Innovation Through Inclusion
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.