WEBVTT - The Power of The University 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:24.076 Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is deep background to show 0:00:24.156 --> 0:00:27.516 where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news. 0:00:28.036 --> 0:00:32.516 I'm Noah Feldman. As the school year starts up again, 0:00:32.956 --> 0:00:35.716 I wanted to talk about a form of power that 0:00:35.836 --> 0:00:40.156 we often overlook, and that is the power of universities. 0:00:40.916 --> 0:00:44.796 Universities are not just centers of learning and of research 0:00:44.916 --> 0:00:49.716 and of teaching. They're also powerful actors in the socialization 0:00:49.796 --> 0:00:53.316 of young people into the values that our society cares about. 0:00:53.836 --> 0:00:57.316 There are places where common sense is created, where new 0:00:57.396 --> 0:01:00.556 knowledge is formed, and there are also places where there 0:01:00.556 --> 0:01:06.836 are internal power dynamics, with faculty, students, deans, and administrators 0:01:07.156 --> 0:01:12.476 all involved in a sometimes collaborative but sometimes antagonistic effort 0:01:12.516 --> 0:01:17.836 to determine who controls what happens in the university. To 0:01:17.956 --> 0:01:22.316 discuss power in the American university today, I'm joined by 0:01:22.396 --> 0:01:26.476 Tamar Gendler. Tamar is the Dean of the Faculty of 0:01:26.596 --> 0:01:30.116 Arts and Sciences at Yale University, where she's also the 0:01:30.196 --> 0:01:34.396 Vincent Scully Professor of Philosophy. For those of you who 0:01:34.436 --> 0:01:37.596 aren't academics, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and 0:01:37.636 --> 0:01:42.396 Sciences is an extremely important and powerful person. Her job 0:01:42.796 --> 0:01:45.436 is both to talk to the president and the provost 0:01:45.476 --> 0:01:49.036 on the one side, the faculty on the other, and last, 0:01:49.036 --> 0:01:52.156 and not least, the students and the people who actually 0:01:52.276 --> 0:01:56.036 make the university run every day, the clerical and technical 0:01:56.076 --> 0:01:59.636 workers who actually make sure that the lights are on 0:01:59.916 --> 0:02:02.756 and the classrooms are ready, and that students have food 0:02:02.796 --> 0:02:05.196 to eat. All of that cycles back to the power 0:02:05.236 --> 0:02:07.316 of the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 0:02:07.956 --> 0:02:12.716 And because Tamar was and remains a brilliant philosopher whose 0:02:12.796 --> 0:02:15.356 job is to think about the deeper meaning of the 0:02:15.396 --> 0:02:20.316 world around us, she brings a distinctively thoughtful take to 0:02:20.516 --> 0:02:28.276 questions of power in and around the university. Tamar, thank 0:02:28.276 --> 0:02:32.276 you so much for joining me. The organization of power 0:02:32.316 --> 0:02:35.236 in the university has evolved a lot. There used to 0:02:35.276 --> 0:02:37.676 be an ideal of a university as a self governing 0:02:37.716 --> 0:02:42.396 institution where the faculty more or less collectively ran the show. 0:02:42.436 --> 0:02:45.436 But that's not been true for decades in the US, 0:02:45.516 --> 0:02:47.796 and it's probably even less true today than it's ever been. 0:02:48.036 --> 0:02:51.236 So when you want something to happen, to what degree 0:02:51.276 --> 0:02:54.876 can you get it to happen? So governance in the 0:02:55.036 --> 0:03:00.676 university is fundamentally a collaborative exercise. But I do have 0:03:00.956 --> 0:03:05.436 resources that allow me to shape the segment of the 0:03:05.516 --> 0:03:09.036 university for which I'm responsible in various ways. For example, 0:03:09.596 --> 0:03:16.316 I control the budget importantly, I control the hiring of 0:03:16.436 --> 0:03:21.476 faculty in certain areas, and I oversee the process of 0:03:21.996 --> 0:03:26.396 tenure and promotion. One of the primary things that I 0:03:26.476 --> 0:03:29.436 need to figure out how to do is to determine 0:03:29.636 --> 0:03:35.876 whose voices to trust in making decisions, and how to 0:03:36.236 --> 0:03:41.956 encourage people to speak honestly about things. But something that's 0:03:41.956 --> 0:03:45.316 distinctive about academic management, at least in the US, at 0:03:45.356 --> 0:03:48.876 least these days, still is that people in powerful positions 0:03:48.876 --> 0:03:52.316 like you didn't come up through a managerial chaining process. 0:03:52.476 --> 0:03:54.596 You came up by being a professor, in your case, 0:03:54.596 --> 0:03:58.836 a philosophy professor. How does the fact that you and 0:03:58.916 --> 0:04:05.836 other senior administrators were professors rather than professional managers affect 0:04:06.036 --> 0:04:09.436 do you think the way that you exercise the lens 0:04:09.476 --> 0:04:14.516 and responsibility that you have. So the kind of managerial 0:04:14.596 --> 0:04:20.156 work that I do with regard to staff has been 0:04:20.276 --> 0:04:23.836 a skill that I acquired only in and on the 0:04:23.956 --> 0:04:28.876 job sense, and I found it enormously gratifying to learn 0:04:28.956 --> 0:04:33.116 from people on what we sometimes call the backstage vice 0:04:33.116 --> 0:04:37.396 presidential side of the academic house. How it is that 0:04:37.436 --> 0:04:42.676 one engages in things like HR management, budgeting, thinking about 0:04:42.716 --> 0:04:45.316 how we relate to the Office of General Counsel, the 0:04:45.596 --> 0:04:49.436 city and state, how we relate to federal relations. All 0:04:49.476 --> 0:04:53.596 of those are skills that are acquired through the course 0:04:53.756 --> 0:04:58.076 of engaging in managerial work. Let me ask a question 0:04:58.116 --> 0:05:01.956 about the relationship between those two parts, the front of 0:05:01.996 --> 0:05:03.556 the house and the back of the house. To use 0:05:03.596 --> 0:05:05.836 the analogy that you just use, which if I am 0:05:05.916 --> 0:05:09.076 not mistaken, comes from the running of restaurants, may be appropriate. 0:05:09.116 --> 0:05:13.396 A lot of faculty, a lot of my faculty colleagues, 0:05:13.476 --> 0:05:16.396 especially my colleagues who are say, ten twenty years older 0:05:16.396 --> 0:05:19.956 than I am, talk a lot about how there seem 0:05:19.996 --> 0:05:26.316 to be many more layers of sub deans, dean lits, deanlings, 0:05:26.796 --> 0:05:31.996 people who are effectively professional administrators and when they're being 0:05:31.996 --> 0:05:37.676 described negatively, bureaucrats who are crucially involved in running these huge, 0:05:37.796 --> 0:05:40.556 rich institutions. And I think it's true even at the 0:05:40.596 --> 0:05:43.836 less rich institutions. And my older colleagues tend to talk 0:05:43.836 --> 0:05:46.436 about this as something that they feel has changed significantly 0:05:46.436 --> 0:05:49.956 over their time in the university. Do you think of that. 0:05:50.036 --> 0:05:53.596 First of all, is that perception accurate or is that 0:05:53.796 --> 0:05:57.636 a nostalgic perception that they have, And if it is accurate, 0:05:58.196 --> 0:06:00.956 how is it changing our universities if they're being run 0:06:01.276 --> 0:06:04.716 by people with increasingly with people with more professional training 0:06:04.716 --> 0:06:08.716 and how to manage things, but with less knowledge of 0:06:09.156 --> 0:06:14.156 the academic side of the job. The deans and deanlets 0:06:14.196 --> 0:06:17.916 about which your colleagues complain are very often people whose 0:06:18.236 --> 0:06:22.716 assignments are either regulatory in the sense that they are 0:06:22.796 --> 0:06:27.076 asked to make sure that the university remains in conformity 0:06:27.116 --> 0:06:32.996 with either an internally or externally imposed constraint a process 0:06:33.076 --> 0:06:35.476 that needs to be followed in order to achieve a 0:06:35.516 --> 0:06:40.436 certain outcome. Or they are involved in various aspects of 0:06:40.556 --> 0:06:46.476 student services and student life where they interact directly with 0:06:46.636 --> 0:06:53.396 students for whom college may be an unfamiliar familial experience. 0:06:54.636 --> 0:07:00.516 That's two thirds. And in addition, as we know from 0:07:00.996 --> 0:07:09.476 sociological theory, any bureaucracy develops systems which it then perpetuates. Tomorrow, 0:07:09.516 --> 0:07:13.636 we've talked so far about the way that the power 0:07:13.716 --> 0:07:16.836 operates within the university. I want to turn now to 0:07:16.876 --> 0:07:22.796 the question of how universities exercise power and influence or 0:07:22.836 --> 0:07:27.316 don't exercise power and influence over the society more broadly, 0:07:27.956 --> 0:07:30.396 which is something that I think we often take for granted. 0:07:30.676 --> 0:07:34.116 Rather than breaking down and thinking about I want to 0:07:34.156 --> 0:07:38.876 begin that by asking you, how do you think a 0:07:39.036 --> 0:07:46.076 university does influence the society more broadly, and then we 0:07:46.076 --> 0:07:48.756 can move to how it should do that. Yeah, that's 0:07:48.796 --> 0:07:55.996 a terrific question. So the fundamental purpose of a university 0:07:56.516 --> 0:08:03.396 is to preserve, create, and transmit knowledge, and so at 0:08:03.396 --> 0:08:09.516 its most fundamental level and in its ideal form wandwich 0:08:09.556 --> 0:08:16.436 In university has power in society and empowers society is 0:08:16.476 --> 0:08:21.836 through the preservation, creation, and transmission of knowledge. But one 0:08:21.836 --> 0:08:27.156 of the most powerful things that universities do, in addition 0:08:27.316 --> 0:08:34.036 to transmitting knowledge is certify that the transmission of knowledge 0:08:34.116 --> 0:08:39.836 has taken place, and in so doing they create and 0:08:39.916 --> 0:08:46.716 sustain the professional class. And of course that operation brings 0:08:46.836 --> 0:08:53.316 with it the incredibly important socialization function, and universities in 0:08:53.516 --> 0:08:57.716 America in particular, but in the world in general, play 0:08:57.716 --> 0:09:04.716 an incredible role in forming and socializing the elite and 0:09:04.956 --> 0:09:09.556 in differentiating among those who have been present at this 0:09:09.756 --> 0:09:14.476 incredibly formative time of life between the ages of eighteen 0:09:14.796 --> 0:09:18.556 and their early twenties, and those who have not been 0:09:19.156 --> 0:09:25.836 formed in that kind of environment. What universities and colleges 0:09:26.196 --> 0:09:30.756 do is, in addition to provide training that isn't professional training, 0:09:30.876 --> 0:09:37.596 training of a kind that says, beyond the twelve years 0:09:37.636 --> 0:09:43.716 of universal education, I have gone on to explore something. 0:09:44.196 --> 0:09:47.516 And one of the astounding things about the way that 0:09:47.556 --> 0:09:53.036 the American collegiate educational system works is, with the exception 0:09:53.396 --> 0:09:59.916 of areas like engineering, it is largely content indifferent. And 0:10:00.436 --> 0:10:05.076 what that suggests is that it is the acquisition of 0:10:05.076 --> 0:10:11.276 a certain kind of mastery of something complicated and the 0:10:11.676 --> 0:10:16.276 co presence with others who are also engaged in study. 0:10:16.356 --> 0:10:21.356 That is what college is providing, in addition, of course, 0:10:21.436 --> 0:10:24.876 to the particular skills that are being provided, skills of writing, 0:10:24.956 --> 0:10:29.396 skills of mathematics, and knowledge of some or another subject matter. 0:10:29.956 --> 0:10:36.676 But the fact that American industry typically hires people regardless 0:10:36.676 --> 0:10:40.556 of area of studying college suggests that that certification process 0:10:40.996 --> 0:10:44.756 is a process of certifying a different kind of knowledge 0:10:44.756 --> 0:10:48.756 and skill acquisition. Although aren't a lot of students at 0:10:48.796 --> 0:10:51.516 least voting with their feet and hinting that they don't 0:10:51.556 --> 0:10:53.836 anticipate that it's going to be that way in the 0:10:53.876 --> 0:10:56.156 long run. I mean, when you and I were in 0:10:56.236 --> 0:11:00.636 college thirty plus years ago, we thought that majoring in 0:11:00.676 --> 0:11:03.556 the humanities was something that could lead you to a 0:11:03.676 --> 0:11:05.716 job teaching of the humanities is you and I both 0:11:05.796 --> 0:11:07.756 ended up doing. Or it could lead you to working 0:11:07.756 --> 0:11:10.196 for an investment bank, or could lead you to become 0:11:10.476 --> 0:11:13.076 a poet, or could lead you to almost any sort 0:11:13.076 --> 0:11:17.796 of thing. But today fewer and fewer students, not only universities, 0:11:17.796 --> 0:11:22.476 but at elite universities, are interested in majoring in more 0:11:22.516 --> 0:11:26.796 abstract humanities fields, which they don't perceive as leading to 0:11:27.596 --> 0:11:30.476 a job so measured by a market stance. At least, 0:11:31.036 --> 0:11:37.556 that idea of a general certification seems to be increasingly obsolete. 0:11:37.796 --> 0:11:42.476 It's an interesting question what explains the decline of majors 0:11:42.636 --> 0:11:46.516 in humanities, And I teach at one of the very 0:11:46.596 --> 0:11:49.676 last universities that continues to have almost a third of 0:11:49.716 --> 0:11:53.996 its students majoring in humanities fields. It is certainly the 0:11:54.036 --> 0:12:00.396 case that students in university today are increasingly taking courses 0:12:00.476 --> 0:12:03.076 in what we might think of as technical areas in 0:12:03.156 --> 0:12:07.916 computer science, in data science, and in social science, fields 0:12:07.916 --> 0:12:12.756 that have quantitative aspects like economics. But even though there 0:12:12.756 --> 0:12:17.236 aren't as many students majoring in humanities, it remains the 0:12:17.316 --> 0:12:21.876 case that the skills that are acquired through humanistic education, 0:12:22.516 --> 0:12:28.356 the capacity to analyze argument, the capacity to take evidence 0:12:28.556 --> 0:12:34.436 from an ambiguous source of information, the capacity to appreciate 0:12:34.516 --> 0:12:39.516 what is esthetically valuable in addition to what is practically valuable, 0:12:40.156 --> 0:12:46.076 remain things in which students are interested, and the remain 0:12:46.236 --> 0:12:51.636 things that allow people to do, even in practical fields, 0:12:52.196 --> 0:12:58.076 more interesting and more fulfilling work. So I don't know 0:12:58.436 --> 0:13:03.596 whether the explanation for why it is that students aren't 0:13:03.636 --> 0:13:08.036 studying humanities is solely that they think that it isn't 0:13:08.196 --> 0:13:12.956 useful for careers. It may be in some ways just 0:13:13.236 --> 0:13:16.996 a crowding out with the recognition that there are other 0:13:17.036 --> 0:13:21.196 things that also need to be acquired, that are skills 0:13:21.236 --> 0:13:24.396 that are at this point not yet taught fully in 0:13:24.516 --> 0:13:30.716 high school. They require more than the twelve years to master. Yeah, 0:13:30.716 --> 0:13:32.836 and I should be really clear that I am very 0:13:32.916 --> 0:13:39.116 sad about the general decline in the humanities focus of students, 0:13:39.196 --> 0:13:43.676 mostly because my own view is that without the humanities, 0:13:43.916 --> 0:13:46.676 you can make stuff, you can build stuff, you can 0:13:46.716 --> 0:13:50.116 solve certain kinds of technical problems, but you'll never know 0:13:50.196 --> 0:13:52.956 what the right thing to do is. I mean, humanities 0:13:53.036 --> 0:13:57.276 is interested fundamentally in normative questions and questions of what 0:13:57.716 --> 0:14:00.836 the world ought to be arranged, like whether it's ethical 0:14:00.956 --> 0:14:06.156 or moral, or esthetic or political. And in that sense, 0:14:06.476 --> 0:14:08.676 in my view, at least, if you don't have the humanities, 0:14:09.316 --> 0:14:11.756 your whole system is going to grind to a halt 0:14:11.876 --> 0:14:14.316 because you're just I mean, well, it won't purely grind 0:14:14.356 --> 0:14:16.156 to all, because people will still make decisions about what 0:14:16.156 --> 0:14:18.596 they should do, but they'll do it without thinking. And 0:14:18.636 --> 0:14:21.756 then you get the consequences that we have in the 0:14:21.756 --> 0:14:25.716 world where new technologies emerge and are immediately deployed, and 0:14:25.756 --> 0:14:27.996 then people look back a few years later, sometimes not 0:14:28.076 --> 0:14:29.876 very many years later at all, and say, oh, no, 0:14:30.636 --> 0:14:32.636 what did we do? And often the answer is you 0:14:32.676 --> 0:14:35.556 didn't stop to think about the way you wanted things 0:14:35.596 --> 0:14:38.076 to turn out. You only thought about the fact that 0:14:38.076 --> 0:14:41.796 you had this cool new technology to play with. And no, 0:14:41.916 --> 0:14:44.916 that's exactly right. The world doesn't stop because you're not 0:14:44.996 --> 0:14:47.796 asking the normative questions. And one of the things that 0:14:48.036 --> 0:14:53.236 humanities and the humanistic social sciences cause people to realize 0:14:53.276 --> 0:14:56.876 is that there are always normative questions, whether attentive to 0:14:56.916 --> 0:15:01.076 them or not, and that if you just move forward 0:15:01.116 --> 0:15:05.436 without attending to them, you will end up with patterns 0:15:05.436 --> 0:15:07.876 in the world which aren't the patterns that you would 0:15:07.916 --> 0:15:12.676 have wanted. Tomorrow. When I asked you about what the 0:15:12.756 --> 0:15:16.236 university is in fact to do powerwise, you started with 0:15:16.876 --> 0:15:21.116 the ways that they transmit knowledge through certification and through socialization. 0:15:23.316 --> 0:15:26.596 I want to ask you one more question about that aspect, 0:15:26.636 --> 0:15:28.556 and then I want to switch to the question of 0:15:28.596 --> 0:15:31.796 the making of knowledge. But before we get there, I 0:15:31.796 --> 0:15:33.476 do want to ask one more question about the idea 0:15:33.516 --> 0:15:36.796 of intellectual socialization, which I think is a phrase that 0:15:36.836 --> 0:15:39.556 you use or something similar to that, and I wonder 0:15:39.596 --> 0:15:41.636 what you mean by that, because one of the things 0:15:41.716 --> 0:15:44.916 that a sociologist would say, or that a Martian would 0:15:44.916 --> 0:15:47.596 say if they came and looked at our universities is 0:15:47.596 --> 0:15:51.316 that the students do seem like they leave thinking a 0:15:51.316 --> 0:15:53.996 little differently on a whole range of issues, or maybe 0:15:53.996 --> 0:15:56.876 a lot differently than they do when they came in. 0:15:57.796 --> 0:16:00.796 And that involves a whole bunch of different things. But 0:16:00.876 --> 0:16:04.316 it's approaches to how they think about problems ideally, but 0:16:04.396 --> 0:16:08.076 it also seems often to include solutions to those problems, 0:16:08.636 --> 0:16:13.596 including sometimes political solutions. And so I'm wondering what did 0:16:13.636 --> 0:16:20.556 you mean by intellectual socialization. Yeah, universities are like cities 0:16:20.836 --> 0:16:24.916 in the sense that they bring together people from a 0:16:25.036 --> 0:16:31.276 wide range of previous life experiences in a tightly socially 0:16:31.396 --> 0:16:39.476 knit space that produces a lot of nonintended accidental encounters 0:16:39.516 --> 0:16:44.636 that require people to recognize that the way in which 0:16:44.676 --> 0:16:47.476 they happen to have lived up until the point when 0:16:47.516 --> 0:16:50.436 they arrived at the university is just one of many, 0:16:50.516 --> 0:16:54.076 many ways to have lived. So this is about the 0:16:54.116 --> 0:16:59.996 way in which the socialization function almost inevitably results in 0:17:00.276 --> 0:17:05.316 an unseating of what it is that had been accepted 0:17:05.436 --> 0:17:12.076 as the natural or only or marked way of being. So, 0:17:12.156 --> 0:17:15.876 in addition to the socialization an example of that because 0:17:15.876 --> 0:17:17.836 that was that was that seemed correct to me, but 0:17:17.876 --> 0:17:22.876 also abstract. Yeah, So, a student who grew up in 0:17:22.996 --> 0:17:26.516 a particular religious community, a student who grew up with 0:17:26.676 --> 0:17:30.996 a particular set of political values, a student who grew 0:17:31.036 --> 0:17:35.276 up in a particular language, a student who grew up 0:17:35.396 --> 0:17:39.396 in a particular social class. All of those are ways 0:17:39.436 --> 0:17:42.236 of being that are felt very, very naturally to students, 0:17:42.436 --> 0:17:46.156 and they typically grew up in a town. Towns have 0:17:46.236 --> 0:17:50.316 a certain degree of heterogeneity to them. But to the 0:17:50.316 --> 0:17:52.996 extent that you grew up in a particular locale, you've 0:17:52.996 --> 0:17:56.036 had a particular set of experiences. You grew up on 0:17:56.116 --> 0:17:59.156 a farm in the Midwest, or you grew up in 0:17:59.716 --> 0:18:02.476 the Upper West Side of New York City, and those 0:18:02.476 --> 0:18:06.116 are the set of experiences that you have. Coming into 0:18:06.236 --> 0:18:10.796 contact with individuals from a wide range of other experiences 0:18:11.156 --> 0:18:14.236 just makes it in f and coming into contact with 0:18:14.316 --> 0:18:19.596 them in the particular way that universities and other youth 0:18:19.796 --> 0:18:22.356 organizations do this right, if you go into the army, 0:18:22.756 --> 0:18:26.756 you interact with people in an intense environment, in a 0:18:26.916 --> 0:18:32.036 deeply social space, in an age stratified environment for a 0:18:32.076 --> 0:18:36.676 crucial period of time. But the disruption of the assumption 0:18:36.796 --> 0:18:39.676 that the only natural way to do things is the 0:18:39.756 --> 0:18:42.676 way that you have always been doing things is one 0:18:42.676 --> 0:18:46.996 of the crucial disruptions that universities bring. And that's a 0:18:47.036 --> 0:18:50.916 result of the formal structure of the university. We haven't 0:18:50.996 --> 0:18:54.476 yet gotten to the second question, which is the content question, 0:18:54.556 --> 0:18:56.996 which is not just that you bring this group of 0:18:57.076 --> 0:19:00.716 people together, but what it is that you do with them. 0:19:00.756 --> 0:19:02.916 But let me make sure that I've answered your first 0:19:02.996 --> 0:19:05.196 question before I move on to the second. I mean, 0:19:05.236 --> 0:19:07.356 I think you have. I do think we should just 0:19:07.516 --> 0:19:11.556 acknowledge that the effect that you're describing, you take a 0:19:11.556 --> 0:19:14.876 lot of bright, young, impressionable people, you put them in 0:19:14.916 --> 0:19:18.836 a single community, can produce for all that we talk about, 0:19:18.876 --> 0:19:24.156 the diversity of viewpoints in our universities can produce some 0:19:24.316 --> 0:19:29.996 degree of homogenization of their views. They come in very diverse, 0:19:30.316 --> 0:19:32.756 and in principle, one of the reasons that we want 0:19:32.796 --> 0:19:35.716 a big diverse student body is so that the student 0:19:35.716 --> 0:19:38.756 body can remain intellectually diverse. So when they graduate, they 0:19:38.796 --> 0:19:41.396 have many different points of views since they came in 0:19:41.396 --> 0:19:43.196 with many points where they've been recruited to have many 0:19:43.236 --> 0:19:46.276 points of view. And yet sometimes it doesn't work that way. 0:19:46.316 --> 0:19:48.956 I mean, sometimes it leads to people reaching a kind 0:19:48.996 --> 0:19:54.076 of background consensus on what they think. And critics of 0:19:54.076 --> 0:19:56.556 elite universities, you know, I'm not one of them, but 0:19:56.596 --> 0:19:59.676 there are critics of elite universities who say, gee, you know, 0:19:59.676 --> 0:20:03.116 they come in students come in from a Trump county 0:20:04.076 --> 0:20:08.156 and then they come into a university where statistically almost 0:20:08.156 --> 0:20:11.356 nobody on any faculty anywhere in the United States voted 0:20:11.396 --> 0:20:15.596 for Donald Trump. It's not just elite universities, it's all universities. 0:20:15.956 --> 0:20:18.756 And then they're in a community where they emerge with 0:20:18.836 --> 0:20:22.796 a view of, roughly speaking, what people with their education 0:20:22.836 --> 0:20:26.556 are supposed to think, and that's a kind of liberal 0:20:26.876 --> 0:20:30.956 or left of center consensus, which over the course of 0:20:30.956 --> 0:20:33.076 their careers they may or may not sustain that point 0:20:33.076 --> 0:20:35.676 of view over their lives, but that is the environment 0:20:35.676 --> 0:20:38.436 that they're in, in in the environment that they that they leave. 0:20:38.436 --> 0:20:40.516 And it just raises this interesting question of whether the 0:20:40.596 --> 0:20:46.116 socialization affects are in some way a little bit at 0:20:46.116 --> 0:20:49.476 odds with our stated goal in our universities of bringing 0:20:49.476 --> 0:20:52.316 in people from all different perspectives and putting them all 0:20:52.356 --> 0:20:54.156 together and mixing them up so that they'll come out 0:20:54.196 --> 0:20:59.476 with lots of different perspectives. So a huge number of 0:20:59.476 --> 0:21:02.116 interesting questions there. And of course there are students who 0:21:02.276 --> 0:21:06.196 come to university without religious commitment and get involved with 0:21:06.236 --> 0:21:09.276 a religious community and leave the university with the more 0:21:09.396 --> 0:21:13.916 traditional set of values than they entered. But I agree 0:21:13.996 --> 0:21:18.956 that in the contemporary context that direction of motion is 0:21:19.116 --> 0:21:23.156 significantly rarer than the other direction of a student who 0:21:23.276 --> 0:21:28.716 comes from a politically conservative environment and leaves with a 0:21:28.796 --> 0:21:36.676 certain sense of justice driven concern about the well being 0:21:36.716 --> 0:21:41.676 of the community. So what I would say is motivating 0:21:41.836 --> 0:21:47.716 and appealing about the generational passion that you and I 0:21:48.156 --> 0:21:52.156 think both feel among our students is that it is 0:21:52.316 --> 0:21:57.676 driven by a deep sense of wanting the world to 0:21:57.876 --> 0:22:03.316 be a more just and equitable and verdant place. To 0:22:03.356 --> 0:22:06.676 the extent that I think the two sets of primary 0:22:06.716 --> 0:22:10.396 concerns that I hear from students on our campus are 0:22:10.436 --> 0:22:14.796 about racial and political justice on the one hand, and 0:22:15.236 --> 0:22:19.556 about the long term concern for environment on the other. 0:22:19.996 --> 0:22:23.356 And some of what's going on is the world is 0:22:23.876 --> 0:22:28.596 a messy, ugly place in which lots of messy, ugly 0:22:28.716 --> 0:22:32.036 evil things have happened. And some of our students come 0:22:32.036 --> 0:22:37.116 to university without full knowledge of the way in which 0:22:37.156 --> 0:22:39.996 the world that we live in came to be, and 0:22:40.196 --> 0:22:44.276 some of them come to historical understanding of a kind 0:22:44.316 --> 0:22:47.596 that they never had before. They continue to have the 0:22:47.676 --> 0:22:51.436 normative moral commitments that you and I were talking about earlier, 0:22:51.956 --> 0:22:55.516 and those combine to cause them to take on a 0:22:55.636 --> 0:23:03.116 sort of passionate social justice picture. But it is certainly 0:23:03.156 --> 0:23:07.756 the case that the recognition that there might also be 0:23:08.076 --> 0:23:14.676 politically servative solutions to some of the justice challenges that 0:23:14.996 --> 0:23:18.876 our students are moved by, that there might be ways 0:23:18.916 --> 0:23:23.916 in which market, rather than regulation, could best determine the 0:23:24.036 --> 0:23:28.836 sorts of outcomes that they seek. Environmentally are less prevalent 0:23:29.076 --> 0:23:35.556 in at least the public voices on many elite campuses, 0:23:36.076 --> 0:23:42.076 and I think, however, aware one is of the undercurrents 0:23:42.196 --> 0:23:46.516 that run counter to that. It is undeniable that universities 0:23:46.836 --> 0:23:51.276 right now are places where the dominant discourse is the 0:23:51.356 --> 0:23:56.396 discourse of social justice, the discourse of environment, and interestingly, 0:23:56.396 --> 0:24:00.636 in the case of social justice, it's very domestically focused. 0:24:00.916 --> 0:24:06.596 I hear much less conversation on campus about issues of 0:24:06.876 --> 0:24:13.796 international justice, global poverty, global freedom, civil rights of individuals 0:24:13.876 --> 0:24:18.196 outside the United States than I do about dialogues of 0:24:18.316 --> 0:24:22.036 the very undeniably important set of questions that we face 0:24:22.076 --> 0:24:26.076 as a nation around issues of racial justice and social class. 0:24:27.676 --> 0:24:40.636 We'll be right back tomorrow. Let's turn to the making 0:24:40.676 --> 0:24:45.316 of knowledge research. Universities are supposed to be places where 0:24:45.436 --> 0:24:49.556 we get new knowledge, not just transmit it, but discover it, 0:24:49.756 --> 0:24:56.356 invent it. How does that project express itself in power 0:24:56.516 --> 0:24:59.636 terms visa via the rest of the world. I mean, 0:24:59.676 --> 0:25:02.316 assuming that these universities do in fact produce knowledge, which 0:25:02.316 --> 0:25:05.956 I think they do, how does that affect the rest 0:25:05.996 --> 0:25:10.476 of the world from a power perspective. It's an interesting question, 0:25:10.516 --> 0:25:14.276 and I was thinking about the ways in which the 0:25:14.356 --> 0:25:18.596 United States, I think, both in medicine, in drug development, 0:25:18.796 --> 0:25:27.636 and in universities, produces a disproportionate amount of what the 0:25:27.676 --> 0:25:34.876 world gets intellectually in a way whose financing is extraordinary. 0:25:34.956 --> 0:25:39.556 That is, a large proportion of the world's most highly 0:25:39.636 --> 0:25:45.316 ranked universities are American universities, and the proportion of the 0:25:45.316 --> 0:25:50.156 world's discoveries that were made in American universities due to 0:25:50.436 --> 0:25:56.276 federal funding and student tuition and the other resources taxpayer 0:25:56.316 --> 0:26:00.556 resources that go into state universities, were really truly extraordinary. 0:26:00.716 --> 0:26:04.556 And so what I would say is American universities became 0:26:04.716 --> 0:26:10.476 the place that the world went to gain knowledge. Virtually 0:26:10.516 --> 0:26:15.956 all of the elite Chinese universities have faculty on them 0:26:15.996 --> 0:26:22.116 who were trained in American universities. Most of Iran's engineers 0:26:22.156 --> 0:26:27.676 are trained in American universities. Large number of the world's 0:26:27.716 --> 0:26:33.196 political leaders were trained in American universities. And so the 0:26:33.276 --> 0:26:39.876 production of knowledge in American universities gave America as a 0:26:39.876 --> 0:26:44.516 place where discovery happened a sort of disproportionate role in 0:26:44.556 --> 0:26:49.316 the world's intellectual economy. It's now the case that Asia 0:26:49.556 --> 0:26:53.076 in particular, China in particular, but other parts of Asia 0:26:53.156 --> 0:26:59.036 as well, and in some ways parts of Europe and 0:26:59.236 --> 0:27:06.076 a little bit in Canada are producing new knowledge at 0:27:06.356 --> 0:27:10.676 a rate and with investment of a kind that are 0:27:11.356 --> 0:27:13.836 as intense as in the US. Certainly that's the case 0:27:13.916 --> 0:27:18.196 in China in terms of scientific knowledge, and the question 0:27:18.276 --> 0:27:24.756 of whether that will ultimately undermine the fragile ecosystem that 0:27:24.916 --> 0:27:29.596 is the American university system is a really interesting one. 0:27:30.276 --> 0:27:32.916 How close are we to that kind of an undermining 0:27:32.956 --> 0:27:37.276 I mean, how much do you see that decline as 0:27:37.676 --> 0:27:41.876 imminent versus being something that's still some years off. I mean, 0:27:41.876 --> 0:27:44.356 it still remains the case that people from all over 0:27:44.396 --> 0:27:46.796 the world want to send their children to study in 0:27:46.796 --> 0:27:49.076 American universities, even people who don't particularly care for the 0:27:49.196 --> 0:27:54.156 United States. Somehow, our educational system remains highly desirable from 0:27:54.196 --> 0:27:56.716 a global standpoint, even as the power of the United 0:27:56.716 --> 0:27:59.636 States more generally is often perceived by many to be 0:27:59.676 --> 0:28:03.996 in decline. So I think there's a number of questions there. 0:28:04.116 --> 0:28:08.756 American universities do much more than transmit knowledge. American universities 0:28:08.956 --> 0:28:15.476 are places where a crucial kind of socialization happens, and 0:28:15.516 --> 0:28:18.836 where the creation of a certain kind of cultural capital 0:28:19.436 --> 0:28:22.356 is provided to the individuals who attend them, and a 0:28:22.476 --> 0:28:27.756 set of social connections are established. So the rise of 0:28:28.156 --> 0:28:32.236 research in places other than the United States, I think 0:28:32.396 --> 0:28:38.116 doesn't undermine the particular socialization role that American universities play. 0:28:38.156 --> 0:28:43.196 And of course American universities have this very interesting structure 0:28:43.316 --> 0:28:50.516 whereby the value of the degree of their alumni depends 0:28:50.596 --> 0:28:55.716 in part on the contemporary status of the institution with 0:28:55.756 --> 0:28:59.596 which the alumni are affiliated. So every American university has 0:28:59.676 --> 0:29:04.996 thousands and thousands of people across generations in whose self 0:29:05.116 --> 0:29:11.356 interest it lies to keep that university leat and respect it. 0:29:11.676 --> 0:29:15.276 So there's a very interesting set of interest in parties 0:29:15.516 --> 0:29:21.556 keeping the socialization and social network role of American university's intact. 0:29:22.276 --> 0:29:26.196 When I was talking about the rise, particularly of investment 0:29:26.436 --> 0:29:30.756