William Jacobson is a professor at Cornell University Law School. In 2008, he founded Legal Insurrection, a top conservative blog covering law, politics, and culture. In 2021, he launched criticalrace.org, a website that identifies and tracks critical race theory — including Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity (DEI) and so-called anti racism — through databases and interactive maps. Last year he started The Equal Protection Project (equalprotect.org) “devoted to the fair treatment of all persons without regard to race or ethnicity.”
Recently, I interviewed him for an episode of Over the Target on EpochTV. Below is an edited account of our conversation.
LS: Congratulations for breaking the story that woke ideology has even infiltrated veterinary schools. Totalitarianism means taking over not just a society’s political life, but every aspect of it. How bad is it if they’re even going after pets?
WJ: This came through a tip from somebody who's a student at a vet school. And he said you're not going to believe what's going on here. Ιt’s like Social Justice 101. What we found is that what you find in general in higher ed — the anti-racism task forces, the programming, the mandatory study, the critical-race type ideology is pervasive in veterinary schools.
There is a whole field of people who argue that veterinary medicine is biased against people of color. It's mostly anecdotal, but there's one person who's written a — quote, unquote — scholarly article, how the bias against pit bulls is reflective of racist sentiment, because I guess apparently, some higher percentage of pitbull owners are people of color. And therefore, that is a way in which racial discrimination, white supremacy manifests itself.
LS: How did progressive ideology sweep through American institutions so quickly?
WJ: For at least a decade, it's been building: The DEI bureaucracies have been in place, the incorporation of that ideology, throughout academia, throughout education, and now even corporations and government has been building for a decade, but if there was a turning point, it would be the killing of George Floyd.
You saw $50 billion pledged to these movements by corporations and foundations — not all of it’s been paid. In fact, probably most of it hasn't been paid, but they were pledged. And then you saw a very aggressive turn on the campuses.
Cornell University, where I teach, announced after George Floyd's death that the suggested reading for the summer was Ibrahim X. Kennedy's How to Be an Antiracist, which expressly advocates discriminating currently to remedy past discrimination. They also announced that we were going to become an anti-racism campus and there would be mandatory training for staff and for students and faculty.
What happened to Cornell happened across the workplace landscape, not just in academia — very aggressive programs to promote what they say is anti-racism, but in fact is a very racist philosophy, which is that you judge people based on their identity group.
LS: is this what motivated your latest initiative, The Equal Protection Project?
WJ: It was launched very specifically in response to a Providence teacher loan-forgiveness program. We're based in Rhode Island, and the Providence School District, which is the largest in the state, has a new teacher hiring incentive program that provides loan forgiveness to new teachers, but only if you're non-white. We've challenged that and it’s now at the EEOC, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
They're openly discriminating on employment benefits in a public school district based on race. We said we can't sit back in and just report about it anymore. And we launched equalprotect.org to take action.
LS: That’s blatantly illegal. Why does a public institution feel comfortable with breaking the law?
WJ: Yeah, well, that seems obvious to everybody that it’s illegal. And you wonder how they did it and why they're doing it. They're emboldened. They figured until somebody tells them to stop, they're not going to stop, till a court or an agency forces them to stop.
They are now completely in power, certainly in Rhode Island, run by progressive Democrats at every level of the state. They have complete political backing, they don't necessarily have popular backing. And they think they're completely immune. The governor hasn't spoken up, the Attorney General has done nothing. The teachers’ union, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, has said nothing, even though 80 per cent of their members are being discriminated against on the basis of race.
LS: In March, Stanford Law students shouted down a conservative speaker, appellate court judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, and at least one administrator sided with the students. You’re on the ground at Cornell; is that what’s happening at all law schools around the country?
WJ: There's a monoculture in law schools. It's very frightening. Cornell is more moderate than a lot of places. I'm the only openly politically conservative faculty member. So that lack of ideological diversity and faculty impacts law schools, where only one opinion is expressed by the people who are there the longest —the faculty and the administrators. Students come and go in three years.
Students are afraid to speak their mind, particularly if they're conservative. Most students just take the attitude, I got to just keep my head down. The first thing an employer is going to do in screening applicants is go on the internet. And if someone has called you names on the internet, even if it's completely false, you may not get an interview, you'll never know why you never got the interview. Students are scared to death of social media and of being called names. And the people who are pushing the DEI stuff, know that and they exploit it.
But think about those students at Stanford who were screaming at the appellate court judge. Those are people who are going to one day be in prosecutor's offices. They’re going to be in government positions, or in the HR department of corporations. That's the most frightening thing, not that Judge Duncan got shouted down but that people doing the shouting are going to be the future leaders of the country.
LS: It seems the gains made in the wake of the George Floyd riots are sweeping. Are they lasting, too?
WJ: It’s coming from 100 different directions. The Rhode Island Supreme Court is considering a new continuing legal education rule that's going to require you have one credit a year on DEI. Several other states have that requirement already. The American Bar Association has toyed around with requiring DEI study in law school.
I think what you're going to see is a bifurcation in the nation, or maybe a three-tier system, the red states versus the blue states with some purple states in the middle. The purple states will probably continue along the lines they have now. But in blue states, it's going to get worse. The State University of New York, which is a huge system, has just passed a requirement for incoming freshmen, that they must take a course related to DEI, it's mandatory now. New York is only going to get worse, Rhode Island is only going to get worse, California is only going to get worse.
Red states are going to have to start throwing around their weight and helping out the rest of us suffering elsewhere in the country.
