CANCELED: Law and the Politics of Diversity
How can law sustain diversity and inclusion in complex, unequal societies and economies, as illiberalism is solidifying across Europe and North America? What is the role of universities in upholding these principles? What does it take to build truly diverse and inclusive workplaces?
For decades, lawyers, scholars, and activists have grappled with these questions mobilizing an array of tools such as anti-discrimination rules, affirmative action, or diversity and inclusion policies within institutions. At the same time “diversity and inclusion” agendas have never been free from critics, including from those from equality movements, who support these principles and their transformative potential. For some, the law itself leaves many deep inequalities intact, for others, diversity became something of an institutional performance failing to truly tackle issues of resource and power distribution along gender, race, ethnicity, class – to name a few.
This conversation reflects on what diversity and inclusion may mean in this context, bringing together perspectives from law, feminist and critical theory, and education, and comparing developments across Europe and the United States.
Speakers
David B. Oppenheimer is a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and Co-Director of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law. He is the author of The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea.
Ivana Isailović teaches law at the University of Amsterdam. Her work examines the relationships between law, power and economic lives, drawing on political economy, critical theory and feminist theories. Her forthcoming book with French publisher Actes Sud explores the relationship between feminism and neoliberal governance, including the limits of diversity and inclusion strategies that can leave deep inequalities untouched. She has taught and worked at McGill University, MIT, NYU School of Law, and Harvard University.
