Speaker Series: Atinuke Adediran
In 2020, when it was economically beneficial to do so, companies proclaimed the importance of equity and diversity. But as Fordham Law Professor Atinuke Adediran shows in her book DISCLOSURELAND: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress (Cambridge University Press, January 2026), five years later and with Trump back in office, those recent promises have significantly softened or been eliminated altogether. Adediran examines why this type of lip service surged, why the commitments crumbled, and what their unraveling means for shareholders, employees, customers and for the future of racial fairness in the corporate world.
Analyzing data from more than 2,000 companies—including Amazon and Walmart, the two largest corporate employers in the world—Adediran explores the issue from three angles. First, she illustrates how business pledges are opportunistic when they’re not grounded in historical facts about past corporate inequality. Second, she reveals how companies use public statements to deflect accusations of racial inequality in their businesses. And third, she highlights how under the Trump administration, many companies choose one of two paths: softening their progressive language or scrubbing race from their messaging entirely. All of these approaches reflect the same calculation: how to protect their reputation with politicians, shareholders, customers, and employees today, while hedging against financial and reputational risks down the road. Nowhere in this equation are genuine concerns about how race intersects with their business practices and the lives of the employees and customers they depend on.
To register, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org.
Professor Atinuke Adediran uses empirical sociological methods to study the relationship between business, law, and society. Her work spans a range of ideas with reputational, financial, social, and political consequences for the private sector and society, including environmental and social issues, stakeholder welfare, diversity and inclusion, race relations, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and pro bono legal services.
In addition to Disclosureland, she has published articles and essays in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Law and Social Inquiry, Northwestern Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and UCLA Law Review. Her work has also been featured in popular outlets like Agenda (Financial Times), Bloomberg Law, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal.
Professor Adediran’s work has won many awards, including from the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Ford Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. In 2023, she received the university-wide Distinguished Research Award for Interdisciplinary Studies at Fordham University.
Before joining Fordham, Professor Adediran was the David and Pamela Donohue Assistant Professor of Business Law at Boston College Law School, and an Earl B. Dickerson Fellow & Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago. Prior to entering academia, she was an Associate in the New York office of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, where she represented clients in complex commercial business disputes with a focus on securities litigation and maintained active pro bono practice.
Professor Adediran holds Ph.D. and MA degrees in Sociology from Northwestern University and received her JD degree from Columbia Law School.