Addressing Allyship in a Time of a “Thousand Papercuts”

In 2020, a team of students in the class on Women, Law and Leadership students interviewed 100 male law students on their philosophy on leadership and conducted several surveys on allyship and subtle bias. Complementing the allyship interviews, the class developed several survey instruments to examine emerging bias protocols and stereotype threats among a new generation of leaders at Penn Law from a diverse demographic. This exploration looked at individual patterns of conduct, institutional policies and organizational behavior that could combat a new generation of structural and systemic biases. Thirty years after the landmark study by Lani Guinier, we look at the changing mores of a small group of women and men at Penn Law School.This Project grew out of a partnership with Thomson Reuters Transforming Women’s Leadership Initiative.