It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. We'll talk now about the Trump

administration continuing to use lawsuits and investigations to attack diversity, equity, or inclusion programs.

We'll focus on two new developments that you may have heard the headlines about in the last few days.

One, they're investigating Smith College, the private women's college in Massachusetts.

They're calling it a civil rights investigation over Smith admitting a transgender student.

They're investigating that as an act of sex discrimination against women.

Smith started admitting trans women in 2015.

And they're suing the New York Times for not promoting a white male to a deputy editor position.

The suit from the Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission, challenges the very premise of the Times' attempt to increase representation in

leadership by underrepresented groups. The government says, quote, a necessary consequence of New York

Times' intent to increase the percentage of non-white leaders would be a decrease in the

percentage of white leaders, unquote. So we'll talk about both these cases now and the bigger

tensions over how to view discrimination that they represent with Suzanne Goldberg,

Columbia University Law Professor, co-founder of the School's Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and founder of its Gender Law Clinic back in 2006, she's also had some roles in the Biden administration as an advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, and to the special State Department envoy to

advance the human rights of LGBTQ plus persons. She also had been the acting assistant secretary

in the office for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education. Professor Goldberg,

thanks for joining us. Welcome to WN.YC. Thanks. Glad to be here.

Let's take the Smith College investigation first. I believe this is coming from the exact office that you used to work in, the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.

And I know you have opinions, but first, can you just explain to our listeners what kinds

of civil rights violations are the Trump people considering that Smith may

have committed? So the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights announced it is opening

...