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- [00:00]
Dr. Luthra
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- [00:03]
Dr. Christina Gessler
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Dr. Luthra
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Dr. Christina Gessler
the New Books Network. Hello everyone and welcome to Academic Life. This is a podcast for your academic journey and beyond. I'm the producer, creator and host, Dr. Christina Gessler, and today I am so pleased to be joined by Dr. Luthra who is the author of Can I say that your Go to Guide for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Welcome to the show.
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Dr. Luthra
Thank you so much, Christina. Excited to be here.
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Dr. Christina Gessler
I am so glad that you are here and that we're going to talk about this book as we start off. Will you please tell us about yourself?
- [01:10]
Dr. Luthra
Sure. I'm an academic. I've been in academia for a very long time, but a career front. I did my PhD and I finished it in 2009 and have been in in faculty roles in Singapore, in Copenhagen, and now I'm at the Imperial Business School in Lond. I describe myself as a slightly different academic. I think I'm a bit of a rebel in academia. I think during my PhD program I very quickly realized that a lot of the research, really good research that we did as academics didn't really get out there to have impact when it should. And so I decided that my anchor for or litmus test for the work and research that I was doing, that it was really going to be grounded in impact and I would find avenues, even if it was difficult, even if it was off the beaten track, that I would find avenues that allowed me to have maximum impact and my impact on the business community making progress in the areas of research and what I fundamentally, of course as a human being very much believed in and continue to believe in. And so that's been my journey in academia. I It's been, it's been a beautiful journey. Very challenging at times when you don't fit the mold of what it looks like and you want to challenge the systems that are at play. Of course that means that there are some moments of heartache, of course, through this process, but no regrets. All of that have made me who I am today and hopefully for other academics out there, those coming up as well, those during their PhD as well, that they see that academia can look different, that it can feel different, that it can, it can be defined by your own anchor and what you would like to see as a vision for, for the, for your own purpose. I'm also mom to two boys. In fact today my older one turned 17 so it's quite a big day, his last year of being a teenager before he becomes an adult. So I'm holding that space right now as a mom, so. So that's me currently living in London.
- [03:21]
Dr. Christina Gessler
One of the things we're curious about here is how people knew graduate school would be something that they wanted to pursue. I know when I was in high school I wasn't really clear about how the path through higher ed was going to work. I knew that I was hoping that it would. When you think back to when you were around your son's age, did you imagine where you would end up now?
- [03:43]
Dr. Luthra
Now? Not at all. Because I, coming from a South Asian family, there were three options to pursue at university. First of all was a non negotiable. You had to go to university, of course, which in a way was really nice. I think I grew up in a family where my father is retired as a university professor. So education was highly valued and it didn't matter whether you were male, female, boy, girl, didn't matter. You had to be highly educated. So that was a non negotiable. But there were certain constraints. You had to be either a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Those were the preferred pathways forward. I always wanted to study human behavior, organizational psychology, organizational behavior. Those were all the things that I was really interested in, but they were not the lucrative pathways. So I was good at math and science, stereotypically one could say. And so I pursued engineering. But I always enjoyed the, the courses, the cross faculty courses that I did in, in the business school and, and those are the ones where I was happiest. And so I had to find my way, you know, squiggly career as it's known to where I wanted to be. So at my son's age of being 17, could I have imagined that I would be in a business school carving my own pathway, being a practitioner academic, sitting at the at kind of having two leg in practice with organizations and in academia, in research. Definitely not. And certainly not having written my fourth book. Definitely not.
- [05:18]
Dr. Christina Gessler
You've written several books. This is your fourth. It's called Can I say that your Go to Guide for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. What inspired you to write this one?
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Dr. Luthra
So this was a book I felt that was building As I was writing the rest, it's interesting because the research behind this book is really around the resistance and backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion. And it came out at such a timely moment. I mean, I couldn't have anticipated that. I'd been doing this research for about two years. But resistance and backlash has always been there through human history. If you look back in time to the early women's rights movements in the early 1900s, civil rights movements, LGBTQ rights movement, there's always been resistance. And so I was always curious to understand it, and this was a theme that kept coming up in my research again and again and again, that there was some degree of resistance. And the way I see resistance is on one end. It's the overt backlash that we've probably seen the most often the last about 15, 16 months. But there's also the, the, the hesitation, the feeling that I'm walking around eggshells. And it's not just others who feel this. Even I feel this, I experience this. That there's just this hesitation. Do I have everything I need? Do I know enough about this subject matter to speak about it? This is not my lived experience. On what basis am I going to speak into this? And so, you know, there is that hesitation, that resistance. And so I was really curious to understand it. So it, it, the book happened to come out at, I think what is a wonderful time for it to come out given the context we're in. But it's been a theme that's always been there in my work and I would argue in the di space long before I've been around.
- [07:08]
Dr. Christina Gessler
You tell us that it's not a prescriptive book. It's not going to tell us what we can or cannot say. Instead, it is a book about enabling a mindset shift. And as part of that you offer us reflection exercises. At the end of each chapter, there's a section called Start to continue, which are exercises we can keep doing. There are places in the chapter where we're invited throughout the book to stop and get out a notebook and pen and sit with questions and consider our answers, but also to engage in these questions and answers with people around us so that it becomes ongoing living work. You tell us in the book that this is not a workshop or a one time thing, but it is the work of a journey. Can you take us into the opening of the book, chapter one, taking stock of dei? Because in that section you define terms and you really bring us into what DEI is and isn't. And I think that's A wonderful foundation for us to begin with, please.
- [08:14]
Dr. Luthra
Yeah, absolutely. It's very easy for us to say we are anti something or we are for something when it is an acronym that is catchy. So I'm anti di, I'm anti voc, for example. And it is more challenging for us to sit down with the deeper questions of what are we actually saying we are not supporting. So the first chapter really is about unpacking what is diversity, equity and inclusion. It's grounded very much in research and best practices around how we choose to define these terminologies. Diversity is about difference. It's about embracing human difference, human uniqueness. Equity is about fairness. It's really that piece about desiring and wanting our spaces, our environments, our processes to be fair. And inclusion is that deep feeling of belonging that I'm a part of. And so if we break down diversity, equity, inclusion, it is really about embracing uniqueness and difference. It is about fairness, and it is about belonging. And I have yet to meet someone who can look me in the eye and say that they do not want to be valued for their uniqueness, that they do not believe in fairness. They might disagree with me about how fairness is executed, how it looks in practice, but to actually look me in the eye and say I don't believe in fairness, and then to say that I don't want to belong, to feel a sense of belonging, I have not met a person who can look me in the eye and say that to me. Because the reality is that this is what all human beings want. We want to be valued for what we bring to the table, what's unique about us. We want to believe that the world around us is fair, that I am hired into a role, I'm promoted, I have opportunities because it's a fair system, that I deserve to be here. And the last one about belonging is it's one of the core needs of human beings to belong, to want to be a part of, whether it's in our family units, whether it's in our community, whether it's in our organization, our teams. And so these are all core human desires. So when we say we are anti dei, we don't believe in it. We need to ask ourselves the question, what is it that we're actually saying we are against? But I think that's the fundamental question that I hope the reader gets from that first chapter to really have that reckoning with what is diversity, equity and inclusion at the core?
- [11:01]
Dr. Christina Gessler
And we're using the term dei. But you point out very early on, on page three, that in different countries, it's different sets of letters. It might be de, B, D, E, I, B, J, I, n, D, D, and I, but. But we're talking about the same ideas. And as we get into the. The different things that the letters stand for, and there's more letters in some. Some places and others, even though we're all getting at the same ideas, you unpacked two things for us that I'd like to dig into a little bit more. One is intersectionality, and the other is why we talk about equity and not equality. I think equity versus equality trips a lot of people up. And intersectionality is a word equ, people are familiar with. And yet I think it's one of those words that we've heard so much, we don't know what it means anymore. Can we unpack those a bit?
- [11:48]
Dr. Luthra
Of course. Absolutely. So let's start with intersectionality. Now, when we look at diversity, particularly the D, in our organizations today, we tend to prioritize certain aspects of human identity and human experience. And those are usually around binary gender identities. It might be about ethnicity or culture, nationality. It might be, depending on where you are in the world, it could be sexual orientation as well. In some organizations, you might put age on the table, educational backgrounds. Now, some of this is more visible, others a bit more invisible. Ultimately, what we put on the table in our organizations are things that can be measured and that can be tracked. And we live in a world that what gets measured is what gets done. And so we prioritize certain aspects of human identity and human experience. For human identity and human experience cannot be boiled down to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 aspects. Human beings are complex. Each one of us has multiple aspects of our identity that weave together and intersect together that exist and coexist at the very same time. And that means that we experience the world around us, and we have lived experience in very different, unique ways. To us, that is what intersectionality is about. The concept of intersectionality is grounded in the work of Professor Kimberly Crenshaw, as she studied the intersection of race and gender for black women. And that was where it really came from. But of course, it's expanded now into looking at. At least in my work, looking at multiple dimensions coexisting at the same time, making it more complex, but also providing a more holistic understanding around the very idea of diversity. And that makes it. In some ways, it makes it really complex, difficult for organizations, because a lot of these dimensions that make up human identity are very invisible. They're very. They're very much unique. To us and how we experience things as an individual, and they're not visible, and so it's difficult to track and trace. And yet none of us shows up. We don't get into the office and leave our personality behind or leave the fact that I'm a mother behind, or leave my religious beliefs or political beliefs behind or my socioeconomic status behind or an invisible disability. We don't leave any of this behind. We show up at work and with all of that. And we might need to suppress certain things, unfortunately, depending on the environment we're in. But it's still a part of who we are. It's not something that we can absolutely disassociate, compartmentalize out, and not look at it when we're at work or even in a social setting. It is integral to who we are. That's the concept of intersectionality, and I think it's one that is pivotal as we look at the work around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- [14:56]
Dr. Christina Gessler
When we get to inclusion, you take us into the work of a scholar, Lynn Shore, and her colleagues at San Diego State University, and you talk about some key components that need to be present for inclusion to be felt. And I stopped there at that section for inclusion to be felt. I think many of us have had an experience where we were technically included, but we didn't actually feel included once we were there. And you say inclusion is a sense of belonging in an environment we'll all feel welcomed, accepted, and respected. How do we get these key components for inclusion to be felt, for people to be valued for their uniqueness and for an understanding that people really feel they need to belong, that inclusion is the feeling you have when you are part of the larger group with a shared sense of purpose.
- [15:56]
Dr. Luthra
Yeah. So according to Shore and others, there are two components, as you rightfully said, that make up inclusion. One is that we need to be valued for our uniqueness, and the other is that we feel a deep sense of belonging. Now, to understand what this feels like, sometimes it's helpful to jump out of this and to say, what does it not feel like? What does the opposite look like? So let's look at assimilation. And in the same model by Shor and others, they look at this idea of assimilation. With assimilation, people feel a deep sense of belonging because they've suppressed their uniqueness. So they have conformed to dominant norms, to what's acceptable around them. Hide a part of their identity, for example, but suppressing the uniqueness. And so that's not what we want. So we want people to bring be Able to express their difference, to be able to bring that uniqueness, because that is what adds value. At the end of the day, we also need to think about why are we embracing uniqueness? Because it adds value. It adds value to the team to have different perspectives. We're able to make better decisions, we're able to catch issues that we might otherwise not have seen. We're able to ideate better and which means that we can innovate. So there's lots of really amazing team related and business outcome related reasons for why we want to feel that sense of belonging and be valued for our uniqueness. So we can look at that feeling of, of what does it feel like to be included? It definitely isn't when I am suppressing a part of my uniqueness, when I'm not able to express a perspective and experience that I have because I don't feel safe necessarily to do so. Now the other side of course is the idea of that you're, that there's differentiation, which means that in according to Shor and others, it really looks at the idea that everyone is able to be unique and bring their differences, but they exist in silos with other people who are a bit more like them. But those, those communities within organizations exist in silos. And that's also not what we want because that prevents us from harnessing the collective benefit of people coming together for that common purpose to be able to drive output and outcomes, be that decision qualities, be that, you know, in, in terms of innovation. And so those are not what we want. So when we, if we eliminate those and we come down to, okay, so we want people to be able to bring, when we talk about uniqueness, bring different perspectives, life experiences, different expertise that they have. And at the same time we want them to be in an environment where they're heard, where they're respected, where their opinion and what they want to say is taken into account, where they can challenge their status quo, where they can challenge the decisions being made not in a non constructive way, but in a way that is constructive, that adds value, that is productive. And then you see that sense of belonging. Now this sense of belonging isn't to say that whatever I say is what's considered or what the outcome is. It's to say that I have the ability to be able to express my expertise, what I'm bringing to the table, to ask questions that challenge a particular way of doing things. And that is taken into account, that I feel that I am then listened to. Now it also doesn't mean that it is About a free will to say whatever we want. It is about responsibility, it's about accountability, it's about not causing harm to others as well. So I think it's, it's within that framework because I think that sometimes people understand this as I should be able to show up as I am who I am, say what I want, and that's just too bad if others can't deal with it. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about constructive environment where you're adding value, where it's respectful, where it doesn't cause harm to communities or individuals. And at the same time it is a productive outcome for the team. That decision, the quality of decisions is improving, interpersonal relations are better, and there's innovation happening.
- [20:09]
Dr. Christina Gessler
Eutelis it's important to note that inclusion is not felt in a DEI strategy or, or roadmap. I think many places have tried to make sort of blanket policies. This is how we will do DEI or this is our feeling about dei. And you're pointing out here that that's not how people feel included, that it is felt in our day to day interactions with each other, by the coffee machine, at lunch and during meetings. And you talk about how nurturing inclusion requires active allyship. You have a prior book about that for listeners. Could you just briefly share with us what active allyship is and how that might help support inclusion?
- [20:54]
Dr. Luthra
Absolutely. So active allyship is really the idea that we are in a lifelong process of building and nurturing, supporting relationships with those from underrepresented, marginalized and discriminated groups with the purpose of advancing inclusion. It is very much focused around the idea that the vast majority of us are passive allies. We might intuitively believe that diversity, equity and inclusion is the right thing to do, or it adds business value, for example, but we don't necessarily know what to do or how we should go about enabling that change to happen. An active allyship is moving from seeing it that way to seeing it more as frequent and consistent behaviors that we can engage in, to shift cultures, to shift mindsets, to shift structures and systems that have existed for a very long time, but need to be redesigned to be more fair, to be more equitable. And that's really what allyship is about. And of course, in my prior book, the Art of Active Allyship, I look at the seven behaviors that contribute towards allyship and what it actually means in very tangible, practical ways to be able to make that happen.
- [22:12]
Dr. Christina Gessler
You go on to talk about what DEI is and is not. On page nine, there's a very helpful chart that listeners can find because I think there are so many misunderstandings about what DEI is and what it might do. And so I'd like to take a few minutes to unpack what it is not because it's often conflated with an ideology or a charity about a zero sum game where one group is going to win and the other is going to lose. There seems to be a fixed pie mentality in many of these misconceptions instead of an inclusion and space for all mentality. Can we talk about what it is versus what it isn't?
- [22:59]
Dr. Luthra
Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk. Let's bust some of those myths right around this. I think that's a nice way to look at it. I'll start with the zero sum mentality. I think in the last 15 months, I think many of us working in the space have had to hold a mirror up and ask ourselves, what could we have done differently? What can we learn from where we are today with the backlash, especially the overt backlash that's, that's there. And one of the things is that in approaching it from a zero sum game, that it's one group against another. And this stems from policies as well, policies and practices around quotas or targets, for example, that give the impression that it is about one group, let's say, for example, women against men, that you prioritize women and it's a fixed pie, as you rightfully said, or pizza. And if you give one piece to a woman, that means there's less for men. And that isn't about how it should be looked at. Now this brings us to the equity piece. You asked that question earlier about what is the difference between equity and equality here? And that's where the equity piece really comes in. This equity is about leveling the playing field. It's about ensuring that if you're qualified, if you have the competencies, that you should be given a fair chance at an opportunity. It isn't about lowering the bar and it isn't about one group against the other. It isn't about taking away from someone, but it is about making it fair so that everyone who is competent, who has the capabilities, who should be given a chance, is actually given a chance. So what it is not is about lowering the bar. It is definitely not about lowering the bar. If anything, sometimes when I work with leaders at organizations who have gone through, you know, bias mitigation, bias blockers, implementing them across their employee life cycle, they say, wow, you know, we didn't realize we had Talent out there that was even more qualified than the talent pools that we were accessing before. Right. So it's about thinking about who's actually capable, competent to be able to add value here. But it's also challenging our very notions of what merit, meritocracy and competency and confidence, et cetera, look like because they're defined in a particular way. And all of us, myself included, have an image in our mind of who we consider to be competent, what competencies we even need for a job, what kind of capabilities, how confidence shows up, who is someone who is considered brilliant. We have an image in our mind and it is about challenging that. That's what DEI is about. It's about leveling the playing field, making it fairer. If you, if you have what it takes to do the job, you should be considered for the job. That is what it is. And so those are the myths that we want to bust. Not a zero sum game and definitely not about lowering the bar.
- [26:00]
Dr. Christina Gessler
Chapter two is the Backlash and the Resistance. And in this chapter you let us know we don't need to be myopic about it. Here in the States, we might feel it's our thing, and Australia, they might feel it's, oh, it's happening here, but in fact it's happening in many countries around the globe that there's a resistance to DEI, that there's a backlash. And on page 30 and 31, you break down your research from your experiences and working with global companies and diving into the research, and you say, you categorize the backlash and resources resistance in dei, in people into three broad categories. The deniers, the passive resistors, and the active resistors. Can you take us inside these, these categories and, and what this means for the backlash?
- [26:53]
Dr. Luthra
Yeah, I think when you look at the backlash, you see those that are, of course, the active resistors, right. They're out there, they're championing for, for, for change, what they believe is change. They are questioning the systems and processes and change that has happened within the umbrella of dei, that it is not merit based, that it is a zero, you know, that it is pitting one group against the other, that it's zero discrimination. It's a reverse discrimination, that it is about lowering the bar. So those are the active kind of active deniers, active resistors. Right. And then you have those who are a bit more passive in it, that the resistance doesn't show up in very, that kind of overt ways, but they're still in many ways trying to derail, I suppose, varying degrees. I Think between denial and passive. It is about varying degrees of derailing the processes that are at play. And that is, you know, in more subtle ways or in bit more of ways that have impact within teams and organizations. So it is about that scale, I suppose you could say it's, it's a scale on one extreme is the very active resistors who are out there removing, abolishing. I think what's really interesting is how this plays out in organizations and how I've seen it play out in organizations because these behaviors then manifest themselves into thinking about, well, there are those organizations that are saying that these are our values, we're committed to dei, we're not going to change anything. And if they're consequently answers to that, so be it. There's, that's one group globally, right. Of organizations. Then there are other, there's another group of organizations that say that listen, we could, we might need to retrench large parts of our employee base because, you know, because of, if, if we're still using these terminology, there might be consequences to that. And therefore we are going to shift how we look at this. We might change it towards belonging and inclusion or well being, etc. But it doesn't change, you know, kind of the systemic and cultural aspects of it that we're still going ahead with that we want. It's all about fairness. It's about ensuring that we are genuinely hiring on the basis of who has the right skills and expertise, etc. And so we're going to continue those changes that we're making and we want our employees to feel like they belong. And so the cultural shift is, is very much what we're working on. That's bucket number two. And then there's bucket number three, which is really using this backlash as an opportunity to say, well, this is a great chance. We never believed in it in the very first place. Now's a great time for us to backtrack on it and go back to what we were like, you know, pre2020, for example. So it has an impact on how organizations respond.
- [29:46]
Dr. Christina Gessler
On pages 38 and 39, you take us into making sense of backlash and resistance and you say, you may be wondering why are we seeing so much backlash and resistance to dei? And later on you go on to posit that the answer lies in the fact that the efforts for DEI so far have really focused on a few things. One is the idea that some policy or behavior could be the quick fix. Another is that you can make a business case for dei. And the other is offering simplistic solutions for complex problems. The next page takes us into one of the thought exercises that we find throughout the chapters of the book, which is, are you resistant to dei? And it's just time to sit with the questions. There's about 10 of them and they're yes, no questions you can sit and think about. And you invite us to write our thoughts down in a notebook. And you say, you know, if it feels uncomfortable, you can come back to it later on after you've read more of the book or done more reflecting. You also let us know that later on in the book, in chapter six, that, that we can explore discomfort. And there are tools there to help us get comfortable with the discomfort. Because this is a journey and not a quick fix. We are going to feel uncomfortable or discomfort at certain points in the journey. And you encourage us not to see that as a bad thing or as a sign that it's not working. You also talk to us about how this work is not about shame or guilt or us against them. As you work through your research, you came up with three key fears that come up when people are dealing with their feelings about dei. One is the fear of the unknown. Another is the fear of losing power or privilege. And the third is the fear of being excluded. I want to be mindful of the time. Can you quickly take us through how you identified these three fears and why they're getting in our way?
- [31:49]
Dr. Luthra
Yeah, so just. Just to go back a little bit and pick up from where. Where you kind of left off. When we look at this resistance we have and we ask the question, why does this resistance or backlash actually exist? And when we look at prior research, it shows us that we see DEI as a threat, a threat to our status, to our culture, to our value systems, to the position itself, space that we have adopted, been able to enjoy and adopt. We see it as a threat to our progress in our organizations, career progress, for example. And whenever we confronted with a threat as human beings, we react, of course, through the fight, flight, Fawn and freeze system. And that evokes in us a whole host of emotions. Everything from feeling overwhelmed to feeling anxious, to feeling nervous, to feeling inadequate. And there's a whole host of emotions that I unpacked through my research around what those emotions are. And it turns out that if you leverage prior research around emotional emotions and understanding emotions, it comes down to the core human emotion of fear. And so in the book, I actually look at five fears. The last two are more for people working within this space. So the first three Fears are, as you. As you rightfully pointed out. One is the fear of change or the unknown. The second is the fear of saying, doing the wrong thing, getting it wrong. And the third fear is really the fear of discomfort, which you've also addressed. And the remaining two fears are the fear of taking actions and the consequences that come from doing so. And the last fear is the fear of not making adequate progress. Right? So if we look at the first three fears, fear of change. And that really stems from the idea that I don't know much about this subject matter, that DEI is something unknown. I have never delved into it. It's asking so much of me. You know, there's so much change happening in my organization. I need to do things so differently from how I was expected to do. The behaviors that are being asked of me are different. I also have to create space now for other people, people who look different from me. I have to change the way I joke at work, because that's not acceptable. So there's a lot of change happening. And as human beings, we love comfort. We love staying within our comfort circles. And so the fear of change is real. The fear of saying and doing the wrong thing, of course, and hence the title, can I say that? Is something that we all contend with, myself included. Do I have the right vocabulary? Am I saying the thing in the right way? What if I'm causing someone to be harmed by this? What if I'm offending someone? And that can mean that we feel like we're walking around eggshells, right? And the last one in these three is the fear of discomfort, right? Coming to confront our own biases, our role within the systems in which we're in the fact that we're complicit with upholding systems of power consciously or unconsciously, can be very, very deeply triggering. And. And it's difficult for us to sit with that. I think we'd like to believe that we are good people, and we somehow associate bias with being bad. And yet bias is how our brains function. It's part of neuroscience. And how we process the vast amount of information coming our way. It's the heuristics, algorithms, mental shortcuts we do. We can't run away from it, and yet we've been conditioned to believe that it is bad. And so we associate ourselves with something that bias is something that is so negative, and that discomfort is very, very difficult for us. And so in the book, I paint this, of course, but then I leave the reader, of course, to. With a set of nudges as how I see it. It's not prescriptive, but it's nudges to explore, to experiment with, to try out, to really let go of those fears. So, so that we're able to make progress in this space.
- [35:57]
Dr. Christina Gessler
The first two chapters take stock of DEI and they take us into the backlash and the resistance. Chapters four through eight provide a guide for what we can do to help us let go of fear and stop seeing DEI as a threat. Page 191 begins a section called Final Thought. Where do we go from here? And in that section, you take us into the importance of finding common ground and building bridges in the few minutes we have left. Can you offer some final thoughts on where we go from here?
- [36:28]
Dr. Luthra
Yeah, I think. You know, what I would love to leave the listener with is that we live in such a polarized world. And in this polarized world, we've been taught and conditioned to debate, to take a side, one side over the other. Human experience and human complexity is not something that exists in A or B. It exists in everything in between, all of that. Right. So it's. It's not this or that. It is. And, and. And in the multiplicity. So I'd love for the listener to walk away with wanting to hold space for multiplicity. Holding space, space for multiple realities, multiple truths. To move away from this culture of debate and defending one school of thought or one way of thinking about something. To really this idea of dialogue and curiosity, to engage in these topics from a place of trying to understand and not to defend a particular stand. I think that would be that, you know, that that is my hope that we can move towards.
- [37:43]
Dr. Christina Gessler
Thank you so much for being here today, Dr. Luthra, and sharing from your book. Can I say that your go to guide for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. You've been listening to the academic life. I'm Dr. Christina Yesler inviting you to please join us again.