Unknown Speaker  00:00
In fact, if you talk to people, it's demoralizing work, it is pushing paper off one side of the desk to the other. It is processing volumes of clients. And if you can't process them fast enough, you're often penalized to your evaluation of your work is that you're not doing good work. And part of good work is how fast you can turn over. The client load that you're carrying, certainly does not involve groundbreaking, you know, sort of putting together the kind of case for your client that might actually set new precedent, or, you know, sort of it'd be make the work enjoyable for yourself and allow you to use the skill for creating and manipulating the law, which is what you're trying to do. It has really become almost a quasi clerical kind of business. Now, we're talking about the work. That would be, you know, unconscionable and probably intolerable enough as it was, if you were getting paid. Don't want to tell you that some of my law students are making less money now than they were before they came to law school with a likelihood that they will cap out at a much lower level than they would have had they not come to law school. And that the vast majority of those payments of students are women who get trapped and you just not you don't get the job interviews for a lot of the more prestigious jobs. Absolutely. Then when you do you get I mean, just outrageously demeaning things. And this is actually worse now than it was when I was coming out of school. I just came back from the National Women and law conference, the stories about the kinds of questions that are being asked to young women when they go for corporate or corporate law firm type jobs are outrageous. I mean, in 1973, nobody in New York City and I mean, not, you know, they weren't sophisticated. There certainly were no women at the law firm that I went to work at. But no one I mean, I interview with some, you know, 15 Odd firms, no one asked anything, just crazy. You know, I mean, I mean, personal questions, you know, humiliating but one student and actually the University of Chicago has banned one law firm in Chicago from interviewing on campus, only for a year. But you know, many years better than nothing. Apparently young woman was asked her how she was going to feel when someone on the job called her a negative. She was asked, she guess she was asked about some of her

Unknown Speaker  02:14
outside sports interest. And she said what she played golf where he playing golf in the alley, he says black folks don't play golf. There's no golf courses in the ghetto.

Unknown Speaker  02:25
I mean, you know, this kind of outrageous behavior. And women, of course, are asking, What method of birth control you you're using? Which one of you is going to undergo, you know, sterilization, your husband or yourself? I mean, questions that, you know, are, by the way against the law to ask. And when challenged about them, they put it off as the behavior again, of one obviously, Ill mannered, you know, person in the law firm, but certainly not the policy or practices of the law firm, and again, understand the law and lets them out in most instances, from being held accountable. No intent, absolutely no intent, we have more than one serving at a non discrimination policy here. God only knows what happened to that senior partner that afternoon. He had too many drinks at lunch.

Unknown Speaker  03:16
I mean, I think you've gone beyond the text cases, many cases. Yes, from an objection, academia is very tough, a tough nut to crack. There have been

Unknown Speaker  03:31
we've got a handful of gender discrimination cases challenging tenure decisions, essentially, most of which we've lost. Although Pricewaterhouse holds out hope. And a couple of which were settled. We didn't win them, but they were settled. But but they are not particularly winning cases. principally because any of the areas of employment where there are a range of subjective variables, and then the minute you start to have a collegiality, you know, you're in trouble. Okay, you know, you're in big trouble. Because that becomes the catch the kind of the buzz category? Well, yes, they published in the US they're teaching wasn't that bad, but they weren't very collegial, which is another way for say they will not fit in. And collegiality has been one of those time honored categories, which the court does, in fact, defer to as the right and the prerogative of higher education. But increasingly, it is very clear to me that universities do have to do a little bit better record keeping me in other words, not you can't say just any old outrageous thing that comes out of your mouth, because the court does seem to be sensitive about that, even where they don't seem to have a clear standard for how they're going to judge each case. But but they sort of like obscenity, they know what when they see it, you know, the more outrageous cases they can identify when they see them, so that schools do have to be a little bit more careful about that. The other area, of course, is racial discriminate. issue area. And we've been far less successful in that area as well. In the whole with the whole question of tenure, for a variety of reasons, I think these are some of the reasons that tend to plague women as well. But they do disproportionately plague minority faculty. As a result of our numbers being extremely small, we're spread extremely thin. I have had in 15 years worth of higher education experience, I've had enough administrative experience, I've never been on an administrative line to probably run a good sized college or university at this stage. I certainly have had enough faculty of committee experience to be in a position to at least Dean something, because I've served on virtually every aspect we tokenism is, is is a bitch. I mean, I have because it's another way that they get young faculty when they first come in, and particularly young women and young minorities, I have taught more, more in a broader range more and a broader range of subjects than virtually all of my other colleagues, because you don't have any control over your teaching schedule. And that's one of the ways in which they whipsaw you. And sort of I call it designed for failure. I mean, if you have to keep changing what you're teaching, you never build up enough expertise in any one given area. And at the time you hit the tenure wall, it's like, well, you're teaching so terrible. I've never taught anything more than once. I mean, what do you want from me? For first time through, I think I'm not doing badly. The fact that I can even keep up my first year at Northeastern, I taught five different subjects were on quarters there, we're on quarters, five different subjects, you know, different one every quarter. And I was a wreck by the end of the year, needless to say, and it was like, what you can't keep up with the boys, I certainly have made sure that no one coming behind me, woman or minority has had to undergo that. And I'm pretty clear about that. But but many minorities and women don't even survive that initial phase. And if they do at the time, they had tenure, their teaching has found wanting. Certainly I am the person who does more of the academic hand holding more of the emotional hand holding the virtually any other faculty and that goes across the board. It's not just for minority students, it's for the women. And I do have women colleagues, by the way, who don't spend time doing this. For many of the men who can't find anybody who's shoulder to cry on as well. And one certainly can't appear to be totally biased about the thing, although I can make my preferences known. They come in anyway, they understand how to get nurtured and struck, they may understand that better than minorities and women, they kind of kick their way through the door and get the attention that they need. And that's around the clock kind of proposition. Faculties don't reward that at all. In fact, they that is considered a demerit, because obviously that's time it's taken away from publication, and other kinds of of, you know, a behavior and activities that they do impact value. In terms of affirmative action, there is obviously no legal precedent around that.

Unknown Speaker  07:55
There certainly has been consistently a trickle. I mean, the data I was looking at was just amazing. I don't know if I brought that book with me. We published a variety of statistics for a conference that was celebrating the 20th anniversary of nuclear program last year, and haunt me and I was still dumbfounded. I mean, you're talking about, you know, graduating 25 PhDs in, you know, Poli Sci and a given you and that was a high number. I mean, if you start looking at the sciences, you start talking about people who are five, one to five, one to six, if it's a particular zoology one show a year. And so that, you know, when people start talking about affirmative action, you know, even for students, oh, my god, obviously, people are not being admitted to the programs they said people are not applying is when I'm told when I go out to talk. In point of fact, I think that's probably true. I was here last week, across the street speaking to sophomores and juniors, and seniors about graduate professional school education, how to think about it, you know, how to apply for it, how to finance it. Certainly, it seems to me that minority students in particular are not pushed to think about that, or at least not at a stage where they can still meaningfully plan for it. In terms of their academic work. Women are proceeding into these areas, but again, I think that to the extent the job market is so tightly constructed, women just require I mean, I can't tell you the number of my classmates, you know, here at Barnard who have advanced degrees who've managed to go on not to use them, you know, in places where they're actually using them. No one's wants to say that I'm using them but you know, I mean, some people who've worked at as middle level, you know, administrators in you know, non academic settings since they graduated from you know, a doctoral program is not my idea necessarily of the world's most fulfilling career and certainly not what they had in mind when they went through that program. A lot of folks just find that if they look out on the horizon, the picture is not necessarily worth the investment. The other issue by the way, which we cannot discount at all is financing. Fine. am singing you know this is I went to Barnard when Bogard cost $2,500 a year. That's right. And I was on scholarship. And we were grateful for that. So I mean, I mean, it was hard for my parents to even conceive of being able. I mean, they could not have sent me here. Had I not gotten scholarship, we're talking $2,500 a year. What are you talking now? What that's what the what with the dormitory and stuff? Yeah, I mean, I guess the whole package was 5000. If you threw in dorm, a dormitory cost as much as tuition is $2,500 for the tuition and $2,500 for Willenborg. I mean, this the cost prohibition for a lot of people even you know, and by the way, this is where this whole standardized testing business comes in. One of the largest financial giveaways in the country in terms of scholarship assistance is a National Merit Scholarship Fund. Which is mean in order to qualify as a semifinalist out of which all finalists are in fact drawn. One has to score at a certain level, okay, which is set on a state by state basis on the PSAT, CA, which is otherwise known as a National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Many inner city schools don't even give that test because you have to pay for it. Either the student has to pay or the school has to pay to administer the PSAT. Okay, if schools cannot afford to, which means that a whole lot of minority students don't even take the PSAT Sats are not even the pool to be considered for that. Women on the other hand, many of whom are in the pool still won't get their fair share, because you're getting locked out of it on the process of gender bias in the test itself. And therefore not scoring at that cutoff point level, within your own state to even qualify as a semifinalist and therefore to be considered as a finalist. Even if you're outside the National Merit Scholarship pool itself. Many colleges and universities including this one, which bought my name off of the semi finalist list, I had to finally figure it out. Many corporations and colleges and universities literally bindings off of nano bio, but they may call you a little arrangements are made off of that semi finalists list. That's the way in which they identify promising, quote unquote, minority or women students, people, many schools put in their catalog, we have x number of National Merit finalists and semi finalists. Now that doesn't mean that any of these people got money from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. What it does mean is that their name appeared on that list. And the school has probably packaged their all financial aid in an attractive fashion to lower them to the campus so that their names in fact can then be used, or at least their numbers be used as part of their recruiting brochure and material to attract other people to come to them because

Unknown Speaker  12:52
they've got really smart people, okay, at their school, because these were national merit semi finalists and finalists based on a bias test that is not in any way being looked at, or regulated. So I mean, it really piggy backs off of itself. And it's something that we have to be critically aware of. We just want a New York State lawsuit. Last spring, Judge Walker, who happens to be George Bush's first cousin, interestingly, must have a daughter or niece, who had did not done well on the sad because he struck down New York State's sole reliance on the LSAT score for the distribution of $14 million worth of scholarship assistance in New York state high school graduating seniors. That was the only criteria by which that money was being allocated prior to our lawsuit. And the reason we were able to win was that actually, a piece of legislation had gone through the New York State Legislature the year before outline, basically changing the way in which the money was allocated, not to rely solely on the SATs, they had been relying on the Regents for a long time. They found it was too expensive to give out the separate regents exams. So they went to the LSAT. So they were relying solely on the LSAT and Nyberg and fair tests had gotten a piece of legislation through the the legislature saying no, you can't just rely solely on the SATs. So they were using SAP and grades for one year. And then they left the legislation lapse. Everybody was worried about the budget and it just expired. And so the the Commissioner of the Department of Education in New York State said he was going back to rely solely on the PSAT. We used the testimony when that bill was first adopted, indicating that they were recognizing that there was gender and was racial bias in the essay to just say you can't go back. You change because you would, you know admitted that there was bias. We went to court and Judge Walker agreed with us. But he went further than that. His opinion is a wonderful opinion because he says after all of the evidence came in, he finds that there's about as much relationship of the LSAT to one's ability to do well in college is once you says this is the only opinion And this year because of that corridor, when they were relying solely on the LSAT girls, we're getting about 36% of that $40 million this year after they have to use grades, not just the LSAT girls got about 51% of that $40 million, and we think that we're gonna be able to do even better. Girls get better grades in high school and better grades in college. And yet standardized tests at virtually every juncture literally dampened down your opportunities for money for the range of colleges and universities that you can go to. Let's stop wasting your time. Thank you