Reimagining Repair: The Role of DEI in Racial Redress and Institutional Reform
Transitional Justice in the USA Speakers Series - Part VI:
Reimagining Repair: The Role of DEI in Racial Redress and Institutional Reform
This panel will examine the conceptual and historical foundation of current efforts to remedy the harm of racial discrimination through the contemporary aims of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (DEI). It will seek to understand how DEI principles have shaped or could shape institutional responses to historic harms against marginalized communities, particularly racial minorities. Panelists will explore how DEI frameworks—when implemented with integrity—advance truth-telling, collective memory, redress, and institutional reform, echoing the goals of transitional justice processes adopted in societies confronting legacies of violence and exclusion. It asks if this framing would make a difference in the current debates on the merit of the DEI enterprise. Against this backdrop, the panel will critically assess the rise of political rhetoric in the United States that seeks to delegitimize DEI and to pressure public and private institutions into abandoning these commitments. Panelists will consider whether such backlash risks generating new cycles of racialized harm and eroding the rule of law. The discussion will conclude by contemplating what future measures—legal, cultural, and pedagogical—may be necessary to address this emerging landscape and to reaffirm the role of DEI in building inclusive, rights-respecting institutions.
Co-organized by: The Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law | Boston and Roger Williams University School of Law.
PANELISTS:
• Danielle Conway, Dean of Penn State Dickinson Law and the School of International Affairs & Donald J. Farage Professor of Law; President, Association of American Law Schools, and Executive Director, Antiracist Development Institute
• Anu Gupta, Author, Speaker and Founder of Be More with Anu
• Taino Palermo, Co-Director, Indigenous Peoples Rights
• Marie Wilson, Journalist and former Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)
MODERATORS:
• Erika George, Associate Dean for Equity, Justice, and Engagement & Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law
• Nicole P. Dyszlewski, Assistant Dean for Curricular Innovation and Professor at Roger Williams University School of Law
Program details may be found here.