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Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist

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Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the

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Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.

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As always, you can email the show at radio at

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the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,

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make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and

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of course to the premium version of our website as well.

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Our guest today is William A. Jacobson, Clinical Professor of

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Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell

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Law School and founder of Legal Insurrection the Great website,

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joining us to talk today about excising DEI diversity, equity

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in inclusion initiatives and programs from America's colleges and universities.

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Professor Jacobson is also founder of the Equal Protection Project,

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devoted to the fair treatment of all persons without regard

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to race or ethnicity. The project will not only investigate

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racial preference programs, but also litigate when necessary. I found

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that of course at the Cornell Review. Gets your copy today.

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Professor Jacobson, thank you so much for joining us on

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this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for having me on.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely. We have spoken in the past about all kinds

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of government abuses, this is certainly one area of government

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abuse that has absolutely exploded over the last several years

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in this country. You told Tucker Carlson not too long ago,

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this our highest ideal as a society is enshrined in

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the Constitution, the fourteenth Amendment and federal, state and local law,

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which is, you do not discriminate on the basis of

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race or ethnicity. And we are seeing that, unfortunately, under

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the concept of equity, that there is outright discrimination on

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the basis of race. It is an interesting time in

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this country, a country that truly has dealt with the

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scourge of racism, discrimination and bias, a country though, that

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has moved away from the idea of equality into equity.

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Let's start there. What does the left mean when it

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says or uses the term equity.

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Speaker 2: Well, equity they distinguish from equality. So equality is where

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everybody receives equal treatment. Equity in their minds is outcome

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driven that you have to have equal results as opposed

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to equal opportunity and equal resources. In the context of diversity,

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equity and inclusion, it has a very racial tone to

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it racial aspect to it. And so if outcomes, if

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outcomes from a test, if outcomes from whatever the competition

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happens to be, if outcomes from admissions do not reflect

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the racial mix that they believe it should be, they

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believe that that reflects necessarily racism, and so their idea

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of equity is to manipulate the race of students, to

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manipulate racial and ethnic factors to reach what they consider

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to be the ideal racial mix. So equity is equal results.

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But in the context of what we normally talk about

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it on campuses, it really is a racial quota system.

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Speaker 1: It is assolutely contrary to meritocracy. Is it not.

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Speaker 2: Well, Yes, because it's not looking at how a particular

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person performs. It does not treat individuals as individuals. It

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treats individuals as proxies for identity groups could be racial

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identity groups, could be ethnic identity groups, could be sexual

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or sexual orientation or sexual self identification identity groups. But

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my main objection to DEI in general has been that

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it is a group identity ideology at its core, and

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you can't get away from that. People and students are

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proxies for whatever their group is.

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Speaker 1: Well We certainly have experienced the dangers of groupthink in

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this country of late and certainly over the history of

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this country at times as well. But these terms, diversity, equity, inclusion,

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they all come with the subjective salt or seasoning of

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a left that has been for years trying to control

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the language, control of the definitions of the language. These

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are are these not wide open terminalogy subject to change

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to whatever the political necessity is, if you will.

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Speaker 2: The terms themselves are essentially meaningless. It depends what you

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do with them. And you need to understand that what's

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referred to as diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI are

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simply the action agenda of a critical race perspective, so

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critical race theory that we heard so much about two

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three years ago, and the left decided we need a

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debate over what does it really mean? And it's just

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a law school course, they would say, it's just you know, theoretical,

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et cetera. And to a limited extent, they're right. It

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is a law school legal concept that our legal systems,

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in our structures are meant to preserve a racial hierarchy

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and racial preferences, and there is no real search for truth.

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There is no real law. It's all just a power play.

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So critical race theory does that in a racial context.

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It grew out of critical legal theory, which was a

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more Marxist class sort of perspective that these structures in

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society are meant to maintain the class structure, and they

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substituted race for class in that classical Marxist paradigm. But

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what has happened is DEI is how critical race concepts

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are put into action. So DEI is the action item

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to implement critical race theory. And that's why you get

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into these definitional arguments and you get into these things,

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and why it's very much in flux. It is whatever

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the particular university department or professor or bureaucrat wants it

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to be. There's no definite structure to it. But what

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it almost always means, if not always, is it is

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a group identity ideology that does not treat people as individuals,

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treats them as proxies for their group. And that's why

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you have training, you have classes, you have admissions practices

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that treat people by group identity. So there is no

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definitive definition of what DEI is other than it is

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a group identity approach to implement the concepts from critical

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race theory.

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Speaker 1: And as you say, by design that terminology is in flux.

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And this is something of course that has gone back

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a long time. I mean, we think about DEI in

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some ways popping up feels like overnight into the lexicon

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into the general conversation over the last few years in

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this country. But as you know, a critical race theory,

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anti racism, all of these sorts of viewpoints that America

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and Americans, particularly white Americans Americans are systemically racist. You know,

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that's a viewpoint that goes back sometime. I remember being

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an undergraduate at the University of Milwaukee many many years ago,

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back in the early nineteen nineties, and I remember if

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they weren't using this terminology, they certainly were employing the

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ideology of it. How far does this stuff go back.

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Speaker 2: Well, it goes back quite a way. As you say,

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this is not something new. What happened was these ideas

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percolated throughout academia. A lot of the practices took place

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in academia. Maybe they weren't called diversity, equity inclusion, but

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very race based focus on admissions. We've been litigating admission

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affirmative action for decades now, and so these concepts were there,

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the ideology was there. What changed and what made a

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lot of people think it came out of nowhere was

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post George Floyd that changed everything. It was almost like

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they had plans on the shelf to push this very

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deep into education and into society, but needed the excuse,

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needed the spark, and the George Floyd death was the

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spark the weaponization of black Lives Matter. Now, black Lives

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Matter had existed and it's something we followed since before

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it was even an organization. It was created. The hashtag

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black Lives Matter was created after the Trayvon Martin death

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and the George Zimmermann trial, which was an absolute valid

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case of self defense, but that's when they created the hashtag.

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And it was after the Michael Brown shooting that they

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created the formal organizations and there are several of them,

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but the formal organizations of Black Lives Matter based on

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the false claim that Michael Brown was shot with his

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hands up saying don't shoot. And so there was a

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period of several years at least of Black Lives Matter

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activism of those concepts, but they never really caught on

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as much as they did after George Floyd when they're

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burst out everywhere, and universities fell all over themselves to

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virtue signal. Same with corporations. Corporations and foundations pledged fifty

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billion that's b with a billion with a B, not million.

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Fifty billion dollars to racial justice movements. Most of it

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probably wasn't paid, but they pledged it, and campuses implemented

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anti racism programs. And I witnessed that first hand to Cornell.

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I teach at Cornell Law School, and in July, I

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think it was or in June of twenty twenty, so

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George Floyd died the end of May. In June of

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twenty twenty, the president, then president of the university, Martha Pollock,

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assigned Ibram Kendy's book How to Be An Anti Racist

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as summer reading for the university. Not mandatory, you aren't

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going to be tested on it, but every summer there's

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one book that the university selects as recommended reading for

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the entire university and which will be subject for undergraduates

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to seminars and other programming in the fall. And they

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selected Ibram Kennedy's book How to Be An Anti Racist

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it was offered free online to anyone with the Cornell

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ID and so I read it online for free, and

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it was pretty horrifying. It really instilled the concept of

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reverse racism, of retaliatory racism, and it was pretty horrible.

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And then in July she announced unilaterally announced a campus

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wide anti racism initiative based on the Kenny Book, which

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forced onto the campus essentially Kendy's theory and staff was

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immediately required to start attending trainings and seminars as part

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of their employment requirement, and they were going to be

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judged based on how well they did at implementing anti

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racism in their jobs. And Kenny's most famous saying is

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that current discrimination is justified to remedy past discrimination, and

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future discrimination is justified to justify to remedy current discription.

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So basically, it is an anti constitutional, anti Fourteenth Amendment,

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anti Civil Rights Act ideology that was implemented on Cornell's campus.

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The president was able to do that to the staff

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because that's administrative. She was also wanted it imposed on

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students and faculty. For that, she actually had to go

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to the faculty Senate, where, surprisingly to me, shockingly to me,

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there was some pushback about that. But that's what you

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saw at campuses everywhere. You saw purges of professors who

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criticized that. There was a fairly significant attempt to get

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me fired because I criticized the rioting and the looting

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of Black Lives Matter and the Black Lives Matter ideology.

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So it seemed like it came out of nowhere. It

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was erupting everywhere, every campus, every corporation, every government entity

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was jumping on this Ebram Kendy style anti racism paradigm.

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But it didn't come out of nowhere. It had been

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at least one, probably two decades in the making.

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Speaker 1: It is amazing to me all that you just brought

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us through. It's amazing and painful to think back, as

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you're absolutely right. I mean, there was a real purge

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going on in our institutions of higher education and government,

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in business and elsewhere, and it was all based on

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this stuff. We just we seem to have lost our

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collective minds in the summer of twenty twenty. I now,

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I know there are a lot of moving parts in

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all of that. We had this pandemic. There was fear

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driving a lot of things. There was an election watched

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by the world. In this country it's a different topic altogether,

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But all of these things are just a millage of

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just nasty things happening. And the outcome was again Americans

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moving away from the room, rule of law, from basic

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founding principles to pick up this ideology. How much of

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this is tied to the Marxist movement over the years

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in this country and around the world.

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Speaker 2: As I mentioned, basically, what the left has done in

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the United States at least is substitute race for class,

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and so as opposed to perpetual class warfare, it's now

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perpetual racial warfare and ethnic warfare, and that is the ideology.

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So a lot of people say, is it Marxist? Is

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it not Marxist? Well, the structure is similar, but it's

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race instead of class. And I think that's deliberate because

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the people who want to tear down our society, which

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is the goal the state was the stated goal of

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the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. I'm forgetting

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their names, three women who founded it, who described themselves

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as a vowed Marxist. Their words, not my words. And

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if you want to tear apart American society, class isn't

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really going to work because we were a very fluid society.

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We're a society where you can move up the economic

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chain if you have talent and you have drive and

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you work hard, and many people do that. You know,

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many of our billionaires were not born into billions. The

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people who founded major tech companies things like that, they

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may have been middle class or up in middle class,

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but they certainly didn't come from you know, billionaire class people.

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So there's enormous, enormous mobility, economic mobility in the United States.

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We just don't have the class structure where that works.

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And so tearing our country apart based on class warfare

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was never going to work, and it didn't work. But

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race is something you can't change skin color, you can't

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change ethnic history, you can't change and so very you know, adroitly,

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the Marxists, mostly academia to start, recognized they need something

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better than class in order to tear down our society,

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and they found race, and they have been exploiting it

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at least since the nineteen eighties. So I was at

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Harvard Law School. I graduated Harvard Law School in nineteen

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eighty four. Harvard Law School was the epicenter of the

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critical legal studies movement. But I noticed, even in the

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early eighties, before there was even the term critical race theory,

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I noticed them injecting race into a lot of things,

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most particularly in terms of the anti Israel movement on campus,

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which was small at that time, but it was there

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trying to portray that dispute as a racial dispute. And

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so you began to see this racialization of critical legal theory.

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And so by the late eighties early nineties it now

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was beginning to be called critical race theory. One of

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the person who invented that term and is still to

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this day one of the leading proprietors of it, was

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a classmate of mine at Harvard Law School. So I

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witnessed this all in real time. I saw how everything

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became racialized. And so is it Marxist? It grew out

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of a Marxist approach to society, substituting race for class,

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and so yes, people I think are generally accurate when

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they call it.

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Speaker 1: That interesting legal insurrection. Of course, it's written a lot

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about DEI initiatives and programs and mandates in our government

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and our institutions of higher education. I just wrote a

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piece for the Federalist and the Federalist obviously has also

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taken a good deal of time in investigating looking into these policies.

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But you know, this is just thresh. We have a

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potential lawsuit coming out of the state of Wisconsin in

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Green Bay, Wisconsin's fourth largest school district, where you have

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it appears to be a policy. There's some mincing of

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words about what exactly it is, but it appears to

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be the case that you have in one case, a

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young elementary school student who was left out of an

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essential reading assistance program. The boy was diagnosed with dyslexia.

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He was left out because of the color of his skin,

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and in twenty twenty four, that means the color of

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his skin white. They have a program in Green Bay.

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It appears that focuses those kinds of vital resources, those

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reading resources on certain racial classes black, Hispanic, and Native American,

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or as they describe it, nation origin, nation, or however

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it's defined these days, it's hard to keep up with

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the language. That appears to be a pretty egregious example.

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What are some of the more egregious examples that you

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have seen in the DEI movement in higher education over

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the last few years in this country?

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Speaker 2: We form the Equal Protection Project, which is equalprotect dot

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org specifically to address the problems we were finding. So

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we have a website launched in February twenty twenty one

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called critical race dot org, which documents completely source linked

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documents the spread of critical race theory and its variants

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throughout higher education, the professional schools, medical schools, and what

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we call elite private K through twelve meaning the national

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ranked boarding schools, and through that we began to get

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a lot of complaints from people about what they were

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seeing go on. So in February twenty twenty three, we

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launched Equal Protection Project and brought over fifty challenges to

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programs where there is just outright discrimination. They will have

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a program where eligibility you have to be bipop, or

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you have to be black, or you have to be

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you know, non white student of color. They use different terms,

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but basically outright discrimination at public universities. At private universities,

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we found forty two such programs At University of Illinois,

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Urbana Champagne. We just filed one with fifty one programs

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that discriminate. I think it was thirty some odd based

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on race and ethnicity and twenty some odd based on sex,

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which is also unlawful title mind, you know, so it's rampant.

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The administrators don't seem to care. We file the cl

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We've been filing them for the most part at the

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Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education, and

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in about half the cases the schools will back down

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almost immediately, but they pop up elsewhere. It's like playing

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whack mole. So there is a widespread practice in higher

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education of open discrimination. So it's just about everywhere.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting to me that, you know, we talked about

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what was going on in twenty twenty fighting this fight

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at one point, and to some degree even into today

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after much so much has changed, but it was a

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lonely place to be on a very difficult battleground. For sure.

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Speaker 3: This liberal Attorney general thinks it's Amazon's fault. The Watched

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00:22:57,000 --> 00:22:59,759
Out on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski every day

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00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:02,839
has helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy

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and how it affects your wallet.

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Speaker 2: The age of.

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Speaker 3: DC is going after Amazon because of delivery times in

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rough neighborhoods. Maybe if he would go after the crime,

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the deliveries would come quicker. Amazon's just protecting their employees.

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Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,

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00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:20,000
it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the Watchdot

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on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify,

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or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Our guest today is William A. Jacobson, Clinical Professor of

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Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell

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Law School and founder of Legal Insurrection website. By joining

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us to talk about excising DEI diversity, equity and inclusion

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from America's colleges and universities on this edition of The

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Federalist Radio Hour. How do you do that? As you mentioned,

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it's whack them all, you know, I think about it.

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I think about this election in many ways was a

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scene chain intellection based on the fatigue of the American

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and the American voter in particular over what we've seen

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in DEI all manners of it. You know, everything from

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transgender sports men in women's sporting events, all the way

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through some of the programs like the one I talked

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about in Green Bay that is favoring racial classes over

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you know, others that still have the same educational needs.

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This is a massive industry, as we just reported at

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the Federalist a billion dollars plus has gone out in

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contracts from the Biden administration over President Biden's tenure in office.

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That compares to nineteen million under the first Trump administration.

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How do you go up against that powerful mass of money.

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Speaker 2: There's a couple of ways in that related to each other.

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One is enforcement. You don't need new laws and you

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don't need new regulations. When money is given out in

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federal grants, they have to abide by the Civil Rights Act,

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they have to abide by the non discrimination laws. And

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what we've seen in the higher education realm is the

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Department of Education under Biden, which is the time period

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we've been doing it, has been fairly lacks in terms

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of enforcement. They have the power to pull funding from

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these schools, they have the power to take remedial action

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against these schools, and they don't do it. So I

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think the first thing that needs to happen is whether

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it's through the ocr Office for Civil Rights of the

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Department of Education or the Office for Civil Rights of

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the Department of Justice. And there's some talk about how

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those might be reconfigured under the new administration, but regardless

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is take enforcement action. So a perfect example is they

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need to make a test case. They need to make

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an example of somebody, and we just filed a case

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against the University of Rhode Island with fifty one openly

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discriminatory scholarships. The Department of Education incoming needs to make

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an example of that, needs to send a message messages

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to colleges that when you get federal money, including money

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from the Department of Education, you have certain obligations in

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order to keep that money and to continue funding, and

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one of those obligations is non discrimination. So the first

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prong of what needs to happen is the federal government

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needs to start enforcing the rules and regulations they already

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have that require non discrimination if you're going to get

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federal funding, and they've not been doing that. In fact,

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as you indicate, if anything, they've been going the opposite

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direction and encouraging this discrimination. The second one, which is

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completely related, is the funding itself. That money is the

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only thing that will motivate universities to change their ways.

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They don't really care about public opinion because they're very insulated.

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They're already in a bubble, particularly elite universities, but even

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some high ranking public universities like University of Michigan. So

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the federal government needs to start to pull funding from

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some of these universities unless they clean up their acts.

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Money is the lifeblood of these places. The federal government

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funding dwarfs all other funding that sources that these schools have.

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If a perfect example goes back I think twenty thirty

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years ago, something called the Solomon Amendment. Solomon Amendment was

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when universities would refuse to allow military recruiters on campus

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because of the don't ask, don't tell policy of the

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Department of Defense, and Harvard Law School barred military recruiters

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military jag core recruiters from coming to campus, and that

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violated the Solomon Amendment, which was congressional legislation that said

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if you do not treat military recruiters on equal footing

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as other recruiters, you lose your federal funding. And Harvard

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challenged that law, went up to the Supreme Court, and

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the Supreme Court upheld it and said, you have no

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constitutional right to federal funding, and if you want the

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federal funding, you take it on the terms and conditions

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that the federal government imposes. And Harvard ended up backing

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down because it could not risk, because not just Harvard

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Law School, but Harvard University would have lost all of

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its federal funding hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

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That's what the federal government needs to do. It needs

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to say to these schools that you cannot engage in discrimination,

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you cannot violate the law and keep your federal funding,

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and we will pull it. Pull it for one or

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two universities, and you will see hundreds of others fall

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into line. But you don't get that. Pull it from Harvard,

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pull it from Columbia where there've been atrocious conduct and

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atrocious misconduct, and you will see everybody come around to it.

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And I guarantee you Harvard will back down, just like

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they back down on the military recruiters. So combination of

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enforcing the laws that we have and using the power

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of federal funding to make sure that they comply.

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Speaker 3: Well.

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Speaker 1: I true our words never said money talks, and we

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have learned over the last several years that money definitely

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talks on college campuses. Isn't it funny? Do you find

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it curious? I mean, there's still the backlash from these

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universities and the tough talk and all of these sorts

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of things. But there have been universities who have back

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down on the DEI sort of thing. I think about

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the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin in the

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Midwest because they felt like they're funding source of revenue

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from the state. In those cases, it's coming to was

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in peril. Do you find it curious how the values

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that they espouse administration on these campuses about diversity, equity,

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and inclusion can disappear when we're talking about cash.

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Speaker 2: That's right, And I should have mentioned also that states

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have a role in this. I mean there are half

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dozen or more red states which have used their power

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over public universities, have used their power over funding to

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bring the universities back towards the center. Because when diversity

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is spoken about on campuses, it's never diversity of viewpoint.

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There is no diversity of viewpoint on most campuses. The

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faculty and I just know Cornell is close to one

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hundred percent liberal to left leaning to far left leaning.

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The Cornell Sun student newspaper has done many surveys over

437
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the years of donations from faculty, party registration of faculty,

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and it is literally close to one hundred percent liberal

439
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to Democrat. And so there really is no diversity of

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00:31:15,559 --> 00:31:20,920
faculty on the dorsey of faculty when it comes to viewpoint,

441
00:31:21,319 --> 00:31:24,799
when it comes to political orientation, they don't care if

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they're happy that way only, and that creates a very

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toxic campus environment. So, you know, states have a big

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role at bringing things back to the center. Nobody is

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under an illusion that we're going to all of a

446
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sudden have a bunch of conservative you know, public universities.

447
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That's not going to happen. But at least introduce some

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diversity into the faculty, because the faculty drives a lot

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of these things.

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Speaker 1: I spoke about it before, but the loneliness of the

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conservative on college campuses has always been, you know, an issue,

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but it's gotten so much worse over the years. You've

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been in this business a long time. Do you ever

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feel like, you know, as there been a time you

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feel like you're tilting at windmills or that you're howling

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into the wind.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is not an exaggeration, or if it's,

458
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it's not by much. You know, Cornell University which a big,

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sprawling place. They've got the Ithaca campus, the medical school

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in New York City. I think their faculty number is

461
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ballpark eighteen hundred ballpark. Of those eighteen hundred, you can

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count on one hand the number of faculty who are

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openly politically conservative. And when I say politically conservative and

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openly is important. There may be voters out there among

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faculty who keep it to themselves. There may be faculty

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who consider themselves economically or religiously conservative, but people who

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are outspoken about the political angle of things are almost

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non existent. I would say I'm the only one, but

469
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there might be a couple of others, but I am

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close to the only one out of a faculty of

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eighteen hundred. Certainly, I'm the only one at the law

472
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school who's openly politically conservative. And I don't think that's

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an exception. Now, how many are openly politically liberal to

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left huge numbers. I mean, it's almost taken for granted.

475
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So you know, do I feel like I'm tilting it

476
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at windmills sometimes? Yeah? But I also know that even

477
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having one faculty member who is outspoken the way I

478
00:33:49,559 --> 00:33:52,279
am gives a lot of strength to the students. I'm

479
00:33:52,279 --> 00:33:57,480
the faculty advisor to almost every, if not every right

480
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:00,599
of center student group on campus. And to think it's

481
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:03,880
because I'm so wonderful, but the reality is there's literally

482
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:07,799
nobody they can go to. There is nobody else who's

483
00:34:07,839 --> 00:34:11,000
willing to serve as a faculty advisor for a lot

484
00:34:11,039 --> 00:34:14,360
of these groups, if not most of the groups. And therefore,

485
00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:19,239
you know, I feel my role is extremely important. I

486
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,920
think even having one dissident on a campus makes a

487
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:28,519
big difference. The campus is still very, very wedded to

488
00:34:28,639 --> 00:34:34,559
the DEI camp, to the DEI agenda at the administrative level,

489
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,599
but I do believe having me speak out against DEI,

490
00:34:38,679 --> 00:34:41,599
and I've openly called on the Board of Trustees to

491
00:34:41,639 --> 00:34:46,239
get rid of it completely, get it out of our system,

492
00:34:46,639 --> 00:34:50,039
that even having one person can make a difference. And

493
00:34:50,079 --> 00:34:53,280
so I don't pretend that I've changed the course of

494
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:57,239
the university, but it's really important that there's at least

495
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:01,199
somebody speaking out. And when I eventually retire, which will happen,

496
00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:04,519
they'll literally be nobody on the campus to speak out

497
00:35:04,559 --> 00:35:08,079
on these issues, which is why I think it's extremely

498
00:35:08,639 --> 00:35:12,880
important that these changes be made that the Trump administration

499
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:18,320
will have the power to do soon, because the small

500
00:35:18,599 --> 00:35:22,760
small number of not I wouldn't even say conservative, of

501
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:27,599
non liberal professors is aging out you know, I'm sixty five.

502
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:29,599
I don't know how many more years I'll do this,

503
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:33,920
but you know, so I think it's important. I don't

504
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:38,079
think I've been tilting it will win Mills. It is lonely, okay.

505
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:42,000
But I draw strength from the students, who are far

506
00:35:42,119 --> 00:35:45,719
more moderate than the professors as a group. Uh. And

507
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:49,360
I draw, you know, strength from the alumni, who are

508
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:53,199
far more moderate as a group than the administrators and

509
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:56,880
the faculty. And I hope, I hope change comes, and

510
00:35:56,920 --> 00:35:59,000
I hope change comes in the next four years.

511
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:02,239
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you this, I don't believe that you're

512
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:05,840
tilting at Windmills. For what it's worth. I have long

513
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:10,400
admired your work, and a dear friend of mine for years.

514
00:36:11,079 --> 00:36:14,880
We lost him at the university at Marquette University a

515
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:17,679
few years back. But John McAdams, who was fighting the

516
00:36:17,679 --> 00:36:21,400
same fight on that Jesuit school campus, which you think

517
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:24,679
wouldn't have all of the kind of battles that maybe

518
00:36:25,159 --> 00:36:30,840
a Cornell has had, or a UCLA or Columbia or

519
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:34,519
those sorts of things. But they've been steeped in dei

520
00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:39,559
in anti racism and critical race theory culture for a

521
00:36:39,639 --> 00:36:43,960
long time, and John courageously fought those battles to the

522
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:47,800
point of the threat of his job, and I'm sure

523
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:50,880
you have faced those same kind of things as you

524
00:36:50,920 --> 00:36:55,239
mentioned before. But you're right. There is a new day coming,

525
00:36:56,000 --> 00:37:00,360
and I think that you have a receptive audience. The

526
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:03,679
President elect, the forty fifth and soon to be forty

527
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:09,679
seventh president, who has been very outspoken about his feelings

528
00:37:09,679 --> 00:37:14,079
on DEI in this entire movement. Christopher Ruffo has talked

529
00:37:14,079 --> 00:37:19,760
to President elect Donald Trump, how successful can this administration be?

530
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:26,159
An administration that is set on fighting the swamp, draining

531
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:29,480
the swamp? Can it drain the DEI swamp?

532
00:37:31,159 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 2: It can drain it, mostly because we've only been talking

533
00:37:34,519 --> 00:37:39,400
about higher education, but the DEI agenda from the federal

534
00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:43,679
government goes so much more deep. The National Institutes for Health,

535
00:37:44,079 --> 00:37:50,840
National Science Foundation, various other bureaucracies have incorporated DEI requirements

536
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:54,639
into their eligibility for federal funding. So if you're a scientist,

537
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:59,519
you may have to prove that you've you adhere to DEI.

538
00:38:00,079 --> 00:38:02,559
Those are things Trump can get rid of with the

539
00:38:02,599 --> 00:38:04,239
stroke of a pen, and I hope he will on

540
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:07,679
day one. I hope he will. That will eliminate an

541
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:14,159
enormous source unrelated to education, an enormous source of DEI

542
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:17,519
discrimination that takes place at the behest of the federal

543
00:38:17,519 --> 00:38:21,320
government and frankly as a federal government requirement. So I

544
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:24,960
think he can do a lot. And again, if he

545
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,960
does the enforcement and the use of federal budget, federal

546
00:38:29,039 --> 00:38:32,760
funding for colleges and universities, and also K through twelve,

547
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:35,039
I think he can do a lot. Can he solve

548
00:38:35,079 --> 00:38:37,880
the problem, No, because people need to understand this is

549
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:42,559
quasi religious for the adherents. It really is a religion

550
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:48,639
for the DEI bureaucracy and the DEI advocates in many ways.

551
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:51,079
And so will he get rid of it completely. No,

552
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:54,360
But can he make enormous changes if he does it

553
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,199
in a smart way. Yes. I don't think he was

554
00:38:57,199 --> 00:38:59,880
prepared in his first term for what he would face

555
00:39:00,199 --> 00:39:04,199
in terms of sabotage from the bureaucracy, sabotage from the states.

556
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:07,480
But if he does it smarter this time, and I

557
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:10,320
have every reason to believe he will because he's had

558
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:14,519
experience and he's got advisors who are mapping things out

559
00:39:14,519 --> 00:39:19,079
for him, I think it can make a tremendous, tremendous impact,

560
00:39:19,159 --> 00:39:21,199
just to show you the power of an idea on

561
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:25,119
campus in the run up to the oral argument in

562
00:39:25,159 --> 00:39:29,199
the affirmative action case. So this was the fall. I'm

563
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:32,119
getting losing track of the years. Whether it's twenty twenty

564
00:39:32,119 --> 00:39:34,199
two or twenty twenty three, I guess it was twenty

565
00:39:34,199 --> 00:39:36,679
twenty two. So in the fall of twenty twenty two,

566
00:39:37,159 --> 00:39:41,800
the Cornell Political Union, which is a truly nonpartisan debate

567
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:47,159
society basically Cornell's campus, invited me to debate affirmative action.

568
00:39:48,039 --> 00:39:51,320
And they do it Oxford style debate where the speaker

569
00:39:51,559 --> 00:39:56,800
gives a presentation, takes questions, then the students debate among themselves,

570
00:39:57,519 --> 00:40:04,400
and I advocated the position that against affirmative action, race

571
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:07,880
based affirmative action, and lo and behold. At the end,

572
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:11,039
they take a secret vote, secret ballot vote, and my

573
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:17,039
proposition passed. So on a college campus where you would think,

574
00:40:17,119 --> 00:40:19,639
you know, ninety nine percent of the students would be

575
00:40:19,639 --> 00:40:22,760
in favor of affirmative action, effect, I won the vote

576
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:25,280
at the Cornell Political Union. I think part of that

577
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:28,920
reason was it was a secret ballot. You just signed

578
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:30,880
your piece of paper and put it in. You didn't

579
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:34,480
have to put your name on it, and so I

580
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:39,320
have hope that students are not as indoctrinated as we

581
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:42,880
would think, and that there is hope that the power

582
00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:46,559
of ideas can prevail on the campuses. But I'm also

583
00:40:46,679 --> 00:40:52,480
realistic that there are massive institutional forces, including massive bureaucracies,

584
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:56,159
who were devoted to making sure DEI continues. So I

585
00:40:56,199 --> 00:41:00,960
think Trump can do tremendous accomplishments, but nobody should think

586
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:02,239
in four years this is over.

587
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:11,119
Speaker 1: So you're telling us there's a chance that.

588
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:11,639
Speaker 2: It's a one in a million chances. They say in

589
00:41:11,679 --> 00:41:14,760
the movie, Yeah, there's a chance. I mean there's a

590
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:21,400
chance to make substantial progress. Whether it can be purged

591
00:41:21,559 --> 00:41:25,760
from the discrimination done in the name of DEI, can

592
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:29,320
be purged completely from the system, I think probably not,

593
00:41:29,519 --> 00:41:32,599
because it will continue to live on in faculty, it

594
00:41:32,639 --> 00:41:36,199
will continue to live on in bureaucracies, and you may

595
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:38,360
not be able to change their minds. But I think

596
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:42,039
if we create a culture of equality on the campuses,

597
00:41:42,079 --> 00:41:46,559
if we go back to explaining the virtue of treating

598
00:41:46,559 --> 00:41:50,280
people as individuals rather than as proxies for groups, I

599
00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:53,760
think you'll find a receptive audience on most campuses. Whether

600
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:56,400
they'll admit to it, I don't know, because there's a

601
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:59,840
lot of social pressures to go along. But I think

602
00:42:00,159 --> 00:42:03,239
I think this can. There is a chance, but it's

603
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:07,039
got to come from outside the universities. The universities have

604
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:12,000
faculties and to some extend, administrations have become so radicalized

605
00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:15,679
that I do not believe internal change is possible. It

606
00:42:15,719 --> 00:42:19,400
will take an external force like the federal government and

607
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:22,639
the state governments to force them to come back to

608
00:42:22,719 --> 00:42:23,159
the middle.

609
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:24,119
Speaker 3: Yeah.

610
00:42:25,119 --> 00:42:27,360
Speaker 1: In other words, the cancer is already there and it

611
00:42:27,400 --> 00:42:30,360
is going to take, as you say, external forces to

612
00:42:30,519 --> 00:42:36,000
remove excise that cancer. Final question for you, what is next?

613
00:42:36,039 --> 00:42:36,199
Speaker 3: Then?

614
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:41,239
Speaker 1: What does twenty twenty five look like? For William Jacobson

615
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:43,039
and the Equal Protection Project?

616
00:42:44,559 --> 00:42:46,239
Speaker 2: I think we're going to keep doing what we're doing.

617
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:51,679
We've had a big impact. We've I think helped change

618
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:54,320
the culture. There are certainly many other people who've done

619
00:42:54,559 --> 00:42:57,000
as much, if not more, than we've done. But we're

620
00:42:57,119 --> 00:43:00,559
part of a movement that I believe has change the

621
00:43:00,559 --> 00:43:06,960
culture around DEI. That has changed the culture enough around

622
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:11,119
DEI that political change is now possible on the campuses

623
00:43:11,199 --> 00:43:14,840
when it comes to DEI, that structural change is possible.

624
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:16,599
So we're going to keep plugging away. We're going to

625
00:43:16,679 --> 00:43:20,880
keep filing legal claims. We hope to increase the number

626
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:24,559
of lawsuits we have as opposed to Office for Civil

627
00:43:24,679 --> 00:43:28,440
Rights complaints. We're going to continue to speak out on this.

628
00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:31,840
So we're going to keep doing what we're doing, hopefully

629
00:43:32,239 --> 00:43:35,519
at a more aggressive and higher level. And for the

630
00:43:35,559 --> 00:43:38,840
first time in our existence as a foundation, as a

631
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:42,159
nonprofit foundation, we will actually have the federal government on

632
00:43:42,199 --> 00:43:45,199
our side. It's going to be a very strange feeling

633
00:43:45,559 --> 00:43:48,480
to have the federal government on your side, not hostile

634
00:43:48,519 --> 00:43:51,199
to you. So we're looking forward to twenty twenty five

635
00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:56,239
and we hope that the incoming administration is successful in

636
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:58,000
affecting change.

637
00:43:58,199 --> 00:44:02,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll be a bit, Dorothy. It'll not be Kansas anymore,

638
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:06,199
that's for sure, and quite frankly, that's a good thing.

639
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:10,599
I wish you godspeed and good luck in your efforts.

640
00:44:10,679 --> 00:44:12,559
And thank you so much for joining us on this

641
00:44:12,679 --> 00:44:15,480
edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. Thank you for having

642
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:19,760
me indeed anytime. Thanks to my guest today, William A. Jacobson,

643
00:44:19,760 --> 00:44:23,840
Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law

644
00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:28,480
Clinic at Cornell Law School, Founder of Legal Insurrection, The

645
00:44:28,519 --> 00:44:32,960
Great website, joining us to talk about DEI where we

646
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:39,079
go from here not America's colleges and universities. Professor Jacobson

647
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:44,719
is also founder of the Equal Protection Project. You've been

648
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:47,480
listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm

649
00:44:47,480 --> 00:44:51,000
Matt Kittle, senior correspondent at The Federalist. We'll be back

650
00:44:51,039 --> 00:44:55,079
soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and

651
00:44:55,239 --> 00:44:56,519
anxious for the pray.

652
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:03,119
Speaker 2: There is a pump pult and say pointed to

653
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: Job Right a poll in lecal check numap platinum in

654
00:45:10,159 --> 00:45:10,440
the pl