Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:00]:
S, to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast. A podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their schools. Today's special guest is doctor Donna Niccol. So without further ado, Donna, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:00:17]:
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:18]:
Pleasure. My you know, we've been talking offline before we hit record. I tell you, I'm really excited for today's conversation. And I know I say that a lot audience too about all my guests, but I'm really excited about this conversation. So before we get into the topic, Donna, I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:00:35]:
Yeah. So currently, I'm an associate dean of personnel and curriculum in the College of Liberal Arts at California State University Long Beach after a 20 year career as faculty both in women and gender studies and also in Africana studies where I was chair of the department for 7 years. I've gotten my education through the Cal State system. I got my PhD at Ohio State University in educational studies with a focus on history of education. I am an ed historian by training and just recently published a book about the 1st black woman trustee in the Cal State System, doctor Claudia Hampton.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:16]:
Alright. Well, I'm I'm excited for for this again, for this topic, and I'm a we're gonna jump right in. So thank you for sharing a little bit about yourself. Here's the thing. Now, folks, I mean, literally, every time I start an episode, it's welcome advocates. I I refer to the audience members. They're known as the advocates out here because we wanna ensure the equity is at the forefront of whatever we do when it comes to education, which often means that we have to make changes in our current structure, maybe our systems, maybe our practices and policy. However, making those changes or leading changes is not always easy.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:53]:
I've talked about in the past about, like, being a part of certain organizations or being part of groups such as I used to be a member of the n double a c p years ago. And I realized that folks see n, double, a c p. They just automatically assume there's an agenda in place, and guards are automatically up from the very beginning. Or, like, you enter into a diversity, equity, inclusion training, professional development, and you automatically have your mindset, oh, this is a diversity training. And so a lot of folks have their guards up. We were Eakins. You mentioned there's some strategies that might not be as and correct me if I'm not using the right term, but there there might be some strategies that aren't as in your face open agenda focused type of strategies to implement change. And I wanna start there.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:02:42]:
You talk about sly civility. Could you share a little bit about that?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:02:46]:
Yeah. So sly civility is a resistance strategy that was first Eakins of coined by a cultural theorist named Homi Bhabha. And in that, Homi Bhabha says that when people are colonized, and in this case, he was talking about colonial India, when people are colonized, they have to come up with some strategies in order to get resources to the disenfranchised. And so what sliceability is is this idea that as a colonized person, if you have the opportunity to get access to the institutions of the colonizer, what you need to do is be befriend the colonizer, be civil toward them so that you can get access to the resources that the colonizer benefits from, and then you slyly pass those resources back on to the other disenfranchised folks in your community. So it's a resistance strategy, but it's one where you're not, like, in people's face. Instead, you're building relationships with people who are polar opposite to you in order to make sure that other disenfranchised folks have a chance.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:03:52]:
Is this like a a Trojan horse type situation?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:03:56]:
Yeah. In in a way, it is. But it what what it does is it relies on your social skills and you becoming the instrument of of change. It's not relying on the system to change. It's relying on the individual to help change the system from within. So in a lot of ways, it is like a Trojan horse.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:14]:
I got you. Okay. Alright. Alright. So so okay. We're we're on the same page. Now I guess the next question is, does it matter what type of level of or position you're in, it makes a difference?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:04:26]:
Actually, slice ability works no matter what position you're in. If you're trying to make change at whatever level you're in, so long as you understand that you have to be civil to the people who hold power, gain their trust, and then gain access to the resources they have, you can pass them on to other people. So let me give you a contemporary example of how sliceability is happening

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:51]:
right now. It's not in the

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:04:51]:
educational realm, but it it it will, I think, help your listeners understand what I'm talking about. So there is a, a black woman who is part of the Biden administration right now. Her name is L Young, and she is the director for the office for management and budget. And L Young has managed to help prevent any government shutdowns. And the way she's been able to do this is she's befriended the Republicans, and they call her the Republican whisperer throughout the Biden administration. Because what she has done is she's developed personal relationships with members of congress. So she's from Louisiana. And so all members of congress from Louisiana, regardless of party affiliation, she'll send them crawfish and gumbo.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:05:37]:
Sending people a meal ingratiates her to them so that the speaker of the house, Mike Johnson, who's from Louisiana, who's polar opposite of her in terms of politics, loves her to the point where they're willing to negotiate with her because she's made inroads on a personal level. So it requires a lot of social skills, but it's understanding that in order to lead, you might have to become the instrument of that leadership.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:06:03]:
So okay. I could just hear my listeners thinking, like, so this sounds like a form of manipulation. Is is that would that be a safe response? You could

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:06:13]:
call it a a form of manipulation, but I think of it as just being politically savvy that you need to understand what your opposition needs or wants in order to compromise with you. And instead of trying to kind of bum rush them with and hit them over the head with, this is the moral reason why you should make this change. Sometimes you have to say, I'm gonna cook dinner for you and let you know that I'm safe so that that way we can have a conversation. So maybe it is manipulation if you think about it as that, but I think about it or I see how it got played out with this woman that I wrote a book by is that it opened the door for her and then she continued to work with people. Because of her race and because of her gender, she had to figure out a way in order to negotiate. And she couldn't negotiate just by saying, well, you know, this is the right thing to do for black people or this is the right thing to do for women. Nobody was listening to any of that.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:07:17]:
So tell me about that. So Claudia Hampton is the woman that we're referring to. Correct? Yes. What was she trying to do? What was her initiative?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:07:26]:
So she was appointed in 1970 4 to the board of trustees for the California State University System. And at that time, the Cal State System had not put together or enforced a nondiscrimination policy or affirmative action policy, though it was on the books since 19 65. And so one of her big goals was to enforce affirmative action with regards to hiring for faculty and staff and also for student mission. And so in order to get these mostly conservative white men to fund affirmative action programs, Hampton had to negotiate with them. And the only way you can negotiate is through this informal thing they call the telephone network, where all the backdoor deals would happen. Well, only men were allowed into this network until she started to cook dinner for the white men on the board. And once she did that, she became quote, unquote, our trustee. They claimed her as their own.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:08:31]:
And in fact, she was able to make much more headwind with enforcement of affirmative action on race and gender than the white women on the board, because the white women on the board were viewed as staunch feminist. Whereas Hampton played to the gender norm by being the hostess for these dinners for these men. And so it it's it's a sort of thing where the willingness to let the men think that they're in control by her cooking dinner allows them to see her as safe enough to negotiate with them when it comes to policy.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:09:07]:
I could see, like, those dinner sessions, you know, she has she has a seat at the literally has a seat at the table in that in that instance where she's like they're having a meal, they're sharing a meal, and she can pitch certain ideas or pitch certain thoughts, get confirmations. All that stuff can happen. Right?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:09:25]:
Yeah. And and she's not the only black woman that's doing this. There are other black women educators who are using a similar type of Eakins of social networking. So Verna Canton, who was a West Coast director of the NAACP, in order to make inroads with regards to busing for black students during the height of segregation, she cooked dinner for folks. Bertha Maxwell Roddy, she's out of North Carolina. She became the first black woman principal of a predominantly white school in North Carolina. She used a lot of the same techniques because there was such a backlash against the civil rights movement in the seventies and into the eighties that black women knew they had to come up with an alternative strategy to get into these systems and change them from within.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:10:13]:
Okay. So I'm gonna throw this out because, I'm curious. Does it matter what I'm making? Like, do I want to present food that is catered towards the the the guest, the person, like, what they like to eat? Or am I trying to showcase, like, hey. I can throw down in the kitchen. Here's some soul food, for example, or here's something that I'm really into. Share a meal with me. Is is does that even matter? I'm just curious.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:10:39]:
You know, I don't know exactly what she made. I do have one reference in the book to her, making steaks for the her husband grilled some steaks for the men, and then she made all of the, you know, side dishes. But I'm not I'm not quite sure what it is in terms of actual entrees. But the other thing that she did was while she was working on the men, she would send Christmas cards and flowers to their wives. She would learn their their family members' names and come up to them in after a meeting and say, well, how's your wife doing? I heard that, you know, this, that, and the other. And so she personalized every interaction.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:11:16]:
Okay. So now I'm going back to thinking like, okay, may yeah. I agree. Maybe it's not manipulation. It's more of relationship building Yes. And, a way to to to get to know someone. You know, it's one of the things I talk about a lot is, you know, what what what do you like to do outside of school or outside of this space? Like, what do you do when you're at home? Or how are your family and how are your kids? How are things going? So those kind of things, I think, are very thoughtful and authentic. And you're building that relationship, you're building that rapport.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:11:43]:
I mean, I could I just as I'm thinking, I mean, you could do this from a student level. Like, you can let's say you're in a teacher and you're in a classroom and you're trying to get more buy in from your students, but you're taking the time to learn who they are. Maybe you're bringing in some donuts or bringing in some snacks for them, making sure that they have water, whatever. Those little things and, again, it's not necessarily a manipulation tactic. It's just more of I'm trying to build this relationship and connect with you. However, I do have some ideas that I think would be beneficial as well. So okay. Let let's let's do this because I have folks probably listening and they're thinking, okay.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:12:20]:
Give me a solid school related exam. What could this look like? So, I don't know if you have an example, but if not, I I'm just thinking one of the topics that comes up a lot is diversity in books. So let's say I'm a teacher and I'm wanting to diversify maybe the school library or maybe even in within my classroom. But there's all these banned book options stuff out here and there's all this political stuff and I'm like, I'm nervous about how to approach this. Is there a way to utilize sly civility to implement some sort of initiative for increasing the amount of diverse books within the school?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:12:58]:
I think so. I mean, I taught in l LA Unified. I was a secondary school teacher. And some of the ways in which, you know, to diversify my book, my library for my students would be to speak directly to the parents and say, you know, we want to get some more books about black history, but, you know, we're limited by budget. And so, you know, it would be really nice if, you know, you could just donate 1 or 2 books to us. That would help us. And so where the slice ability would come in here is that the conversation I would have with the principal. And I'm thinking exactly of what happened with the principal that I had, who was not encouraging with regards to diversity in our textbooks.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:13:48]:
But when I approached it from saying that parents would pay for the books, this principle is way more receptive to that idea. So wasn't

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:13:56]:
it really coming from you. Right? It was more like you're you're saying, oh, the parents want the books.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:14:02]:
Yes. And so there was a a Eakins of I I wasn't asking, you know, for the school budget to be used on these books. I was saying that the parents want these, you know, they want these topics and the parents are willing to fund it by purchasing books. I didn't say that I only asked the parent to pay, you know, for 1 book at a time or 1 pay 1 book per child. I didn't go all into those details. I didn't need to. I sold the principal on the idea that it wouldn't be the responsibility of the school to do it, and that it's coming it's coming from the parents Eakins though it was really my idea.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:14:41]:
I love it. So so slight. Very, very slight.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:14:43]:
Yeah. I mean and even when Claudia Hampton, even though she was working in the higher ed context, she put together partnerships between LA Unified School District and the Cal State System. And so in order to increase the number of black and Latino, the Cal States are willing to have some faculty members come teach on your campus, teach classes for your, you know, your gifted and high achieving students. And if the students do well, we'll be able to get them a scholarship into the Cal State University. And so she she was cons looking for opportunities to increase the number of black and brown students in the university. In fact, she's responsible for the creation of a a STEM based STEM magnet that was catered toward black and Latino students out here in California. It was her brainchild. And when Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent turned her down, she went to Long Beach.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:15:41]:
Long Beach said, oh, yeah. We'll absolutely do it. And so to this day, that school site is on the campus of a 4 year institution out here, and it has an 86% student full full, like, full scholarships to 4 year institutions. And that's all because she had done some, you know, sly civility. And and she also cajoled the chancellor of the 4 year institutions, the Cal States, to give money to the young black scholars program that was created by a 100 black men in Los Angeles. So they got like a half a $1,000,000 grant because the university wasn't doing good with recruiting black male students, and so she, you know, used a reputation in order to bring about change for black men.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:25]:
K. So here's the question because, again, gears are turning. What are some strategies? Because okay. Let's just say let's just say I can't I can't cook. Right? Because, I mean, I mean, I I can do a little something. I I mean, I could boil some water. I can boil some water. Okay.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:41]:
K. Let's just say let's just say I'm not I'm not the most savvy when it comes to to cooking. Let's say I'm not the best golfer, and so meeting a group of folks on a golf course is not gonna what are some other strategies that I could utilize that are sly enough where I can, again, have those conversations? I can get that seat at the table, if you will. What what are some strategies that you can share with us?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:17:05]:
Yeah. So Hampton not only cooked for people or sent Christmas cards, but she would take them out to lunch after a board meeting. She would meet them. Keep in mind, this is the seventies and the eighties. She would go, you know, have cigarette breaks with them. There were a few very conservative men on the board who she didn't get along with in terms of politics, but they would go have a cigarette break together. And so it was just little small things that she did. She took very meticulous notes about each board member.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:17:39]:
In her 1st year, she didn't say a word. She absolutely didn't talk. And in this interview that I've I've found of her, she said she did that on purpose so that she could study the board culture. And it afforded her the opportunity to figure out what were the the majority of of the men on the board interested in. They were meant mostly interested in finance and buildings. And so they weren't interested in educational policy, and so she said, well, that's the place where I'm gonna go is educational policy because that's where I can make the most change. And that's where most of the debate about affirmative action was was educational policy. So she she studied them.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:18:20]:
She knew one guy, for example, was very he was one of the more powerful trustees, man, by the name of Charles Luckman. And she knew that he was powerful because he was a world renowned architect. And so in order to prove to him that she was a moderate, when they were he was debating about how high to put a mound at one of, you know, one of the campuses, She said, whatever Luckman wanted, he was gonna get it because I wanted to make sure that the predominantly black campus, Cal State Dominguez Hills, would get the person I wanted. So in order to kinda make sure that happened, I would trade votes with him. She called it the game of boardsmanship. And so she studied them, and then she was extremely prepared for meetings. So she would have a meeting with before she would do the the the hosting, she there was a a a black man who was the first affirmative action officer. She would meet with him first.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:19:18]:
They would strategize the votes. She would cook dinner, meet with the white guys, negotiate, and then she would go to the board meetings. So the way she conducted herself in meetings was it was a lot of preparation and a lot of, you know, making sure when she was board chair, because she became board chair 5 years into being on the board, she would make sure that all of her allies got to speak first. And then everybody who was against her, they would have to defend themselves. So she would call on the folks who were pro affirmative action and let them make their points. And so she just knew how to do this very well, but that was because she had worked in the k L setting for almost 30, 40 years and was also responsible for monitoring the desegregation efforts of LA Unified School District from the 19 sixties onward.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:20:11]:
This reminds me of I don't know if you read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Mhmm. Dale Carnegie. And I just I just hear all of that

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:20:21]:
within Yes.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:20:22]:
The way that you're framing framing this conversation.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:20:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the book, and one of the chapters is just kinda detail how she built her capital by building these friendships and these relationships. She served on 9 of the 10 major committees on the board. She would do things like go to committee meetings that had nothing to do with her assignments, but because she needed to be apprised of what was happening somewhere else because it might impact the things that she was advocating for. And so by the time she had become board chair 5 years in, she had enough capital where she could influence major votes to the point where Ronald Reagan, who appointed her as trustee later in the 19 eighties when he became president, appointed her to a federal commission. I was amazed that she was appointed by Reagan knowing his politics. Like, how the world did this happen? So in the book, I detail how she she won over Ronald Reagan, which seems just you know, it seems so far fetched to me.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:21:27]:
And once she she served on the board for 20 years, and by the time she was about halfway through, about 10 years in, she could really start to take on gender issues more. In the beginning, she mostly dealt with race. But about 10 years into it, because she had enough capital and people around the state loved her. She the presidents loved her, the students loved her, Even when she was dealing with some really tough racial politics between black and brown, she came away from a lot of these things unscathed because she had built personal relationships.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:22:02]:
Would you say that her tactics of not just in your face, change this now, this needs to happen right away, contributed to a lot of her success?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:22:13]:
Oh, most definitely. So she was appointed when Reagan was leaving the governorship and when Jerry Brown was coming in. And so Jerry Brown's appointments were all pretty much, you know, more radical left. And she was the conciliator between the Reagan appointees who were conservative hard right and the Brown appointees who were hard left. And so she was like plunk right in the middle. And they all would come to her for advice and counsel because they thought that she was the most level headed person out of the whole bunch. And and I would say that not being radical worked for her. Now keeping in mind that she's coming at a time when black radicalism is ruling the Eakins of social politics of the day because there's a backlash against all of the policies that happened during the civil rights movement.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:23:05]:
There's a backlash against affirmative action. There is this kind of, you know, police brutality is is increased. And so black radicalism is the response to that in the wider sphere. But Hampton realizes and understands that she has to work on inside while people who are on the outside might be pushing for a more aggressive type of politics. You need both. You need the liberal insiders and the radical activists. Because if you're working for the same goal, you need multiple approaches toward that goal. It can't be one or the other.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:43]:
I I I support that so much. You know, I I I say sometimes, like, look, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna protest. I'm not gonna march. But I I believe it's necessary. I believe that that's gonna bring a lot of awareness. I'm a hurt people in their pockets, so I'm all for a boycott. Like, I'm down. You tell me not to buy somewhere or shop or watch or whatever, I'm I'm down.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:24:04]:
Because that's to me, that's I think that's necessary as well. So I feel like combination of, like, protests, demonstrations, then a combination of, again, boycotts and all that. And then you have your your leadership. I I I'm a big fan of doctor Eakins, and I'm also a big fan of Malcolm X. And I I feel like the 2 of them during that time frame, in order for a lot of the changes that took place during the civil rights movement, was because of the 2 of them. I I don't know if doctor King would have gotten as much as he was able to accomplish if Malcolm X wasn't on very like again, same same necessarily not necessarily the same path, but just different approaches to civil rights. I don't know if if those changes would have taken place had them both not been prevalent during that time frame.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:24:54]:
Yeah. I I think we need to open up people get very entrenched in their one side and not realizing that issues are complex and people are complex and you need all of the sides working together. If your if your goal is equality for everybody, it doesn't have to mean that there's only one way to do it. There's plenty of examples. Mary McLeod Bethune took what is called a pragmatic idealist approach. So she took the pragmatism of Booker T Washington and she took the idealism of Du Bois, and she merged them together when she put her curriculum together for Bethune Cookman College. So the students would get the practical education that will help you make money from Booker t Washington, so that would be half of their curriculum. And then the other half would be the idealistic, learn the liberal arts so that you can defend yourself in in, you know, in court from Du Bois.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:25:46]:
So she merged the 2 together. It doesn't have to be a either or.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:25:50]:
And they didn't even like each other. Like, when I read

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:25:52]:
Oh, no.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:25:52]:
They when I read Souls of Black Folks, oh, man, these dudes hate each other.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:25:57]:
Okay. Yeah. And if you look in Booker T Washington's papers, he has written letters to Andrew Carnegie disavowing Du Bois as a folly, you know, some type of aberration.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:26:08]:
So it's interesting, like, as I'm listening to you talk about Mary McLeod Bethune and how she took pieces of both of their their their philosophies in in order to start her curriculum. Even though, again, they didn't even like each other. But there are principles that were available that could be utilized as well. So thank you. Thank you for that. I'll say this. Sly stability is something that I I want to learn more about, and I'm sure our our listeners do as well. What other resources would you can you recommend necessarily that if if I wanna learn more about this that's that might be out there?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:26:42]:
Yeah. So I I would start with Homi Baba's actual work called Locational Culture. It's dense. It's thick. You probably should get some cliff notes to go along with being very clear about that. I read it in grad school and and my cultural studies class, and I was just like, are you serious? But then the way I learned about it again was I was sitting in a conference panel, and we're talking about development offers at historically black colleges and how they had to use lizability to court white donors. And I said, this is what Claudia Hampton is doing because I was raised in the black radical tradition, you know. And so when I was hearing her say I'm cooking dinner for white men, I was like, what? Say that again.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:27:23]:
You know? I walked away from the project for a little bit until I could kind of figure out how to reconcile those two things. I would also read a surname Carol Perkins article called the pragmatic idealism of Mary McLeod Bethune, because you could see a prime example of this happening. And I will say in my book, I do explain, sliceability in detail in a way that I think is more accessible than the way that Homi Bhabha wrote it. So so that would also be one way. And throughout the book, I'm constantly reminding readers, this is an example of slice civility. This is an example of slice civility. And the way in which I approach the book, it does a arc of the history of affirmative action, but it also provides if you look in each of the chapters, the way I lay it out is strategy and then I give a long kind of narrative description of how she utilized that strategy. So for the entire book, there's about 10 strategies that she used, and you can see how those tactics got played out.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:28:26]:
Okay. That makes sense. So I I again, I have learned a lot in this this time, and I'd love for you to share with our listeners any final words of advice you wanna provide to us.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:28:37]:
I think the the the biggest thing that I I really want for people to understand is that particularly as we're paying attention to book bans and attacks on DEI and and so forth, that we need to look at the power brokers behind those decisions. And they often we don't know who they are, and they often are boards of trustees, school board members, those sort of folks. And the book that I've written really tries to do is to unmask that hidden hand of educational governance that we need to pay attention to who's getting appointed In the case of trustees and boards of governors, those are appointments in public institutions. They're not elected. And so you have these nonelected people who are just laymen and women. They might know something about education. They might not. And so I think one of the things that's important if you're an advocate, is to know who's on your university board, who's on your school board, what their politics are like.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:29:39]:
You have a right in public institutions to attend trustee board meetings. They're open to the public, and a lot of times the public doesn't show up until there's something really controversial, like, you know, tuition hikes, they might folks might show up. But for the most part, these people can make decisions on everything from if I am a student and I write a for the student newspaper that's funded by the university and they don't like it, they can pull funding. They're the final arbiter on faculty tenure decisions. A lot of power concentrated in the hands of people who don't know anything about education whatsoever. And it's not to say that they're all bad people. Right? Claudia Hampton was was, you know, took her her position really seriously and her advocacy very seriously, But we give up a lot of our own power as the general public when we don't pay attention to who's representing us.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:30:32]:
Did you happen to did you get an opportunity to meet Claudia?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:30:35]:
I did not. She passed away in 1994, but I'm a direct beneficiary of her her advocacy. She fought in the nineties for they were trying to raise tuition. And so she said, nope. You if you are gonna raise tuition, you have to offset it with grants. And I received a state university grant which paid for my master's degree. My whole educational trajectory is is connected to her advocacy.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:30:59]:
Wow. Well, that's a great way to the end this conversation just to hear the personal connectivity between you and Claudia Hampton. Thank you so much for sharing a story. If we have some folks that wanna connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:31:12]:
Yeah. You can go directly to my website. It's www.donnajnicol.com. There there are audio links, so you can hear Claudia Hampton in her own voice. There's a contact page where connect with me directly. Also, I am pretty active on Instagram at black woman on board book. Also, Twitter to a sec to a lesser extent, me and me and Twitter have our moment or x. We have our moments.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:31:41]:
But mostly through the website. The website is the key place.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:31:43]:
Alright. And folks, there'll be links in the show notes. And let it remind us, what's the title of your book again?

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:31:49]:
The title is Black Women on Board, Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:31:55]:
There it is. Again, links in the show notes, folks. You can grab yourself a copy. Donna, it has truly been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.

Dr. Donna Nicol [00:32:04]:
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

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