The DEI Podcast at Notre Dame Law School explores concepts of diversity, equity, inclusion, culture, belonging, and justice as they arise in law and key social and cultural issues. The podcast is hosted by Max Gaston, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Notre Dame Law School.
According to research, bias is a habit that begins to take shape at an early age. As we form our own social identities surrounding things like ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, religion, and gender, we start to identify as members of a specific group of people. These identities in many ways can shape how we see and treat others — and how others see and treat us. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Dr. William Cox, Dr. Patricia Devine, and their colleagues developed the bias habit-breaking intervention, an evidence-based approach which builds on more than 30 years of scientific research on prejudice, stereotyping, and bias, and has been proven to reduce bias in people’s attitudes and behavior long-term. Dr. Cox is the Principal Investigator of the Stereotyping and Bias Research (SABR) Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the founder of Inequity Agents of Change, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to reducing bias, creating inclusion, and promoting equity. In this conversation, Dr. Cox explains how bias impacts the mind. He then provides proven strategies for reducing bias, and identifies common approaches such as color-blindness that people often take to address bias that often create more bias rather than less. Topics covered with timestamps: 2:44 – Why a scientific, evidence-based approach is the best method for reducing bias. 7:29 – The origins of “bias as a habit” and a summary of the bias habit-breaking intervention model. 13:30 – How stereotypes can create and guide our expectations about others. 17:13 – People in society are often penalized if they violate the stereotypes we hold for them. 20:04 – Once a stereotype is a habit of mind, even if we experience that it’s wrong 75% of the time, confirmation bias causes us to give more credit to our stereotype than to the contrary evidence. 28:44 – Perspective taking as a strategy for reducing bias. 36:18 – How untested assumptions can reinforce stereotypes and cause them to self-perpetuate. 38:57 – Stereotype replacement as a strategy for reducing bias. 42:20 – Considering situational explanations as a strategy for reducing bias. 46:14 – Broadening your media input as a strategy for reducing bias. 51:23 – Colorblindness, ignoring group status, believing in personal objectivity, and stereotype suppression fail as approaches to reduce bias and create more bias rather than less. 57:03 – The importance of speaking up when you see bias occurring.
Have you ever felt like an imposter? Unqualified for the job, less intelligent than your classmates, or undeserving of your accomplishments, and that somehow you managed to convince others you were more capable than you really are? In this episode of the DEI Podcast with Max Gaston, we revisit Max's conversation with Dr. Kevin Cokley, a psychologist at the University of Michigan who studies the imposter phenomenon. Dr. Cokley researches the relationship between imposter feelings, mental health, and academic outcomes among students from underrepresented communities. Listen as he discusses his research and experience with imposter feelings, and how we can learn to use these feelings as a motivation rather than a limitation in our daily lives.
In this episode, three students from the Notre Dame Black Law Students Association join Max for a lively discussion on the power of representation in law school, the complexity and pervasiveness of stereotypes, and contemporary social issues in the Black community, the legal profession, and beyond.
In his best-selling book, The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein demolished the de facto segregation myth that Black and White Americans live separately by choice, providing the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation. Aware that twenty-first-century segregation continues to promote entrenched inequality and underlie our most serious social problems, Richard has partnered with housing policy expert Leah Rothstein to write JUST ACTION: How to Challenge Racial Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law. JUST ACTION provides bona fide solutions, based on decades of study and experience, that activists and their supporters can undertake in their own communities to address historical inequities, and shows how community groups can press those in government and the private sector that imposed segregation to finally take responsibility for reversing the harm, creating victories that might finally challenge residential segregation and help remedy America’s profoundly unconstitutional past.
In recent years, the business case for diversity has emerged as the go-to argument for why organizations should prioritize diversity in their recruiting efforts. Though most organizations don’t feel the need to explain why they care about core values such as innovation, resilience, or integrity, when it comes to diversity, lengthy justifications on the value of hiring a “diverse workforce” have become the norm. At Boston University's Questrom School of Business, Dr. Oriane Georgeac researches how individuals respond to organizations’ messages about diversity and their justifications for why they value diversity in their workforce. Her findings show that organizations relying on a business case to justify diversity among their ranks may inadvertently alienate and hurt their efforts to recruit members of historically underrepresented communities.