradigm.
But it didn't come out of nowhere. It had been
at least one, probably two decades in the making.
Speaker 1: It is amazing to me all that you just brought
us through. It's amazing and painful to think back, as
you're absolutely right. I mean, there was a real purge
going on in our institutions of higher education and government,
in business and elsewhere, and it was all based on
this stuff. We just we seem to have lost our
collective minds in the summer of twenty twenty. I now,
I know there are a lot of moving parts in
all of that. We had this pandemic. There was fear
driving a lot of things. There was an election watched
by the world. In this country it's a different topic altogether,
But all of these things are just a millage of
just nasty things happening. And the outcome was again Americans
moving away from the room, rule of law, from basic
founding principles to pick up this ideology. How much of
this is tied to the Marxist movement over the years
in this country and around the world.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned, basically, what the left has done in
the United States at least is substitute race for class,
and so as opposed to perpetual class warfare, it's now
perpetual racial warfare and ethnic warfare, and that is the ideology.
So a lot of people say, is it Marxist? Is
it not Marxist? Well, the structure is similar, but it's
race instead of class. And I think that's deliberate because
the people who want to tear down our society, which
is the goal the state was the stated goal of
the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. I'm forgetting
their names, three women who founded it, who described themselves
as a vowed Marxist. Their words, not my words. And
if you want to tear apart American society, class isn't
really going to work because we were a very fluid society.
We're a society where you can move up the economic
chain if you have talent and you have drive and
you work hard, and many people do that. You know,
many of our billionaires were not born into billions. The
people who founded major tech companies things like that, they
may have been middle class or up in middle class,
but they certainly didn't come from you know, billionaire class people.
So there's enormous, enormous mobility, economic mobility in the United States.
We just don't have the class structure where that works.
And so tearing our country apart based on class warfare
was never going to work, and it didn't work. But
race is something you can't change skin color, you can't
change ethnic history, you can't change and so very you know, adroitly,
the Marxists, mostly academia to start, recognized they need something
better than class in order to tear down our society,
and they found race, and they have been exploiting it
at least since the nineteen eighties. So I was at
Harvard Law School. I graduated Harvard Law School in nineteen
eighty four. Harvard Law School was the epicenter of the
critical legal studies movement. But I noticed, even in the
early eighties, before there was even the term critical race theory,
I noticed them injecting race into a lot of things,
most particularly in terms of the anti Israel movement on campus,
which was small at that time, but it was there
trying to portray that dispute as a racial dispute. And
so you began to see this racialization of critical legal theory.
And so by the late eighties early nineties it now
was beginning to be called critical race theory. One of
the person who invented that term and is still to
this day one of the leading proprietors of it, was
a classmate of mine at Harvard Law School. So I
witnessed this all in real time. I saw how everything
became racialized. And so is it Marxist? It grew out
of a Marxist approach to society, substituting race for class,
and so yes, people I think are generally accurate when
they call it.
Speaker 1: That interesting legal insurrection. Of course, it's written a lot
about DEI initiatives and programs and mandates in our government
and our institutions of higher education. I just wrote a
piece for the Federalist and the Federalist obviously has also
taken a good deal of time in investigating looking into these policies.
But you know, this is just thresh. We have a
potential lawsuit coming out of the state of Wisconsin in
Green Bay, Wisconsin's fourth largest school district, where you have
it appears to be a policy. There's some mincing of
words about what exactly it is, but it appears to
be the case that you have in one case, a
young elementary school student who was left out of an
essential reading assistance program. The boy was diagnosed with dyslexia.
He was left out because of the color of his skin,
and in twenty twenty four, that means the color of
his skin white. They have a program in Green Bay.
It appears that focuses those kinds of vital resources, those
reading resources on certain racial classes black, Hispanic, and Native American,
or as they describe it, nation origin, nation, or however
it's defined these days, it's hard to keep up with
the language. That appears to be a pretty egregious example.
What are some of the more egregious examples that you
have seen in the DEI movement in higher education over
the last few years in this country?
Speaker 2: We form the Equal Protection Project, which is equalprotect dot
org specifically to address the problems we were finding. So
we have a website launched in February twenty twenty one
called critical race dot org, which documents completely source linked
documents the spread of critical race theory and its variants
throughout higher education, the professional schools, medical schools, and what
we call elite private K through twelve meaning the national
ranked boarding schools, and through that we began to get
a lot of complaints from people about what they were
seeing go on. So in February twenty twenty three, we
launched Equal Protection Project and brought over fifty challenges to
programs where there is just outright discrimination. They will have
a program where eligibility you have to be bipop, or
you have to be black, or you have to be
you know, non white student of color. They use different terms,
but basically outright discrimination at public universities. At private universities,
we found forty two such programs At University of Illinois,
Urbana Champagne. We just filed one with fifty one programs
that discriminate. I think it was thirty some odd based
on race and ethnicity and twenty some odd based on sex,
which is also unlawful title mind, you know, so it's rampant.
The administrators don't seem to care. We file the cl
We've been filing them for the most part at the
Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education, and
in about half the cases the schools will back down
almost immediately, but they pop up elsewhere. It's like playing
whack mole. So there is a widespread practice in higher
education of open discrimination. So it's just about everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me that, you know, we talked about
what was going on in twenty twenty fighting this fight
at one point, and to some degree even into today
after much so much has changed, but it was a
lonely place to be on a very difficult battleground. For sure.
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Speaker 1: Our guest today is William A. Jacobson, Clinical Professor of
Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell
Law School and founder of Legal Insurrection website. By joining
us to talk about excising DEI diversity, equity and inclusion
from America's colleges and universities on this edition of The
Federalist Radio Hour. How do you do that? As you mentioned,
it's whack them all, you know, I think about it.
I think about this election in many ways was a
scene chain intellection based on the fatigue of the American
and the American voter in particular over what we've seen
in DEI all manners of it. You know, everything from
transgender sports men in women's sporting events, all the way
through some of the programs like the one I talked
about in Green Bay that is favoring racial classes over
you know, others that still have the same educational needs.
This is a massive industry, as we just reported at
the Federalist a billion dollars plus has gone out in
contracts from the Biden administration over President Biden's tenure in office.
That compares to nineteen million under the first Trump administration.
How do you go up against that powerful mass of money.
Speaker 2: There's a couple of ways in that related to each other.
One is enforcement. You don't need new laws and you
don't need new regulations. When money is given out in
federal grants, they have to abide by the Civil Rights Act,
they have to abide by the non discrimination laws. And
what we've seen in the higher education realm is the
Department of Education under Biden, which is the time period
we've been doing it, has been fairly lacks in terms
of enforcement. They have the power to pull funding from
these schools, they have the power to take remedial action
against these schools, and they don't do it. So I
think the first thing that needs to happen is whether
it's through the ocr Office for Civil Rights of the
Department of Education or the Office for Civil Rights of
the Department of Justice. And there's some talk about how
those might be reconfigured under the new administration, but regardless
is take enforcement action. So a perfect example is they
need to make a test case. They need to make
an example of somebody, and we just filed a case
against the University of Rhode Island with fifty one openly
discriminatory scholarships. The Department of Education incoming needs to make
an example of that, needs to send a message messages
to colleges that when you get federal money, including money
from the Department of Education, you have certain obligations in
order to keep that money and to continue funding, and
one of those obligations is non discrimination. So the first
prong of what needs to happen is the federal government
needs to start enforcing the rules and regulations they already
have that require non discrimination if you're going to get
federal funding, and they've not been doing that. In fact,
as you indicate, if anything, they've been going the opposite
direction and encouraging this discrimination. The second one, which is
completely related, is the funding itself. That money is the
only thing that will motivate universities to change their ways.
They don't really care about public opinion because they're very insulated.
They're already in a bubble, particularly elite universities, but even
some high ranking public universities like University of Michigan. So
the federal government needs to start to pull funding from
some of these universities unless they clean up their acts.
Money is the lifeblood of these places. The federal government
funding dwarfs all other funding that sources that these schools have.
If a perfect example goes back I think twenty thirty
years ago, something called the Solomon Amendment. Solomon Amendment was
when universities would refuse to allow military recruiters on campus
because of the don't ask, don't tell policy of the
Department of Defense, and Harvard Law School barred military recruiters
military jag core recruiters from coming to campus, and that
violated the Solomon Amendment, which was congressional legislation that said
if you do not treat military recruiters on equal footing
as other recruiters, you lose your federal funding. And Harvard
challenged that law, went up to the Supreme Court, and
the Supreme Court upheld it and said, you have no
constitutional right to federal funding, and if you want the
federal funding, you take it on the terms and conditions
that the federal government imposes. And Harvard ended up backing
down because it could not risk, because not just Harvard
Law School, but Harvard University would have lost all of
its federal funding hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
That's what the federal government needs to do. It needs
to say to these schools that you cannot engage in discrimination,
you cannot violate the law and keep your federal funding,
and we will pull it. Pull it for one or
two universities, and you will see hundreds of others fall
into line. But you don't get that. Pull it from Harvard,
pull it from Columbia where there've been atrocious conduct and
atrocious misconduct, and you will see everybody come around to it.
And I guarantee you Harvard will back down, just like
they back down on the military recruiters. So combination of
enforcing the laws that we have and using the power
of federal funding to make sure that they comply.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: I true our words never said money talks, and we
have learned over the last several years that money definitely
talks on college campuses. Isn't it funny? Do you find
it curious? I mean, there's still the backlash from these
universities and the tough talk and all of these sorts
of things. But there have been universities who have back
down on the DEI sort of thing. I think about
the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin in the
Midwest because they felt like they're funding source of revenue
from the state. In those cases, it's coming to was
in peril. Do you find it curious how the values
that they espouse administration on these campuses about diversity, equity,
and inclusion can disappear when we're talking about cash.
Speaker 2: That's right, And I should have mentioned also that states
have a role in this. I mean there are half
dozen or more red states which have used their power
over public universities, have used their power over funding to
bring the universities back towards the center. Because when diversity
is spoken about on campuses, it's never diversity of viewpoint.
There is no diversity of viewpoint on most campuses. The
faculty and I just know Cornell is close to one
hundred percent liberal to left leaning to far left leaning.
The Cornell Sun student newspaper has done many surveys over
the years of donations from faculty, party registration of faculty,
and it is literally close to one hundred percent liberal
to Democrat. And so there really is no diversity of
faculty on the dorsey of faculty when it comes to viewpoint,
when it comes to political orientation, they don't care if
they're happy that way only, and that creates a very
toxic campus environment. So, you know, states have a big
role at bringing things back to the center. Nobody is
under an illusion that we're going to all of a
sudden have a bunch of conservative you know, public universities.
That's not going to happen. But at least introduce some
diversity into the faculty, because the faculty drives a lot
of these things.
Speaker 1: I spoke about it before, but the loneliness of the
conservative on college campuses has always been, you know, an issue,
but it's gotten so much worse over the years. You've
been in this business a long time. Do you ever
feel like, you know, as there been a time you
feel like you're tilting at windmills or that you're howling
into the wind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is not an exaggeration, or if it's,
it's not by much. You know, Cornell University which a big,
sprawling place. They've got the Ithaca campus, the medical school
in New York City. I think their faculty number is
ballpark eighteen hundred ballpark. Of those eighteen hundred, you can
count on one hand the number of faculty who are
openly politically conservative. And when I say politically conservative and
openly is important. There may be voters out there among
faculty who keep it to themselves. There may be faculty
who consider themselves economically or religiously conservative, but people who
are outspoken about the political angle of things are almost
non existent. I would say I'm the only one, but
there might be a couple of others, but I am
close to the only one out of a faculty of
eighteen hundred. Certainly, I'm the only one at the law
school who's openly politically conservative. And I don't think that's
an exception. Now, how many are openly politically liberal to
left huge numbers. I mean, it's almost taken for granted.
So you know, do I feel like I'm tilting it
at windmills sometimes? Yeah? But I also know that even
having one faculty member who is outspoken the way I
am gives a lot of strength to the students. I'm
the faculty advisor to almost every, if not every right
of center student group on campus. And to think it's
because I'm so wonderful, but the reality is there's literally
nobody they can go to. There is nobody else who's
willing to serve as a faculty advisor for a lot
of these groups, if not most of the groups. And therefore,
you know, I feel my role is extremely important. I
think even having one dissident on a campus makes a
big difference. The campus is still very, very wedded to
the DEI camp, to the DEI agenda at the administrative level,
but I do believe having me speak out against DEI,
and I've openly called on the Board of Trustees to
get rid of it completely, get it out of our system,
that even having one person can make a difference. And
so I don't pretend that I've changed the course of
the university, but it's really important that there's at least
somebody speaking out. And when I eventually retire, which will happen,
they'll literally be nobody on the campus to speak out
on these issues, which is why I think it's extremely
important that these changes be made that the Trump administration
will have the power to do soon, because the small
small number of not I wouldn't even say conservative, of
non liberal professors is aging out you know, I'm sixty five.
I don't know how many more years I'll do this,
but you know, so I think it's important. I don't
think I've been tilting it will win Mills. It is lonely, okay.
But I draw strength from the students, who are far
more moderate than the professors as a group. Uh. And
I draw, you know, strength from the alumni, who are
far more moderate as a group than the administrators and
the faculty. And I hope, I hope change comes, and
I hope change comes in the next four years.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you this, I don't believe that you're
tilting at Windmills. For what it's worth. I have long
admired your work, and a dear friend of mine for years.
We lost him at the university at Marquette University a
few years back. But John McAdams, who was fighting the
same fight on that Jesuit school campus, which you think
wouldn't have all of the kind of battles that maybe
a Cornell has had, or a UCLA or Columbia or
those sorts of things. But they've been steeped in dei
in anti racism and critical race theory culture for a
long time, and John courageously fought those battles to the
point of the threat of his job, and I'm sure
you have faced those same kind of things as you
mentioned before. But you're right. There is a new day coming,
and I think that you have a receptive audience. The
President elect, the forty fifth and soon to be forty
seventh president, who has been very outspoken about his feelings
on DEI in this entire movement. Christopher Ruffo has talked
to President elect Donald Trump, how successful can this administration be?
An administration that is set on fighting the swamp, draining
the swamp? Can it drain the DEI swamp?
Speaker 2: It can drain it, mostly because we've only been talking
about higher education, but the DEI agenda from the federal
government goes so much more deep. The National Institutes for Health,
National Science Foundation, various other bureaucracies have incorporated DEI requirements
into their eligibility for federal funding. So if you're a scientist,
you may have to prove that you've you adhere to DEI.
Those are things Trump can get rid of with the
stroke of a pen, and I hope he will on
day one. I hope he will. That will eliminate an
enormous source unrelated to education, an enormous source of DEI
discrimination that takes place at the behest of the federal
government and frankly as a federal government requirement. So I
think he can do a lot. And again, if he
does the enforcement and the use of federal budget, federal
funding for colleges and universities, and also K through twelve,
I think he can do a lot. Can he solve
the problem, No, because people need to understand this is
quasi religious for the adherents. It really is a religion
for the DEI bureaucracy and the DEI advocates in many ways.
And so will he get rid of it completely. No,
But can he make enormous changes if he does it
in a smart way. Yes. I don't think he was
prepared in his first term for what he would face
in terms of sabotage from the bureaucracy, sabotage from the states.
But if he does it smarter this time, and I
have every reason to believe he will because he's had
experience and he's got advisors who are mapping things out
for him, I think it can make a tremendous, tremendous impact,
just to show you the power of an idea on
campus in the run up to the oral argument in
the affirmative action case. So this was the fall. I'm
getting losing track of the years. Whether it's twenty twenty
two or twenty twenty three, I guess it was twenty
twenty two. So in the fall of twenty twenty two,
the Cornell Political Union, which is a truly nonpartisan debate
society basically Cornell's campus, invited me to debate affirmative action.
And they do it Oxford style debate where the speaker
gives a presentation, takes questions, then the students debate among themselves,
and I advocated the position that against affirmative action, race
based affirmative action, and lo and behold. At the end,
they take a secret vote, secret ballot vote, and my
proposition passed. So on a college campus where you would think,
you know, ninety nine percent of the students would be
in favor of affirmative action, effect, I won the vote
at the Cornell Political Union. I think part of that
reason was it was a secret ballot. You just signed
your piece of paper and put it in. You didn't
have to put your name on it, and so I
have hope that students are not as indoctrinated as we
would think, and that there is hope that the power
of ideas can prevail on the campuses. But I'm also
realistic that there are massive institutional forces, including massive bureaucracies,
who were devoted to making sure DEI continues. So I
think Trump can do tremendous accomplishments, but nobody should think
in four years this is over.
Speaker 1: So you're telling us there's a chance that.
Speaker 2: It's a one in a million chances. They say in
the movie, Yeah, there's a chance. I mean there's a
chance to make substantial progress. Whether it can be purged
from the discrimination done in the name of DEI, can
be purged completely from the system, I think probably not,
because it will continue to live on in faculty, it
will continue to live on in bureaucracies, and you may
not be able to change their minds. But I think
if we create a culture of equality on the campuses,
if we go back to explaining the virtue of treating
people as individuals rather than as proxies for groups, I
think you'll find a receptive audience on most campuses. Whether
they'll admit to it, I don't know, because there's a
lot of social pressures to go along. But I think
I think this can. There is a chance, but it's
got to come from outside the universities. The universities have
faculties and to some extend, administrations have become so radicalized
that I do not believe internal change is possible. It
will take an external force like the federal government and
the state governments to force them to come back to
the middle.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In other words, the cancer is already there and it
is going to take, as you say, external forces to
remove excise that cancer. Final question for you, what is next?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 1: What does twenty twenty five look like? For William Jacobson
and the Equal Protection Project?
Speaker 2: I think we're going to keep doing what we're doing.
We've had a big impact. We've I think helped change
the culture. There are certainly many other people who've done
as much, if not more, than we've done. But we're
part of a movement that I believe has change the
culture around DEI. That has changed the culture enough around
DEI that political change is now possible on the campuses
when it comes to DEI, that structural change is possible.
So we're going to keep plugging away. We're going to
keep filing legal claims. We hope to increase the number
of lawsuits we have as opposed to Office for Civil
Rights complaints. We're going to continue to speak out on this.
So we're going to keep doing what we're doing, hopefully
at a more aggressive and higher level. And for the
first time in our existence as a foundation, as a
nonprofit foundation, we will actually have the federal government on
our side. It's going to be a very strange feeling
to have the federal government on your side, not hostile
to you. So we're looking forward to twenty twenty five
and we hope that the incoming administration is successful in
affecting change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll be a bit, Dorothy. It'll not be Kansas anymore,
that's for sure, and quite frankly, that's a good thing.
I wish you godspeed and good luck in your efforts.
And thank you so much for joining us on this
edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. Thank you for having
me indeed anytime. Thanks to my guest today, William A. Jacobson,
Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law
Clinic at Cornell Law School, Founder of Legal Insurrection, The
Great website, joining us to talk about DEI where we
go from here not America's colleges and universities. Professor Jacobson
is also founder of the Equal Protection Project. You've been
listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm
Matt Kittle, senior correspondent at The Federalist. We'll be back
soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and
anxious for the pray.
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