0:00:05.3 Vicki Brett: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vicki Brett.

0:00:08.9 Amanda Selogie: I'm Amanda Selogie. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education, civil rights, and modern activism.

0:00:19.3 Vicki Brett: Each week we're gonna explore new topics which are going to educate and empower others.

0:00:25.9 Amanda Selogie: And give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field.

0:00:33.5 Vicki Brett: Welcome, listeners.

0:00:34.9 Amanda Selogie: Hi, everyone.

0:00:36.7 Vicki Brett: I'm just doing a vibe check. How are you this far into the school year? It's November. We got "no school November", since there's so many days off in November.

0:00:45.0 Amanda Selogie: No, I mean, yeah, no school November is perfectly put because, like, trying to schedule meetings this month is like, I don't even know. I don't even... I'm literally having IEP teams that are like, "Okay, so January?

0:00:58.1 Vicki Brett: Right. Right.

0:00:59.5 Amanda Selogie: Is unacceptable for kids that need intervention like right now. And it's really tough. But I mean, there's panic, there's panic from parents, there's panic from schools. You know, with this shutdown. You know, we're recording this on Friday. It is November 7th. Obviously we are still shut down by the time this comes out on Tuesday. I don't know if there's an end in sight by then. We've talked about like, July is the time where we really have to panic about funding for schools for, you know, next school year. But as of November 1st, Head Starts across the country have already had to shutter doors. Here in Orange County, I just received word from like our local Head start that they haven't lost their funding. I think that's partially because of like state bringing in funds. But across the country there's been so many Head Starts that have had to close. So like all these families who just with no notice have no place for their child to go for childcare, early intervention. So we're seeing it.

0:01:59.7 Vicki Brett: Yeah. And I mean, these seismic shifts in education are going to continue. And, you know, we have kind of been the little chicken saying the sky's falling for a while. And we're, you know, we're being very cognizant of guests that we have on because, you know, we don't want it to be, you know, a form of doomscrolling, but we really want you to see from different perspectives, right? In terms of what's happening and how people are moving. And I think, you know, today's guest, Nadine Jones, thank you so much for coming on, is really going to help us kind of see things differently, which is important to see things from different angles. Nadine, can you please introduce yourself and give a little bit of Background?

0:02:47.5 Nadine Jones: Sure, sure. Happily. I'm a 2003 Howard Law School graduate. I started out in antitrust and basically practiced that for about nine years in Washington, D.C. And then in 2012, by then I had an almost two... You know, I had a brand new baby, and then I was brand new divorced, and realized I needed to make different life choices. And I moved to Jersey City to take on a corporate role where the hours were much more stable. And I stayed there for 12 years and eventually rose to the ranks of general counsel, which is probably as high as you can go in the legal world when you're in a corporation.

0:03:27.7 Vicki Brett: Yeah.

0:03:28.6 Nadine Jones: And then I left January of this year, and I am now consulting. So work from home and doing some consulting work. And that's me in a nutshell.

0:03:38.0 Amanda Selogie: Well, we're so appreciative of you coming on. I think we've talked in the sense of what is happening from this administration all year, and we've talked a lot about DEI, we've talked a lot about, you know, trying to have these conversations about, how do we address... How do we move forward? And so we appreciate your perspective because, you know, we're... We have, you know, our perspective... We're very in our world of special education, and it's important to have these conversations with people in other spaces. So we're so grateful for you to be on today.

0:04:11.6 Nadine Jones: I'm thrilled to be here. And I forgot something critical. I have a special needs son. My son is on the spectrum.

0:04:17.6 Vicki Brett: Oh, thank you. Yeah, thank you for sharing that with us.

0:04:20.7 Amanda Selogie: You're very much in this world, too.

0:04:22.5 Nadine Jones: I am, from a different perspective, from a different angle. I'm on the receiving end, but I am in this world. So that's another reason why I'm just thrilled to be here. And the work that you do is so important.

0:04:33.7 Vicki Brett: Oh, thank you so much. No, that... For us, that also kind of just puts another layer. Like, people are multiple layers. They're not just one layer and just kind of, you know, jumping in. You know, I think our listeners are pretty informed because they're listening to our podcast and because of the social media posts that Amanda does, you know, about what has been happening. So there's this push with this administration to reduce federal oversight, blocking grants, and, you know, shutting down enforcement offices like the Office of Special Education Programs, Office for Civil Rights. Where do you see the greatest, like, immediate risk to legal compliance? Is it with those shutdowns of those entities? Is it something that we're not thinking of? What are your thoughts?

0:05:21.9 Nadine Jones: Oh, I have a lot of thoughts, but I'm gonna zoom out a little bit just so that folks really understand how deep rooted this anti DEI sentiment goes. It permeates throughout, I would say, majority of this administration's executive orders, not just the education-focused executive orders. So certainly K-12, you need to be careful in terms of what you teach, how you teach it in terms of slavery and those things, absolutely disparate impact. And how you analyze discipline; in terms of whether or not disciplinary actions are being meted out equally across the races. That's another executive order that has purported to wipe that out. And then we can talk all day about Harvard and the fight that they're fighting. The pump fake, if you watch basketball, is anti Semitism, but at the root is really a anti DEI sentiment and a liberalism sentiment to control the narrative of what the elite schools teach. In the corporate world, they went laser focus to wipe out DEI. So if you're a federal contractor, if your top customer is the federal government, what are you going to do? You've got 20,000 employees, okay? 80% of your revenue is coming from one client, which is the federal government.

0:06:49.1 Nadine Jones: And they're saying all of your affinity groups, anything that's DEI related, you need to scrub it and you need to terminate, effective immediately. And now you're sitting at the board table like, "We believe in DEI, but are we going to unemploy all these people by losing our top customers? " So, like, these are the conversations I think boardrooms were having, what it really goes... So we can talk about what the premise is behind this anti DEI sentiment. Because it goes deep. It's really going very deep. But as a board member, as a corporate, you know, board, you'd have to really think about what is core to what we do and how much do we need diversity in what we do. So if you look at the studies, there's no dispute that diverse workforces produce better widgets, produce better outcomes. There's absolutely no dispute. You can just Google Harvard Business Review, diversity marketplace, profit and loss, and you're just gonna get like a never ending well of materials that show that more diverse societies and workplaces produce better marketplace... You're more competitive, if I go back to my antitrust roots. So what exactly are you going to do?

0:08:07.6 Nadine Jones: For example, Target made one choice and Costco made another choice. And Costco basically said, "We service a diverse customer base. We have to have diverse input in order to be able to satisfy our customers." Target, I don't know what the thinking was for Target, but they went in a different direction. And you see the fallout. You see the public fallout as it pertains to both. So those are tough conversations at the boardroom. Now, maybe if I were on the board at Target or somebody who looked like me or somebody with my lived experiences, maybe it would have been like, "You know what? Slow down, because I can tell you right now how the Black community is going to react." So how we communicate this change is going to be critical. We're not just going to go out and say, "Yeah, we're going to shut down DEI 'cause President Trump doesn't like it, and neither do we." Like, you know, like, we're going to say something that is much more nuanced and a better language. But maybe they didn't have that diversity, or maybe they did and the company still went a different way. We won't know and we don't know.

0:09:19.6 Nadine Jones: But by the same token, look at all the schools. You have Columbia, you have Cornell; just announced their agreement with the Trump administration today, and you have others that seemingly acquiesced. And then you have Harvard who's like, "Bring it. We'll see you in court." Right? So...

0:09:43.1 Amanda Selogie: And that's the perspective that I think a lot of people we speak with. And obviously we are a small nonprofit, but I mean, we literally... We deal in inclusion. Right? It's in our name. We deal with those practices all the time. And, you know, for the little guy, we kind of look at it from, "Well, if these big guys, if these big corporations, these big schools don't fight, what are the chances for us? " And, like, we do see, like, we have seen a bunch of small, like, law firms and small businesses that are trying to fight. And from our perspective, we see it as like, "Well, yeah, you're gonna lose customers because the market share... People are pissed about it." Like, "If you back down, there's no hope for the rest of us." And, like, I get the perspective of, like, yeah, you wanna keep your employees and everything, but I think, like, what happened with Target speaks for itself in that maybe we need... Like, if everyone stood up, maybe we have a collective fight and we don't need to bow down and we don't need to lose jobs. That's kind of like, our perspective on it.

0:10:49.2 Nadine Jones: I agree. And I love that you mentioned the law firms. I can't believe I forgot that. Talk about the elephant in the room. Yeah, okay, but let's go to the schools, and I'm talking higher education. For K-12, it's a different consideration. And as educators, I would strongly urge educators, be very mindful. I know you want to do the right thing by your students. You love your students. I know that. And if you have a student that wants to be referred as she and not he, but doesn't want, you know, their parents to know, just, you got to protect yourself also. Do you see what I mean? There are executive orders that threaten criminal repercussions and all of these different things. So I'm just saying think about yourself also and make sure you have the right approvals from the parents to use certain pronouns and so forth. But if you go to the higher education, what could be one of the considerations why Columbia, for example, might have acquiesced and Harvard didn't? Yes, it could be their employees, but millions and billions of dollars are held by the federal government to go into critical medical research.

0:12:05.3 Nadine Jones: Who knows what they were thinking about? Were they thinking about that NICU baby who was just waiting on this groundbreaking, you know, therapeutic that they were about to go to market with, or? I don't know what they were thinking.

0:12:19.7 Amanda Selogie: Well, they might be thinking, "This one baby, yes, we might be missing out on this right now, but if we don't stand up, what are the consequences for the overall future? " And maybe that's thousands of babies that we can't save from medical research that were prevented to because it's a slippery slope. And so I think there's the two sides of it.

0:12:41.6 Nadine Jones: It is. I read their complaint. I read their briefs. That's exactly it. They didn't talk about babies. But it was the slippery slope. And it was just, "We refuse to compromise our core values. We are a private academic environment. We have First Amendment rights. We're not handing over our visa students to you. We are not going to reprimand our teacher..." You know, "We're not going to allow you to discipline our teachers." Because the government, the Trump administration, wanted to be able to hire who they wanted, fire who they wanted, they wanted to set the curriculum, they wanted to set the disciplinary measures, they wanted to be able to... I'm forgetting a lot of stuff. The type of control that they wanted, the admission process, they wanted a third party auditor to come on site to audit the viewpoints of faculty and students. And if the...

0:13:38.4 Vicki Brett: Oh, Lord. Yeah, but it's all about less government, right? Let's have less government involved. It's just the narrative, right? And I think, and not to interrupt, but just to make the point that these ethical kind of situations that are arising are also within Special Education. When there is a lack of funding, and you know why the district has a hiring freeze; is not able to provide speech and language 'cause they cannot hire an extra speech and language pathologist, you as a parent know the reason why, but you also have the right to file a complaint for them not providing the services. And that has been something that just a few of my clients have already had to struggle with. And it all kind of ties back to, you know, who is in control of the purse. And that this administration is, like, hitting that hard on all the levels. And I'm just pointing it out because it's the same problem in corporate, in Special Education, in whatever you want to look at. And I think sometimes people often think of, "Oh, well, that's a higher education, Harvard, battle that has nothing to do with my everyday life."

0:14:55.7 Vicki Brett: And they could not be further from knowing the truth of the matter. And that's why I wanted to make that point. Because as you were talking, I'm like, "But this is the same stuff." We're all seeing it. It's just obviously based on our experiences and how we move in the world. We are experiencing those feelings in so many different ways.

0:15:15.6 Nadine Jones: It is exactly the same. Exactly. Like, the zooming out. That's why it's important to zoom out, folks. It's exactly what you just said, Vicki. It is not just with Harvard. It is not just with, you know, withholding money from New York City now that Mamdani was elected. It's not just the corporate. It's... There is an underlying current that one day, once we get past and through all of this; which I do believe we will, will we have the ability to sit back and, you know, strip out all the rhetoric and try to strip out all of the emotion and just really take a look, "What happened? Really, what really happened. What is it that was so attractive to the thought of eliminating DEI by so many of our neighbors? " And I think it's a difference... Sadly, I've spent too much time thinking about this. But I do think it's a finite, like, zero-sum scarcity mindset. So that if Vicki and Amanda are successful, then that necessarily means the White man lost something. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's an inherent belief that you could only be where you are not because you're better than White straight men, but because of things like DEI.

0:16:47.8 Nadine Jones: So you're eating and I'm not eating because of this... You know, it's not fully articulated, which is part of the problem with the litigation on the federal government side, the courts are like, "What does it even mean to you? " And there's no [laughter] there's no definition. Yeah.

0:17:05.5 Vicki Brett: Like, "Why do you care? " Yeah, yeah. Like, "Why do you care? " You know, and it's like they just can't come out and say that, "We are a misogynistic patriarchy that wants to..." You know, like, the audacity. And maybe they will. I don't know. I thought a lot of things would never be said or done. And we're here. Yeah. Remodeling the White House. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's just... It is like. I know. And... But no, I really... This is the part I miss about law school. I miss a lot of things about law school. But these, like, you know, discussions, right, of how the law is swirling around us. And although the law is slow to change, when you have an administration that is signing EOs, executive orders, and forcing things to happen in a way that things don't normally happen. Yes. The courts can kind of provide that check. Again, you know, you're starting to see how people are moving through this world. And, you know, I love the kind of, you know, being quiet with yourself. And you had mentioned, you know, and if you were on the board of... Like, "Hey, can we just pause? "

0:18:10.9 Vicki Brett: Right. Like, we're... This environment that's been created is this like boiling pot. And it's like, "You just gotta make a decision." It's getting harder and harder and harder and people start to make choices that are quite frankly, irrational because they are in this, like, environment. You had mentioned that you were on board. So, you know, you are actively guiding, you know, some of the ways in which. I'm assuming some of your boards are kind of just small things like, you know, what they're putting on their website and things like that. What is one thing that you would want people to know in terms of, you know, what is coming or, you know, how they can react or just, I don't know, just, I guess sit with it is probably what you would say, but just kind of... Yeah. What are your thoughts with all of this kind of raining damp on everybody? What is something that they can do or say, or... Yeah.

0:19:04.8 Nadine Jones: I think for every organization, whether it's a for profit, non profit, big, small, I think this is a moment where you really need to firmly understand what are your values? What are your values? And as a corporation, your fiduciary duty so to speak kind of is to your shareholders and to your employees, really. It's not necessarily to make the world a better place, but if you truly believe that having different viewpoints, different world experiences, different races, nationalities, religions, all coming together and having a voice and working collaboratively, if you really believe that that makes your widget better, you need to stick it. You need to stick that landing. You need to... You really need to just stand firm on that. And what do you believe? What is worth the fight? Now, I do sit on some... On a pretty big nonprofit and, yes, there are a lot of diversity initiatives, but not as the focus of what they do, as a tool for improving the output. So it's a police community... Type of police-oriented organization, and they, the data shows that when you have a divorce... [chuckle] a diverse police force working within a diverse community and so forth, policing goes better, you get better outcomes, your solve rate of crime goes up, trust is increased.

0:20:47.7 Nadine Jones: So the diversity is a tool. And so what I advise them to do, as a board member, not necessarily as an attorney, what I advise them to do is, "Let the data ground what we do. And we know what produces better outcome, policing outcomes. Let the data ground it." So if we are in a defensive posture, we could say, "Well, we're not just trying to hire women for the sake of it. We're not just trying to hire, you know, members of the LGBTQIA community for the sake of it. Data shows that policing outcomes, which is our reason for being, data shows that our policing outcomes are enhanced when our police force reflects the communities that they serve." That's the type of advice that I gave them. And so there was a reaction to... You don't need to say DEI everywhere on the webpage. You can simply talk about policing outcomes and cite the reports like the, you know, the academic document or report that supports what it is that we're doing. And they agreed, with some misgiving, some, you know, some members of the staff were very hurt by the folding of... Like, the acquiescence to what they believe to be totally irrational and unreasonable coming from the Trump administration.

0:22:16.8 Nadine Jones: And our response was, but our mission hasn't changed. Not one program has changed, not one program. We have not sacrificed any program. It is the same work that we're doing. We did remove knee jerk words from public view buzzwords. Yeah. And that was, to me, that was... Yeah. Was that a compromise? Absolutely, it was a compromise, but the work remained the same and we're still working, you know, so everyone's going to have to make that assessment. It could be about tariffs, you're going to fight it or you're just going to pay it. Well, two companies on November 5th argued before the Supreme Court. Little. Little guys. Little guys, Amanda, like what you were referring to. Little guys made it all the way up to the Supreme Court, and they put on quite a show. Their attorneys were on. Yeah, they were on.

0:23:10.5 Amanda Selogie: Well, and talk about the courts being the one, like, I mean, whether it's an actual check, you know, it's gone back and forth over the course of the year. But because there's been so many lawsuits, I think that's the one at least constant, that we can kind of still count on in terms of enforcement. But we'll see how this one shakes up.

0:23:32.7 Nadine Jones: We'll see. We'll see. I'm not as confident in the Supreme Court's response. The questioning was good, but look at the difference. You got two little guys, really, small companies chose to fight, and a big guy, Harvard, chose to fight. You have big guys, like maybe Columbia, big law firms, chose not to fight, and then you had little law firms who chose... So it came down, I think, to what is worth fighting for. They had to ask themselves, what is worth dying on the Hill for? 'cause they might. If those tariffs continue, some of those... You know, they're not going to make it, those two companies. They're just not. They're dying on this Hill.

0:24:16.3 Vicki Brett: Yeah. Right. I'm already planning your part two, because I feel like that would be such a great... Just something very juicy for us to bite into. You know, we value, you know, your decades of experience and really, you know, bringing forth this conversation, that's something that we wanted with this podcast when we started it almost 10 years ago, which is nuts to think 'cause we had started it the first time Trump was around. Yeah. And, you know, we wanted to start conversations. And I know a lot of people know exactly where Amanda and I stand [chuckle], but it is very interesting because we are all humans. We are all in this experience together. And when you are just in an echo chamber. It's really hard to be able to focus on anything other than rage. I think we had a great blue wave the past few days, which has reignited a bit of hope. But, you know, I'm still, you know... I'm not going to hold my breath. So we value your perspective and we will definitely have you back on because this is ever changing. It is ever growing. It is... It touches everything.

0:25:27.5 Vicki Brett: And I think, you know, having you on to kind of explain it in a different way. Like, and just having that experience, it's super helpful to me. So I hope the listeners enjoyed this week and we will talk to you soon.

0:25:42.4 Amanda Selogie: Bye.

0:25:43.5 Nadine Jones: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

0:25:45.8 Vicki Brett: Thank you, Nadine. Bye-bye.