Let me welcome everybody. Welcome you to the Future Trends Forum. I'm so glad you're here today We have a fantastic guest on a vital subject, and I'm really really delighted to explore Absolutely delighted to bring to the forum Virginia superior. She's a professor of political science at Boston University And in that capacity she's been studying among other things including voting She's been studying the history and politics of American higher education and she published recently a Fascinating paper on how and when colleges close and it's a fantastic document I really recommend diving into it You should have a link to it in the bottom left of your screen And that includes all the other things ways of thinking about higher education closures as part of the ecosystem as well as as part of a life cycle of Institutions it's a very deep paper which tells us a lot and gives us a lot of direction to go on and Today we're going to be exploring. So without any further ado, let me bring professor superior on stage low It's so good to see you. Thank you for coming long time. No see indeed. It's been an hour You know there's so many ways to introduce Faculty work in higher education and for me my favorite way is to ask you what you're going to be working on for the next year One of the big projects the big ideas the classes the papers the books and trips. What's what's next year for you? Okay Well, thank you everybody for coming good to meet you all and I'll look forward to our conversation I'm what I'm most looking forward to is retiring on June 30th And yes so I can For a whole variety of reasons one of which is so I can Work on this book a bit more. So let me say a little bit. I think it's important to know that not only Am I a scholar? I'm a political scientist and a researcher and a teacher But I spell spent well over a decade in higher education administration I spent Over 30 years on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin Madison Where in my last number of years I was Vice provost for teaching and learning and I was interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs and then after that went over to the dark side And moved to boston university specifically to become dean of the college of arts and sciences and the graduate school of arts and sciences so so in in 2015 I went back to the faculty and took up teaching and research again But one of the major projects That I got involved in was to combine a whole lot of things that I've done for a long time To do a major work on the history of higher education in the u.s Looking at it as a political scientist would As a project of american Social and political development. I'm not interested in it for its own sake But really as it relates to the development of the american state and society So the paper that some of you may have seen and and that frames The conversation we'll have for today is not published. It's really a little working paper That I pulled out of a much much larger project really only because of the fact that in 2018 2019 people began to notice that There was a spike in the number of institutions that closed Um and in massachusetts in particular I think people became very very riveted because of the debacle that was mount ida college We have later had some other examples a much better one. We lock college that combined with my own institution um, but what disturbed me and what i'm continuing to work on now is how a historical Is the understanding of most people in higher education about our own sector My sense is that people know bloody little about The history and say some things that are really highly uninformed um And really understand institutions as all sorts of little individual organizations and not anything that connects with anything else So so this working paper was really an effort to pick things out of the news and to Frame it as I understand it. So what am I going to do? Uh in the next couple of years. Well part of the reason I decided it was time to retire at the ripe old age of 70 Is um, I really want to finish this book Um, which is going to be massive Um, it is based on about four years work in which I collected a set of discrete facts about every institution Of higher education this country and its history That was ever accredited at the baccalaureate or graduate degree. So that little outline is 700 pages I didn't intend to do that when I started out But I've always been a funky kind of scholar and once I get into something I really do it. Um, and so So this history is going to be a little different from most of the others Because I can actually build it from the ground up and think about institutional histories Um, so where it's going Um, just so you know when you can ask me anything about any of this is I've already done a large section of it Closing in on 150 pages or so, uh, which starts the book On higher education institutions and their communities Because almost all higher education institutions that were founded up through world one were founded by and in communities And so I I can talk a little bit more about that. I won't do that now I then turned to state and federal government But the core of the book the remainder of the book Will be through a set of chapters to ask a discrete set of questions that I think have Have challenged Higher education and determined its history Since the beginning in in the 1630s and that is higher education. What is it? Who gets it? How is it paid for and supported? What does it benefit and what does it have to do with the rest of the world? And who gets to be involved and so that those questions are going to frame the chapters And each one of those will be developed In a historical way so so there's that and I there's some other things but I guess I'd close by saying I farm about an acre of my 160 acres up here in New Hampshire I Work in two nonprofits. One is shelter music boston which sponsors 80 or so classical music concerts in 910 homeless shelters and rehab centers a year in boston And I helped to run a little nonprofit farm market that I found it and contribute to so so i'll have enough to do I think you'll have plenty Well, I would love to see that that book as it grows and when it's when it's done when it hits press We'd love to have you back Just to to talk about it. This is fantastic Friends, this is the part of the program where you all get to go I'm just the moderator. I'm just the mc the forum is for your questions your comments and your thoughts So if you have questions about farmers markets, we'll allow a couple of words This is a great time to ask about what happened to the higher education ecosystem What makes a college close and how that changes over time what forces they connect with And we already have a few questions and i'll bring up a couple of them right now Whoops to begin with this is one from phil katz Not too far from me here and a long time friend of the program The council of independent colleges and he says how does the analysis of the closure of colleges? Compared to the analysis of the closure of other cultural institutions such as museums or other charities That's a fabulous question. Um and I only have some Some ideas about it from my sideways glances. I've been looking at the history of higher education I know a lot more about how how Colleges and universities and their predecessors were founded In a context of the founding of other institutions for example museums and shatak was and And all sorts of things. Um I you know, my I would really have to be have to be making guesses There are a couple of things that come to mind though one is Neither other cultural institutions nor colleges and universities are paid for by the ticketing of their patrons in other words Originally no college or university has ever survived just on tuition Or has and never will Um, and that is the same of our as our other cultural institutions museums Aren't paid for just by those of us who you know pay the tab as we walk in or Certainly my ticket to the bs. Oh Doesn't support it. Um So all of these institutions which are public cultural goods survive and certainly survive at quality Only by having Important patrons whether that is Private philanthropy or increasingly since the 19th century The support of government Um, so I suspect that those other institutions that have have failed just as almost Is true of almost every College or university that's failed has done so because the other sources of patronage Have dried up And and and all of them I imagine spend some time trying to figure out the balance Between access and what they charge from its tuition Uh having other revenue streams I bought a set of masks today from the Peabody Essex Museum Because I need masks and I prefer to do it in ways that support cultural institutions Universities have all sorts of other things You know they do all sorts of things but ultimately If that patronage drives up Cultural institutions go down So patronage is crucial as is that kind of mixed model of multiple Sources of income. Yeah, do you have an idea of the answer? Um You asked it Oh, uh, phil ask it. Yeah, and phil if you'd like to follow up just click the raised hand We can bring you on stage Phil is an awesome fellow Among other things the background in american history And we uh, he wants to join us. Let's bring him up. Here you go phil In fact, I'll use the the fancy video format just to emphasize phil's coolness Well, now I see now I see myself You know, I I'm interested in this because I I also have a background in In the cultural world having worked for the american alliance of museums And there are some really interesting similarities in the history of The development of cultural organizations and the development of nonprofits generally And we could add to the list of things Um non-profit local hospitals. You might add to the list of things um church congregations So I do wonder whether the things you're talking about have more similarity to a cluster of Of non-profit organizations Or whether there are fancies with an analysis of businesses that go in and out of of business I guess in general my question is is There's something unique about The treatment of how we think about the closure of colleges Or are they a subset of some other thing? And if so, what is the what is the superset that they're part of? I'm going to keep notes on that because it's a question That I'd like to pursue more. I think it's a very important one And partly because you often get folks, you know, I've been on a board of trustees for a university And I've certainly had to deal with boards of trustees and very often you get business people Um, who will say, you know, these institutions are too important to be left to academics artists curators and so forth Business people know how to deal with them. And there's a substantial difference Between sustaining an institution that's a for-profit revenue organization and a non-profit And I and I suspect That that you are right because we're talking about institutions That are founded to serve And serve in a broad Range of ways we have to be businesslike. I mean to be a non-profit doesn't mean That all you're supposed to do is build up debt But being a non-profit means Core to the value is something other than profit And that they have a good full society that that needs to be Supported So I think those similarities are important. Can I add one more thing to the mix here? And I think Brian got out a little bit when he talked about sort of the ecosystem of higher education Because that is a really important issue. We're dealing with very locally based organizations as strip cultural organizations as well And we're talking national You know ecosystems, so I know that when you talk about something Like an art museum we'll go to the cultural sector. You know, there are some really interesting debates about what happens when you have You know say an art museum and a symphony And an opera company designed for a city of several millions like Detroit Which is now a city of several hundred thousands instead And how does that issue of sort of carrying capacity and national contribution You know play into these issues. I don't have an answer for that, but I think it's a really important you know consideration going from the the scale of the one institution, which of course those who Work there and go there and love those institutions. That's vital to them But there's also a larger national context I smile when you mention Detroit because my father is from there and my uncle Was the kind of house pianist for the Detroit Symphony when they didn't have anybody important Um You know, again, I think that's really crucial. There are there are institutions of higher education say in the 19th century That began to develop beautifully, but then the railroad was somewhere else or You know the waterway got silted up The town failed and the institution failed Um, but likewise in the late 19th century and I was just writing about this because of the chapter on on On communities birthing and nurturing institutions is, you know, if you know the rest of the Non-profit sector, you probably know very well that That many of those institutions which and hospitals which started out independent in the 19th century Found that they could no longer support themselves and hustled to be eaten up by An institution of higher education that certainly happened to hospitals Where most of them found that they could not support themselves anymore and they And especially after a national report that just slammed the quality of american Healthcare they hustled to find an university to adopt them um theaters Um in boston A good example is the constant relationship between the huntington theater and boston university Or between a piece of tanglewood and boston university where You know all sorts of questions that affect The non-profit so I think it's great to open with that With that link because I think you're absolutely right We have well, we have to be business like we have more in common with other non-profits and cultural institutions than with A pharma company at the same time. I should say before brian takes me down here takes off the screen not takes me down you know as as You know someone who works for the council of independent colleges We like to point down I'll point out here that of course the average age of a college that goes out of business is Decades decades longer than the average age of a business that goes out of business And you know, there's a real difference between A silicon value startup that flames out in three years and a small college that gives you 150 years before Closes so it's always important to keep that comparison in mind. Sure. Sure. Thank you phil. Thank you phil And I'm not going to pull you off of the hook. I'm just going to thank you Yeah, for everybody who is who is new to the forum This is an you've now seen both examples of how we have conversations You've seen a question popped up. You've also seen a questionnaire pop up And you can do either of those either by clicking the raised hand button or the question button and Professor Shapiro, thank you for that very very deep answer I actually have played in the youth symphony at Detroit's orchestra hall once so your father that memory just makes me very happy We have a whole stack of questions I want to give people a chance to bring up one comes from killed Dush long time friend of the program and he asked I'd like Dr. Shapiro's view of the role of higher ed's degree or job credential monopoly And credential inflation in artificially sustained demand, which is now threatened by alternative credential I'm going to put that back up in the screen because that was a deep question. It's a great It's a great question And one of those questions when I said that that the book is going to be framed around a set of essential questions The what's it for and what it achieves? Your question fits in there and it's really it's really one that's troubled higher education since Since the very beginning. What's it for? What is it credential? And especially toward the end of the 19th century as it became much more a credentialing system than it had been earlier um You know one of the things I find very interesting is it it's really very recent for both colleges and universities and american society generally to understand Colleges and university largely in their credentialing. That's not what it was for the first couple of hundred years and there is no essential reason why? um Colleges or universities Should even have a monopoly on the credentialing for much of the american economy All sorts of pressures led to that inflation that you were talking about Plenty of professions from the 19th century That you got into or one got into because of a for apprenticeship You didn't do a program for it slowly colleges and universities offered alternatives as for medicine Pharmacy a whole bunch of things and eventually they began law and and universities eventually became Basically the sole creditors Especially in the post-world war two period I frankly think that's nuts I think it devalues Really what a college education can be for? um And it leads to a lot of people feeling like they need a particular kind of higher education That they might not really need Um and could use something else entirely for for credentialing So I think we still have to sort that out once again What do you need a bachelor's degree for? Why is it once upon a time to be an occupational therapist? You needed to apprentice And then you needed two years plus Apprenticing and then you needed a four-year program and then when I was provost at the university of wisconsin The occupational therapy program told us you could no longer get a job in occupational therapy Unless you had a master's degree later They said a phd and they took exactly the same program characteristics Nothing different nothing upgraded and then petitioned to have it called first a master's degree and then a phd So we have professional phds The whole How do we balance? This is something I know we're all dealing with at different institutions. How do we balance? An understanding that that higher education Especially of the liberal arts and sciences part the training of the mind The expansion of exposure To cultures to literature and understanding of the workings of science of the arts. How do we balance? of you that that That kind of education needs to be made accessible Meaning available and affordable Because high school is not doing it And we need to make proper credentialing programs accessible um, but We shouldn't be wasting the time and the resources of institutions and people by Forcing them Through the garlic press where they don't need to be One of my big fears is whenever any of us say well, you don't need this credentialing It sounds to people like saying not everybody needs college You know We do need aspects of that and it's too little accessible not too much accessible But we've gone kind of nuts with credentialing Well, thank you for that great one last thing by the way One of the things that we're doing in colleges and universities and all of you associated with them have seen this Is we've injected more sensible aspects, but not something that's accessible for all our students In increasing the amount of hands-on and an internship work we offer Right so that even in liberal arts and sciences degrees We've integrated much more hands-on work Internship work apprenticeship work because we've recognized that neither apprenticeship alone Nor quote classroom education alone gives us everything we need The problem is it's not accessible Because we still structure it in a way. We're only our Wealthier students and better resourced students can afford to take a lot of those opportunities For all variety of reasons we could talk about likewise international study Mostly only our wealthiest students can afford to do that the way most of our institutions structure that This is a great question Kiel And and Gina. Thank you for taking that in several key directions I want to make sure that we have a few other questions Because they're coming in thick and fast And they come from different angles. Thanks to phil and thanks to kiel for these questions We have one from across the atlantic And this is from professor dolla clark at university of darby He asks colleges are good closures are error connections Populations shifts and graphics, etc. But as a number of institutions have grown error corrections have grown So our closures small appear I'm not sure I'd call them error corrections. I there's market response And that's not an error correction if if the world changes the world changes And if the market is no longer there the market is no longer there And and most of the closures I've seen The market has left sometimes long ago And It's less an error correction and more obsolescence You know, let me give you an example What's its name evergreen college or whatever it was in vermont? Oh Right. Yeah Great next time Little shishi place actually brought in mostly pretty wealthy students who were confident enough and thought they could afford to go And their parents thought they could afford to go to a college where they could study ecology and sing kumbaya And you know, they were way out in front um It's closed because there was no national market And it's not because there was no national market for student studying ecology. It's just there's Piles of institutions that do that better And actually have science in the curriculum and actually have good interdisciplinary studies. So You know Evergreen existed for a while because there was a purpose for it, but but there wasn't anymore. So it's not You know, it's small beer as you say luckily i'm married to a brit. So I know what that means um It's small beer If all you're doing is looking at it from a market point of view It happens But when an institution of higher education closes, it's not small beer because you have people who lose their jobs You have a community that loses People who would be living there. Otherwise you have shops that close you have restaurants that close you have the ethos of a town That is altered tremendously by the loss of any major cultural institutions. So I wouldn't go as far as small beer and I wouldn't say it's it's um You know just error correction It's it's something Deeper that has to do with markets and ecologies of institutions and communities Thank you. Uh, don't appreciate the question And don't also has a fantastic avatar of itself that he uses which is really disturbing um, and it was uh Evergreen excuse me. It was green mountain college green mountain. I knew it had green You know, I'm in new hampshire. What do I know about from up? I'm not going to go down that road I it's too dangerous. But what we have we have more. Thank you. Uh, again, june for the answers to that we have uh, another question that comes back to Both phil and keels Which is from a colleague of mine at georgetown who asks if credentialing is a reason that philanthropy contributes to higher ed To help the x youth compare employer if higher ed loses that monopoly does it then also lose full thropic support? so, um at b u while i was dean I was responsible for raising a hundred million dollars during our campaign And almost none of that came from people who are were narrowly interested in credentialing They uh, most of the people who actually gave to this non-profit institution Yes, they wanted our students to be able to find jobs later and they wanted to prepare them but They wanted skill building. They wanted opportunities They wanted a whole variety of places and things and most of the the institutions that have done Best in their development other than The portion that is the business school And maybe the portion that's the engineering school Are interested in the broader sense not of credentialing but of skill building or opportunities or whatever The institutions that are most narrowly focused on Credentialing and employment preparation Tend not to attract a lot of philanthropy though they may get grants and not a lot of philanthropists If people really wanted to donate to institutions That were credentialing they would give a lot more to community colleges Hmm Yes, those are credentialing You know, they serve two purposes basically one is to prepare students for four-year colleges And the other is to prepare People for job market and credentialing and so they'd be great places for people to donate That's not where philanthropy goes in education. And if they really wanted to donate well It wouldn't be so easy for harvard and stanford to do philanthropy It would be much easier for a lot of other institutions That are more likely to contribute to upward mobility than those two institutions Which are unlikely to contribute very much to upward mobility First a great question Nothing on rise against to harvard and stanford Another graphical collision. Thank you And we had the A couple more questions at point towards the future. I'm going to save those a question for the president We have one from the awesome saras hand Gregorio She's at montclair state where she's her phd and doing a thousand things at once because she's brilliant that way And she asks about a concept of life coins So I'm going to ask the question We're seeing more press on queen sacrifices happening because of coven relating financial excellencies Is an increase of the personnel moves a commentary on the outlook of colleges as a whole And the concept of queen sacrifice refers to when a college university removes tenure track faculty Using the analogy from chess where tenure track faculty are like the queens on the board So to you know to put that back up Is this a commentary seemingly to happen? Is this a commentary on the outlook of colleges as a whole? So the only thing I know about Uh chess comes from the queen's gambit um So so let me make sure I understand this is is Are you talking about here the moving away from tenure track faculty to Adjunct faculty or I'm not I've never heard the term. So I'm trying to To when a college terminates tenure track faculty Not not because of individual personnel issues of because of Accidency because they're closing a program. Um, there are not many institutions that have terminated tenured faculty Usually what they will do is terminate tenured faculty positions That occur naturally for example In one of the many moves that the wisconsin state legislature did to try to starve its university system Again, I don't want to sound biased about what what the state government did but When we had to figure out what to do, especially when they did that in the middle of a year We had to restrict somehow we did not fire tenured faculty We selectively figured out positions where when people left they would not be replaced That's happened much more often Mostly the institutions that have ended up firing any tenured faculty are in the process of shutting down Well, that's a that's a good, so that's a that's a clear answer. Thank you The most recent example we've got is from Western Oregon University where they Close their philosophy major and minor laid off for tenured professors and also Removed 11 non-tenured faculty members. Yeah. Yeah, the removal of tenured faculty is is uh, all Restructuring and reducing the quality and extent of the educational programs as a desperation act and many Folks have gotten into desperation acts of finding ways of restricting. You know You can't go beyond your budget You can you can spend some time eating The other thing that's more common Is in any institution that has an endowment to begin to eat the principal They'll do that first usually But firing tenured faculty if If it's an institution that depends on tenured faculty and especially a research institution That will surely take a spiral Because tenured faculty are not are there to teach But tenured faculty also contribute to the prestige of the institution in other ways They contribute to revenue in other ways, you know and so on and so forth They contribute to subvention of part of the program by bringing in grants So That doesn't happen as much what happens more is Shucking staff Which Contrary to a lot of business people out there who talk about us tightening our belts usually means we're reducing services to students Almost always means we're reducing services to students They will reduce adjunct faculty and contingent faculty Which almost always means increasing class size and reducing options But not as much tenured faculty I love this exchange between two of you sarah and jenna because sarah your question is such a Detailed precise probe and jenna not only did you answer it, but you also gave us a sketch about some of the different Should we say autumnal phases that a college can go through on its way to a winter? Thank you. Thank you both. We have two questions that build on both of these. I'll make sure that we get them Joellen parker a dear friend and also An incredibly experienced thought leader of education She follows on sarah's question and asks As professor subparo looked at these institutions that stay open But only by changing their nature Sure, and and there's a long history of of that of institutions Um, we've seen some let's just take the current area. They're they're plenty in the 19th century But the current era moving from um in-person classes to online classes moving from serving An undergraduate population of the normative age to serving adults That that has become very common. I've seen a couple. I can't remember who but in the last couple of years that's often a step before closure, but In doing those kinds of things in shucking Liberal arts and sciences programs and thinking that you can survive if you look useful and and Keep only the programs in Uh more applied subjects ask betger college about that and how it's going for them. Um Yeah, so so there's that's one of the many many ways people Institutions can go about reconceiving What they do very often they'll add Before they totally shift Um, so all of the programs in adult education as as institutions saw that That the population of the normative student age Was going to begin to shrink. We knew that was going to happen Of course, many places did what they could to try to attract More people who were older than that Um Around world war two there are whole bunches of institutions that were on track to to um Close because of the impact of the depression And the war saved them because they contracted with the federal government and became very involved in war training. So um Institutions that are good on their feet will look like other organizations will look at good opportunities for for Keeping their educational mission by doing it in a different way Speaking of which we have a question. That's a perfect perfect Connection, excuse me. This is from mark orbit wilson out of the west coast And mark asks any thoughts about elders wanting further education and the impossible requirements of these Contemporary university Um, i'm a great fan of institutions that open up to elders Maybe I should be because i'm an elder now, but but for many years I participated for example at wisconsin in the in the program They had for the community and b. U has lots of places have it where Classes that have seats The professor can give permission for a certain number of Elders from the community to to take the course Often at some reduced amount of tuition But we certainly have that and I love those programs and I've always loved Having some elders If we had more time, I would tell you a wonderful story about that, but I've I've loved having age integrated classrooms. Although sometimes elders are a little hard to control But uh, you know, they're generally not looking for credentials. They're looking for learning I've had people who've spent their their careers in finance and now They want to take my course on Gender politics and history because it's something new to them Fantastic. Thank you mark for the great question. Thank you for the heartfelt answer. So that's one way forward We also had a question That comes from the excellent michael haggins who asks clearly What do you which walks into you think small scale or size contributes to closures? I don't know what small is I mean, it depends it's The the real question is the the structure and the finances of a particular institution what it takes to sustain it um, what What often happens is that? That an institution is retracting and it gets to a point where it's too small to survive Um There are institutions that have attempted to go in the other direction and it and try to bring in more and more Students, especially those for example who have gone online and that is not always as successful because they're competing with other kinds of organizations. So I think it's more a matter of the mix of Of the mission the resources and how many people it takes to be sustainable Um You know how many how much again how much support outside of tuition dollars Thank you. Um, good question. Thank you We also have a very friendly question. I think from a sali mudiyamu important state And sali asks Do you have any comments on david larry's book the perfect mess? Which argues that us hyrae has always been influx and threatened and that is what makes it resilient It just does a quick note. We had david as a guest a couple months ago. He was fantastic. I agree Okay, next question I agree. He's he's one of my favorite writers In this because that kind of thinking and it's it's one of the major things that i'm interested in as well is Is you know people who say higher education has always been exactly the same And sometimes they have characteristics for what it's been like since the very beginning. That's always wrong Really really wrong Well, thank you for the question. Thank you for the admirably concise answer And I will actually show you how to find david's Video at the end of the program today. Good. Thanks. Now speaking the end of the program which is approaching This is the time where we try to look more and more at the future And we have two questions. I'm just going to flash them both because they They balance each other and I wanted to honor both of them for asking One of them comes from another previous guest at brad wheeler in indiana It says you reference mergers and closures as an end to an advanced institutions What is your foresight for more frequent closures or mergers and your views on that? Hang on one second because keep that the question is almost it's so close to this question Which comes from london from animery borg who asks how does the past history? Impact the future of higher ed. Where do you see us going? So two future oriented thoughts for you I see more flux and more change. How's that for a non answer? um you know the The closures mergers and shifting is Has spiked and it will continue to do so because we haven't yet completely played out the 2008 session that is is Still having an impact because all of those institutions that got pushed to the edge then have done the dance since then of finding every way of saving themselves and You know that's still playing out, but obviously the impact of of covet and the pandemic and And the tightening of economies around the world Is is going to drive this much Higher and so, you know, we have more institutions of higher education In this country and britain and others all sorts of institutions That didn't used to be colleges and universities were made so in the united states in the 40s and 50s and 60s in britain in the 60s 70s and 80s Under thatcherism there was an expansion of the number of institutions that were designated as universities And so You know, there's a lot more play for loss um there are a lot more institutions around and even if we We expand toward older people and so forth the number of people Who are going to be searching for? a basic Degree education, especially if they have to pay it especially if they have to pay Top dollar that that's shrunk And so especially the weaker institutions by which i mean the ones that have always Mostly been local And don't have a local population to sustain it Certainly the ones that are tuition dependent Those that have lost their external support base Will be gone and will Merge Some of that happens in the private sector But the public sector is driving it too because as everybody here knows um In the united states at least the amount of support the proportionate support That the public has given to higher education Over the course of the past decades has has been ravaged Um, and that is not going to do any of us any good The the great scholar of this is chris newfield Who just crossed the Atlantic itself california to britain? I recommend his the great mistake and also he was a fantastic customer on this program a couple years ago Can can I just ask a question to amplify brad's point of mergers in in your paper? you see several times Defining closure is kind of tricky because sometimes a closure means something is folded into another institution Like we look um, and and so that's a closure, but it's You know the people may consist kind of I mean, do you do you think we'll see we'll actually see public higher education mergers as well? Oh, yeah, look, there are a couple of new systems again I'm going to forget who I saw in the newspaper. Maybe somebody else will remember A couple of more states that are thinking of making systems Right. Well, that's a merger Um often not as radically merged as say wisconsin did it in the 1970s There are different kinds of systems But but there is some conversation about merging the systems including integrating the four years the research institutions and the two years There are some benefits to that I was involved in what I think was a wonderful program of trying to do More articulation between the two year and tribal colleges in wisconsin And anison and i'm actually pretty proud of being involved in those articulation agreements Um, but some of them, you know, some institutions just get buried in others becker college It's two most successful programs gaming and I forget what? Are being eaten by clark university my alma mater Which is very interesting because clark is one of those small Very tuition driven institutions that has to think very carefully about how it's going to survive And so they're taking on these very applied programs That's a thank you both for those questions and thank you for that great tour of the horizon We have a couple more questions I'll make sure we give her a chance before we run completely out of time And one of them comes from video from greg shuckman at the education commission the state's commission Hello greg Hang on a second Okay, where you come see a brian Where are you today? So, uh, I am enjoy. I'm in maryland and enjoying this gorgeous weather that we're having here outdoors. So Yeah Yeah, so dr. Superior and and brian sort of got to the question I was asking about about the future of publics because that's how you Ended your paper was That it was for another time, but since for the less selective publics Um, they're so demographic driven by by who's within 150 mile radius or so of them What do you think is more important the demographic changes in their communities or the state funding subsidies state funding I think the state funding is really crucial for the comprehensives Um And also the community colleges the local county and and state funding and and those are areas that Just needs so much rethinking Um, because they they are going to be much more the engines of mobility than most of the university campuses that are research universities and draw nationally Because they can be more selective they Uh, they offer so much More in some ways so much more value added. I mean, I've spent my career at at the research ones, but Comprehensives are value added in such important ways, but Not only have they been strapped but Those are where students take out loans that they default on You know, you know that anybody who's looked at this stuff the major research institutions the prestigious ones the ones that get rich kids Our students may take out big loans, but they pay them back because they can pay them back Because of the lack of mobility in the system the people who get strapped Are the comprehensive students where the graduation rate is known better than 33 percent They have big loans And they may not be able to pay them back because they haven't graduated And so there I think is the one of the biggest crimes of our system is Um to make those unattractive and Unuseful And to soak the students in a way in weird ways for few dollars Almost as badly as some of the the for-profits do Thank you Thanks a great question. Great Gina, thank you for the for the excellent answer We have time for one quick last question And this is a big one from heather mcmorrow, and I think this is a great one to end on How can higher education better make the case for its place in society? And how can we help refute the current cultural belief the private industry is the soul or a primary driver in a successful economy It's a great question, and it has been since the 18th century um Yeah, you know it it really has been You see it again and again and again with folks out there thinking, you know get out in the world and do something It's private industry that that makes the difference and not higher education I think we do have to keep um Keep adapting to the times and changing even when we talk about The core liberal arts and sciences Those are not the same as they were 50 years ago or 100 or 200 years ago So we continue to adapt what they look like But we have to be thoughtful so that we are still Holding on to our basic understanding of what an education is for We have to be those of us at the prestige institutions have to be not snooty About what it is we do and what we offer And how it gets integrated with quote the real world We have to use our alumni base um in very important ways and And keep finding new ways of telling the story but in in you know over 200 years That case has never been fully convincing to a lot of people it probably never will be And there's a degree to which we have to just keep buckling down and thinking about How we can do education and relate to our surrounding society in the best ways we can And how we can make the best difference we possibly can in the community What a fantastic answer and and and Heather what a terrific question And I think that is a perfect way to uh to to end today I hate to wrap things up, but we are at the top of the hour again And we have to thank you professor superior for being a fantastic fantastic guest. It was fun The delight having you here. What's the how can we keep up with your work in the in New Hampshire? Is you right should we just wait to hear until the book hits press or is there any So I have two two places to find out more about me. Um, I have a website which is, um I will send it this information to you and you can shift it out to people but blogs bu slash Has a lot of my stuff and all of that. Um, I'm also doing a regular blog right now called the retirement letters Mm-hmm. Dot wordpress.com Uh on July 1st last year. I started a blog that will end on June 30th Uh, yes, uh this year where I am reflecting on 45 years of being a scholar teacher higher ed administrator And gadfly. Um, and if people are more interested they can take a look at that and we can be in touch Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much and good luck with the writing and please enjoy spring in New Hampshire Thank you and thank all of you for coming and for your questions. They were great They are great, but don't go friends. We're explaining. They'll let you know what's happening over the next couple of weeks And uh, on the second of course, Gina's motion of complimenting you for these fantastic questions Looking ahead for the next few weeks. We've got sessions on A game that helps you think about ed tech and merging ed tech On campus about improving equity and education for black students as well as a session on accreditation If you'd like to go, uh, learn more or keep these conversations going rather We have spaces on facebook twitter linkedin and slack Facebook, I'm sorry twitter is usually the place to go If you'd like to go back into the past and look at our previous 250 Recordings including some of the sessions that were mentioned today. Just go to tiny world comm slash fdf archive And please subscribe so that we can like keep doing this In the meantime, thanks to everybody. Uh, thanks for your fantastic wide-ranging thoughtful questions This has been a great session. Above all, please all of you take care of yourselves I just got my second Vaccine so I am good to go. I hope all of you can be as well in the meantime. We'll see you next time and we'll see you online Bye bye


The demands we are placing on our Fireland leaders and decision makers are incredibly high. To quote the leadership website homepage, the most essential element of successful wildland firefighting is competent and confident leadership. On this website, and I certainly hope you have all visited this site by now, you'll find the wildland firefighters core values and principles. Under each principle, you'll find references or tools that will allow you self-directed opportunities to improve your performance level as a leader. Some of the tools you'll find include Tactical Decision Games or TDG Libraries, where you can take a pre-built TDG and run the exercise with your local resources. You'll find the Sand Table Exercise Workbook, the professional reading program, and a self-development plan. Recently added is a tool called Leadership in Cinema, which allows you to identify leadership styles in movie clips and other media and apply them to your own work environment. Films not only entertain us, but they can also teach us a lot about leadership styles. Pam McDonald from the Leadership Committee has made available to you already a selection of movies that have been reviewed and lesson plans have been created. To hear more about leadership and the Leadership Development Program, we recently talked to Tom Boatner, the Group Manager for BLM Fire Operations. This idea that regardless of what level you are in the fire program, whether you're an engine crew member or a unit FMO, or you're a national fire program manager, all of us need to understand that we can continue to learn valuable things that will improve our performance, whether we've been doing this for a week or 30 years. So this whole idea that we should be continual students and continually looking for ways to improve our performance, I think is a huge fundamental part of what good leadership is. We're putting incredible stress on our fire line leaders these days with the complexity of the incidents they're dealing with, the amount of policy and procedure we're asking them to stay on top of. We're putting a huge burden on our leaders to perform at a pretty high level. And we're looking for people who have the willingness and the strength to give that their best shot. And we're trying to give them some training and some tools that will help them be better at it.  What we're still struggling to get better at is the human element that becomes an issue on the fire line. How do people communicate when they're under stress? How do people make decisions when they're under stress? What happens to our performance when we're fatigued because we're 60, 70, 80 days into a long demanding fire season? I think first and foremost an AAR is meant to be a learning process to discuss how a group of firefighters performed in a particular situation, what happened, both positive and negative, what can we learn from what happened today to make us better tomorrow. It's not meant to be a formal assertion of facts or any organizational means of deciding if something bad has happened on a large scale. It's meant to be a local learning process, confidential so people can speak real openly and learn about what happened and what they did. Investigations I think are performed by, in general, an outside group to look at an incident or a part of an incident where generally something didn't go right, ascertain the facts and see what the organization needs to do to deal with what happened. And that's a different thing from a small fire unit using an AAR as a learning tool to improve their performance. If the only time young leaders get to practice making critical, potentially life affecting decisions is when they're on the fire line and things are stressful and at their worst, then we're not going to get very much practice at it, which means we probably won't do it as well as we can. But if we find a way to practice making those kind of decisions and assessments and communicating them in an environment where there is very little risk, but we're trying to imitate the high-risk environment that we occasionally work in, then we are going to get better because we're maximizing the practice. And I think tactical decision games and sand table exercises are an inexpensive, low-risk way to give young leaders many, many repetitions at making difficult decisions and then being assessed on how they did so they can improve their performance. It's like a football team practicing for 20, 30, 40 hours to play a one-hour game. Hopefully they'll make the mistakes and do some learning in the practice that will make their performance better in that brief period when the chips are all on the table. Fireline leadership is important to us because whether we like it or not, we are considered a high-reliability organization. Errors on the fireline can and do have life-and-death consequences and it has always been our goal to perform at the highest level possible. For this reason, we tend to focus a lot of our attention on accidents and near misses in the hopes of learning from some of these events. Let's listen to Dr. Patrick with him as he gives us some insight into some of the practices of high-reliability organizations. Well, what makes the study of high-reliability organizations unique is just this focus on errors. You have to have high reliability because any error can result in death, personal injury, or high levels of property loss. And so therefore, that should be unacceptable. There should be zero tolerance. You can make automobiles and they think a 3% error rate is great, but we have to function down at the level where we would prefer there were no errors at all. The focus of high-reliability organizations on near misses comes about in that they examine every error that they have in great detail. Therefore, we have reviews. We have to look at some things that some people might consider to be trivial, but when you start looking at this at an organization or a wide level, you realize that it's not trivial. High-reliability organizations, we know that the dissemination of information is critical, and so to get that information out, there's several channels available to people. Of course, you can go right through your chain of command and through your supervisor. You can also take more direct routes and go through mass emails to other Forest Service, a BLM, Park Service personnel, kind of things like that if that's available to you. There's also safe nets are available for anyone which allow anonymous types of information to go out. I think many times in our organizations there are not enough positive reinforcements, and this is very important. AAR shouldn't get the feeling that people fear them that they're going to find something wrong and pick someone apart. It should really be an open learning kind of experience, and so you can really focus on the positive experiences in there too. And actual rewards for people are great. Just a, hey, job well done is always real useful. In the past I've seen letters to people commending them for a job well done. There's always the rare pay bonus that comes along, and just anything to encourage people that when they do a job correctly that they're going to get rewarded for it and recognized. Now let's get into our groups and complete the exercise in your student workbook.


Students that come from China to study in British Columbia enrich your province in many ways. They contribute to the diversity, knowledge and excellence of our schools, universities, colleges and institutes. They bring language and culture from China to our communities. They contribute skills and knowledge to our workforce. They make a significant impact to our economy. And while in China, I will be encouraging students, parents and teachers to choose British Columbia, Canada.


Welcome to American Issues Take One. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. And today the title of our show is the 2022 election. Change is the only constant. Well, we're in day two now of the midterm elections and it appears that the Republicans will most likely get the House of Representatives to swing their way, they'll be in control of that. Not 100% sure, but it's most likely they will get the House. The Senate and control for the Senate is up to three states, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. Chances are Arizona does swing to Mark Kelly, the incumbent Senator. And so that leaves Nevada and Georgia. Georgia will now have an official runoff in December because no candidate got 50% plus one vote. And Nevada is as tight as it gets. Hard to say how that swings. So we don't know the entire outcome of our election yet, but we do know two things. And one is there was no red wave. And secondly, the election deniers that there was over 300 of them and a lot of them didn't get elected. So those election deniers that were falling and locked up with Donald Trump didn't make the grade for this election. I'd like to talk about this and many, many more things. So I'd like to introduce the guests today. Today we have our special esteemed guests, Vicky Cayetano, our special esteemed guests, Chuck Crumpton and our contributor today, Cynthia Lee Sinclair, Jay Fidel is on assignment. I'm sure it's post-election assignment and he's busy at work doing on the street interviews and post-election polling, maybe. All right, good morning, everyone. Good morning. I mean, that's the same question to everybody around the table here today. And that is a two-part question. So Vicky, to you first. One is what are your general thoughts about what you saw last night? And secondly, did the polls and predictions of a red wave have the motivation effect to draw out more Democrats to vote or were the polls wrong? Just wrong as many times they have been in the past. What do you think? Well, like most things, I think it's a combination of things. I definitely believe that the Democrats were very energized and knew what's at stake and came out in full force. So I think that's very encouraging. But to me, the biggest takeaway is that Donald Trump is not what he thinks he is. I think there was a lot of talk that the candidates that he endorsed were going to sweep into power. And I'm encouraged by that because I think that although he's overly conservative for my liking, I think at least Governor DeSantis of Florida is at least a little bit more mentally balanced, shall we say. So to me, that was a big takeaway that Trump isn't what he thinks he is and that there could be another leader in the making for the Republican Party that I think anyone will be better than Donald Trump. All right. Chuck, your thoughts about the election and same question about the red wave and did that actually motivate Democrats to come out or where the polls off? Yeah, I think if he's insights are spot on, one of my want to pick up on whether Governor DeSantis is more balanced than Trump is sort of like saying, well, Jerry Lewis seemed a little bit less silly than Supey sales. You got to remember where on the spectrum you are. But hey, no. I think I just gave away my age by laughing at the named Supey sales. Go ahead. But DeSantis's win and the command in Florida is really going to create an interesting national picture. There's no question that he is the leading opponent to Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination. And he may be the stronger candidate as he demonstrated last night and may be able to again. Couple of things that we look at. Oh, one is, I agree with Vicki on to say it a little bit different way. I think people were really afraid that either party would take predominant control and the way they came out essentially prevented that. The Republicans may have a very, very small minority in the house. They may or may not get one in the Senate. But as we've seen the last two years, that small a minority with the filibuster rule in the Senate and with other things going on in the house is not a workable control factor. Let me focus on that last point you just made. You know, if the Biden administration had the Senate in the house and really very few things got done.  But a lot of things that Joe Biden wanted in his first two years just wouldn't happen or didn't happen because Republicans said, we're taking the ball and we're not gonna play. So they all voted in lockstep, no against everything that was on the floor. Does it really make a difference that Joe McCarthy now is the speaker of the house and it's a Republican controlled, does it matter? Hey, it may not. McCarthy has not demonstrated the level of control of his block that for example, McConnell has over in the Senate. And if you look at McConnell's concerns and inferences about this election, pretty hard to argue with. Candidate quality cost the Republicans in some really important races. They only needed to swing five, a net five to get control of the house and only one to get control of the Senate. They're not gonna get five apparently and they may or may not get the one in the Senate. So if you're looking for- Wait, you mean they are gonna get five for the house? Wait, you're talking about the Democrats, right? Or the Republicans, I'm sorry. No, well, the Republicans, yeah, they may get five but they're not getting a sufficient majority that they're gonna have a reliable- So the question is, Chuck, do we still have gridlock in Congress? I don't think there's any question of that. I think we definitely have gridlock in Congress. And do they have enough to override presidential veto power? Okay, good point. Unlikely. Okay, thank you, Chuck. Cynthia, your thoughts about the election and the second part of that question. Well, for the first part, I think I wanna say something completely different than what I've been hearing anywhere. And that is, so many people are just absolutely overwhelmed with all of this fighting back and forth lives. Who do you believe? Who don't you believe? Who's right? Who's not? Terrified some of us, you know? And I personally couldn't watch all of the tick here or tick there. We got one over here. We had one over there. It was making me crazy. I can't understand the pressure. And it made me wonder how many other people are like that.  And I wonder how that kind of mentality is going to affect the final outcome? And will it? And that leads me to the second part of my question. And that is, okay, five, no, six states. And I'm gonna name them Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Oklahoma have nine interference laws, voter interference laws that are already on the books. That means that the legislature, the partisan legislature in those states has the power to decide which ones to count, which ones not to count, which ones to throw out, which ones to keep. That to me puts into question those six states. And that was just, this is all information from the Brennan Law Center. And so if those six states are the only states cause there were a number of other states that were in process of passing more of those interference laws, how does that affect like what's happened in Georgia? You know, things like that, that the closeness of some of these races could come down to what does the legislature say? And that to me is what's terrifying.  You know, so let me give you an example. I think Arizona, and I think it passed by 73% was that a state identification is required prior to vote. It might have not been Arizona, maybe it was another state, but what's wrong with that? Is that an interference or is that an integrity? That's not an interference law. There's voter suppression laws and there's voter interference laws. And there are two different things. The voter suppression laws are the ones that require more IDs to get in to close down some of the polling places, to limit this or that, can't give them water while they're standing in line for 10 hours. Things like that. Those are the voter suppression laws. That's completely different than the voter interference laws. The voter interference laws are the ones that literally give the final decisions and even the administration of the elections to the partisan legislatures. These are only in Republican states. There's no Democratic states that have done this. It's all just the Republican states. Well, you know, I appreciate you making that clarification and distinction. That helps. Thank you.  Your democracy depends on it. And that was a strong message. And I think that was a big motivation for why a lot of Democrats did turnout or at least mailed in their ballots if they didn't go to the polling site directly. It seems that we have one state in particular right now, Kerry Lake, the candidate for governor of Arizona. She was recently, was on the news, making a brief comment. And it seemed to me that she was basically the same because there's a delay in counting the votes that correlated to incompetence. And then she made that rhetorical technique of winding in competence into, we have to ensure that there's honest elections, indicating that they weren't honest. So we have Bill Gates, the supervisor of all elections in Arizona, say there is no history or there's no evidence of shenanigans here in this election or the last one. Is it gonna work? We did, fortunately last night, we didn't see a lot of accusations about rigged elections or fake elections. And other than Kerry Lake in Arizona, do we think we hear or see any more of this as the vote count continues, particularly in these close races? You know, Tim, that's just a good summation. And I agree with Cynthia and that I think people are very concerned and make sure that their vote counts, that it matters. I can't help but think of these people who are setting up this message would do so if they in fact won the race. I think that talk would go away. I think they're just bad losers who can't accept the fact that the people did not elect them. What Cynthia, I wanna go back to what you said about voter interference, loss. You know, and I would assume that these laws being placed in these states is to ensure the integrity of our ballot system. But what I'm hearing from you is a concern that it may in fact be used to undermine the outcome of an election or to skew the results to what a partisan legislature wants it to be. Is that correct, Cynthia? If I may, I'm gonna read you on a right straight from the Brennan Law Center. The nine enacted election interference laws in the six states permit partisan actors to interfere with elections, operations or overturn election results, direct new resources towards prosecuting election crimes and threaten election officials with criminal penalties. Seven of these laws will be in place for the 22 midterm elections. Unbelievable. Yeah, kinda scary. That is scary, yeah. But you know, I think that voter integrity that is so important. And I personally think that the outcome could have been much more radical. So I think that hopefully a lot of people get the message that we need to come out and we need to find balance. It cannot be extreme left or right. This is what creates revolutions. We need to come together. And it seems like the word compromise doesn't even exist anymore. I'm not gonna change your mind how you feel on certain things any more than you will change mine. But we all need to acknowledge that we want the greater good to be done for our country. So how do we come together to do that? I think is what's missing. That civility and respect is what we need in order to get through the gridlock that we're seeing where nothing gets done.  No one's really screaming about it. Out of 370 GOP election deniers to one extent or another or skeptics of a free and clean 2020 election. Of those 370, about 210 actually looked like they've been placed and won their elections either from the House of Representatives, senators, governors, attorney generals, or secretary of states. All these various positions across the country that's still a fairly significant number. Does that concern you at all? It does concern me. I just hope that they understand that the majority of the people of this country want to move on. There's so many other things to address, inflation, women's reproductive rights, the war, how that impacts us. You know, there's so many other things that we need to address and do the work of the people. I think that's really key. This is just more disruption and distraction. And when you think about it, what does it do? We need to move forward. I hope they understand and really start getting to the... Do you think that they talk less about these things now that they've been placed and Donald Trump's not really there to hyperventilate and keep going on about his denial of the election of 2020? Yeah, that's very important because to me that's what leadership is all about. There's no question in my mind that Trump is the one rallying this message because he lost such a narcissistic person that cannot accept that, that the people don't love him enough. So I definitely think that different leadership will craft a different narrative that hopefully brings us closer together. Okay, thank you. Hey, Chuck, we didn't see a red wave. We saw more of a ripple. And the wave, as I said last night was left on shore. What do you think that was? Well, a couple of things. The Democrats may feel that they've kind of dodged a bullet and they've kept things close enough and evenly divided enough that the next two years won't be a disaster and they'll have a chance in 2024. But realistically, as a number of commentators pointed out last night, there are people who are in positions that either came very, very close or could still win their election. Herschel Walker, Kerry Lake, give me a break. If you put either of those people in Hawaii, they would, without question, do very, very poorly because they're not confident or they're not responsible or they're offensive to people or all of the above. So for Republicans to be able to put people out there like that and still marshal enough of a voter base in important swing states, it's still a very, very scary terrain. There's still more quicksand than mud out there. And we all need to be aware of that. The strategies for the next two years will be critically important for the 2024 position. Did the criticism of Joe Biden and his economic record, particularly inflation right now and his low job, well, his job approval is about 48%. Did that fail, the Republicans? Did they put too much emphasis and weight that tying any candidate to Joe Biden would ensure a GOP victory? That's for you, Chuck. Well, one of the things that you got to remember is if you're gonna make it a very personal ad hominem attack, Biden beat Trump in 2020 decisively by the popular vote and pretty decisively by the electoral vote, even though overall in the swing states, there were very close elections that wound up making a big difference. So if there's anything that if I were a Republican I'd wanna learn from this election, it would be stop the personalized ad hominem stuff. And if issues are working for you, come up with plans to accompany those issues that give people something to hold on to and a reason to vote. The Republicans attacked on inflation but offered no alternative. They attacked on prime but offered no alternative. And in fact, they've been the unrestricted gun rights supporters. So how many people can you sell on that? Yeah, good point. Cynthia, if it wasn't the economy that was really the main focus, then it had to be the social issues. To what degree do you think social issues was a big part of blunting a red wave here in this country for this election? I think it was young people. They don't really poll young people. So the polls may have showed something completely different and then all these young people came out. And for the young people, it was abortion and gun rights. As they're tired of having to do shooter drills at school, in the grammar schools and the high schools it's crazy to think that our kids are at this much risk and Republicans answer is just put more guns in the schools. And that just really, I think for me was incredible. So, but you know, we had abortion rights score victories across on the state ballots on the initiatives, right? They really did well.  It was voted down either not to put anti-abortion language in their state constitution or it was to solidify that and to put it on there. And look at two different angles. Let me give you a number on that because you're spot on of the exit polling that took place yesterday. 61% were angry or dissatisfied about the Roe v. Wade reversal. And of that 61%, 71% voted for Democrats and 27% voted for GOP. So there's a real disparity over one specific wedgie issue. Do we move, do the Democrats move forward with the same kind of strategy in the next two years to try to govern and trying to bolster the presidency for 2024? Do they stay with that strategy or do they make a dramatic shift from it? Well, if we know that economy is the number one thing sort of across the board, even above that abortion issue. And of course, economy, probably not the kids aren't gonna be voting on that one, right? And they were a big block in this midterm. So if it's still one of the big overarching things then that means it's across the board. Everyone's worried about it. My big problem with that is all the media pundits, all the journalists, everybody, say all the Republicans saying the economy, the economy, the economy, it's terrible, it's terrible. And it's all Joe Biden's fault. And we didn't hear the Democrats or Joe Biden talking about the fact that the economy is terrible everywhere in the world right now. It's not just Joe Biden's fault. And we didn't really hear that. We heard it a little bit, but we didn't hear it enough, enough to squash maybe the independent voters or the moderate Republicans that were like, well, I can't vote Democrat because the economy's so bad because all they heard from those Republican people was the economy's terrible, terrible, terrible. Okay, well, let's admit that Joe Biden did kind of moonwalk away from talking about the economy because it wasn't Rosie. It wasn't a good picture for him. So rightly so, he talked about democracy and he talked about the Roe v. Wade and he talked about gun issues. So that strategy actually worked for the Democrats even though they're gonna lose the House most likely. Question is, does Joe Biden stay with that strategy moving forward? Well, I think not because I think the reason that it's not already a blue wave is because of that economy that was not addressed. Like, yes, we would have been able to have better economy if my Build Back Better plan had passed. We didn't hear that a lot. And I believe the media has a huge role in this, not even so much what Joe Biden did or didn't do, but what the media did just absolutely, every time you turn on the TV, well, the economy's bad. So, you know, it's gonna be a problem for the Democrats because the economy's so bad, not continuing to say it's not the Democrats fault, it's everywhere in the world. Every once in a while, you'd hear somebody say that. So his messaging probably needs to change about that specific issue then. Just about that specific issue, but I think he still needs to continue to hammer about democracy because it is still on the ballot, right? Okay. So five states that we were just talking about, if you look at the races that are super close, like the Kerry Lake one we were just talking about, that one is super close. It's what, 49, four and 50 something. So it's very close. That's one of the states that has all Republicans everywhere in their state houses and they are the ones with those voter interference laws that could say, well, it's so close, we're gonna, you know, swift things around a little bit and make it so that Kerry Lake wins. Same with Florida, same with Georgia, same with, you know, so in the case of all of these counting of the ballots, that's all done by these same people, these same partisan legislatures appointing, remember they took away all kinds of election officials and put in their own people. Okay. Let me get to Vicki on, I want to thank you for your answer on the economy. I want to talk, speak with Vicki about this as well.  Does Joe Biden, does he change his messaging more towards the economy and trying to explain how he's not in control and how he's made things better? Or does he continue on as Cynthia suggested, there's other things that he still needs to talk about. How does Joe Biden move forward with his messaging? You know, I think the president has to address the economy and the Democrats have to take a hold on that to not talk about it really gives for me anyway, an impression like we're clueless, you know, and we're not, we need to address it. People are hurting.  And nobody is talking about it. So I do think that needs to be discussed. And I think it's interesting, one thing I wanted to point out, I think sometimes people vote for a candidate, not so much because they like them, but it's a vote against the opponent. It's better this devil than that devil. It's not like anything. But I think economy is going to be very critical in the 2024 election. And I think, you know, there's no question, Cynthia, you're right, it's worldwide, but you've got to frame a narrative. So it doesn't look like you're just copying out. You need to address, to educate, to communicate so that the people, and give people the hope. So what does this mean? Where are we? What will it look like? I think that's the kind of narrative I would like to see President Biden lead. Okay, thank you, Vicki. Chuck, we're almost out of time, but I want to get this question out to you. You know, DeSantis did very well. And you can almost say that now Florida is no longer a purple state, it's a red state. You know, when you get 57% and Charlie-Chris gets 42% and plus many of the other positions went GOP. He now has wind in his sails. To what degree does that diminish Donald Trump? Clearly DeSantis has the presidency in mind. He has not provided any assurance that he's gonna fulfill his full term as governor. Trump knows that, DeSantis knows that. What's gonna be interesting is McConnell knows it and whoever winds up being Speaker of the House also knows it. That's gonna be an area where a lot of pitch battles are gonna be important. The Democrats need to anticipate that and develop not just a strategy, but leadership that can offer exactly as Vicki says. Reasons for problems with the economy and strategies that are going to deal with those effectively. And that may include governors out of states who have managed to get through the inflation period pretty well and come out of it well. Has Trump, the Trump fever broken by this election? The fact that the election deniers, a lot of them didn't make it and DeSantis did so well in Florida. Has Trump fever broken? I think the question is more, is Trump's monopoly eroded? Same. Because his control over the money on the donors was so extensive that even McConnell was deferential. And those who spoke out against him during the January 6th and aftermath backpedaled as quickly as they could out of deference to that control. I don't think we're gonna see that for the next two years. We're gonna look at internal struggles for control over the money and the donors and the influence. In that area of the Republican party and what they do with it. Alrighty. Well, we've run out of time so I do wanna go around the table and get last thoughts. Cynthia, we'll start with you. Okay, it's sort of a random thing that I thought was really interesting that was on the ballots for people in their initiatives. Five states, Alabama, Tennessee, Vermont and Oregon, but Louisiana did not remove the loophole. And this loophole was for a involuntary servitude, slavery as punishment. And there are several states that still have that in their constitution. At any rate, it was already in part, when they outlawed slavery, they kept it on in the sense of this involuntary servitude thing.  And so that has been taken out of five states. It was voted down. Louisiana did not vote it down, which means they can still do it. And there's a several other states that they never even voted on it yet. But I thought that was an interesting thing. All right. Think of it, voting on slavery in 2022, right? 140 some odd years later, wow. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Cynthia, for that perspective that that is odd. Chuck, you get the next thought. So one of the things that President Obama did very effectively when he came into the office after the 0708 crash and recession had taken place was he did focus on the economy. He got really knowledgeable brain trust leaders in there. They came up with plans and strategies and they put those through. And they essentially worked well enough that he had no trouble winning again in 2012. And he didn't do as badly in the midterms as most other presidents have done. That's gonna be a challenge. Do you think he runs 2024, Joe Biden? I don't think that's the best strategy for Democrats. They need to come up with economic leadership that's going to capture some level of support in the independent voters and the moderate voters. All right. Thank you, Chuck, very much. Vicki, you get the final word today on the election and your thoughts. Well, I think that the American people understood clearly what's at stake. I think that's why so many voters turned out. And I think for that it's very encouraging. While some states are still very extreme, I think in their selection of who they elected, I think by and large, especially on the Republican party, I think that they're looking for a different kind of leadership. And I think that itself is encouraging. And I think that Donald Trump was the biggest loser, because the people that he put up were ideology, Trump competency. They didn't necessarily make it through. So I think that's a victory for Democrats and for our country. So I'm overall happy with the way things turned out nationally. I'd like to thank you very much for that last comment because I think Donald Trump is the biggest loser out of these election results, regardless if the House goes to the Republicans. And I couldn't agree with you more and I'm really appreciative that you've made that comment. So I'd like to thank my guests today, Chuck Crumpton, Vicky Cayetano, and Cynthia Leeson-Clair. Thank you for joining us on American Issues Take One. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. Tune in tomorrow for American Issues Take Two where Jay Fidel will further talk about where does this country go now after this election. And until then, aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


What's up everyone? It's your girl Kinsey here from Leighton sports cards. I'm ripping some personals here from human age We've got one order of the 2022 Panini select UFC hobby boxes and five of the 2022 Panini select UFC H2 Alrighty best of luck here woman. We're gonna start with your H2 boxes. One two three four five Here we go Where's some discos For you Got disco Dominic Reyes and red octagon side zero gone Nice one there 20 of 99 and on the octagon red and pop car new bergamot Diaz octagon disco Sarah McMahon and octagon disco Colby Covington There are McGregor Lee. We've got blue disco of Derek Brunson That is 37 of 49 Silver rich Franklin middleweight division right H2 number two Peterson silver rookie octagon side Casey O'Neill Gary Morales Silver rookie of Nicola flyweight division Tell me, okay they've got a Henry sehudo on the disco and Jessica Andrade disco Octagon side John Jones Paul Craig on the disco rookie and silver rookie of the wound John on the light heavyweight silver H2 number three Regas That is nasty on the concourse level that is sick Congrats on that we'll bag that one for you a huge hit One of the best female fighters probably you know ever Fortunately because I was a big Ronda Rousey fan. I still am she's never the same after Molly Holm messed her up Okay, relax water and gone who on the disco Peter young silver Silver Amanda Nunez another Crazy, I love watching her fight Last pack here Korea Ghana a Jimmy Crute disco and Cosmatcha may have on the second year disco Hey sponsor Wow H2 number four Yeah, all right. Yeah, she's Louise slack man That is true We've got disco glover textera and red Sterling St. Pierre silver John Jones Brock Lesnar We've got had blue disco Holly Holm that one is out of 49 on the premier level Lauren Murphy octagon side rookie disco of Adrienne Yanez and disco rookie of Raulian Pivea Pava Pivea All right last H2 box here for you human and then we will get into your Hobby box Yon Blasovic disco red rookie of Jeff Molina to 99 premier level Yeah, I didn't watch it. I didn't get a chance to watch it Patty Plymlet on the rookie It's the first Patty that we've seen out of this all night tonight Silver rookie of Gems that's all games at all. That's true Mike Check makes it a little easier. I'm sure but still yeah Usman we've got octagon side Charles Olivera nice one there Tauperia rookie octagon side disco of Kunitz Kaya Kunitz Kaya and a Amanda Rivas on the disco All right, very solid disco boxes there for you human Now time for your hottie. Good luck Two autos and a man hit We got tricolor of Divish Divish Divishily and light blue dose on your 78 of 199 Silver Macy Chessian in Ghana May have on the second year rookie Nikolou tricolor. Nice. They're my gamut off on the rookie And we've got a octagon action signatures of Mike Perry Perry is the auto first auto here for you Saying Phenomenos ocula and silver to a Vasa for you Izzy got out of 199 Amanda Nunez. Oh my gosh Amanda Nunez. This is too. Oh my gosh patch auto.  What a box 62 of 199 And we've got gold rookie octagon side of Shavkat Rakhmanov Wow Believe that is a Khabib's cousin correct 8 out of 10 Little piece of the pack on that That came off.  I'm sorry. Let's mag that new guest Wow Was just very distracted on that Wow, that is another big card Pumin with the big UFC hits Wow, we'll mag that one too That is Khabib's cousin correct y'all Nunez and we've got scope of Nate Diaz Sorry Nunez is cut long woman so it will not fit in a Mags, but we'll get it protected up in a top order with the LSE sticker over it Sonan silver Volk and new we've got oosman on the red out of 125 Strickland silver thug rose Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I knew that was a big one for sure Shanko tri-color Chessia It's not Khabib's cousin. Okay. I thought it was maybe it was the headpiece because I know they all wear that though that wig Looks the same. Yeah Silver Matt snow on the patch and bronze rookie of Tucker Lutz out of 175 Wow, that's a fantastic. What was that six box? UFC Break there for whom and congrats again. Thanks so much for hopping in and we'll get this right out to you


n Love Van Vleet Peyton Pritchard Rookie Bolts Patrick Johnson Have you seen the Kingsman movies? I've not Sabin Lee Rookie We started to watch one last night Pretty late last night The most recent one That's like the prequel of all the other ones Carol Lewis Jr. We got like 30 minutes into the movie and then our Wi-Fi It's by Harris We're like wow We're like alright then We're not finishing that movie It started off really good too I kind of like when they go back and tell the pre-stories of multiple movies RJ Hampton That will do it for Prism We're going to go Corkings next And an outage too We never really have outages for Wi-Fi Got Jamal Murray Anthony Edwards And level one Franz Wagner Level three Joshua Primo Rookie for the Spurs Got red Graffiti Grates of K.D. That is out of 149 Maestro's Cade Cunningham and Graffiti Grates of Trey Young And we've got magic Rookie expression Franz Wagner on the two color patch Magic Love in this box Anyone in set? Wizards, I would say we probably have Denny Abia out of Cassius Winston out of 49th Thunder Erin Wiggins Erin Wiggins This year they have Corey Kisper Isaiah Libbers Isaiah Todd in some products not all of them They're pretty popular in Origins now that I think of it Let's see what we can get Beale's got a Better Ender in this Got Kemba Walker Steph Curry Julius Randall Red Parallel Charles Bassey We literally just went through for three on case hits Rookie Original Scotty Barnes Boom! Every box that has a case hit I think we have hit just about We had a Kaboom earlier A Galactic Out of Revolution Originals out of Origins Thomas C with the Raptors Wow Grizzly's Silver Ruffiotto to 99th Santiago Dama Grizzly's on the Silver Ink Thunder RPA Trayman Casey Contenders time What are they called? Ticket Stubb? What's the case hit out of this? Thunder Oh it's like the little passport thing Is it? I don't think those are case hits Those are short frame Rookie of the Year Scotty Barnes Got Rookie Ticket Auto Santiago Dama Grizzly Grizzly's heating up here Sweet Shots of Nicola Jokic Denver No insert in this box In this pack This is the last card We've got Rookie Ticket Jalen, oh there's two in this one That's why we have a lottery ticket Of Jalen Suggs and hollow Rookie Ticket Jalen Green Thanks for their rockets Man I wish there was something on that one Playoff Ticket to 249 Dijante Murray Dicut on the back here Superstar Zion Williamson Dude have you seen him lately Zion?