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Hard to keep track, you know it. We have watched the headlines come fast and furious. We are trying to know when it comes to the US administration's policy on US tariffs. What we do know at this hour. President Trump said he will exempt Mexico from his new twenty five percent tariffs on any goods and services that fall under the North American trade agreement that he actually renegotiating
during renegotiated, i should say, during his first administration. So this does offer reprieve for a major, major US trading partner.
A reprieve, but perhaps just until April second. Back to our DC News Bureau and Bloomberg Intelligence Senior pol analyst Nathan deeed, it's hard for us, Nathan, to keep track of it. What are you telling Bloomberg clients about what they need to know in terms of timing and how much these tariffs are going to affect them.
Yeah, So what we're coining this is we're coining this as shock and awe strategy for tariffs, where President Trump comes out here and says, look, this is what I'm going to do. It's going to happen. I'm not going to negotiate. And we saw this with Canada. Mexico tariffs are on thirty day extension, tariffs are on. Now we're seeing the exemption for Mexico. So come April second, which
is the next major catalyst. Obviously there's potentially some negotiations with Canada to go between then, but with April second, clients need to prepare for this idea that these reciprocal tariffs are going to come. But they also have to prepare for the idea that there are going to be exemptions. The one thing that President Trump does not want to see is sticker shock amongst the consumer base. So if you're talking about any types of goods, you know, we
saw the big three automobile makers in there. They got their exemption. So I do think that President Trump will be amicable to some exemptions when it comes to April second. He just may be in the days after April second, not the lead up to it. So you have to certainly pay attention to it because it's going to be really interesting to see what happens.
Can I just say to anybody, see the trade deficit today winding to a record ahead of these tariffs. I mean, I know people might be bringing stuff in to get ahead of them, but I mean we import a ton of stuff. So are we talking, ultimately, Nathan about a lot of exemptions to come.
Well, you know that's the challenge here is because you know, every industry is going to want their own exemption. The big three automobile makers were in there, Tim Cook from Apple could be in there next time talking about an exemption for the technic industry. So you know what I think he needs to happen here is, you know, we prepare for the worst case scenario, and the worst case
scenario is reciprocal tariffs across the board. But then also you just have to remember that what are the industries and what are the consumer facing goods that American people want President Trump to bring the price down?
Food?
In particular, this is something that drove a lot of voters to him at the end of twenty two in the elections. So I think what the White House will do is to look and see, Okay, what industries in which sectors do we think are going to hurt the American consumer more than others? And look, automobiles technology, that's something that Americans buy quite a lot of. So I wasn't surprised to see the exemption for the automobile makers there.
So it's really hard to tell, though, because there's only one person that decides whether these tariffs are on or off, and it's President Trump, and so we just have to like prepare for one scenario and prepare for the other.
Nathan, I know this is fast moving, and I know that we are only getting details sort of as they come out day by day and even hour by hour. But have we been able to has Bloomberg been able to quantify now, given the thirty day reprieve from the tariffs on Mexico, what actually is tariff in terms of amount of goods?
Yeah, so we were looking at this morning, and obviously the exemption is for all goods that found her within the US MCA. We think that's probably close to one hundred percent, not exactly, but even the President of Mexico this morning, you know, the President of Mexico said in her briefing that's pretty much everything. So, you know, I want to say that, you know, obviously these you know, the headlines are there and so forth, but you know, we think it's effectively a push off of the tariff
until April second. The situation obviously is a little bit different in Canada. You know, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Trump have been feuding a little bit on social media, and I think that's probably going to continue because what we you know, we discussed this yesterday in the program. The negotiation stance that we saw coming from Mexico was different than the take that we saw it was coming from Canada, and it looks like it got different results.
So unless that relationship between Ottawa and Washington changes, the Canadian tariffs may be here until April second, if not longer.
Nathan, I mean, we can't get in this mind. We don't know what he's ultimately thinking. But what does President Trump ultimately want? Is it tariffs and pushback? Is it something else that he wants from these countries, from our allies, from our major trading partners. Do we know what it is?
I think what it is is he wants a fundamental shift in terms of the American economy. If you listen to Scott best Into, the Treasury Secretary in his speech this he was talking about how, you know, manufacturing can
come back to the United States. The challenge with that is is that in order to build a plant, or buy a plant, or shift the supply chain, you're talking about a three four five year you know time frame and you know tariffs, on the other hand, are going to have an immediate time frame in terms of price
and consumer impact. So that's I think the challenge for the White House here is you have a long term strategy and a long term goal, but you're going to have to deal with short term pain in the interim. The question is will the White House stomach that short term gain or short term pain and the economic hit in order to achieve their long term goals. I'm not so sure.
Well, it's interesting when you talk about supply chains. We've talked with our Markerman about the apple supply chain, as massive as it is, and how that would take a long long time to shift in terms of you know, so much over in China, how.
Much time they spend building it up.
Yeah, in China, several decades, right and so, and ultimately that assembly to try and replicate that, create that somewhere else. That is something that would take many, many years to do. Nathan, as always, thank you. Nathan Dean, senior policy analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, joining us from our Washington, DC bureau.
Okay, so you're up to date on US tariffs for now, but no promises for what happens over the next day, ten, twenty four or forty eight hours. We're going to stay in DC with our focus now on the US labor market. We're gonna get the closely watched monthly jobs report coming from the US government tomorrow. Lots of conversations though being had right now about how the cuts to the federal workforce will impact the US labor picture.
All right, with more on that, we head back to Washington, DC into Bloomberg News Real Economy Team reporter Mark Naquette. Mark, a couple of things I want to get to, including the story that you guys have put out investors. Obviously
focusing on jobs. We did get the outplacement firm report, Challenger Gray and Christmas their report talking about employers in February announcing plans to reduce headcount at the fastest pay since early in the pandemic, led by cuts in the government sector as the Trump administration moved to shrink the federal workforce. How bad is that? How does that tell us about what's to come?
Unfortunately, we have a jobs report coming out Friday that will not necessarily reflect the impact of the DOGE cuts. The survey period for the jobs report coming out Friday was a second week in February, kind of afford the you know, the cuts really began. But it's gonna expected to show sort of the first indications of, you know,
the the impact of these federal firings. And it's it's not just the federal employees who are being let go, but it's the contractors and folks who work for entities that do business with the government who are getting terminated as well as a result of the broader cost cutting and reductions that the DOGE and the Trump administration is making. So we expect to see in the upcoming job reports for March and April, you know, some more soificant impact
of these cuts. But I think you're already starting to see, like you's mentioned in the Challenger report, you know, the sort of the knock on effects of the streamlining that's happening right now at the federal government, you know, with these contractors and other folks who are being affected.
Does it have a real possibility, because the federal government is such a big employer in the United States, to have a significant effect on the unemployment rate in the US?
It can? I mean, it's it's it's projected that the total impact on the private sector job market could be ash as a half a million if you add all the direct and indirect reductions. It won't move the needle tremendously, but it would certainly have an impact on, you know, the unemployment rate going forward.
So to the story that you and the team Augustus, Sarah and Gerald Dillard had put out, you guys note specifically that economists are seriously, you know, looking at all of what's happening in the federal government and maybe rethinking their forecast for labor market expansion this year. What are you hearing either anecdotally or are they putting or starting to put some numbers to it.
Now they're starting to put some numbers to it, you know, hit as much as one hundred and twenty five thousand, you know, over the course of several months on individual
job reports. Because of this impact we're seeing of the reductions at the federal level, but we're also seeing some kind of interesting sort of ancillary effects, and we've put it in our story today, states like New York and Maryland actively recruiting fire federal workers to join the state workforce in a case where they have, you know, an opening and their state workforce, particularly for us specialized the expertise, you know, like some of these scientists and researchers who
are losing their jobs at the federal level come find, you know, the state workforce and work for the state. So there could actually be some opportunities for folks who are losing their jobs at the federal level to still get a job in their field just at the state level.
Is there any concern from you or economists that we might not get as a good of insight from the federal government in terms of the data that they track, that that we use, that we look to, that investors look to as a result of cuts at the federal level.
Yeah, and it's hard to even track, you know, the impact of the federal firings. You know, for example, you know, we look at initial jobless claims to try and see, you know, what kind of impact the federal reductions are having. And one the unemployment claims are filed under a separate program for federal workers, and there's a leg in reporting that number, and some of the claims are not reflected, right, folks who had put on administrative lead and they have
not yet filed for unemployment for example. So bottom line, I don't think we will see the entire impact of the reductions that are happening at the federal level in the various jobs reports.
All right, super important as we go through the numbers, and maybe need to be patient to wait to see what the ultimate impact will be. Mark Kat, thank you so much, Real Economy team, reporter at Bloomberg News there in DC.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
We're going to get another take on kind of what's been going on in the markets with someone who's actually been watching the rates US rates market pretty closely.
Yeah, I want to bring in Thomas Carroll founder and CEO at the registered investment advisor at ballast Rock Asset Management and invest in multi family real estate properties and also in a venture capital. The firm has about two hundred and forty million dollars in assets under management. Thomas joining us from a Boca Raton, Florida. Thomas, good to
have you here. Look, I just want to start on daylight today, where you see the markets really volidile, Grateful to be in a an asset class that doesn't buy and sell at the whim or click of a button.
Absolutely, and in fact it's fascinating. Over the last two months, we've seen a real uptick in investor demand for our asset class for interest in investing simply, I think a large part because they are nervous about the forward for equities and for public markets, and they don't want to be in an asset class that gy rates as much
as we've seen in equities. So after twenty twenty four, which frankly was a ballmarket year in general, we on the private markets invest side found it quite challenging to raise capital in twenty four. However, twenty five has started totally differently, and I think it is driven by people seeing significant volatility if their public markets is social.
So essentially what they're saying is, we don't want to be in public markets because it's too volatile. We'll pull the money from public equities and instead we'll invest it in alternatives. And one of those alternatives is with you.
And can I just say that that's what we heard from Raj Danda of Arias Wealth.
Management, who was a huge some privates.
Yeah, so that the.
Volatility of the public markets is freaking people out. But forgive me go ahead.
Is that what it is? Thomas?
Absolutely, And it's not necessarily as directors pull out and put in, because of course placing capital into private markets is a slower, more stable process. But certainly reallocation proportionally adjusting portfolios. We believe that we are seeing that, and we're certainly seeing it here at the coal face raising capital or private market deals with pross venture capital and real estate.
So, Thomas, you know, we live on these headlines that are coming out of DC, and rightfully so, because they do move the financial markets, some of them do, not all of them do. How do you take in US policy out of the White House, How does that ultimately impact your world? Rates are important. If rates go up, that's going to be more problematic. I would assume if rates go down that could be better as long as we're not maybe in a recession. But tell us how you see it.
Well, we certainly have to manage to a long term view. We cannot be driven by short term decisions in the same way that a hedge fund trader or market maker can be in public markets. So we view our job more like i'd say, driving an oil tanker and having to make decisions two miles out if we want to turn course in the way that we build portfolios and execute acquisitions and dispositions and value add strategies. So we're
certainly taking a long view. These short term decisions, though, and their driver on interest rates do impact us, both for the positive and for the negative. The positive in that actually rate volatility and in particular what we perceive as a likely rates higher for longer as inflationary pressures like tariffs and DEGO globalization and near shoring, those are all inflationary pressures that will that will really require the
FED to keep rates higher for longer. That pressure a lot of sponsors out there, a lot of real estate owners out there who acquired assets at the peak in twenty twenty or twenty twenty one and even twenty twenty two have been clinging on for dear life, waiting for rates to drop, and especially those that are acquired assets at the peak using floating rate short term bridge financing, have been desperately waiting for that drop, and if it's not going to come, they will have to concede and
likely take a loss, but that will certainly get the acquisition market started again, a market that's stalled through twenty twenty three and four. So that opportunity for those of us that are well capitalized is really exciting. We see the next two years with a lot of sellers just conceding and capitulating. We see that as a great opportunity to acquire if you're well capitalized.
All right, we're going to leave it on that note, Thomas, So good that we could get to you on this day when there's a lot going on in the markets and get your perspective an important one. Thomas Carrol, founder and CEO at the registered investment advisor ballast Rock Asset Management. They've got about two hundred and forty million dollars in asseids under management, joining us there from Florida.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting a two pm Eastern on Apple car Play and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Well, let's talk about Alibaba. As we noted, they introduced its Quinn platform. It's a model that it claims performs as well as Chinese startup Deep Sequel with a fraction of the data, with US as Bear Technology Strategies. Ted Mortenson with US from Tampa, Florida. Ted, I think this coming as a surprise to people, especially just a few weeks after we got the Deep Seek news.
What do we need to know about this announcement from Ali Baba.
Well, there's two things. Number One, I would consider this almost as a war between the US and China for Jenai leadership. This is a major advance, and I think if you look at Ali Baba's last report when they focused on their Cloud Intelligence group, they let the street know for the first time that they're going to spend roughly fifty three billion over three years that's more than
that they spent in the last decade. They also indicated that when they get to what's called AGI, and that's eighty percent of kind of human capability, the States are very very high. You're talking about fifty percent of GDP. So this is going full bore between two nations that can afford not to be in a lagging stance, and I would not be surprised if President Trump makes some moves in this area over the coming weeks.
When you say AGI, you mean artificial general intelligence, which, yeah, I googled it. You're talking about basically, when you've got a machine that can do anything that Tim and I can do a human can do.
Correct you trust that because that's Gemini showing you that search result. I can tell you that I'm looking at your screen.
But that's what you're talking about, right.
That's That's exactly what I'm talking about. We're a couple of years off from that, but we're going to get there. And the implications on how this is going to change every industry and how we look at you know, SMP earnings and GDP, you have to have a very open mind because it is changing extremely rapidly.
How rapidly.
I spoke to Bin Ran of Sigtec earlier this week at Bloomberg invest He's the founder and CEO of this firm that spun off of Brevin Howard back in twenty nineteen, and they've created these agents to essentially do the job of analysts and quants on Wall Street.
It's pretty remarkable stuff.
He gave us a demonstration, But he said, by the end of this year, half of the workforce is going to be made up of AI agents. Is that too bold a proclamation.
That maybe a little bit aggressive? I mean, Mango dB last night basically said for them, and they're they're kind of the database layer for JENNYI applications. Whether it be right or wrong. They said fiscal twenty six was going to be a transition year, So there's different opinions it's going to happen to degree of how quick it happens, is how the next generation jenn Ai Silkan stacks mature
number one and number two. We have some major major Silkin advances happening going forward into next year with Navidia's release of Reuben, for example. This is a technology innovation we've really never seen, at least I haven't seen in thirty years of doing this.
So what's the role of Nvidia at this point? I mean, they're down about sixteen percent seventeen percent this year. We know that they've really taken a hit, you know, following the deep seak news that we got back in January. But I mean, is it silly for investors to count Nvidia out? I mean, how are you thinking about the companies that investors should be watching when it comes to the AI trade.
So the chart doesn't look great, and that's just feeding on itself. But if you look at the if you look at what Jensen's doing, the man's brilliant. He's he's one of I would say the greatest tech innovators of our time. He invested billions of dollars into this area before it even became a market. So Navidia has a four to five year lead. I think where the street really misses it is Navidia's dominance in that software stack area.
On Jenny I they are light years ahead of people, and it could be conceivable that Navidia could be one of the largest software companies of the next tech cycle as we get additional infrastructure rolled out. So you cannot count this company out. They're holding a lot of the cards, both on training and inference, and they have a very good field where the market's going. So it's more buying from the fearful.
Here.
Hey, Ted, just got about forty fifty seconds here. So Ali Baba, how does the news today make you now think about this company which is known for its electronic commerce, you know, e commerce, retail, financial online. How does this news that maybe make you rethink a little bit about Ali Baba?
And just quickly, you know, it really doesn't because if you look at the innovations and Jenny, I look what AWS is doing, or a zore or GPC, they're at the same plane of tech innovation. It's just going to be a matter of who gets there the quickest and who has as as much as free cash flow to get there the quickest. You know, it's it's gonna be a battle. But I don't think it really changes the thought process.
All right, So happy we could spend some time with you, Ted Mortensen, Bear Technology Alice joining us.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five y's during listen on Apple Karplay and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business Up, or watch us live live on YouTube.
Well, Harvard Law School has a long history of catapulting black students into the American elite. Barack Obama, Ken Channall the Vammex, Ken Frasier of merk Ray MacGuire of Lazard. A generation before them, Conrad Harper became the first black partner at Wall Street law firm Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett. Decades later, as President, Obama would appoint Katanji Brown Jackson's a federal judge on her way to becoming the first
black woman to join the US Supreme Court. Now, Harvard Laws status as a training ground for potential black stars in the worlds of business, politics, and culture could be under threat after the Supreme Court banned the use of race and admissions across the college system, so writes Janet Lauren in a Big Take this week. She's Bloomberg News Higher Education Finance reporter. She joins us here in the
Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Also joining us an alumna of Harvard Law School, Deborah Lee, the former CEO of Black Entertainment Television Networks, also a board member at Marriott Procter and Gamble and Warner Brothers Discovery.
Thanks so much to both of you for joining us.
Thanks for having it having me.
Hey, Jane, I do want to start with you, because just start with the numbers, the data you're reporting. What did it tell you about black students and how they're doing at Harvard Law today.
So this year the number of first year law students called one l's is nineteen, a year after the Supreme Court decision, and previously the year before it was forty three.
Wow.
So it was a big, sharp decline in the first year that students could apply after the Supreme Court declared that race was no longer a factor in admissions.
How big? How big are the would a class be?
Just for context, Harvard's is quite large. It's five hundred and sixty students in compared to some of its peers like Stanford and Yale are roughly about two hundred, so it's more than double the size. In fact, this year, Yale, with about two hundred students, had more black students first year students than Harvard did at all.
So to be fair, what does Harvard say about that drop?
Well, Harvard was a named litigation litigant in the case. So they're saying, you know, it could be one year. It's you know, it's just one year of data. They continue to want a diverse class, but they're sort of hamstrung in what they can say given what's going on
in the country right now. And I say, one thing that was a very bright spot about reporting the story was meeting with the current students and what they're doing to try to recruit and and make students comfortable with the application process.
Well, let's talk about that in a moment.
Definitely.
I want to bring you to the conversation. You're an alum of the Harvard Law School, former CEO of Black Entertainment Television Networks. What do you think about that drop?
I was very upset when I heard about the drop in numbers. I was at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School. I did a joint degree program, so I was in a four year program. I was there from seventy six to nineteen eighty. Every year I was there at Harvard Law School, they admitted with the entering class, as Janet said, of about five hundred students, would include fifty black people, right, that was the number they kind
of aimed for. I've found out since then that sometimes it was higher, sometimes it was lower, but fifty was kind of the end all. And it was as a result of something called the Harvard Plan, which was implemented years ago, where people came together and said they wanted Harvard to Law to be one of the best training grounds for black law students and black lawyers, and they implemented this plan. There was a dean who focus on this.
So everything worked out until this year. And you know, we know what the Supreme Court said, but they also said, you know, students could talk about race in their applications. They can consider all kinds of other factors. So I have to say I blame Harvard Law School for this drop because a lot of other law schools didn't have up the drop.
And they ultimately decide to be fair, right, They ultimately decide who comes in who doesn't.
Yes.
And when I was at Harvard, there was a case called back Baki, which was the first reverse discrimination case, and as black law students, some of them wrote an a meekas breed for the Supreme Court, and as part of that, the admissions director from Harvard College came over to talk to us one day and She said, only one fourth of the students at Harvard College get in on the numbers, one fourth get in on diversity, one fourth get in on legacy, and the other fourth one
fourth get in on whether you're an oboe player from Utah, you know, some distinguishing factor. So she made it very clear. And I haven't forgotten this in fifty years whenever I finished Harvard.
That's a formula. There is a form where there was a formula.
There was a formula.
And you know, people say, oh, diversity, you know, screws up everything. There are all these otherqualifications that can get you into Harvard College. So I don't know how they did it at the law school. But let me just say this. The thing that bathers me the most about the drop is because nineteen students black students were admitted
this year. Does that say to everyone above nineteen that if brace wasn't taken into account, you wouldn't have got into Harvard Law School those fifty students that were admitted. And I hate that anyone would think that, because, first of all, everyone admitted to Harvard Law School is qualified. It's not you know, we're just going to pick some random students and you have to perform, and you have to graduate. And as you said, there's so many amazing
Harvard graduates. Everyone that you mentioned I know except Conrad Harper, and I know them in part because I went to Harvard Law School, so there's such a great network.
Some of them were there with me.
But when you meet someone and they tell you they went to Harvard lawsie were, You're like, oh, yeah, so did that?
Well?
I did mention Barack Obama. I won't to ask you what he thinks about what's going on in Washington, because you know we won't call on him right now, but I do want to know. You are featured in Janet's piece as working to make sure the numbers don't fall right.
So what are you doing well.
I was part of a call of black alums from Harvard Law School before Christmas, and we talked a lot about what can we do, and so the decision was made to write a group letter to the dean, and that letter was delivered and the Dean of LA Harvard Law has agreed to meet with a group of alums. So you know, the first thing we have to talk about is what happened. You know, I'm not saying this was done intentionally. I think it was just, you know,
the circumstances change and people weren't ready for it. And as Janet said, the law students are getting more involved. There was the head of the Law Students was on the call with Thus and you know he's very active. And I went up to Harvard Law last week to speak and tell students to keep the faith and work hard, and we can't let this happen again.
Jenna, what would you say to somebody who hears the nineteen figure as a drop from last year and says, well, wait, a second one year does not a trend make maybe this is an anomaly.
Well, I actually did speak to an admitted student who also is considering Stanford and Chicago and Duke and other top law students in his schools, and he's leaning towards Harvard. But one thing that he took a lot of comfort in was interacting with the current students. You know, they held zooms, they read essays. He met the current president of the Black Law Students Association when he in a Harvard Law officer admissions officer came to recruit at Dillard.
So he felt comforted knowing there is this tight student group who are there to provide assistance and to provide a community. So I think that bodes well. But they've got some work to do.
Yeah, a lot of work. And you know, one thing we talked about is the lums is maybe we don't give Harvard Law money until.
We resolve this issue money talks.
I started a public service scholarship program at Harvard Law, so people who wanted to go to public service and didn't have money that you make when you go to a corporate law firm law firm, could do that as an alternative. I mean there, we just have to talk about and figure out what went wrong and keep it from happening again, because it reflects poorly on the law school. It really does, especially when no one else's numbers fell.
Junk Car Harvard Law class of eighty three, retired partner at Simpson and Thatcher. This is in Janet's story said this country is going through a new Jim Crow, referring to the laws that legalized racial segregation in the US South, as we know, back in the nineteen sixties sixties.
Do you agree, yes, I agree. I was born the year Brown versus Board Education was decided nineteen fifty four. And my father pushed me into Ivy League schools because I was a generation, first generation who could take advantage of that. I went to Harvard Law School because I could take an advantage of that. And it does feel like the Supreme Court and this White House are trying
to roll back progress that has been made. Anytime our president says a plane went down because of a DEI higher, you know, he's equating it one DEI with just black, even though a lot of other categories included in DEI, and he's equating it with incompetence. And that's not what THEI is about. And I'm old enough to remember affirmative action before DEI. It's been called different things, but the goal is to open the door to people that are qualified.
And someone said to me, so, what you're talking about is a diverse meritocracy, and I said, exactly, that's what we're talking about.
One thing I do want to ask, because I know we get pushed back on this a lot, is that people are going to say, well, half of America put this president with his initiatives and his campaign promises, you know, to roll back woke initiatives.
His words.
You know, what do you say to that.
I hope that's not true. You know, you mentioned it before. I came on about the twenty twenty five plan, and there were horrible things in that when I first heard about it, and you know, Trump distanced himself phone, No, I'm not going to do that, And now he's doing it. So did all those people that voted for him know he was going to do this? Is this what they wanted?
We've made a lot of progress, all kind of groups women, you know, Asians, Latinos, and I just don't think the majority of Americans want that roll back and are saying we only want white men again. I don't believe that.
Jennet.
You your story is about what's happening at Harvard Law, but you already mentioned some of the other Ivy League law schools here in the US. Did they see a similar drop off too following the Supreme Court decision?
Do we know that yet?
Well?
I mean we looked at the top five law schools, and nobody else had the same drop that they did. They increased. Now, one reason one Harvard law professor said was, you know, Harvard wasn't named litigant in the Supreme Court.
Lawsuit, So what does that mean?
Though, does that mean they're more sensitive to it, they're more concerned with following the law.
Well, certainly they're going to be very concerned about it. But perhaps if you're a student and you keep hearing Harvard Harvard Law School Supreme Court case, Harvard Law Harvard University Supreme Court case, over and over and over, that could be a recent In the University of North Carolina, which was also a name litigant was they also had a slight decline.
Jennet, what are you seeing in terms of colleges? And I want to bring you back in and you know your reach out to Deborah, But are college's universities not talking about issues before? Or they'll give you stuff on background, but they want to be very careful. Has it changed a medically? You've been covering this industry, this group for a long time.
Everybody is very nervous. You know, people I've talked to for more than a decade are very nervous. It's you know, the federal funding is under scrutiny.
No.
We wrote a story in December basically outlining all the things that were likely to happen, especially at a place like Harvard, which has been under imment scrutiny and the idea that they're considering pulling federal federal research funding seven hundred million dollars at Harvard. It's quite a lot of money.
Debora.
I want to speak to you in the capacity of not just a graduate of Harvard Law and also was it the Kennedy School as well, but also as a business leader, former CEO of Black Entertainment Television Networks, also currently a board member of Marriott p ANDNG Warner Brothers Discovery. You've been on boards for many boards for the last twenty two years. This is also happening at the corporate level, right.
So what we're seeing happen in education, we saw executive orders from the president, and we know there are a lot of people at different universities and our company is trying to think, Okay, what do we do with the DEI initiatives that we have that have we have invested so much in over the past few decades.
Well, what are you hearing?
Yeah? Well, what Janet said, people are.
Afraid business leaders are business.
Leaders even though the Supreme Court has not touched them, doesn't apply to them. But there have been activists that have gone after certain corporations and said, you know, you're doing too much in DEI. Offices have been shattered, people have been reassigned, and they're pulling back on money to organizations that might look like DEI. And so there's a lot of change going.
But is there a way to still have a leadership team or a workforce that looks like America? Yes, when you have pushed back from the federal government at initiatives that attempt to do that.
Several more than several companies have said, diversity has been one of our values for one hundred and twenty years and we're not going to change it because of this White House that may be in office for four years. And so people are standing up against the political pressure. And I admire those companies because it does take a lot. And if next week they do get some federal funding from the government, will that change their position. I don't know.
But several companies well that are standing tough.
Don't bring you into this question. You you know, did all this reporting and have talked to Deborah ahead of the story being put out on the Bloomberg.
Well, I guess, Deborah, is there anything that you would say to a potential Harvard law student now a black student who's considering option. Should I go there? Is it or should I go somewhere else? Only nineteen students in one year, maybe if maybe it's just going to be small, what would you say?
I would say, If they're admitted, go to Harvard, try to apply, you know, talk to students, talk to consultants that help with these kind of things. Put your best foot forward, and hopefully you will get admitted. And I will tell students because I do get this question a lot from students who are admitted to Stanford or Georgetown or whatever, and they're like, oh, I got a full ride from UCLA. I'm like, if you got into Harvard, go into debt and go. It's the best network, it's
the best law school. You know, you can't go wrong with going there. You may have to pay back more money than if you went to UCLA on a full ride. So I'm a big proponent of it. Even though I didn't really want to go to Harvard. My dean made me apply, and I didn't tell my father I applied because I knew if I told him and I got in, he would make me go. So I didn't tell him. When I told him, I got in and I was
going because I made it up my own mind. He said, oh, that's funny, you didn't even apply, and I was like, well, I forgot to tell you. But it's one of the best decisions I made.
Hey, before we let you go.
What someone listening or watching right now who might agree with what the White House has done might say to themselves or say to us, what about the idea of meritocracy. We're only the best of the best get to do these things. And if you bring in other factors, it's not a meritocracy.
What would you say?
I would say, that's absolutely not true. We bring in other factors all the time. I remember my first law firm job. The guy who started the same day I did was a baseball player, and all the partners kept saying, Oh my god, you're going to be on our team. We're so excited. Why did he get the job?
You know?
And maybe I got the job because I was black or a woman, But there are always other factors, and meritocracy is always an issue. You know, if someone opens the door for you and you walk through it and you can't compete, you're not gonna make it. You're not going to make it. I saw a great thing on Instagram about that about black women doctors. Someone said, I don't trust them and they take the same exams as everyone else, They do the same work and they have
to graduate. What are you talking about? So I like the word. And actually John Malone came up with it. He's on one of the boards I'm on and he said to me, Deborah, what you want is a diverse meritocracy.
And I said, exactly, a diverse meritocracy, something to really think about. We don't want standards to be lowered exactly. Hey, listen, we've got a run. We've got to get back to the markets. But thank you so much, an important story to tell. Jenna Lauren, Bloomberg News Higher Education finance reporter, incredible reporting, climbed it on the Bloomberg and Deborly thank you for finding time pres as well former CEO Black Entertainment Television Network.
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