Im sure. So depends on your math. Host who first used that, that term, quota queen . Guest i dont really know who used the term. It was first i believe published in the wall street journal, but i cant tell you who came up with the quota queen term. I think they were just copying from somebody early on. Host was it a fair term . Guest no. Host why not . Guest because i wasnt a queen, and i didnt believe in quotas so [laughter] i guess somebody liked the fact that there were two qs, so. The media soon defined to me. I kept waiting for the white house to put together a strategy. Meanwhile, the right wing had the field to itself. Guest thats true. Host you go on to write that conflated three racialized images welfare, quotas and unmarried loud demanding black women. Heit became part of an organized campaign that continues still to convert the 1960s slogan power to the people into quotas for unqualified and undeserving black people. The right wing story was that one or more black less for whites, apparently by any means necessary including the destruction of democracy. Quotas queen made any further communication superfluous. But it announced my agenda loud and clear, a black woman who did not know the place. I would to to whites what centuries of whites have done to blacks. Guest it speaks for itself. I dont know that ive anything to add. That was written in a way that reflected what had happened a year or two years or three years ago. Right now were talking of something that happened 22 years ago. So im not sure what the value is in repeating what they were doing. I think they speak for themselves in their terminology and, its always precociousness. This assumption that they can attack people based on nonsense but as long as they keep attacking them somehow the challenge will become like a tsunami. You just get caught up in it. So you need to know how to swim but on it and you also need to know how to exit. Host back to you both, the tyranny of the majority, im sorry lift every voice and we considered ourselves, you write, a group of serious longstanding friends to be the president and first ladies intellectual is not political peers. Each of us shares a sense of importance, arrival we believed in him bill clinton, in his bighearted has in his passion for justice. How did you get to know the president and mrs. Clinton . Guest i went to Yale Law School and they were there. They actually were very helpful to me because while i was at the law school i was conceding for something called were you get to do a fake litigation and if you do a good job then you get to move to the next level. And they played the role in determining who gets to be a participant in the barristers union, and although there was another student who was challenging me they were much more sympathetic to the arguments that i was making as a result i ended up participating in the finals of the barristers union. So in that sense i got to know them. And then later on after i graduated from law school it was a program an annual program on i guess south carolinas right off the coast during the period between december and january the first part of january. And they were both, hillary and bill were at that retreat, and my husband his daughter and i also came to the retreat and thats what got to know them a little bit better because hillary and i were on the same panel. Host june 3 1993 want to show a little bit of the president s press conference. Could you just give us an idea of what part of whose writing you really have trouble with . Yes, i can give you an idea. There was, in the michigan law review, there was an article lani guinier analyze the weaknesses of the present remedies under the progress act and many other analyses i agree with. But seem to be arguing for principles of proportional representation and minority veto as general remedies that i think are inappropriate as general remedies and antidemocratic very difficult to defend. Host very difficult to defend. Lani guinier, where were you when the president had that press conference . Guest boy he had a press conference in the evening and then i had an opportunity to speak the following morning where all of Immediate Team and find out who was this evil which . And the news at the time came much more fairminded and much more realistic. I spent before president clinton did that talk i had spent about an hour and a half explained to him what was in the long review articles here and at the time he didnt have any objection to them. There was no argument he made to me personally that explained his subsequent remark. Host and that was the same evening as that press conference that you met with the president in the oval office and then you drove to the department of justice, heard the press conference. When you are the words difficult to defend, how did you feel . Guest that he was under a lot of pressure to retreat. Host that night he also with your nomination, correct . Guest yes. He called the up on the phone and said im sorry but im going to have to withdraw your nomination. And i said okay. And then there was no further comments. I hung up. He go back and he said you just hung up on the. Why did you do . I said im sorry, i thought you were finished telling me what you have to say. And so then he continued and he said, the next day he gave a very friendly talk about how he would give me some money if if he could that he was very fond of me but he just couldnt make this move to consider. Some of the argument i was making, which by the way our arguments that are derived in part from what happened in germany, and who made the german system the United States of america after world war ii. So these concepts are not unusual. And effect the United States has adopted them for other people. Host the right that the president like many others who are unfamiliar with the law reduced on the of simply skimmed the text and failed to appreciate that i was describing a particular strategy, promoting black faces in high places, but not agreeing with many of the basic ideas behind the strategy. Was a lot review style . Guest well a lot review style requires number one, that use a lot of footnotes. It also wants you to articulate all of the other options that could be considered in addition to what it is youre trying to introduce or to develop further. And although it is based on examples, its often much more theoretical, and thus people are not law professors are often not aware of or able to distinguish the difference between an argument that is scholarly and implementation of a particular set of assumptions that havent really been developed. Host did you ever get the chance to publicly testify . Guest wrecks on your nomination. Guest yes. I got that opportunity through the media, not through the Justice Department or through the other branches of congress. Host would you have liked to have testified . Guest yes. I was looking forward to it. I mean i wasnt as upset about let me put in the affirmative. I was eager to play a role in the Clinton Administration at the beginning of the administration. I had been as the Justice Departments, and the Civil Rights Division, in the late 1970s and knew a lot about the Civil Rights Division because i had been there for four years. So i felt very comfortable with that nomination. But on the other hand, i had a great job at the university of Pennsylvania Law School. I enjoyed teaching. I enjoyed writing and exporting some of these ideas. So what offended me was not the fact that the nomination was withdrawn but the way in which it was withdrawn and absence of any particular issue of the substance of my comments. It was just trying to create an image of me that was apparently apparently no politician would want to touch base with me or even touch me. Host so professor guinier, if you got in front of the Senate Judiciary committee at a republican senator at you and said, do you believe in quotas, what would your answer have been . Guest know. I never articulated, i was called the quota queen but there was no basis for this because i wasnt arguing about quotas but i was arguing about the allocation of power in a way that respected the citizens of the United States that it was a single i do have a particular amount of white people are black people or latinos or asians americans. I was talking about a more fair system of allowing citizens to have a larger voice in the election of and the operation of our senators or our congressmen or women or of the people who actually come in the state, the governor, the representatives of their, that there were other ways of ensuring that the citizens of the United States were playing a significant role in determining what the responsibility was elected officials, and whether the elected officials were in touch with the citizens themselves and representing the citizens and themselves rather than an ideology or some other identity that the elected officials had almost complete management and power over and the citizens themselves were in some ways very much ignored except to come to the ballot box and, you know elect a, b c or d. That they really were in a position of making decisions or influencing the decisions that were being made because we have a system of elections that was created in the 18th century. We are not in the 21st century, and the idea that we are stuck with what people in the 18th or 19th century were doing is ridiculous as far as im concerned because they didnt have computers. They didnt have cars. I mean, there are lots of ways in which citizens now have a lot more or could have a lot more influence and opportunity in the democratic processes of the United States. Host what you think of majority rule . 51 determine who gets to rule. Guest well theres certain circumstances where 51 versus 49 makes sense. The question is is that the way it should always be . And the answer, in my view is no. In fact, if you go read and look at germany, or look at south africa, or look at australia there are lots of other countries, lots of other ways of ensuring that the citizens are making decisions, not the corporations that are subsidizing the individuaindividua l who then gets to draw up lines to sure he or she gets reelected, and the whole procedure becomes foreign to most citizens potential voters. Host one of the things that a lot of your books in the Voting Rights act, something were talking about now in 2015 as well. What are the strengths and weaknesses, in your view, of the voter rights act . Guest which Voting Rights act are you asking me about . Host you can take that where ever you want. Guest the court only rights act is without a lot current. Without a lot of its strength so its difficult to discuss a big effect i just had dinner last night with somebody who was in the Voting Rights act, whos in the voting Rights Division of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, and she said that once they killed section five there was very little left for people who have been working very hard in the Voting Rights section to have something still to do. So in a way it is getting more and more power to the states to determine what the election process, particle is even with regard to federal election, not just with regard to state elections. Host what is section five . Guest section five was, past tense a section of the Voting Rights act that covered a certain number of states because of the ways in which they had behaved in the previous 75 80 100 years in terms of the allocation of the opportunity not just the allocation, but the commitment to ensuring that the citizens of the United States and the citizens of that state should have a genuine opportunity to influence the decisions of the people who are ultimately elected. And we have a system in the United States in which the allocation of representatives positions is done by the representatives who are already in power, and they draw districts that look very strange, and they draw districts that put people but they dont want in their particular district out of it and they create districts in which they are pretty much guaranteed to win, or at least that Political Party is guaranteed to win. And so its a way of quieting the citizenry when, in fact in a democracy the people that you want to speak out are the citizens themselves, not simply the people who get elected and then ignore the concerns of other people because theyre not in the district or because they have drawn the district that is people who are in the district but they have no allies. Host before you move on to some of your other writings, some other topics how did that period of time april to june of 1993, change it, change your life . Guest well it changed my life and i would say very good ways. I got to write a number of books and i got to write books that people were willing to read. So that was an opportunity. And also i just gave me and it also i guess it gave me more of an opportunity to speak to be able to get people engaged in the conversation but this is not just about what academics think. Its also in many ways much more important what the citizens themselves think. And very few people are willing to challenge the way in which we divide up power in this country. Because we are stuck on what the Founding Fathers did in the 1700s. And the Founding Fathers were people, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. See the Founding Fathers determining for the rest of the countries life how to allocate power and how to determine who represents him. Host lift every voice, we did that term come from by the way transferred it comes from lift every voice and sing. Its a song that is important in the black community. Host why . Guest because i think the black community, its great strength is its sense of community, and it has a sense of community, unfortunately, in terms of what makes it a community is the feeling of accidents, the feeling that blacks have not been respected. Feeling of accidents. Slavery dominated the United States and really punish black people in ways that are still being felt you know, 200 years later. 150 years later. So i think at least in terms of my experience, especially as a litigator when i was working for the naacp, the Legal Defense fund, theres a tremendous sense of community in the black domains of a particular state or a particular city. But theres also an interest in, not just improving life for black people because theres interest in making things more fair for all people, and so one of the potential opportunities our options have not in my view been taken advantage of or develop is to find ways to encourage poor blacks, poor whites poor latinos and just poor people generally to Work Together to think about a fairer way of incorporating their views into the political process. Right now we have corporations determined to get elected rather than the population determining who even has the money to run for office, much less win. Host one more quote from lift every voice and this could apply today. And if you could expound on this certainly you write no one had prepared me for a soundbite litmus test for public service. Guest that seems to speak for itself but what i was saying is the media comes in and they put a name on you or put a position on you, then thats the end of the conversation. I dont mind people challenging my views but unlike an opportunity to respond. Host lani guinier, professor at harvard, curly. How long have you been at harvard . Guest since 1998. Host why did you move to harvard . Guest it was a difficult decision but i pretty much enjoyed working at the university of Pennsylvania Law School. I had a colleague, susan sturm we cotaught a class together but it there were several reasons why harvard was appealing. Number one it was something that was challenging the university for a long time and that is that they didnt have any black women working at the law school and very few black people working at the university. Its an irony because not only did i attend bread clip which become part of harvard which is now part of harvard radcliffe. But my father had gone to Harvard College in 1929 and he had applied to the college. He had been accepted, and then when he showed up at the school, they were appalled because he failed to submit a photograph with his with his application. And so he couldnt come they refused him. The students wouldnt talk to them. It was a terrible experience to the first person to talk to him was ralph bunch who was there as a graduate student and ralph bunch directed him to other places, like in the kitchens of the dormitory. Thats where my father could feel comfortable. So, and of course, he then told me how proud he was when he was admitted to harvard but also the challenges of being at a place where you have a lot of people who come from much more elite, much more important or at least well supported families. But so, there was a sense, and he left harvard after two years. So this is during the depression and he could no longer afford it and they wouldnt let him live in the dormitory, et cetera. So my going to harvard applying and going with something about i think i felt as a tribute to my dad. But host what did he do after two years of harvard . Guest he went to new york. He had been, he had done very well in high school. He was the valedictorian in his class. He went to Boston English high school. He had been the editorinchief of his Student Newspaper at high school, and there was a group that brought all of the students who had been the editors of the High School Journal to a meeting with someone from the new times it came to harvard to recruit people who are interested in journalism to