On May 4, 2017, Ian Haney López, JD, the Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at University of California, Berkeley and author of Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, presented on how the last 50 years of American political leadership and public policy has been shaped largely via racial pandering, resulting in public policies that reinforce deep-seated inequities in our society. Haney López also stressed that improving social and political equity in the United States will require an inclusive approach, and a more widespread understanding that racist policies and practices towards people of color negatively impact whites as well.