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- [00:00]
VRBO Host/Advertiser
Book a loved by guest property with VRBO and you get a top rated vacation rental that's loved for all the right reasons. Ugh. I love my VRBO for the location. Good reason. Oh, and for the pool. Cause pools are cool. I feel the love. Book a VRBO that's loved by guests. If you know you vrbo, you know
- [00:16]
Mike Pesca
that moment when you're cozied up at your favorite bar. That's what we do every week.
- [00:20]
VRBO Host/Advertiser
A lot of the stuff I was doing back then, I look back and like I was so silly and so crazy. I had a liquid nitrogen ice cream shop. The girls were wearing bikinis and lab coats and making liquid nitrogen ice cream from alcohol. And it was just like this, only in Las Vegas.
- [00:35]
Mike Pesca
Crazy thing the Speakeasy is a raucous ride through the world of spirits, cocktails, bartending and more, with hosts who know a thing or two about making drinks and drinking them.
- [00:45]
VRBO Host/Advertiser
I don't want anybody to be apathetic about this brand. I want them to feel something, even if it's negative. Hence our fresh fck tagline. I don't know if I'm allowed to curse on here.
- [00:56]
Mike Pesca
Pull up a chair and join us for the world's longest running cocktail podcast, the Speakeasy, out on Fridays. Wherever you get your podcasts. It's Wednesday, May 20, 2026, from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca and I've been thinking about this story for a few days. After I read it in full, I heard about it beforehand. It is the death of Nural Amin Shah Alam. He was a blind refugee from Myanmar who was found on a Buffalo street months ago after he was dropped off by Border patrol at a donut shop. Now, I had heard that headline. That is the inverted paragraph of AP style telling you the facts of this man's death. But it wasn't until I read on the front page of the New York Times a Dan Barry story about Shah Alam. And Dan Barry writes really well and he writes distinctively. And there was something about reading the actual story up until the jump, which was particularly affecting. So the headline was a blind refugee helpless and lost in the snow. And I think if it wasn't on the front page, I would have just vaguely known this was another of those tragedies to chalk up to Trump administration immigration indifference. But here's how Dan's story starts. He was out there somewhere, forsaken in the city where he had sought sanctuary, his damaged eyes blurring the foreign world around him. He was Lost in the snow caked buffalo sprawl, under fed, under dress, speaking a language few understood. Where was Nural Amin Shah Alam? Six days had passed since border patrol agents intercepted the Rohingya refugee from his release from a downtown jail where he had spent a year for a police incident. Rooted in confusion, with no reason to detain him, the agents addressed the mistake by leaving the disabled man still wearing jail issued orange canvas shoes in a darkened parking lot without informing anyone, even his family. Six days then since Nural Amin, 56 year old grandfather, despondent over broken American promises had last been seen. And there is the jump continued on page 18. Sometimes these things just work out. I was hooked. I read the story and yes, this man came from Myanmar where he was a refugee. There was much about his life there. It was a Biden administration initiative that brought him to America. But then during the Trump administration, the social services agencies, including the Jewish Social Services Agency of Buffalo was gutted. They gave him less support than they otherwise would have. So here is this man from a very warm country, huddled with his family in Buffalo on the top floor of a three story house. And the story gets into how one day he wanders out. He's half blind, he is illiterate in even his own language. He buys a curtain rod to take as a walking stick because he is nearly disabled and he becomes disoriented, he winds up in someone's yard. The story in the New York Times doesn't have this detail, but here is some audio of the police interaction. Who come across this guy in someone else's backyard. Backyard who won't drop. Well, they don't know what it is and winds up being a curtain rod.
- [04:30]
VRBO Host/Advertiser
You're gonna get tight. I'm gonna tell you one more time. I'm gonna tell you one more time. I'm gonna tell you one more time. I'm gonna shoot you, dude. Put it down, put it down. Delta 280 radio. Give me more cars. Yeah, put it down.
- [04:50]
Mike Pesca
So back to the Times telling of the story. Nural Amin, who. I'm not sure if they're calling him that by using his first name for familiarity or if that is how you would say it in Rohingya. I've been calling him Shah Alam because I just read last names. Anyway, Naral is detained, taking the police department. Normally he'd be released, but he and his lawyer and the family decide that that is not the best course. They can't really get him out. He's there for a year. Finally the charges are dropped and the day, the day his son goes to pick him up. There is a bureaucratic, let's call it a snafu where he is given to border patrol for a short amount of time. Border patrol determines that he, though a non citizen, was not amenable to removal, meaning he was in the country legally and his felony charges were now misdemeanors. There wasn't a reason to detain him. It was a simple assessment. Except this wasn't a simple case. He's not removable. So what they do is they offer him a ride back to Buffalo, which means to this confused, illiterate, non English speaking guy, well, what does it mean? They decide to drop him at a coffee shop. In their telling, an open coffee shop in the Times reporting a Tim Hortons where only the drive through was open that day. Security outlet shows a white van pulling into the darkened parking lot at 8:19pm Short man gets out of the van. No cell phone, no identification, no English skills, no reading skills, no understanding of where he was. Then he starts to wander and for five days no one can find him until they do. Dead from complications of an ulcer brought on by stress and cold. The register of this story is quite sad, quite pointless. There were definitely people or layers of people, layers of decision makers far away in Washington who if they knew about this guy, wouldn't care, but never knew and definitely didn't care and took away the resources they that might have helped him. But still it's a story of neglect. No one's close to a hero, but the villains are all faceless. And the worst you could say of anyone in the story was that they didn't care. Not just enough, but at all until, and this is why I bring it up, and this was what my strongest or perhaps just most distinct reaction was rooted in. There is one paragraph in this story where the reporter does what the reporter is supposed to do and he seeks comment from border patrol. And this is what the comment was. It is quoted in the Times, another hoax being peddled by the media and sanctuary politicians to demonize our law enforcement. This death had nothing, all caps to do with Border Patrol. Mr. Shah Alarm passed away almost a week after he was released by Border Patrol. Which as we knew by that point in the story is just compounding the horror and tragedy that this man for five days wandered the streets, cold and suffering from an ulcer without any means to communicate. So I was thinking of what this was like. It was like we were all gathering at a wake, a sad, quiet, somber wake where people talked in muted tones. And someone bursts in and starts ranting spittle flecked. And everyone just shakes their head and says, now's not the time. This is not the register we're operating in. You have met our sadness with madness, with near madness. You're also, of course, a reminder of why so much of the sadness occurred. Thought of some other analogies, I don't know. Farting at a nice poetry reading and expecting a high five, playing some sort of heavy metal song. No, heavy metal is good when done well. Some sort of karaoke version of Slipknot at a nice chamber music festival or something else where a dirge is played and true remembrance is being asked. Yeah, that's it. It's farting during the moment of silence and expecting a high five. That's what I'm going to go with. And that was authored by our government, which is to say it was authored in our name. Get the hell out of here with that. You've shamed yourself. And since you are our government, you insist on shaming us. I think if it wasn't in the paper with those words with the all caps, in contrast to the black and white text around it that tended to underplay as a selling point the horror of the story so that it crept up on you. I don't know if it would have been as effective. But I did have that odd reaction to one of these long stories in the New York Times that I so often never read. But in this case, I would not say I am glad, but I would say I needed to read it, and so I did. So I've shared my thoughts with you in extended form on the show. Today I give you a full show interview. My guest is David Oppenheimer, who is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and he has written a book in defense of diversity. It is called the Diversity Principle. It is an interview in two parts. The parts are very different. Part one, we get into the history, which I did not know was interesting. We let Oppenheimer lay out his case that diversity has been, quote, proven to work. And in part two, the pushback artist, I. E. Me asserts himself, David Oppenheimer. Up next, Ever notice how the second you Google something, every ad you get is about that thing, banner ads, and they chase you all around. And if the thing that you were googling is not something maybe that defines you, you don't want that. You definitely don't want that. Or try to watch something when you're traveling and that thing is just blocked. There are so many Ways that the Internet, this miracle of communication is less than a miracle and less than open. And that's why I started using Proton vpn. This content isn't available in your region. Well, there are no regions with Proton vpn. Whether you're traveling or just at home and you don't want your online activity following you all the time, that's your activity. Proton VPN takes the power back and gives it to you. It adds a layer of protection that keeps your browsing habits private. Unlike most VPNs, Proton is backed by strong European privacy laws and years of expertise creating safer, faster and more open Internet for everyone. So whether you want to watch content from anywhere, get around block sites or just keep your activity private on public wi fi, Proton VPN has you covered. It's easy to get started. Right now ProtonVPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two year plan. When you go to protonvpn.com gist that's here's the spelling part. P R O t o n vpn.com/gist for 70% off your two year plan. That's protonvpn.com gist I'm here to tell you once more about True Work. Because it's springtime and it means going outside, dealing with chilly mornings and hot afternoons and everything in between. Plus of course, mud, rain, whatever else the weather decides. Don't worry, True Work has you covered. Most workwear is made from cotton blends which have downsides, right? They get soaked, they get soaked with rain, they get soaked with whatever perspiration you're putting out. You're putting out a lot because you're working hard. Not True Work. They have the advanced technologies, the wicking technologies. I'll tell you about the T2 work pant, which keeps you comfortable over a wide range of conditions. Four way stretch for bending, kneeling and climbing. And there's important water resistant finish to shed rain. And lots of pockets. Nine intelligent pockets. They tell you I wear these out. You know, I wear these to do the work in the front yard and the backyard, but I also wear them out and they're really fashionable and I have nine pockets to help me. Before I found out about True Work, I'd wear the cheap gear and you don't really even realize it, but when your gear is working against you, it just makes the job so much harder. You just basically need pockets in the right places. You don't want to get all soaked by your gear. The T2 work pant is different. It's built for people who hold themselves to a higher standard four way stretch water resistance. Do I have to mention the nine pockets again? The work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15% off your first order at true work.com with code the gist that's T R U E W E R K.com code the gist true Work Built like it matters, because it does. We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask. Even in 2026. Enter how to the longstanding Advice show an Ambie Award nominated Best Personal Growth Podcast. That's back with new episodes and a new host. And that host. Here's the reveal. It's Miss Me? Mike Pesca each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from world class experts who actually know what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silence. No question is too big or too specific. Some topics how to protect the elderly from scammers, how to take psychedelics therapeutically, and of course, how to emigrate to the Netherlands as a throuple. You've got questions. We'll find the answers, so follow how to with Mike Pesca on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. As you know, I've talked a lot about DEI and the D&D I diversity, and now I'm about to talk about it with a scholar who goes back to areas I hadn't even considered. Fascinating. David B. Oppenheimer teaches at the University of California, Berkeley Law School. He is a professor of law there, and his new book is called the Diversity Principle the Story of a Transformative Idea. Professor Oppenheimer, welcome to the Gist.
- [16:08]
David B. Oppenheimer
Mike thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
- [16:10]
Mike Pesca
So I did know of the times that diversity, or what became the idea of diversity, was cited in US Courts. And of course I knew a bunch about what Martin Luther King thought of diversity and how that started. I did not go as far back as Willem von Humboldt, but you do tell me, because I think it's fascinating and the listeners will enjoy knowing how you think that that is the root of what we've come to think of diversity as.
- [16:41]
David B. Oppenheimer
So Humboldt, who was quite a remarkable figure in Prussia in the late 18th and early 19th century, as a diplomat, as a philosopher, as the inventor of modern linguistics, was also the inventor of the modern research university. Every major Research university today in the world is described as a Humboldtian university because they are built on the idea that students and faculty should be confronting each other, should be exchanging ideas and challenging ideas. And in order to put that into practice, he decided that the University of Berlin, which he founded in 1810, should include Catholics and should include Jews in addition to Protestants because it would create a greater clash of ideas. And that was the beginning of this idea that diversity is important in the setting of a university.
- [17:50]
Mike Pesca
How difficult was that practically in 1810 in Germany?
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David B. Oppenheimer
Well, it wasn't difficult at least in Berlin and Prussia because there was a large Catholic population, there was a large Jewish population of intellectuals, but they were pretty much kept out of the universities until Humboldt.
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Mike Pesca
Right. And from what I glean, the top thinkers, the vanguard recognized we wouldn't be a top university, we wouldn't have the best minds were we to be Protestant only. So it wasn't an effort that did anything other than advance the cause of the university. Not to be the kindest or most inclusive or any of these other phrases or least discriminatory. It was just about being the best. If you want to be the best, need Catholics and Jews in 1810 in Prussia it would.
- [18:50]
David B. Oppenheimer
That's right. It was completely self interest, what some people call enlightened self interest.
- [18:57]
Mike Pesca
Well though that does. I want to hold on to that because I want to talk about those ideas and how they've changed a little bit. But take me up to John Stuart Mill, who should I credit you with this? I didn't realize how important his life, his wife was in collaborating with him. Were you one of the people who pointed this out more than others?
- [19:16]
David B. Oppenheimer
No, I'm one of the people who has benefited from the work of a series of feminist legal scholars and feminist philosophers who went back and looked at the relationship between John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill and realized that as he always claimed, she really was the co author of many of his works, including On Liberty.
- [19:43]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, yeah, because that's interesting cuz he was a great egalitarian. He. It wasn't the case where he was trying to suppress the efforts of his wife, he was trying to advance them. It's just that the rest of society wasn't thereby arguing his case a little bit. But what's his contribution to this overall thinking on diversity? Their contribution, sorry.
- [20:02]
David B. Oppenheimer
Their book On Liberty begins with a quotation from Humboldt about the importance of diversity. And I think if they were naming the book today, they would name it On Liberty and Diversity because all through their explanation of liberty and the Importance of Liberty and the Meaning of Liberty is a recitation about the importance of diversity. And they too were involved in trying to open Oxford and Cambridge to Catholics, to Jews, to Unitarians. He couldn't attend Cambridge or Oxford because he was a Unitarian. She couldn't attend because she was not only a Unitarian but a woman. And Oxford didn't admit women until the 20th century. But they were strongly committed to, as you said, egalitarianism and what today we would call multiculturalism. He made a wonderful speech to the students at St. Andrews, where he was the rector, in which he said, you have to open your minds by confronting people who have different backgrounds and experiences than you. And that means you have to invite people from different nations and different religions and different backgrounds into your university in order to have an open minded approach to learning.
- [21:32]
Mike Pesca
Yes. And then again, if you want to call yourself one of the world's best universities and you're excluding John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, you're not that. And that's important, I think, to note also there is an ideological reason, I think, for you to put him there because John Stuart Mill is what we now call conservative, what they would have called classical liberalism, perhaps the leading light of this movement. And the classical liberals today are not as on board with DEI as progressives are.
- [22:04]
David B. Oppenheimer
That's correct.
- [22:06]
Mike Pesca
So I'm thinking that, oh, you can't tell the story without John Stuart Mill. But it's also interesting for your purposes to tell the story because how it includes the classical liberalism leading light.
- [22:16]
David B. Oppenheimer
Well, that's right. And just to add to that, many of the ideas about diversity and many of the right, much of the writing about the value of diversity comes from the center and the right as well as the left. This is not a strictly left wing idea. It may be a liberal idea, but as, but as you point out, classical liberalism is not the same as the term liberal that we use in politics today.
- [22:48]
Mike Pesca
Right. So then you, because you are a law professor who understands these things, takes the Humboldt idea, takes the Mills idea, shows how they it those ideas made their way into the works of lawyers and judges and jurists who we would all know. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Felix Frankfurter, and eventually the Supreme Court is quoting them, is mashing together a couple of their long treatises. This thinking from the 19th century is showing up in important Supreme Court cases, up to and including landmark affirmative action cases. Right?
- [23:26]
David B. Oppenheimer
That's right. The idea that diversity matters shows up in the 1920s in the opinions of Oliver Wendell Holmes on the meaning of the First Amendment and When we talk about the First Amendment as protecting a marketplace of ideas, we're talking about homes, talking about the mills. And that was very much the work of Felix Frankfurter, who was a young acolyte of Holmes and then followed him onto the Supreme Court. And Frankfurter takes these ideas about diversity that Holmes developed in the context of freedom of speech and applies it to academic freedom at the time of the McCarthy period. And then a Frankfurter protege, Archibald Cox, takes that idea and applies it to the argument in support of affirmative action.
- [24:26]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I didn't realize so much about Archibald Cox's biography beyond the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon association and him refusing to fire special. Oh, he was the special prosecutor that several solicitor generals, et cetera, refused to fire. So fascinating. A classic hundreds year old tradition of upholding and advocating for diversity. However, were those arguments based on the same current arguments that you hear about diversity? Because as I read your work on the thinkers of yore, what they were saying essentially was we are less of a society if we exclude these deserving and sometimes excellent members of our society for the sake of religion was very important, but race was also important. Whereas now the diversity argument is more often framed as it is important to have our institutions look like America or reflect the ethnic, gender, etc. Distribution of the country as a whole. So I'll stop there and you totally understand the distinction. Did it change from the older arguments for diversity to how it's argued for now?
- [25:53]
David B. Oppenheimer
Well, I think both arguments are being made. And the argument that I have focused on in this book is the argument that began with Humboldt and the Mills and Holmes and Frankfurter and Cox, and has moved into empirical evidence, has moved into the testing that's done by economists and social scientists, is it true that when you bring together people with different backgrounds and experiences, including people of different races, ethnicities, genders, religions, disabilities, do do they work better? Do they make more discoveries? Do they learn more from each other? And the answer is yes. Now that was a hunch by Humboldt, it was a hunch by the Mills, by Holmes, by Frankfurter, by Cox. But now we've measured it now. Now we've gone into companies that have more diverse boards, that have more diverse leadership, and we've seen that they make more money. We've gone into classrooms that were more diverse, compared them to classrooms that were less diverse, and found that the number of ideas being generated by students in those classrooms were greater. We've looked at scientific papers written by homogeneous groups and scientific papers written by heterogeneous groups, and we have found that diversity contributes to better science. These are things that are not about the value or importance of a particular community looking like the larger community. These are not about equity. And it's not that I don't think equity is important, but that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about are the benefits of diversity in terms of enlightened self interest.
- [28:21]
Mike Pesca
So if diversity, if it were the case that diversity makes firms more money, why would it even be controversial to engage in diversity?
- [28:30]
David B. Oppenheimer
Well, among CEOs, if you speak with them privately and quietly and off the record, it's not controversial. But if you move from having a board that is all white men to having a board in which perhaps a third of the members are white men and perhaps a third of the members are white women, and perhaps a third of the members are people of color, men and women, that looks like a reduction of opportunity for white men. And that's where the backlash is coming from.
- [29:13]
Mike Pesca
White men backlash even though the companies are making more money?
- [29:17]
David B. Oppenheimer
Right.
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Mike Pesca
That's what you're saying is going.
- [29:18]
David B. Oppenheimer
That is correct.
- [29:20]
Mike Pesca
So since 2018, California has a law requiring women on corporate boards to be something closer to equitable. Has this correlated with the companies making more money?
- [29:34]
David B. Oppenheimer
That got thrown out by the courts. That law, before it could take effect, was thrown out by the courts. But we know from Europe that where there are laws that require women on boards that, yes, companies make more money when the boards are more diverse. We don't have data from the U.S. well, we have some data from the U.S. because there are companies that have voluntarily increased the diversity of their boards, and those correlate with those companies being more successful. I'm not going to argue for causation. The best I can give you is correlation, but strong correlation.
- [30:17]
Mike Pesca
And tell me about where the study about classrooms with more diversity come up with better ideas comes from.
- [30:23]
David B. Oppenheimer
There are now hundreds of studies. The classic study was done by, oh, what's her name. She became the dean of the business school at Columbia and then died very young of breast cancer. She was the one who wrote the article for the Scientific America, diversity makes us smarter. And she did many variations on an experiment in a classroom setting with a murder mystery. And the question was, how many clues could the students develop in a specific amount of time? And sometimes the students in the room were all white men who were members of the same fraternity, and other times they were diverse along lots of different ways. And what she found again and again, and other people have replicated this, is that the more Diverse the group is, the more clues they come up with.
- [31:23]
Mike Pesca
And this is a good proxy for all of our thinking because we do have a number of, a number of real world examples where we could test the very diverse organizations or pit them in a field against the less diverse organizations. And you're saying that the more diverse organizations are constantly outperforming the less diverse diverse organization?
- [31:45]
David B. Oppenheimer
That's correct.
- [31:46]
Mike Pesca
So then why do they still rebut it and not want DEI and have to be forced into and sued into accepting this?
- [31:57]
David B. Oppenheimer
Well, again, one is. One is general bias against women and people of color. A second, and related to that, maybe it goes to the meaning of bias is a distrust that it could really be true that women are as good as men, that a mixture of women and men will give you better results. Many men feel that working only with men is more comfortable, which it is. That's, you know, diversity is not about being comfortable. Diversity is often about being uncomfortable because it's discomfort that often makes us think more deeply and see things we wouldn't otherwise see. It means going up against established norms that for those who benefit from those norms, they don't want to give it up. But the irony is that this is one of those cases where a rising tide really does lift all ships. Where, where the company's going to be better off, the stockholders are going to be better off, the officers of the company are going to be better off if they are more diverse in their leadership.
- [33:15]
Mike Pesca
And so what are the mechanisms that you favor and champion to achieve that diversity?
- [33:22]
David B. Oppenheimer
Well, at this point, I would like people to simply recognize the long history of this idea and what a profound idea it is when we start talking about mechanisms. There are lots of different kinds of policy mechanisms. I thought the California law was a good law that required boards to include some women and some people of color if they were a California corporation. I think the NASDAQ rule that got thrown out, that said if you don't have any women and you don't have any people of color on your board, you have to explain why didn't say you have to have them. I think the Mansfield rule, which has been suspended in the legal profession, that if you're going to promote people to equity partnership, you have to have candidates who are women and candidates who are people of color. You don't have to promote them, but you have to at least have them under consideration. That's a variation on the NFL rule, the Rooney rule, that you have to interview at least one black candidate for coach because what happens is that if women and people of color can get their foot in the door, they'll often be recognized as having the expertise being the best candidate, getting the job. But if they're not able to get their foot in the door, that won't happen.
- [35:08]
Mike Pesca
We'll be back with David Oppenheimer in a moment. I want to talk about Navy dolphins. Did you know that our desire to assist the older they don't like to be called aged, but the older Navy dolphins helped unlock a secret to healthy aging for all of us. Yes, I am excited to share with you. C15 from Fatty 15, the first emerging essential fatty acid to be discovered in more than 90 years. A scientific breakthrough that supports healthy aging. Here's the dolphin connection. So Fatty 15 co founder Dr. Stephanie Van Watson discovered the benefits of C15 while working with the Navy to improve the health and welfare of older dolphins. You know, the truth is as our cells age, our bodies age too. And as many as one in three people worldwide may have low C15 levels and fragile cells. And to say nothing of the dolphins, of course, the dolphins. So if you want to get a little pep in your blowhole or whatever parts that you have, just like the dolphins did, fatty 15 repairs age related damage to cells and protects them from breakdowns and activates pathways in the body that regulate sleep and cognitive health. And about metabolism, I've been taking fatty 15 and look, I can't say that I'm swimming large sections of the ocean without surfacing. I can say that things seem to be going well. The self reported pep in the step or ability to recall which Scott Baio characters other than Chachi, he played you know things about cognitive health. I'm feeling a little to the effect. I think fatty 15 is helping on that mission. Fatty 15 was developed to support healthy aging for all from kids to parents to grandparents. That's why award winning fatty 15 is now available as Pure Capsules, delicious Apple Mint Gummies for teens and adults, and Yummy Berry Blast gummies for kids. Fatty 15 is on a mission to support healthy aging for all, including all ages and stages of life. You could get get an additional 15 off their 90 day subscription starter kit by going to fatty15.com gist and using code gist at checkout. I'm here to tell you once more about True Work because it's springtime and it means going outside, dealing with chilly mornings and hot afternoons and everything in between. Plus of course mud, rain, whatever else the weather decides. Don't worry, True Work has you covered. Most workwear is made from cotton blends which have downsides, right? They get soaked, they get soaked with rain. They get soaked with whatever perspiration you're putting out. You're putting out a lot because you're working hard. Not true work. They have the advanced technologies, the wicking technologies. I'll tell you about the T2 work pant, which keeps you comfortable over a wide range of conditions. Four way stretch for bending, kneeling and climbing. And there's important a water resistant finish to shed rain. And lots of pockets. Nine intelligent pockets. They tell you I wear these out. You know, I wear these to do the work in the front yard and the backyard, but I also wear them out and they're really fashionable. And I have nine pockets to help me. Before I found out about True Work, I'd wear the cheap gear and you don't really even realize it. But when your gear is working against you, it just makes the job so much harder. You just basically need pockets in the right places. You don't want to get all soaked by your gear. The T2 work pant is different. It's built for people who hold themselves to a higher standard. 4 way stretch water resistance. Do I have to mention the nine pockets again? The work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable. Comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15 off your first order at True Work.com with code the Gist that's T R U E W E R K.com code the Gist True Work. Built like it matters because it does. With verbo care.
- [39:33]
VRBO Host/Advertiser
Help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twist, so support is always available because a great trip starts with peace of mind.
- [39:50]
Mike Pesca
We're back with David B. Oppenheimer, the author of the Diversity Principle, the story of a Transformative Idea. And I'm going to get to part two in a second. But I'll tell you what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to play large portions of the interview where I refer to a study that he cites and cast doubt on it by citing later studies or the fact that that study was conducted before the replication crisis was really understood, relying on self reports and without preregistration. And so many of his studies do just that. To take one example of his claim that the science is settled on the effect of diversity in education, it's really not. But he talks about a landmark decision called Grutter in which there was a longitudinal study by the Harvard Education Review that showed that during the college years students benefit from diversity, improving their ability to think critically and solve problems. But these are all based on self reports. He goes on to cite a 2004 study looking at 357 black and white students at three universities showing that white students saw participation by black students as adding novel ideas in group discussions. I'm sure they did again self reports. And there is no long term validation of this observation. He goes on to say that a 2005 study replicated the results of that previous study on a larger scale. He writes, citing 2002 studies which can only look at studies before them, approvingly of authors devoting their paper to reviewing dozens of studies published between 191993 and 2000. And so I am here to say that many of these studies have been cast into doubt. There is the replication crisis. There was the way they did the studies then, and there is the fact that a broader scanning of the literature indicates much, much weaker effects for actual measurable benefits of diversity in a classroom setting. Okay, with that in mind, here's the rest of the interview. So there are so many counterexamples to this occurring. First of all, though, the diversification of boards hasn't always held up in courts. Boards have diversified, maybe slower than they would have if there was some court interventions. At the same time, American companies have gotten more successful. The returns from investing in the stocks of company are now outperforming other forms of investment over the last 20 years. So there is a correlation more diversity and more monetary return of those companies. However, because this occurred in line with just how society was changing, I think it's very hard to say that but for some intervention to cause diversity, but for that we would have, we wouldn't have had the exact same thing occurring. I think the European example, which has more diverse boards, I mean Europe, the OECD countries, if you look at them, America outperforms almost every other country in terms of the return on the boards. And I'd also say that what a board seat does in the correlation of a board seat to the actual functioning of a company. And I mean, you know this, it's very tenuous. It's. They meet for a couple days a year normally. It's the same kind of people who are recycled. Once you get established as a person who represents diversity, you get named for 20 boards. And if you look at the people, the companies that are driving almost all of our economics, some of them are a little bit diverse. I think that anthropic is somewhat diverse, but a Lot of them really aren't. I mean, or they're diverse based on things like some ethnic categories, South Asian, East Asian, but other ethnic categories, Black, Hispanic, very poor representation in some of the most successful companies. And I might wish it weren't the case, but that is the case.
- [44:08]
David B. Oppenheimer
But overall, there are all these natural experiments that are going on because there are boards that are more diverse and boards that are less diverse, and there are C suites that are more diverse and less diverse. And there are companies where just management generally are more diverse and those that are less diverse along a whole series of different axes. And when economists group them together and try to look at the big picture, what they see emerging again and again is that there is a relationship between diversity on boards, diversity in C suites, diversity in management generally, and success. Does it mean that every company is going to be more successful if their leadership is more diverse? No. Does it mean that a company that is not diverse can't be successful? No, of course not. There are myriad examples of instances where you get deviations from the mean. But the question is, on average, does it help if you have greater diversity in terms of success in commerce, in science, in learning in each of these areas? 30 years ago, all I could have said to you is, look, this just seems like it ought to be true. Now we've been measuring it. You know, it's almost like climate change 30 years ago, maybe it was 50 years ago, there were scientists saying, wow, we're pumping a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. I wonder if that might make the world warmer or colder or something. But now we've got all this evidence. The same kind of thing has happened with the diversity principle that we've gathered so much evidence that on a broad scheme it works in any individual case, I can't promise that, but broadly it does.
- [46:29]
Mike Pesca
The climate analogy. So I read it in the book and I was kind of shocked because to me it was overstated. The climate analogy is based on the physical properties of carbon atoms, and the diversity argument is based on human beings, of course. Also, climate has for decades been studied and shown to have this highly correlative effect. Whereas when I went into the studies, I don't doubt that you get a better and more diverse array of opinions in a mock trial if you have someone other than all white men making the decision. Many of these studies were all white men versus however they define diversity. And you could get in these settings more diverse or more different examples of questions being raised. And I also don't doubt that as boards don't exclude qualified people. It correlates to companies being forward looking and open minded, but it's a lot different. The there are no studies that are as that rebut as much the basic facts, the inarguable physics of climate change as they do the somewhat hard to define definition of diversity. I mean, there's no equivalent to. Well, by diversity, do we mean women? Do we mean that every organization has to have the same percentages as the overall population? Do we mean that, that Hispanic members who didn't have the qualifications of the rest of the group should be included because you'll get more diverse answers? There's no equivalent to that. Let me just say I think it's irresponsible to call a diversity denier something akin to a climate denier.
- [48:13]
David B. Oppenheimer
I'm. First of all, let's be clear. I am not arguing that people who are not qualified ought to be put in positions for the purpose of Justice Thomas calls it an aesthetic preference of liberals to see some faces, some people of color in the room.
- [48:32]
Mike Pesca
But that's because you take issue with the idea of what constitutes less qualified. I just mean having less empirical scores on tests, for instance, or when they have, when they define what the qualifications are, there are groups that do lower on that definition. And much of the argument, especially with higher education, is do we let representatives, representatives of those groups in? And we'll get to that in a second. I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.
- [48:56]
David B. Oppenheimer
No, that's okay. I interrupted you, so I'm sorry to interrupt you. But if you look at the data in the aggregate, it shows that no matter how you measure diversity, as you increase the mixture of people with different backgrounds and experiences, as you increase the mixture of people of different races and ethnicities and genders and religions, there's a measurable effect. And that's why I think it's completely fair to compare this to the change that we've seen in terms of the development of climate science. And yes, well, actually in climate science too, some of the deniers are nuts and some of the deniers are ideologues, but some of the deniers are simply scientific skeptics who say, well, you're pointing here and saying warmer and you're pointing there and saying colder and you can't have it both ways. And I think that's a, I think that's a bad argument. But I also think the arguments against diversity with the data that we now have are bad arguments.
- [50:21]
Mike Pesca
As far as I know, a landmark study of companies was this McKinsey econometric study where the results don't really hold up. They've tried to replicate this study which at first showed that companies financially outperformed peers. It was very influential. But then when they went to see if it replicated, they found out that it did not. This. So this would be the equivalent in climate change of, I don't know, the UN or the protocols that have been, you know, defined by the, the NASA or other organizations not being able to be replicated. All the climate studies have been replicated in the largest diversity in the workplace. McKinsey study has not been able to.
- [51:11]
David B. Oppenheimer
Well, my understanding is McKinsey studies have been replicated that they've been repeated on a number of occasions and it hasn't been the exact same finding, but the findings in each case have been the showing of a diversity effect.
- [51:30]
Mike Pesca
Well, I could forward you some studies that you know.
- [51:33]
David B. Oppenheimer
Thank you.
- [51:34]
Mike Pesca
Rebut that. The other, another major factor is we've been talking about diversity. But diversity shows up at has a DEI protocols or DEI apparatus. And I don't know how much you are foursquare on board with everything that the DEI offices at every university or at every corporation try to try to advance. But I do know that a major study, and you must know of this study too, though I didn't see it in your book. A major study in the Harvard Business Review that looked at 829 programs showed that, and this was the title of it, DEI doesn't work. Now what they say is there are some interventions that could work, right? Some of the inventions, this is by Dobbins and Lake have some of the interventions include recruiting initiatives, mentoring programs, diversity task forces. These could work. But what actually happens is that that the tools of diversity programs as used by these 829 firms actually decreased the proportion of women and minority in management. So that's also very unlike the climate studies.
- [52:47]
David B. Oppenheimer
Okay, so first of all I do, I not only cite that study, I discuss it at some length. I know and, and I think that their findings are important. And I think that the way in which DEI policies have been adopted are seriously problematic. And I think I make that pretty clear in the book. What I do think is that they recognize the authors recognize that there are a number of different kinds of policies that do improve diversity and that those policies also improve performance. And I completely agree that DEI policies and diversity are two different things. There's a relationship because DEI policies are an attempt to put into practice the diversity principle. But many of them, not all of them, many of them have been Failed efforts. I agree.
- [54:08]
Mike Pesca
Do you think that one of the reasons why these programs continued even though they weren't working, was that it was very hard, given our how we've been socialized, very hard to criticize these programs, very hard to change course from these programs. Maybe there is even a, you know, they do allege a diversity industrial complex, a di trainer industrial complex, maybe that had a role.
- [54:35]
David B. Oppenheimer
I think what's closer, from what I've seen, is a feeling that this is a problem we have to address, we need to do something, and an uncertainty about what to do. But I also think there's an element of if we just stop doing this, will we look bad? Will we look like we don't care? Will we look like we don't believe that there's a problem that needs to be addressed? And yeah, I think all of that contributes.
- [55:19]
Mike Pesca
I just want to put my finger on we have this ideal diversity. The definition can change a little bit. In fact, it could sometimes change so much that you tell yourself we've achieved diversity, even though a critic might say, no, you don't have, you know, this type of person represented in your definition of diversity. Fine, we have this ideal. Then we had the way to get the to the ideal. And the way was not only disallowed, but in my opinion, and maybe in the opinion of people nitpicking, you should have been disallowed was more than perfect. It was creating an injustice. And I just wonder, I really wonder, what's the way to get to the promised land which you chronicle would be better if the all the ways that we actually have as a society are deeply flawed, how do we know what's the right way to do it? How do we even try to do it if all these tries have flaws that in the past and you talk about the history of the idea the flaws weren't as present, What's a good way forward to that if it's not affirmative action and DEI programs as they existed?
- [56:32]
David B. Oppenheimer
Well, one of the things that I say in the book is that I think that we have to confront the way in which we've systematized racism in our country. I, I love this country very much and I feel like I am a patriot. But the systematic inequality, discrimination against black Americans, in particular in education, in housing, in health care, in commerce, in employment, all of which interact, interrelate, has created this terrible, terrible unfairness in the system, which ultimately, of course, means that we will be less diverse. And I think it means that we're going to be less successful than we would otherwise be. And I think that we have to address those problems. We have to address the problem of elementary school education, we have to address the problem of nutrition. We have to address the problem of employment discrimination. I think it's insane that the eeoc, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, is saying the big problem we have in America today is discrimination against white men. I'm not saying that that never occurs, but discrimination against white men is not the major social problem of our country today. And the way in which our system is rigged, if you will, against black Americans and the way that we unfairly exclude women based on biases and when those get combined in what, what Pauli Murray called Jane Crow and we now call intersectionality, it's a terrible one. It's a terrible unfairness for which I think we just have to address it. But it's also, and that's where I think this book is important. It's also. We're shooting ourselves in the foot. What? We're hurting ourselves. American UNIVERSITY Ten years ago, American universities were the envy of the world. Everyone wanted to come study here, everyone wanted to come teach here, everyone wanted to do scientific research here. And in the name of anti diversity, we're crushing that, we're destroying it. I find it almost incomprehensible. I feel like I'm. I'm living in Rome as we are burning down the city and entering the dark ages.
- [59:32]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I agree with so much of what you say and I agree that there is a systemic angle to it and that things would be much better if the chances of every kid in America were not necessarily equal, but just good. Right, Good. I also think that, that poverty and class has an enormous amount to play in this. But I also think that race has a lot to do with class. So I don't want to just spend all the time caveating. But what I see happened is the solutions for things like your average median black kid in America just has strongly different life outcome possibilities than your median white kid. The solutions for that, that were a raft of DEI programs, some affirmative action, some, some tinkering at the edges of, you know, societal institutional solutions. And so many of these were flawed. And so I think that it's hard to fault. Even though the people who are pointing out that they were flawed went way overboard in punishing the institutions for the flaws, I do think it's hard to fault the people who said, ye, these are flawed and they need to be changed. I don't think that you, I'm not sure you even think all of Them were flawed. But that's going to happen. That's always going to happen. When an injustice system doesn't appeal to the vast majority of Americans as egalitarian or fair. And it's in contrast to a lot of the old programs that had much more appeal. And this is the really important thing thing had much better effect. When the Ivy League started letting in Jewish students, these were extremely capable students who, when they were let in, flourished. They didn't have these statistics about the LSATs and bar passage rates and so forth. So it's just a very different set of facts. And I don't think you could really fault the people who point out flaws as flaws.
- [61:42]
David B. Oppenheimer
Well, I celebrate people who point out flaws as flaws because I want to work with them. If this comes down to one, if this comes down to liberals versus conservatives, we all lose. We have to talk with each other. We have to look at ideas and programs together and figure out, okay, what are the flaws and how do we fix them? You know, the admission of Jewish students in the Ivy League faced enormous resistance from those colleges. The SAT was created in part because they thought the Jews would do badly on it and that would keep Jews out. And when that didn't work, the next step was the Jewish quota, which, again, I have a chapter on here. It was a despicable moment in the history of American colleges and universities.
- [62:46]
Mike Pesca
Yeah,
- [62:48]
David B. Oppenheimer
we don't, we agree completely on that.
- [62:51]
Mike Pesca
But it changed because the solution worked. Whereas the solution with diversity did not work in so many instances, it did not work in the, in the corporate boardrooms, it did not work with college admissions. It did not work in a way that unless you, you really work overtime to tell yourself that these poor passage rates ultimately with the bar exam, doesn't matter. Or if, you know, you tell yourself that the bar exam itself is racist and so therefore you can't look at it. I mean, there's a huge difference between the efficacy of past solutions and the efficacy right now of the DEI apparatus. And that's all I'm doing pointing to.
- [63:32]
David B. Oppenheimer
And my point is that if we can agree on the value of diversity, then we can figure out how to work together to make our system of education and our system of commerce more diverse.
- [63:59]
Mike Pesca
And, and the ultimate point is, and if you look at all the statistics and data, there's a huge argument that that's better for everyone.
- [64:07]
David B. Oppenheimer
That's, that's why. I think that's why you invited me. And I know that's why when I, when I finished this book, I was, I was glad to find somebody who would publish it.
- [64:19]
Mike Pesca
The name of the book is the Diversity Principle, the Story of a Transformative Idea. David B. Oppenheimer. Thank you, thank you.
- [64:25]
David B. Oppenheimer
Thank you very much for having me, Mike.
- [64:32]
Mike Pesca
And that's it for today's show. Cory War produces the gist. Kathleen Sykes runs the gist list, Ben Astaire is our booking producer and Jeff Craig runs our socials. Michelle Pesca oversees it all. Benevolently improve and thanks for listening.
- [64:54]
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