In this video, Wesley Morris sits down with Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The 1619 Project, to trace the project’s journey from publication to this moment — when Trump has returned to power on a message that explicitly rejected its premise.  

Two quotes from Nikole that particularly ring true for the LEAD community:

No court and no law has ever said that DEI or diversity, equity, inclusion or working on diversity is illegal. It is not illegal. It doesn’t have to be. Because all you have to have is the threat that your university will be harmed, your organization will be targeted. You may be sued. You have the Justice Department, the Department of Education, and the President of the United States saying that this is illegal, and discriminatory, and in violation of civil rights law. The point of that is that you don’t actually have to force compliance. People comply in advance.”

In a society that has prided itself on being open on freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly…all of these institutions who five years ago pretended that all of this was so important to them, have capitulated.”

— Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones