Strict Scrutiny - Diploma Privilege

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

Leah is joined by Dr. Pilar Escontrias, one of the founders of United for Diploma Privilege. United for Diploma Privilege is seeking to address the calamity of bar examinations (and admissions) in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.  Listen, learn, and take action! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky

Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court. It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they're going to have the last word. She spoke, not elegantly, but with unmistakable clarity. She said, I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks. Hello everyone and welcome to a very special episode of Strict Scrutiny, a podcast about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. I'm Leah Littman, one of the hosts, and I am joined for this very special episode by

a guest, Dr. Pilar Escontrías. Pilar is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. She also has a PhD in anthropology from Northwestern. And for our purposes, one of the most important aspects of her resume is that she's one of the co-founders of United for Diploma Privilege, an organization that is trying to address what we think is a major crisis facing the legal profession in how bar examinations are handling the coronavirus pandemic. So welcome to the show, Pilar. Thank you, Professor. Happy to be here. We are a show about the Supreme Court and the legal culture that surrounds it. And this episode

is going to be focused in particular about one aspect of the legal culture, the bar examination, which is a point of entry to the legal profession. And I think maybe it might be helpful for our listeners, Pilar, if we tell them a little bit about what bar exams are and their role in determining who is in the legal profession before we get into details about what is happening with these bar exams right now. So what people might not realize is all of the different states have their own system for admitting lawyers to their bars. There are different bars for every state. And if you want to practice in a state, you need to gain admission to that state's bar.

Most often, that involves taking the bar examination. There are some exceptions where certain states like Wisconsin allow graduates from in-state law schools to gain admission to the bar, but by and large, it's bar examinations. That's right. What is happening right now is, I think, nothing short of an utter disaster when you place the bar exams on top of the coronavirus pandemic. Because, of course, in any ordinary year, you would have thousands of people gathering at the same place to take an in-person bar examination over the course of two to three days sitting in close proximity to one another. And again, traditionally,

those exams are offered at the end of July. So Pilar, given that that doesn't seem like it should be happening in the midst of a global pandemic, what is happening right now with bar examinations and the coronavirus pandemic? Yeah, so professor, what we're seeing in the legal profession is a really exciting grassroots organized mobilization effort nationwide, locally centered in states, because of course, as you mentioned, bar examinations are administered and entrance into the profession admission is all organized under state structures. So what we're seeing is recent graduates are mobilizing like we never have mobilized before. In late March, then 3Ls in New York wrote a beautiful letter to the Court of Appeals there imploring them to consider diploma privilege as

an option for licensure. So as you mentioned, there are many forms in which licensure can take place. Diploma privilege simply states that an individual who has graduated from the requisite three years of law school then is ready to be an attorney and to enter their profession. So that's what many of us are pushing for in these various states. So in late March, I'm located in California. I, along with another woman in California, decided to write a letter to our California Supreme Court. And I just want to put out there that the power of social media, because the origin story of our movement really began with a Facebook group for BIPOC. And I'm going to use that term numerous times probably in this podcast, but Black Indigenous People of Color. It started in a Facebook group where I posted a note saying,

anyone willing to work on a petition to the California Supreme Court with me? Donnie Sadati Soto, who was then 3L at Harvard Law School and also a California native, said that she would like to participate in this movement. And we kind of both come from organizing backgrounds. We're both women of color. And we're both, we kind of both come from organizing backgrounds. We're both women of color. So we wrote a letter to the California Supreme Court, started circulating it, gathering signatures. And one of the things for us that was really important was to create templates. So in addition to circulating this letter, we also created a template where we deleted all the state-specific information and circulated it to SBA presidents across the U.S. And that was actually the letter that was successful for

Washington. So we have been building these solidarity networks, communications of sharing resources, all with the intent of imploring our state bars and our state Supreme Courts to recognize the exceptional circumstances in which we live right now. I'm glad to hear that Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and social media has been able to do some good in the world. So happy to hear that. But I do just want to unpack some of what you already were getting to, which is what

might we do in response to the fact that an in-person bar examination in the midst of a pandemic seems not only reckless, but deeply cruel. Part of the reason why there needs to be some mechanism to gain admittance to a state bar is that in some states, practicing law without a license is a criminal offense. In others, it's a civil and it could preclude your subsequent admission to the bar. So in order for recent graduates and others to actually start doing the jobs that they obtained after law school, there needs to be a mechanism for them to gain admittance to these state bars. Otherwise, they are going to be prohibited by state law from doing those jobs. And that has this additional complication of, you know, law school is very expensive. People make a plan where they were putting themselves

in a position to be able to have a job after graduation to help them pay down their debts and support themselves. And you mentioned that the movement is very much organized by BIPOC women in particular. And I think throughout our conversation, we'll be noting how some of the state's failure to address this crisis is aggravating what are already disparities and barriers to entry to the profession. If you think that, for example, the legacy of racial discrimination in the country means that BIPOC students will be at a greater disadvantage about having a lack of wealth to fall back on in this crisis, then that is one element of this problem that has created this extremely toxic mix. But you mentioned that the Washington court had granted diploma privilege to graduates who were seeking admission to the Washington bar. But action by a state Supreme Court is not the only way to grant diploma privilege. I think that, you know, I have seen from your feed, which I would recommend to everyone, you should be

following United for diploma privilege. There's also some attempts to ask state legislators, right, to grant diploma privilege where perhaps the highest state courts are unwilling to do so. That's absolutely correct. And what we've seen is that's going on in New York. So our New York coalition has been working really hard with members of the Judiciary Committee and were successful. And recently, just this past week, a bill was introduced for the emergency granting of diploma privilege in New York. and that's what we're in fact working on in California. I do want to point to something, Professor, that you mentioned about disparate impact on BIPOC folks. And part of this movement is forward thinking, right? So we're not simply thinking about what are our lives like right now. We are projecting into the future what will the legal profession look like after COVID if extraordinary measures aren't taken right now. And so that is informed by

social science data. That is informed by state bar reports themselves that acknowledge, and even the NCBE, that acknowledge in the best of times the bar exam does have a sort of discriminatory impact upon BIPOC folks. And so if we think about the original data that, for example, Washington students and California students have gathered of thousands of applicants who will be sitting for the bar, we do find that BIPOC folks, when asked about access to internet, when asked about quiet space to study, when asked about food insecurity, housing insecurity, access to adequate health care, mental health, on every single metric, BIPOC students are higher in that metric of 10 to 27 percent. So we're absolutely suffering a lot. Those arguments may be more compelling for legislators because they recognize us not

only as entrants into a profession, but also as those individuals who will be providing much needed resources to our state constituents as well, right? After in California, for example, there is a moratorium on evictions. What happens when that moratorium is lifted? What happens when deportations start escalating again to high numbers? What happens for folks who need criminal defense attorneys and even DAs, right? So thinking about, I'm saying this as a future public defender, but thinking about what services will be needed, all available data demonstrate to us that there will be more legal services that are needed rather than less. So we do need to ask ourselves, not only as a profession, but as a society, you know, like, are there more humane

ways to respond to pandemic? And I think the medical profession has handled it beautifully, frankly. They have found new ways to effectively license doctors with the appropriate supervision. And that's because that field really sees itself as a partner in so many of these struggles, right? And I feel like the legal profession has not yet seen itself as a partner in this global struggle we're experiencing. I think it might be helpful to unpack some of the different threads of the contributing sources to the disparities in the bar exam,

the pandemic, and the legal profession, because you mentioned the survey results, which are super important, that asked prospective bar takers about whether they would have access to reliable internet, for example. And that statistic is significant because one possible solution that some bar exams have moved to is the possibility of an online examination, not necessarily in July, but perhaps a few months down the road. And so one reason why that is not necessarily a great solution is because of the differential access to reliable internet and quiet spaces to take the examination. And then you layer on top of that the

additional disparities you were noting, the disparities in food insecurity, economic insecurity, similarly, the unreliable access to internet and quiet spaces, the fact that many people might be having obligations to help with childcare or family care or relatives who become sick. And that makes for an even more unequal environment for people to study for a future bar examination, even if it's online. And so the question is, do you take a path that you know is going to exacerbate a bunch of disparities that are partially reflective of the reality that socioeconomic status is not distributed equally in this country? Or instead, are you going to do something that puts incoming entrants to the profession on a more equal footing? Because delaying their entry into the profession is only going to compound some of the disparities. You are going to be forcing people to accumulate more debt rather than, again, allowing them

an entry into the profession and the jobs that they had acquired and planned on attaining after their graduation. Right. And so to speak to your earlier question about what are some paths forward, you know, we have investigated all of these paths forward. We've looked at postponement. What does postponement do? Postponement is the idea that, all right, let's cancel this present bar exam until a date unknown as of yet in the future. What that creates, of course, is precarity of,

you know, financial precarity, all the things you mentioned, the food insecurity, the housing insecurity. Many of us, our jobs are tied to our ability to, in fact, build the state, right? So if I'm a public defender and I'm going to be an appellate public defender, so part of my salary comes from my ability to sort of say, hey, state, this is how much I build. And so that puts those of us who go into public interest into a more financially precarious place. Provisional licensing is the same thing. Provisional licensing means, all right, applicants, you get a license until maybe for two years until you have to take the bar, which also to outside observers seems pretty rational, right? But when you think about what does this mean in practice, in daily lives, what do our new lives look like? It means that at

some point down the road in two years, I need to figure out how to take two months off of my life, right, for a bar exam, transfer my clients. That may be easier for folks in a big law firm, not really going to be easy for public defenders or immigration attorneys or anything like that. So we did do a lot of investigating. We did a lot of research into what are the problematics of these different approaches. And frankly, we didn't think online would be a viable option because the NCBE, the National Committee of Bar Examiners, had very early on in the pandemic released a statement saying, we don't know that online will actually be a possibility, you know, until possibly October.

And even then it's like the uniform bar exam. So there are so many complications here, listeners, in terms of what sort of jurisdictions every state has. What this is all to say is that not every state has a uniform bar exam. Some of us have, you know, state-specific. Some of us have all different forms, you know, a little bit of state-specific, some uniform. So it's very complicated to try to come up with a one approach, one model fits all. And I will also say, Professor, the other problem with online exam, which again, seems like the most rational approach. In the comfort of my home, I'm going to take a bar exam. How are they going to monitor me? You know, aside from even the questions related to access, right? Let's assume I have all the access, but the monitoring functions,

these state bar vendors are, for example, ExamSoft. ExamSoft's proctoring vendor uses AI technology, and there are two levels of implicit bias in using this platform, right? The first one is when you build an AI platform, the AI piece, like the platform itself is based on a database. And that database is usually, well, absolutely white and male. Right. It's not diverse. It's not diverse. It's not a diverse database. So facial expressions that are being monitored, you know, are all the data set are all coming from white males, which means that different behaviors from different communities and

different groups aren't being taken into account. The second level of implicit bias is that there are humans behind this at a certain point. So AI monitors, you know, puts up the red flag and says, I am seeing behaviors that are cheating behaviors. So that's where another level of implicit bias exists because a human will then come in and sort of review the red flags and in an in-person exam there would be numerous layers of protections right there would be numerous proctors lots of people they and also other people around exactly and these proctors also have to take implicit bias training a lot of the human proctors do that is not going to be the case under an AI platform. So it's far more difficult having this, you know, online kind of program where there are no checks and balances that would otherwise have been there in a live

administration of a bar exam. So the AI question is very, is huge. Not even to mention the ethics of using AI. I mean, you mean, we can talk for hours about the use of governmental agencies utilizing AI for deportation and all of these other things. So that ethics question is a separate one as well. So we've thus far been focused on diploma privilege as one possible solution, and then the alternatives that are nowhere near as meaningful for incoming bar takers, the prospect of provisional licensing as well as online exams. I do want to note that if that seems bad, that is if those alternatives seem bad, it's actually even worse given that some states still seem to be committed to the prospect of an in-person

examination. So some states are still signaling that they are going to require incoming bar takers to actually appear in person again at these large venues with so many people. Some of the bar exams say, oh, well, we'll require people to wear face masks. But of course, there's going to be some inspection of people coming into the exam to make sure that they are not carrying prohibited items. That is going to result in so many thousand opportunities for transmission. And so as bad as online exams and provisional licensing seem, some states are still pressing forward with the notion that they are going to have an in-person bar exam. Although I will say, Professor, we can thank Virginia for now not demanding students to wear a suit, they just have

to wear a tie. So I do want to applaud Virginia for having an in-person exam, but taking away that, you know, requirement of a suit and tie. So Virginia is one of the states that still seems to be committed to the in-person bar exam. They have this horrendous, outdated rule where you have to appear in the bar exam dressed to the nines in the middle of the summer heat. But yes, as Bihar noted, they are willing to forgive that particular requirement this year and instead just require you to appear to be exposed to a pandemic while dressed in safi shorts or pajama pants or whatever it is you would like. You know, an added layer of difficulty to this is that everything is changing so quickly and also in such close proximity to the dates of the exams.

So some states are reserving the possibility that they could cancel an exam two days or two weeks before the actual exam date. For people who have not studied for the bar or taken the bar, that might not seem quite so significant, right? Like, oh, it's just an exam, you take it at a later date. But as Pilar, you were alluding to, people will take two months off of work to study for an exam. And so some bar takers in the wake of this pandemic chose to move to a state where they were planning on taking the exam so they wouldn't have to travel, right? They are making all these expenditures on finding a place to live rather than staying with family or friends

somewhere else. And now the state bars are reserving the possibility to basically pull that owl out from under them on very short notice without, again, giving them any assurance that they will fix something and allow them to practice law in the near future. So that is, again, an additional dynamic that is happening happening and part of what is so chaotic about all this is that different things are happening in different states at different times it's just anyway sorry that was a long aside and what you just described is exactly what one of our co-founders is experiencing right now emily croucher so i do want to note that i am one of the co-founders there are three others who were central to this movement. Emily Croucher,

who also graduated from UC Irvine School of Law, Donny Sedati Soto from Harvard, and Efrain Hudnell from Washington. So he led the effort there. But that's exactly what Emily is experiencing. Just two days ago, Kentucky decided to cancel its exam 18 days before the exam was set to take place because it was in-person administration. And what that creates is an entirely chaotic, not only work experience, right? So communications with your job, when do we now start? Is there provisional licensing? Will we be able to practice? But also emotionally, as you state, it's not surprising that about 90% of respondents to our survey acknowledge having emotional difficulties right now. You know, because this is a huge issue for our families as well. Many of us are taking care of family members financially.

So it's a tough time. And I think it's important, again, to bring it back to the why. We are so committed as a profession to this notion of a bar exam that we can't even envision what a future liberated from the strictures of such an examination could yield. collective anxiety that state bars rather than saying, okay, you know, our identities can be tied to other forms of licensure. They don't need to be tied to the passage of an exam. They are so committed to it that it's as if none of us in our profession can sense who we would be as individuals without an examination, right? So that's also what we get from some prospective exam takers. Applicants aren't in agreement on diploma privilege either. There are applicants who say this is how I legitimate myself. Right. I occupy this body in this way.

I'm already viewed as not competent, presumed incompetent. Right. And so a bar exam helps me to overcome that incompetence. And I completely understand. And as a woman of color who is white privileged and white presenting, I understand that. I also can't help but think of history and what I call an architecture of exclusion. So the bar exam doesn't exist as its own individual entity aside from anything else. It also exists as part of an ethics regime, right? Like who can enter moral character and fitness? And so many of these questions

beg of us to reckon with our history as a profession. That's so important that you brought up because one thing I've learned, I think, again, from following your feed, which I would recommend to all of our listeners, the feed is United for Diploma Privilege. That's at Diploma Priv for number four, all, is that actually the move away from diploma privilege, which used to be one of the major ways that people would gain admittance to the bar and the ability to practice, the move away from diploma privilege actually coincided in some states with requirements that states integrate their law schools. That is, at the time that states were forced to, by courts and law, allow racial minorities to gain admittance to law schools, that was when the state bars also let diploma privilege fall by the wayside

and adopted this practice, which in part because of the character and fitness and like moral examination was used to exclude historically disadvantaged groups from admittance to the bar. So as we are thinking about, again, I like the way you framed it, like what kind of profession we want to be and what kind of fights do we think we should be or are a part of. I think that that history is relevant, again, when we're thinking about like, why do we need the bar examination anyways? I guess I'm biased because I'm a law professor, but I think three years of law school is pretty significant. And even law school, it's funny because even law school is a fairly new in the long-term history of the profession.

It's a new entity as well. I mean, the legal profession was virtually unregulated until it wasn't. And then, you know, like, I don't know if folks out there know where the first data from the ABA started getting collected, right? Like, we're a society that likes to collect demographic data. When did that start in the legal profession? It started in 1912 when three black men accidentally made it past all of the requirements of entry. And I want to name them William H. Lewis and Butler R. Wilson of Massachusetts and William R. Morris of Minnesota.

We're not talking about the South. This is the Northern American Bar Association that had an entire session, an entire session devoted to this crisis of entry. That's when they started collecting demographic information on racial and gender identities of entrants. So it's just really interesting to, you know, you start highlighting this and it makes folks very uncomfortable. That's just really interesting to, you know, you start highlighting this and it makes folks very uncomfortable. That's why we didn't lead with this in our movement. What we led with in our movement was like, listen, look at the practicalities of holding a bar exam. This isn't feasible and it's not humane. And so we have to ask ourselves, do we want to make the choice on the basis of precedence or do we want to make the choice on the basis of precedence? Or do we want to make the

choice on the basis of ethics? When you answer the latter, it also forces you to excavate some of this history and it and confront it. And that makes bar associations and Supreme Courts alike very uncomfortable. Yes. So I think we have touched on like who the different actors are, you know, in this movement, it's in part legislators who could address the existence of diploma privilege if they chose. It is in part state courts, as you noted, Washington, their Supreme Court, granted diploma privilege for people seeking admission to the bar. And then, you know, again, just to underscore what diploma privilege is, diploma privilege means you gain admission to a state's bar by virtue of having a diploma from, you know,

a particular or particular set of law schools. And that allows you to practice law in the state. I would hope, Pilar, that, you know, from listening to this, people understand the dilemma that is facing incoming bar takers. What is there for listeners to do if they want to help, you know, the movement to diploma privilege, particularly now? Well, I would say that the first thing you can do is definitely educate yourself and visit our website, unitedfordiplomaprivilege.org, where we're just building a database. We now have 36 advocacy team partners. So what started in California

a few months ago has now become a nationwide movement of students leading this effort. I'm assuming, you know, let's talk first to the non-legal audience out there. Folks, what can you do? Support the people in your life who you know. I mean, I think emotional support is probably the first thing we need. We're leading a fight that's exhausting that we are not equipped to lead, frankly. I mean, in a lot of ways, you know, we have required mentorship because we don't understand, especially because this is a woman of color led. We don't, it wasn't natural for us to be raised in a space where we're thinking of like stakeholders and the Supreme Court and, you know, these sort of gatekeeping mechanism. I wasn't raised thinking about that. I had to learn a lot about organizing at

that level. I mean, I grew up as an, in an organizing household, but union organizing is really different. Um, so I think like offer emotional support to people, um, educate yourself on why do we have things like the bar exam? Because a lot of people, my family members included will say, well, we don't want doctors who never took the medical boards, right? And I'm like, yeah, that's true. Except think about if you actually look at the data, by the time a person takes their medical board exam, they've undergone several years of education, formal education, residency, you know, and their board exam is broken up into like stages. And so that's why 90 to 95% of individuals who take it pass. And you don't see the same racial disparities as you saw,

for example, in California, February, 2020, first time black ABA graduate test takers, 5% passed. That's huge. Like from 90% to 5%. So educate yourself on like, why do we have these bars? Why does this exist? What does it look like in my state? Because this is not regulated by the state. And that's part of the issue. I think in my view, it's not an arm of the state. So knowing how these multiple things work, you know, is important. And then for legal folks out there, I think you all do not recognize your own privilege and what your voice means. And that's why I really respect you, Professor Lippman, because in inviting us onto this podcast, you're acknowledging too, like, wow, I have a broad base of potential support here. Let me

amplify these students' voices. And that's like the biggest gift you could give us because it's been so much effort to attempt to get our professors, our former professors involved, many of whom are themselves abolitionists of the bar exam who don't even believe it should exist, but who are also like, do we really want to take on this fight right now in this way? You know, so reckoning with yourself and sort of asking like, why do I feel so fiercely that there needs to be a bar examination that I can't even consider these very well thought out arguments that people are putting up against it, right? So recognizing what you can provide is support or letter writing, mobilizing, you know, members of your bar

association, mobilizing members of your faculty to support your dean, because deans also are precariously situated too in certain ways, depending on where they're located, right? So, and who they personally are. So how can you show support to a dean who kind of wants to support diploma privilege? And then finally, this is mostly for lawyers out there, I think, you know, not every argument has to be 100% perfect. FYI. Oh, you are going to start preaching to the choir. Social movements are not based on, let me put out this perfect argument that's like, I've, you know, made, I've read every case law that's out there and every argument I make is, no, social movements

are like, we demand better and we envision a future that could be more equitable. It's an imperfect move. No decision you make is going to be right. You don't need to silence us on the basis of our imperfect arguments, right? That's for folks out there who are just like grabbing onto one sentence in a 450 page report. I mean, we submitted a 457 page report to the California Supreme Court. While trying to study for the bar exam, I should know. I haven't been studying for the bar exam and instead made this our full-time jobs. But nonetheless, you know,, think of who are you attacking and why and reframe yourself a little bit. That's such a great point about not demanding perfection from people who are asking for change. And one of the ways I've started to think about this is

there's a risk of error in anything you do. We know where the risks of error are falling from the status quo, right, in-person bar examinations, when the coronavirus pandemic has been uniquely lethal to Black communities and racial minorities. We also know where the risks of error are going to fall if we adopt online examinations, Again, given where the risks of this pandemic and economic inequities arise in our society, we know where the risks of error are going to fall if we adopt provisional licensing. It is going to disadvantage people who don't have a large law firm to fall back on when they need to take two months off to study for a bar examination. So where are the risks of error going to fall if we adopt diploma privilege? Well, we used to have that regime

50, 60 years ago, and it's not like the legal profession was dramatically underqualified then. We should have faith that the people who are taking it upon themselves to work so hard after going through three years of a professional school that they are equipped to handle the demands of the profession. with one other lawyer or have mentors in their life. And we shouldn't saddle them with professional insecurities and economic baggage by, you know, again, indefinitely delaying their entrance into the profession. One of the regimes for diploma privilege, there are a lot of ways you can envision this, right? One of them is, in fact, including supervised practice, perhaps affidavits from employers or supervising attorneys saying, I do attest to this person's ability to practice well, continuing education in the form of MCLEs. All of that is still present. And not to mention, we still have this whole other architecture in the legal profession, which is like the sanctioning board, the disciplinary board. So let's take this as an opportunity for a pilot project. And that's kind of what we talked

about a little bit with the Supreme Court is our state bars have been debating this for years. Is the bar exam a measure of competence A and does it ensure that protection of the public is, you know, is foregrounded? And so we don't actually have data to demonstrate that. Let's take this as an opportunity to have a pilot program. And I want to also plug an article out there by Britt Benjamin, who's a professor at Santa Clara, who also has called on the Supreme Court, is a supporter of diploma privilege, also called on the California Supreme Court to enact a pilot program, something that Washington is also thinking of doing in light of their move to diploma privilege. Test us. See if we have higher rates of sanctions. And you know,

furthermore, the majority of sanctions aren't actually on the basis of practicing law. They're on the basis of like commingling of funds, right? Like I didn't know how to manage a business, so I commingled funds. It's not even about like they were an inadequate attorney or I got inadequate representation. So which by what bar exam does not test. Right. There is a separate examination for that. Right. That's true. Yeah. I mean, that's another thing we haven't even talked about is we have a separate exam for for ethics and everything. But yeah, you know, I think once you start asking yourselves these questions, it's been a really beautiful, like, exploration of self for a lot of people who've come to the side of diploma privilege, too. Like, they see this and they're like, oh, I didn't actually realize that.

You're right. Like, the data do demonstrate that the majority of sanctions are not related to the practice of law. But even if they were, you can still sanction us. And we will have, I mean, we do have a self-regulatory system. So we will have to pay the price if that's the case, that we have been completely incompetent attorneys. We will pay the professional price for that. And that is still present. We're not demanding the abolition of that.

So there are still guardrails in place. And in fact, that's what a lot of deans support. In California, they support what they're calling diploma privilege with guardrails. And I think that that's a viable option for sure. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Pilar Escontrías, for joining us on Strict Scrutiny. It was a pleasure to speak with you. Thanks, Professor. Thanks to you and the rest of your fellow organizers working at United for Diploma

Privilege. Thanks to our producer, Melody Rowell, for doing this episode quickly and on short notice. Thanks to Eddie Cooper for making our music. And thanks, as always, to all of you for listening. You can support United for Diploma Privilege at unitedfordiplomaprivilege.org.