Transcriber: Ahmed Moussa Reviewer: David DeRuwe
We are at a moment of profound change in which technology, globalization,
the need for cross-cutting knowledge and the need for progress
on diversity, equity and inclusion,
and social and racial justice are fundamentally shaping our society.
The public health crisis, racial justice reckoning,
and polarized elections have only accelerated these changes
and exacerbated inequality.
We need to innovate in the face of our major societal challenges,
but the question is, How do we get there?
Although many of us agree that we need all of the key people
at the table when we try to create law, understand problems, or make decisions,
the reality is that our governance systems, educational institutions
and approaches to leadership often aren’t well-designed to do so.
We have an opportunity
to create needed innovation through greater inclusion.
That inclusion needs to start with how we approach governance.
Our legal system and governance institutions are deeply fragmented.
We divide up law by levels of government:
local, state, national, and our international institutions,
and also by different geographic regions,
and the fragmentation is substantive as well.
So for example, when the Obama administration decided it wanted
to create regulations for the tailpipe emissions that come out of motor vehicles
and at the same time regulate fuel efficiency,
it actually had to create joint agency regulations
because we have different laws and agencies
for energy and for environmental law.
But there are wonderful examples of more inclusive governance approaches.
Some of them involve informal processes alongside formal ones.
So for instance,
when the nations of the world convene
to negotiate a new climate change agreement,
there are side meetings taking place among businesses
and among local governments and among other key stakeholders.
Those side meetings often result in voluntary agreements
that, even though they’re not legally binding,
help us to bring together the needed pieces to make progress on climate change.
Our formal governance structures also sometimes create
this greater inclusiveness by actually bringing stakeholders
into the decision-making process or through creating regional arrangements
that allow us to bridge levels of government.
One of the key reasons we need greater inclusion
in the way we approach governance is also to make sure
that the people who are most impacted
have a voice in how we shape the laws that affect them,
a critical step to achieving greater justice and equality.
This need for greater inclusion isn’t just about how we make law.
It's also about how we actually develop
the knowledge that we need in order to make those laws.
Our universities are divided by discipline and often organized in a way
that reflects their history, rather than an intentional organization.
They also often have funding models that can discourage collaboration.
And yet, universities can play a crucial role
in bringing together the disciplines and the stakeholders
that we need in order to make progress on our major societal challenges.
One of the places this is particularly needed is at the law-STEM interface.
One of the reasons that we struggle sometimes to make good law
around health or energy in the environment
or cybersecurity or intellectual property
is because the people making the law
may not fully understand the emerging science and technology.
There are wonderful experiments taking place right now
at a number of universities, including the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law,
Penn State Law, Suffolk University Law School,
Stanford Law School, and others
that are bringing together lawyers and technological experts
such as computer scientists or engineers,
in innovative classes and a new master’s degree program,
designed to try to create that kind of innovation that’s needed.
This kind of educational innovation could also help us
get at one of our profound societal challenges,
which is the access to justice gap.
A 2017 study of the Legal Services Corporation
found that 86 percent of low-income people in this country who need civil legal help
often either have no help or inadequate help.
So how do we bridge that gap?
A number of innovative solutions have been proposed
around how we might use emerging technology
to create greater access to legal help for people,
but the other thing we have to grapple with
is that there’s also an access to technology gap.
And so it’s crucial that we bring together people
with a wide range of disciplinary expertise
and a number of different stakeholders to tackle this problem together.
This need for greater inclusion also is critical to how we approach leadership.
Learning leaders and learning institutions
are important to our making progress in the innovative ways that we need to,
and there’s fairly widespread agreement about that,
but the problem is that in crisis,
people often revert to strong leader models
with an emphasis on fast action through individualistic approaches.
However, even in moments of crisis,
we can actually make better decisions that people feel better about
pretty quickly through inclusive approaches.
So for example, law schools around the country,
including Penn State Law,
had to pivot to remote instruction very rapidly in Spring 2020,
and many of our students were having a very hard time.
So in response to that, we began to think
about whether we needed to change our grading policy that semester.
We took an inclusive approach to doing so.
We had a listening session with our students.
Our student leaders surveyed our students as to their preferences.
We also had students participate in our key faculty committee
and present to our faculty.
This input from our students ended up being outcome-determinative.
Our faculty came to a different approach than it would have without them,
and most importantly, did so in a way that was most protective
of the students who had been most severely impacted by the COVID 19
and other intersectional crises going on at the time.
We took a similar approach
to creating a new associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion,
and to developing concrete action on diversity, equity, and inclusion
in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
These inclusive approaches each took us only a few days to do,
but they resulted in our making decisions that were better than we could have
without that input
and that the students felt better about
because they’d participated in a leadership way in making.
The challenges we face are immense.
We need to find innovative approaches to them
that lead to greater equality and justice.
Greater inclusivity in our governance systems,
knowledge creation, and decision-making
will not change the daunting nature
of these problems that we need to address together,
but it can help us innovate more effectively in the face of them.
Thank you.