While podcast hosts may express opinions about policies impacting children and families, they are not taking any positions on specific legislation or candidates. More broadly, no statements made by hosts or interviewees should be understood as representing a university position on any particular candidate for political office, legislation or ballot initiative.

Please note: This transcript was automatically generated. We have reviewed it to ensure it reflects the original conversation, but we may not have caught every transcription error.

Bethy Leonardi (00:15):

Welcome listeners. My name is Bethy Leonardi and I'll be your host for this season of the NEPC Talks Education Podcast. We want to send a huge thank you to the incredible Chris Saldana who has brought us so much wisdom and insight over the years. Thank you, Chris. On this season's podcast, we'll respond to our current policy climate, examining how policies impact people's daily experiences in education and schooling. We focus on policies explicitly impacting minoritized communities, often in ways that deepen inequity and injustice. In each episode, we'll dive deep into a relevant policy topic, one that's in the cultural conversation now, something people have been talking a lot about or perhaps actively trying not to talk about. Our research assistant, University of Colorado Boulder, doctoral candidate Zander Naul will then help us ground in a specific concrete example of that topic. Next, bringing scholars into conversation with the people who live these policies every day, including educators, administrators, school counselors, youth, and families.

(01:22):

We'll talk about how this education policy functions, who it impacts, and how we're all involved in shaping how education policy lives in people's daily lives. Our goal is to explore policy at the level of people. As a disclaimer, although hosts and guests may express opinions about policies impacting children, families, and educators, we are not taking any positions on specific legislation or candidates. Also, no statement made by hosts or interviewees should be understood as representing the university or organizational position on any particular candidate for political office, legislation, or ballot initiative. In the first episode of the season today, we'll start by talking about current attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI initiatives and education. Xander will introduce us to Arizona Prop 142, a measure currently on the ballot for 2026. Prop 142 will further limit affirmative action of movements toward diversity in Arizona. Today, we'll talk to doctors Michelle Moses and Amy Farley to better understand the context and implications of policies like this.

(02:34):

Let's noodle together.

(02:44):

So part of our goal here is to support all of our listeners to embrace the idea that these policy conversations are not just abstract ideas batted around by university scholars and lawmakers. These conversations have real life impacts and they're for everyone. To achieve that goal, we're going to try to ground our discussion in specific examples and focus on outcomes and impacts on specific populations of people. In this episode, we'll tackle a topic that's been in the national conversation and that has had and continues to have harmful material impacts on many marginalized communities, and that is the relentless pushback against DEI in education. These outright assaults are often framed as trying to end preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, gender, and/or other aspects of people's identities. This includes prohibiting things like DEI offices or staff, mandatory diversity trainings, inclusive curriculum, and considering particular identity markers in admissions or employment.

(03:49):

Shortly after the inauguration, the Trump administration issued multiple executive orders ending what they framed as "illegal discrimination," wasteful government DEI programs, and "radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling." According to Education Week, 21 states have implemented some kind of policy that limits how race, ethnicity, gender, or other social identities can be included in school hiring, training, or teaching. To make this concrete with a particular example, we turn to our research assistant, Zander.

Zander Nowell (04:25):

Thanks, Bethy. Today we want to zoom in on Arizona Proposition 142, which is currently set to be voted on by Arizonans later this year. The Arizona State Constitution already forbids public institutions from granting "preferential treatment to or discriminating against any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin." But if this proposition passes, it would amend the state constitution to add additional more specific prohibitions. First, when it comes to admissions, hiring, promotion, or other employment decisions, this proposition would outlaw what is perceived as preferential treatment on the basis of race or ethnicity. It specifically outlines that organizations cannot ask applicants to make a statement that supports DEI, intersectionality, addressing systemic racism, or examining race-based privilege. Prop 142 also prevents organizations from requiring individuals, employees, and students to complete training or courses that support any of those things. Second, this proposition would also bar using public money to support any office or position that's considered to be promoting such perceived preferential treatment.

(05:45):

This includes any effort to "influence the composition of the faculty or student body with reference to race, sex, or ethnicity, apart from ensuring colorblind and sex neutral admissions and hiring in accordance with state and federal anti-discrimination laws." In essence, policies like this one, and there are many, including North Carolina Senate Bill 227 and Wisconsin's Assembly Joint Resolution 102, which is also on the ballot this November, policies like this one are aimed at dismantling any kind of effort to address historical inequities in admission and hiring practices.

Bethy Leonardi (06:24):

Awesome. Thanks for that, Zander. And to help us unpack and think through the implications of policies like these, we're introducing into the conversation Doctors Michelle Moses and Amy Farley. Michelle Moses is a professor of educational foundations, policy and practice at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on issues of ethics, democracy, and policy disagreements that involve racial, ethnic, and gender diversity and equity. She is the author of three books, Living with Moral Disagreement, The Enduring Controversy About Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action Matters, Creating Opportunities for Students Around the World, and Embracing Race: Why We Need Race-Conscious Education Policy. Amy Farley is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Her research examines equity in education systems and how consequential policies impact educational opportunity, access, and student outcomes.

(07:28):

She pays particular attention to school and university reform, high stakes policies, and the disparate impact of policies on minoritized student and teacher populations. Welcome to you both. Yay. Thank you.

Amy Farley (07:43):

Thank you so much. Delighted to be here.

Bethy Leonardi (07:46):

Okay, Amy, I'm going to start with you. How would a policy like Arizona's Prop 142 work? What are the nuts and bolts of a policy like this? What even is a ballot initiative and a proposition? Can you talk us through a little bit of that?

Amy Farley (08:00):

Yeah, a couple of key things I wanted to note to kick this off. I think it's important to differentiate between a few different forms of these kinds of statewide ballot measures or ballot initiatives. First, we have a key difference in the originator of a reform like this. We have some ballot initiatives that can be legislatively referred, meaning that they're coming from a legislator and being referred to a vote of the people. And then there are some states that allow what are called citizen-initiated ballot initiatives or just initiated amendments, and those would be things that any person could collect signatures on to try to get brought before a vote of the citizenry. The other important distinction is the mechanism by which they're legislating these kinds of reforms. So it can either be a constitutional amendment, which is adding language to a constitution. This Arizona case is an example of that.

(08:54):

It's a constitutional amendment that would be adopted into the Arizona constitution to make these changes, which would be different than a statutory amendment, which would be something that would be adopted into state statute or the rules of how a state is governed. So that's sort of the differences here. The key thing to understand is that these are often used to legislate policy or reform efforts, sometimes stemming from legislators, sometimes stemming from political action groups or political advocates, and they're often rooted in efforts to introduce a certain kind of idea or political discourse to the general population. There's sort of an idea that these are often used to make change, but there are also some evidence to suggest that they're just as equally used to influence elections in other ways. So to introduce ideas into elections that might not otherwise be a part of the discourse or to shape reform in ways that might not be as palatable to be adopted by the legislature, for example.

Bethy Leonardi (09:54):

Okay. So I have a follow-up question to that. What I'm curious about is how is the discourse, even if this doesn't pass, to what extent is the discourse, and this is for both of y'all, to what extent is the discourse around these policies, like the hoopla, the impact of that in and of itself, even if the policy doesn't move forward? Does that make sense?

Amy Farley (10:21):

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think that that is often the goal. So sometimes you'll see these initiatives being referred to the public in places where there's really good evidence to believe that they're not tenable, that they were never going to be passed. And so in those cases you have to ask yourself, is this about trying to make change or is this about introducing ideas into public spaces? And so we see that often with the most egregious sort of anti-minority initiatives, that they might not be real efforts to enact a policy, but an effort instead to target certain populations in public discourse. And we see that there's really real consequences of that for people living in those places. So we see things like increase in mental health challenges, even suicidality in places where those populations are sometimes subject to political discourse around their rights.

Bethy Leonardi (11:12):

Yeah, thank you. Michelle, do you want to add anything to that?

Michele Moses (11:15):

Yeah, I was just going to. Thank you. I was just going to say, to me, this is really political theater in many ways. I don't want to say that all ballot initiatives do not have authentic intentions, but sometimes it's political theater. I think we see proposed legislation that, like Proposition 142, seems largely superfluous. So one purpose might be to play to the voter base somehow, try to get out the vote by having a really sort of hot button topic on the ballot. Another is for politicians to try to make a name for themselves. Another might be to fan flames of racism or of criticisms of higher education, which kind of has been in the crosshairs of governments lately.

Bethy Leonardi (12:17):

Yeah, thank you. So how can you connect, Amy, I'm thinking about the work that you did in your dissertation in Oregon. Can you connect that work to what we're sort of after today in this conversation by giving us an example of why a conversation like this one matters in the spirit of bringing people into policy, which is our goal?

Amy Farley (12:39):

Yeah. So I did my dissertation trying to understand the extent to which citizen initiated ballot initiatives, those ones that are coming from just signature gathering that anyone could bring forward, the extent to which those have shaped education policy, and then in particular, the extent to which those have been used to explicitly target and disproportionately impact the rights of minoritized groups in the US. And what I show in my dissertation is that it's a large policy lever and often an underexplored policy lever in education. It's been used to do a lot of things, ranging from curricular reform to school finance, all the way to these more contentious kind of policy issues like the one we see in Arizona. And I was able to show in my dissertation that they are disproportionately being used to limit rights of minoritized groups, that they're not being used by both sides for equal measure, for equal gain in terms of a political agenda, but really being used disproportionately by people seeking to limit the rights of minority groups.

(13:42):

And so I think in the spirit of bringing people into policy, the questions that I would have would be what is the agenda in an initiative like this? What are they trying to accomplish politically? Thinking about what Michelle brought up in terms of political theater, what kinds of ideas are they trying to reinforce or introduce in the public, and what might be the implications of this work that extend beyond the obvious text of the initiative so that we often see that this work has chilling effects or broader effects than what is stated explicitly in the legislation, and that can be really difficult for our common voter to unpack.

Bethy Leonardi (14:20):

Yeah. Do you want to talk a little bit about the chilling effects that you are potentially experiencing right now in Ohio?

Amy Farley (14:28):

Sure. Yeah. So we have a similar initiative in Ohio. Senate Bill one was passed in Ohio that was putting limits on DEI efforts in higher education in our state. And so we've all been grappling with what that means for us as faculty moving forward and what that means for our institutions. And I think what I've really seen very clearly on the ground is that institutions are large bodies and it's difficult for them to react to major policy changes like this that can happen suddenly. And often when that work is being mandated by legislators, and especially I would say by common citizens in an initiated context, it is difficult for them to keep up with the timelines that are proposed in legislation like that. And I think that can result in work that is not careful. And so in our state, the example that I would share is we had a pretty immediate need to strip language from our websites that had any sort of reference diversity, equity, or inclusion efforts that were being done in our schools or colleges.

(15:30):

And so without time to do that work well, what our institution leaned into was this list of words that was circulated by the National Science Foundation that they were using to just do a quick audit to figure out which of their grants that they had made might have DEI work involved in it that they needed to stop funding to. And so that was an initial sort of pass that the NSF made, and then they followed up with a human checking of those facts, but that's not how it was used at our institution. So how it was used at our institution is they circulated this list of words and said, "You can't have any of these words on your website." And that included words like the common suspects of diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism, critical race theory, but it also included words like woman, black, indigenous, structural, institutional, and disability.

(16:20):

And so we were finding ourselves as faculty wondering how we could effectively run something like a special education program without referencing words like disability and thinking about how we can meet the spirit of our values and our commitments in a context where we're literally being politically silenced around words that are a key part of our work.

Bethy Leonardi (16:42):

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Wow. So we touched on this a little bit, and Michelle, I don't know if you want to start here with this question, but why might some people think or feel a policy like this is even necessary? The Supreme Court recently ruled against affirmative action in the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, and Arizona's Constitution already prohibits discrimination. And so what are people after? What people who are interested in this policy passing, what do they want it to do and why and for whom?

Michele Moses (17:15):

Yeah, I mean that's a really great question. I think I don't pretend to know what the sponsor's motives are here, but I do think it has to do with what we talked about just before. There's some political points that in a certain sociopolitical context like we have right now, I think in the United States, politicians, other advocates can use, I don't know, the national mood to get some pet projects out there. I think we cannot dismiss just the levels of racism and white supremacy that are intertwined with these kinds of proposed and passed, like in Ohio legislation. And quite frankly, I think people have more sinister motives. If you frame an equity policy in a certain way, if you demonize it, and this has happened historically throughout US history, by framing and characterizing something like equity as discrimination, we see that pushback against justice oriented policies and practices like desegregation, racial integration, gender equity, LGBTQ equity and affirmative action, for example.

(18:56):

I mean, people, sponsors use that. They can use that as a platform for larger political aims. Again, like I said before, for getting people to come out to vote because of having particularly controversial or thorny issues on the ballot.

Bethy Leonardi (19:21):

Yeah, thank you. Amy, you want to chime in here?

Amy Farley (19:25):

I mean, I would just say that I would urge people to read the details of initiatives like this and try to see what might be what feel like less important sub-points that are really accomplishing a lot within them. So the example that I'll give is in the Ohio case, our initiative explicitly sort of bans conversations or teaching that might call into question the idea of meritocracy in America. That's a huge thing to place limitation on ideas like that, that might question the basis of meritocracy, especially in a place like higher education where we trade in ideas. We're teaching students how to think about those ideas and develop their own notions of what is right or what is wrong when it comes to those ideas. And I think we see the same thing in this Arizona case. So there's embedded in it, there's a part that says that they want to prohibit any practices that sort of call into question the belief that a racially neutral or colorblind policy perpetuates racial oppression.

(20:29):

So they're basically saying if something is colorblind or racially neutral, then we cannot ask question about whether it might have disparate impact on certain populations. And that is exactly limiting ideas, even though it's certainly not how the initiative is written.

Bethy Leonardi (20:43):

Yeah, thank you. Michelle, can you talk about how research, yours in particular, can help us understand how a policy like this might land on the ground in universities, schools, and classrooms? In your opinion, why might thinking about policy at the level of people matter here?

Michele Moses (21:03):

I think it always matters, and I think the way that this kind of legislation portrays minoritized students, I think is especially harmful. So I think the concrete effects are many of something like this. When students and college applicants are publicly portrayed as inferior, as undeserving of admission, as unworthy of being a central part of curriculum or as only being admitted to college due to their race or ethnicity, those ideas get somehow normalized. And I think we lose opportunities to highlight and honor what diversity and equity actually afford our educational and social institutions. I think what Amy brought up about voters really paying attention to what is in the ballot initiatives and not just the title, there was some research actually that Amy and I and a research team did some years ago when there was an initiative on the Colorado ballot related to eliminating affirmative action in education and employment.

(22:30):

And we found some really interesting things by talking with voters, by conducting community dialogues around the issue. Some voters read the title and they did not understand what they were voting for because if you look at like, "Hey, we want to prohibit discrimination," a lot of people think that's a good idea. A lot of people who support affirmative action think that's a good idea. And we found that that kind of purposeful, purposely confusing language, voters think they're doing the right thing based on their own values and they may not be voting the way they want to be voting. So that's a little bit about how research can come into play there. I don't know if Amy wants to add anything.

Amy Farley (23:24):

Well, I would just echo that, Michelle, and I think it's important to note that what we found in the Colorado case was not just that it was confusing, but that it was directionally confusing. So it was confusing in particular for the people who were intending to support affirmative action, and it may not have been confusing for people who attended to get rid of affirmative action. And in fact, there was anecdotal evidence in Colorado that those signature gatherers on this anti-affirmative action ballot initiative targeted Black neighborhoods in Denver. So they brought their ballot initiative where they were collecting signatures to eliminate affirmative action to Black neighborhoods because they knew that Black citizens would be more eager to sign something that was purporting to eliminate discrimination when in fact they were voting against their self-interest largely.

Bethy Leonardi (24:10):

Yeah. Given that the focus is on people, I just am curious about the conversations that y'all had or conversations that people have in an effort to raise awareness or unpack these policies. On some level, this is about engagement with people and talking through ideas and saying, "Is this really the case that you would prefer for certain people to have less of a good time in life?" And I just can't, I think, imagine people saying, "Yes, that is what I want. I want people to have a less good time in life." And so I guess I'm just curious about the people part of this, the people who are voting and the people who are trying to understand what these initiatives do, if they understood what this really did to discriminate against people maybe that they love, why do people dig their heels in?

Amy Farley (25:16):

I think one thing I want to know is that I want to be careful not to insinuate that people who are supportive of initiatives like this are ill-informed because there are certainly very well-informed people who are voting along their values and exactly what they believe. But I do think that there are people who have also really participated in this political theater that Michelle was talking about, that have gotten caught up in it and have fear that there's something going on that might not be going on. And I think that to a certain extent, advocates for policies like this have done a much better job of owning that public discourse and of creating a sort of culture of people being very afraid of critical race theory in the classroom and these woke academics indoctrinating students than the other side has maybe done of presenting counter narratives.

(26:06):

So the example that I'll give, I have very conservative extended family, and they would absolutely vote yes on an initiative like this for fear that there is this sort of insidious indoctrinating happening that's harming, in particular, white students in the classroom who are learning about racism and these things that they've been told are happening. And at the same time, those same family members have this perception of me as a scholar in policy who does this kind of equity oriented work as someone who's making a difference and healing the world. And I don't think they have put together the idea that the people that this kind of initiative are targeting are me. The work I do is the work that they are afraid of. And so I think we have to do a better job of helping understand what is the work that we're doing and why is it important and humanizing that work that happens in the academy, because I think that that's what we have to get into the general consciousness.

Bethy Leonardi (27:07):

Yeah, thank you. Michelle, did you want to.

Michele Moses (27:10):

Well, I was just going to say, trying to get a sense of why people dig their heels in or why folks might be advocating strongly for or just maybe passively accepting or voting for things like this. There is something to what Amy just said, and I think what I said earlier about having all of this out in the public discourse, it's somehow okay to talk about race-conscious policies as if they have nefarious discriminatory intent. You get that out there, that then is in the air, that becomes normalized. And the most important thing, I think, or the most important things are really how this affects people. I'm talking about people both individually and collectively. People sometimes think at the level of the individual and create these zero-sum games in their head. If a certain student is admitted, then maybe my student won't be admitted, but that's not how admissions works, but that's how these things are portrayed.

(28:39):

I think collectively, how it affects our schools and our universities is also a really important piece of this because our schools and universities are people. That's the heart of what we do. And so we have seen a lot of research over the years that has shown that this kind of anti-equity legislation, like Amy said, whether it's nearly proposed or it actually passes, it has those profound chilling effects. So for example, we might see students of color limited where they apply to college because of that.

(29:25):

They're not going to let the policy affect their choices. They're going to make the choice beforehand, so they self-select out. It has effects on what teachers and professors feel able to include in their curriculum or the reading materials or assignments or research proposals. I mean, what Amy said is how are we going to do research on special education if we can't use the word disability in public documents? And this is a real interest of mine, especially in The position that I'm in, there are likely to be real consequences and real material negative effects on academic freedom. As Amy said, we want to, as educators, be talking through these ideas with our students. This is why they're in school in college. And then there's how these things affect whether and how our people feel they matter within the educational system, whether it's K-12 or college. And I think that's all very, very important to think about.

(30:43):

But when the average voter is look, I don't mean average in a bad way, but a regular voter, they might not be thinking about all of these potential consequences.

Bethy Leonardi (30:55):

Yeah, thank you. I think that that was the idea behind having a focus on policy at the level of people or bringing people into policy is just that, is to recognize that policies aren't part of some system outside of the ways that they impact people every day. I want to be respectful of our time, and so I wonder if we've missed anything. Are there questions or comments that you two want to add or bring in to the conversation before we head out?

Michele Moses (31:34):

So I have one thing that I've been thinking about as I was preparing for this, reading about that proposition in Arizona. All I could think about was the potential negative effects of the policies. And I don't like to only be negative. And so I was trying to think about how might we make lemonade out of this? We largely as educators, we don't have a ton of control over what's happening out there. We certainly can affect change, we can advocate, we can do lots of things to help inform, but these things are going to keep happening. And so in an attempt to make some lemonade here, I think we can also think about how this proposed legislation provides us with the opportunity to surface research-based conclusions about why policies like affirmative action emerged in the United States in the first place. While some advocates have stressed the compensatory nature of such policies, I think others have also highlighted more positive and forward-looking justifications.

(32:58):

So why is it important to have a diverse student and faculty body beyond the importance of educational opportunities for individuals? And so that's something that I think isn't out there in the public discourse that I wish was. Research time and again has underscored the educational benefits of such diversity as well as the epistemic benefits, which I think is crucial because those epistemic benefits enable, for example, the university's research and teaching mission and not only enable it, but also enable it to be the most rigorous and the most effective. Because we know that homogeneous groups, for example, of scientists may be missing a lot of the picture, a lot of the context, whereas those diverse groups of scientists are able often to come up with solutions, ideas, and findings that might not be possible in a more homogeneous group. So those are some things to keep in mind that I wish would come out, that I wish we could talk about in the context of some of this legislation.

Bethy Leonardi (34:24):

Yeah. Thank you for that. Amy, what about you?

Amy Farley (34:26):

I love that, Michelle. I think that I would leave us with this idea of hopefulness, even in the space of initiatives like this that seek to, I think, censor ideas and censor beliefs and scholarship and critical movements. And I think I would say that when I teach, my students often say, "How do you stay hopeful when you teach us about so many hard things in the education policy?" And what I always tell them is that I stay hopeful because I see ideas taking root in my students in ways that give me hope for what that means for the future. And so I would say even in a space like this, even in Arizona, even in Ohio, there is a long history of it being clear that liberatory and emancipatory ideas are persistent and resilient even despite efforts to silence them or to help them. And so I think we've seen that historically.

(35:21):

I think we'll continue to see that. And I think that those can take roots in community and in people, exactly what you're trying to get at in this podcast, Bethy. And so I think the role of individual students, individual faculty, people coming together to talk about ideas and realizing that there's power in those conversations, it's irrepressible.

Bethy Leonardi (35:42):

Oh my goodness. I just love you two so much. We are so grateful for you for being here and sharing your insights. And thank you listeners for joining and learning with us. We want to end as a practice with some reflection questions for listeners to ask of yourselves and to maybe engage those around you. And we'll start here. So according to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, 80% of teachers and 72% of post-secondary faculty are white. Questions to consider with these data in mind, who gets to be included in the teacher workforce and in curricula and why might that matter? What does this statistic mean for the school experiences of the diverse population of students who are in our care? Another question, why might it be important for students in our classrooms to see themselves reflected in the stories they read, to learn about the histories of their communities?

(36:42):

What's lost when we aren't engaging students in honest conversations about our complex world? And then last, what can you do to ensure that educators and leaders in your life and in your world know the importance of diversity and equity in education? How can you use your voice, your vote, and your platforms to uplift this conversation? Thanks so much for joining us and until next time.