 And thank you all for joining us. We are truly honored to have with us today one of my favorite collections of people in the whole entire world. We have Professor Emeritus from Alia Randall with University of Dayton School of Law, Professor Jelani Jefferson Exum from Detroit Mercy School of Law, and Davis Emeritus from University of Toledo School of Law. And Jeff Portnoy, like me, just another lawyer, first amendment expert. Also a color commentator for University of William basketball and other things. So we will try and make this as rewarding, as entertaining, as enlightening as we can. And where we'd like to start is, Franelia, you have a report coming out that updates one from 17 years ago. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes, thank you. 17 years ago, I did a report called the widest law school, 2004, the widest law school report where I've ranked all the law schools, 181 law schools, by how white they were. And I have updated that I'm 2021 report coming out next week. On the internet, the widest law school, schools are less white, but they're still more white than the LSAT application pools. So that, to me, that means they are still, there's still a lot of whiteness that needs to be addressed in most of the schools. Well, if you go to racism.org after next week, it'll be right there up in the menu, 2021 widest law school report. So dare we ask, who's at the bottom of the list at number one, Georgia, what a shock. My technique is not just percentage but what I call excess whiteness. I look at how much whiteness they had compared to the application pool for national, state and regional, which then meant that schools that were in relatively white communities weren't penalized as much, although some of them end up not as white as they should be as schools that were in communities that had a lot of diversity but weren't meeting the needs of that Hawaii was down in it low, which you could expect, although I think Hawaii was one of the nine schools that whiteness increase over the 17 years, even though it was a small amount of whiteness, it did increase. Anyway, so would it be fair to say, it goes to good places. So would it be fair to say that Georgia excelled in achieving disproportionate whiteness? And if so, how did they manage that? Yeah, if you can look at where number one. If they want to claim number one in whiteness, the whole problem is the admission process where schools decide that they want to target to admit a certain group of people, a certain LSAT score, and then they don't even look at others who could do law school and be good lawyers because they don't have the LSAT score. There's a place for the LSAT, but I think that place is not in the admission process, but in the planning of the educational process. The law schools use cutoffs and say a person who has an LSAT below this amount doesn't qualify. I didn't get most of the law schools that I went to did not admit me because I had a below average LSAT and so that's how they achieve that. That combined with whatever overt racism and implicit racism they have and when they evaluate the application. So let me ask a little bit more pointed question, and that is, is the ability of applicants if admitted to service underserved communities and constituencies taken into account? Does it have any weight at all? I mean, other people can talk to this. I don't think it's taken into account. I have not been in the admission process for 12 years, so maybe it is now. But I can tell you it's nowhere near like medical schools are. Medical schools for decades have been admitting based on because they they know that people go back to communities like the ones they came from. And that if they wanted to get doctors into communities of color, the only way to do that is to educate doctors from those communities and and so medicine has done a better job. I'm not saying that they couldn't improve, but they've done a much better job than law. Law is still, I think, one of the least diverse professions in the United States. Anyone else want to speak up to that? Yeah, I'll jump in here. I mean, one of the reasons why law schools operate that way is because there's such a focus on rankings and you know, could go on and on about that and how relevant or irrelevant they are. But when it comes down to rankings, everybody's looking at the different metrics that move you up in rankings or that can tank you in rankings. And so bar passage ends up being one of those and statistics talk about, you know, your LSAT score combined with your first year grades, having some indication about ultimate bar passage. Now, you know, what it doesn't do is look at individual circumstances, nor does it look at what schools can do to actually help to promote bar success along the way. So it's like the low hanging fruit for schools, you know, like, let's just stick with a certain LSAT helps a bar passage that generally speaking, but also just the LSAT, the sort of admissions criteria of your school plays into your rankings also. So everybody's caught up in this rankings game and it ends up being a huge driving factor, regardless of what we all know about, you know, how if you sort of have taken interest in individual student success and build programs that can address student needs, that students can be successful across a broad range of indicators entering indicators. But, you know, that takes a little more resources and focus and energy to do so. And I was at Dayton, when I was at Dayton, I advocated for students who had LSATs into the 30s, 130s, which people say those students can't do law school, but they can if you, you know, it's just a matter of what you're saying, giving them the support. And one of the things that you do bar passage, we, Dayton's bar passage was not tied to race. And so even though many of the minorities had much lower LSATs, the program we gave them meant that when they got to the end, their bar passage was not related to the LSAT score, unlike the other students. So I used to read US News and World Report in the 60s, okay, when the time and news week and all that. And I was turned off to US News and World Report because of the way that they wrote about the civil rights movement at the time about Martin Luther King, it was very, very sort of anti-progressive. So when I came into teaching in 45, and I saw everybody talking about US News and World Report rankings, I was like, them, you know, I mean, you know, and I do know that I was in some meetings along the way where there was the idea of adding some kind of diversity aspect to what they were doing, but they always kept it separate, right? You know, so it wasn't integrated into the actual ranking thing. So, you know, I have a private entity have such influence in the minds of people was I always found really bizarre, particularly where it came from, you know, but that's just me, you know, that bothered me. I wanted to speak about something if I can, which is all the heat that Cuomo is getting right now, okay. So there's three aspects I can see. One is the nursing home limited liability thing. The second thing is sort of hiding his numbers. And the third thing is the sexual harassment, but not really, I mean, amazingly stupid for a governor to be doing that, okay, but let me speak to the limited liability thing. You know, what I've been struck by is that his thing was sort of an executive order, I think, focused on nursing homes, right? There are at least 15 or 16 states that passed legislation that to limit liability for businesses due to COVID, you know. So I'm like, excuse me, this is kind of like, you know, I don't know, complaining about your nose for your head or something like that. I mean, that that part of it makes no sense to me that people can sit here and all shocked at the nursing home where they passed the law basically saying you can't sue or you can't do anything for any business, you know, based on COVID. Problem with Andrew Cuomo is he just became too big for his britches. And when you become too big for your britches, all of your enemies decide to come out of the woodwork. He has had a very disparate kind of popularity rating, very high with the public, but he's got a lot of enemies internally in New York State, including the mayor, who has been brutal the last couple of days in his criticisms and I know people in New York City and that's just animosity that's just been waiting and waiting to bubble over. So I think he's in trouble. I think he made most of this on his own by becoming too much of a public figure and he's going to have a lot of trouble trying to get out of it, particularly with, as you know, the New York Attorney General deciding that she's going to investigate what started out to be, what I think, a very serious legitimate issue on reporting and whether they're being withheld and now is turned in sexual harassment, which just becomes a he said, she said. So we'll see how that all works out. Yeah, he obviously forgot. He forgot the count principle, keep a low profile. Well, he couldn't keep a low profile because he's an overt bully and he has been for years. And so he, you know, the rest of the nation may look at him and say, see this person who comes out and do slide shows. But he has not. He's been a pretty big bully and it's the sexual, the problem with the sexual harassment thing is that he, it ain't something that is surprising, you know, it's not, you know, and, and it's workplace, so some of it. And so it's not just sexual harassment, the sexual harassment in the workplace. And it wouldn't be, it wouldn't matter if he was a man, a low level manager doing it. What I find curious, and again, who knows the facts, what's curious is that none of the sexual harassment became public until all of the attacks started on the mislabeling of these COVID deaths. Most of this allegedly occurred in 2018, 2019. And none of it was made public until a week ago. So, you know, there is this kind of piling on mentality, which unfortunately we see throughout all the country, you know, and it's hard. And I'm not suggesting, by the way, that these things didn't occur or that he's not a bully, you know, and that he shouldn't, you know, like many other politicians find themselves above the law when it comes to things like workplace harassment. But the timing is curious. I think it gets tricky with sexual harassment because, you know, when you're in a workplace environment and things happen, you sort of fight an uphill battle as the, as the, you know, person who's making the allegations, because you're fighting against a power structure, you know, so you see, you know, you have every incentive to just be quiet. So then what happens is when somebody is under investigation for something else or they're vulnerable, what ends up happening is somebody who sort of knows that the stories are there, but they got shut down, tells you now is the time where someone will listen to you. And so it makes it look as though, you know, you're sort of just picking this time to pile on to someone. And there are some of that from the person who got in your ear to say, now's the time. But it doesn't make the allegations less legitimate. And unfortunately, it's just the reality of the fact that the run of the mill, you know, day to day, your story's not heard, and you know it's going to get shut down and you're going to be ostracized. And you, so you sit on it until there's an opportune time. But it, you know, it undercuts, you know, people end up questioning it in this sort of way. But, you know, so I look at it through that lens. I'm telling stories from 20 and 30 years ago that I didn't tell. I'm posting stuff on, you know, just because 20 and 30 years ago, I had no power. And I had, and once you sit on it, sit, sit on it a while, you sort of forget it and you try to move on. And then like you say, when that, when people come back up in the news for some reason, then you remember the story of what they did to you and you sort of want to say, wait a minute, this, this is no shining arm person, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years ago, she or he did this to me. And, and so that's part of it. It is sort of the, I think you're exactly right that when person, people with fear put themselves out in front, they invite the people who have stories about them to come out eventually. Let me change the topic, though, to what I think is the most critical now. And that's the attack on the voting rights all around the country and House bill number one, which passed yesterday, but is not going to get through the Senate, unless they can overcome the filibuster, the Supreme Court getting ready to rule on a voting rights case. And according to most commentators, looks clearly to be six to three in favor of Arizona and limiting voting rights, 16 states in various stages of limiting the ability to go to the polls. This is a story, this is part of the problem I have with this Cuomo thing, which is just occupying the news cycle when it's infinitesimally unimportant when you're looking at what really is important this week and next week. And that's the ability of people to go to the polls. And is there going to be some kind of a miracle that's going to occur, that's going to stop this Republican driven attempt to cut back on the ability of minorities, people of color, poor people in general, to get to the polls. It's a tough question, Jeff, because if you look at 2020 in the state legislators, there were 40 voting restriction bills in the less than two months in 2021. There are over 250. And I doubt whether any of them is to expand voting rights. They're all restricted. And the moderate Democrats and the conservative Democrats don't seem inclined to do what they could do, which is get rid of the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, pack the Court of Appeals and pass a strong voting rights law that would protect people. They they seem to be hiding about, you know, I know that they have the conservative Democrats. Don't their Democrats, conservative Democrats and Democrats, because who knows why they could just as well be Republicans. And and I don't see the Democrats doing what they need to do to protect voting rights. And so I put the I put the onus at this stage on the Democrats because the Democrat could be radical and make changes that would protect the voting rights. Well, yeah, you know, we can talk about it just being a repressive moment, right? I mean, that's basically what these bills are, is is a further effort at repression that's being done to in a way to to make the big lie we've been living come true. I saw a little bit of the CPAC presentation of a former President Trump, where he said, you know, he'd won landslides two times and he may run again to get to win a third time and to loud applause, right? Well, if you look at the landslide he had, since it was mainly with white people, I think he got 57 percent of the white voters. You know, it's trying to make that true in a way. Let's get rid of everybody who's not white and then we'll get the majority of the whites and life's good, you know, in that vision. It's a real sick vision of repression that just got to keep keep fighting, keep fighting the fight. You know, I had thinking about it as a repressive moment, but I think it's just, it goes along with the pattern of what has always happened in this country. I think it's maybe a moment where, you know, like we just, we constantly have repressive moments. Let's put it that way. Okay, I know. Maybe we just take a little breather every once in a while and then we get back, you know, because when it comes to voting, that's always been a vehicle for, you know, marginalizing communities. So, you know, I'd love to see a strong voting rights act and strong legislative protection, but even with it, you know, even at the sort of the strongest, if you imagine, whatever you think is the strongest time of the Voting Rights Act, there are still so many ways to repress votes on that, you know, sort of localized level that was happening all the time. And so I think even with, you know, whatever we want to say about sort of high level voting rights reform or protection, there is always going to have to be those eyes on the ground that are really, you know, working constantly to combat, because repression is sort of the name of the game. And then we just take, you know, these brief moments of pause maybe, but then it gets right back to that. What if it's not a repressive moment, but a repressive movement from back before reconstruction? Because there seems to be exactly the pattern and it's deep, it's broad, it's vast, it's intentional, and it's inequality-driven. Well, yeah, I would go so far as to say- You're just gonna stand up for the majority. Right, I would go so far as to say that it fits a pattern just like Governor Abbott announcing that Texas is gonna be reopened as of next week, 100%. You know, to me, I look at that as that, well, you're just gonna try to get people sick and killed and die from COVID, but you figure it's disproportionately gonna hit people that don't vote for you, so that's okay with me, you know? Minorities and things like that from his point of view. I mean, that's how lethal this thing is. I was talking to a former mayor here down the street about it and I said, you know, I don't understand this stuff. And he said, you know, they just don't care about people, they just don't care, you know? And I was like, yeah, it's just appalling. The other big issue this week, for those of us who follow free speech, is the failed nomination of the budget director, primarily because of her tweets. That's fascinating, fascinating to me. Bizarre world, brother, you know what I mean? After- We're especially given the fact that the tweets of Trump and all that stuff, but as a progressive, I came on over her failing because she was not going to be good for progressive things. And my disappointment is that the Democrats even put her up. What does that say about where the Democrats want to take social security and Medicare if that they would appoint someone like her, which who has such a long and strong history in terms of thinking that these programs need to be ringed in. And so that sort of said to me, so yeah, I think it's part of the thing. They don't know why the Republicans really went after her because I think policy-wise, she would be in their wheelhouse. So right result for the wrong reason. Well, she's going to wind up in the administration just in a different position. No question. And the other one that's apparently under attack is the assistant US attorney general. In fact, it's so much under attack. Last night, I actually saw a commercial that some group has put out in support of her nomination on national television. Really? Which was amazing to me. I hadn't heard that. Which assistant attorney general's under attack? I forgot her name. Okay. The number, who would be the number two person in the justice department? Drawing civil rights background, yes. Yes. But here was a national commercial for a sub-cabinet member. Put out by some obviously very liberal organization, but that shows you how contentious that's turning out to be. Yeah. And she, I think I got a sign-up list. You know, it's a law professor's and supportive letter to sign recently in my emails about her. So yeah. Here we are. And so, Vernelia, you were telling us last time. Yeah. Biden, Democrats, we got a couple of minutes left. Forget this bipartisan stuff. That ain't going to work. Just put your team together, get your votes, knock the filibuster out, do what you gotta do to redistribute power, control, achieve a much better balance. How do we do that? In our last- I don't know that there's anything we can do because we don't control, I don't control the Democrats and I don't know nobody who does control the Democrats and the Democrats are capitalists and they are only going to do as much as necessary to keep, to be able to say to people, you know, we're unlike the Republicans, but I don't think they want, I don't think they don't, I think most of them don't want to get rid of the 60 vote rule. My son had a good suggestion, which was don't get rid of the rule, don't even try to get rid of the rule, just make them have to really filibuster. Yeah. Like old schools have to stay there. Old school say, okay, we're gonna make a rule that you can only, you have to do the filibuster of old school, you can't just give a notice, you have to actually stand at a stadium and talk for whatever number of hours and that would effectively get rid of the filibuster because so many of the people are so old. Yeah, but be careful for what you wish for. We have a Supreme Court that we have now because of what the Democrats did in getting rid of the filibuster for the Supreme Court. It was so far, short-sighted then, it was amazing that they did something that stupid knowing that they would not be in power forever. And I think, you know, I hate to disagree with you, Professor, but I think getting rid of the filibuster now because you're in the majority, two years from now, you very likely could be in the minority again and look what the Supreme Court has happened. We wouldn't have a six, three court right now if we had kept the filibuster rule. So I just think you can't look at today, you got to look at tomorrow. Except that tomorrow never plays out on racial issues. Well, that's a different story. Anybody thinks it's a different story? It's not a different story. It's not a different story because I have to think about what to do right now to fix as much law as possible right now, not tomorrow. Because and then, you know, yeah, you're absolutely right that, but hey, maybe if the Democrats was to get in and do a lot of stuff, they would keep the House and Senate. You know, they wouldn't lose it in a two-year thing. We're looking, yeah, but you're right. I know what you're saying and I, but I can't mown the loss of the Senate because here's the deal. All the judges that all the so-called liberal judges aren't liberal in my estimation and they never do go as far as I would like them to go. And so, you know, pointing to a three more moderate judges, okay, I mean, that maintains the status quo, but I think you're right that getting rid of the filibuster was a direct relationship to being able to appoint Supreme Court judges. So we're out of time for today. That's a great place to leave off. It's not a period at the end of the sentence. It's an ellipsis. I haven't, wait a minute. I haven't called Ben any names yet. Call that thought, Josh. What, is Mr. Portluck saying something there? I didn't hear him. I didn't say it. You have two weeks to think of names. All right, all right. I had a bunch of names ready. Ladies and gentlemen, a wonderful session. Thank you so much. Come back in two weeks. Join us, folks. Be safe, everybody all best. Hang on for debrief.