next year there will be a presidential election where a Democrat will be facing Donald Trump and hopefully beating him. That's an uncontroversial thing to say in the Navarra media studio. And we are going to talk today especially about two candidates, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The latest YouGov poll shows that Warren is basically flying ahead in the polls. She's on, well, flying ahead is maybe an overstatement, but the momentum is with her. So this is the latest YouGov poll. Warren is on 28%. Biden is on 25%. And Bernie Sanders is on 14%. Is this a surprise to you? Because I mean, I remember at the beginning of the year, everyone was commenting on why Warren isn't being taken seriously. She was, I think, in the single digits and it was all about Bernie versus Biden. What explains, I suppose, Warren's phenomenal rise in the polls? I mean, I think the simplest answer is that she's proven to be a good campaigner. And I think she's running a good campaign. I think I have a somewhat more partisan answer, which is I think the basic arc of the campaign up until the fall is being that the anti-Bernie forces broadly defined have kind of cycled through a number of different formulas they've tried. And so there was the attempt to make Beto O'Rourke into a national figure, I think we can say at this point, the very unsuccessful attempt. Didn't he come back a bit when he started swearing a bit more?  And then everyone's like, yeah, Beto, maybe he's got character. Yeah, he's he's tried to pivot to making gun control his thing. And I mean, I think he's come back in terms of his visibility on Twitter, but not in the polls, I think. And then after him, you had you had Mayor Pete, who was another figure who really, I mean, I think even more than a rock no one had ever heard of him. And all of a sudden he was all over magazines and things like that. And he did have a brief surge. There was one point where I think he was pretty safely established just kind of the fourth, you know, fourth candidate. But that didn't last long either. Kamala Harris hasn't been doing well. And, you know, Biden has loomed over the whole thing. But I think his his his lead has kind of been slowly diminishing. There's not a lot of dynamism to his campaign. And they're having to sort of keep him out of events and stuff. And actually in this last quarter, his fundraising numbers were really bad. So it does look like the debate is shaping up to be or the contest is shaping up to be one between Sanders and Warren. And I think what Warren's been able to do, and again, I'll qualify this by saying it is a somewhat partisan reading because I have pretty strong views about this. I think what warrants. Okay, good. I mean, I think I think what Warren's been able to do is, you know, she's been able to embrace parts of Sanders agenda and kind of campaign on them in a way which is more politically palatable to the and more rhetorically palatable palatable to, you know, the professional managerial class constituency that I think has been, you know, dominant in the Democratic Party since the early 90s and to all of the kind of the newspapers and the sort of big outlets of liberal liberal opinion. And I think I think. So I think she's I think her success is in some ways an expression of a contradiction. There's clearly a demand for transformative change. But there's also there are a lot of people who are very hesitant about embracing, you know, a version of it that I think many people in the US left would find sufficiently radical. And so Warren has actually emerged as a kind of compromise candidate that all these other people sort of tried and failed to be. Does it show opposite this to you actually? Does it does it show a victory for the left that Elizabeth Warren is the compromise candidate? I mean, because there's a sort of negative way of looking at it, which is sort of like, you know, Bernie got outflanked by someone who is much less anti-establishment than him, someone who's much less willing to take on the vested interests in the United States. But the fact that she's a compromise candidate, that's pretty they've done all right, right? I think like, I think if if Warren had been the candidate in 2016, that would have felt like a massive victory for the left. I mean, I would have been over the moon if she'd have been the candidate in 2016. So yes, I think definitely.  But it does kind of remind me of Ed Miliband becoming leader in the sense that like, when when Gordon Brown stepped down, there was a sense that there needed to be some sort of compromise with the left. And but the left also recognized that there needed to be a candidate that was electable. And so you ended up with Ed Miliband, who was like a kind of neither left nor right were happy with him, because he was either too left wing for some or too right wing for others. And I so I think like, she sort of reminds me, Warren reminds me of Ed Miliband in that respect, in the sense that it's like a candidate that neither the sort of socialists left or the center are happy with, but both will accept for the other one and both are kind of resentful about because they feel like the candidate has been imposed on them by the other faction. And I think like, she's also reminiscent of Ed Miliband's leadership in the sense that like, she wants to introduce progressive policies through the traditional structures of Washington, which I think have shown themselves to be, you know, through the kind of tinkerings of people like Mitch McConnell have shown themselves to be insufficient for a truly like transformative politics. And I think that will be difficult for her. I think if she wins, if she wins the candidacy, that's like, great for the left. And I think, thank God it won't be Biden, who I think would be absolutely destroyed by Trump. I think she has a shot. I'm also very partisan on this, and I don't think that she has as good a shot as Bernie at winning the states that she needs to win. And I think, you know, her support is very college educated, sort of urban support. And I just don't, I think those are not the people who are needed to win for the next election. She needs to present something that will actually make democratic voters get off their sofas and go to a polling station and vote. And that was what Hillary Clinton failed to do. Let's go to a clip.  So I can't really see him getting the nomination. So it does seem to be like an ideological battle between Warren and Bernie. Bernie obviously now has to try a little bit harder to distinguish himself from the rest of the race. It was easy to say how he was different to Hillary Clinton. Now he's got to make a slightly more nuanced argument about why people should choose him over Elizabeth Warren. He was asked that question, I think earlier in the week. So we're going to go to that clip now. So let me ask you, you and Elizabeth Warren have pretty close to identical positions on the big issues. What do you say to those who say they would pick her because she's eight years younger than you. She didn't just come through this. You didn't just have a heart attack. And look, in the positions, you're pretty much the same. Well, look, everybody, every American has got to make his or her own choice about the candidate that they want. And Elizabeth Warren has been a friend of mine for some 25 years. And I think she is a very, very good senator. But there are differences between Elizabeth and myself. Elizabeth, I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I'm not. I am, I believe, the only candidate who's going to say to the ruling class of this country, the corporate elite, enough enough with your greed and with your corruption, we need real change in this country. What did you think about that answer? Do you think he's pitched it correctly? He's saying, you know, what's different about me? Elizabeth Warren is a capitalist through her bones? I'm not. So I saw, I saw, I think Baskar, who's your publisher, saying on Twitter that this is theoretically quite a good answer. But to be honest, it's a little bit abstract. I don't think there are that many voters in the United States who say, well, I want to vote for someone who's not a capitalist. It's kind of abstract, right? So he has to explain, this is what Baskar's saying, he has to explain why it's only Bernie Sanders who can give you proper Medicare and who can give you proper, I don't know, a wage increase. It's housing a big issue there, I don't know. I interviewed Joshua Green for my book, who is Steve Bannon's biographer. He said that Americans, like, I think he was quoting from another article, or he was either talking about his own reporting, but he said that Americans have gone from being angry at Wall Street, to being angry at the government, to being angry at elites in general. And I think, like, that's something that Steve Bannon understood and felt, actually. And so was able to sort of project that. And I think that he sort of helped Trump over the line with that. So I think you're right, I would agree with you that it's not necessarily true to say that American voters are like, I want someone who isn't a capitalist.  So I can, you know, I think that's plausible. I mean, Warren also does a version of small people populism, right? How much does she talk about taking one of these? I mean, I think she definitely rhetorically embraces that language. But I think she, I mean, I think she does it a bit less. And I also think that in practice, she does it a bit less. I've actually got a Twitter thread of hers here that I think is pretty illustrative of the differences between her and Sanders. And, you know, for a lot of people who don't agree with what I think is basically the Jacobin pro-Bernie consensus around this, they look at Sanders' program and then they look at Warren's program and they see that there's a lot of overlap. And I think for a lot of people, the discussion kind of stops there. They think that, I mean, I don't want to put words in people's mouth, but it's my sense that a lot of people think that the distinction between someone who says I'm a capitalist and someone who says I'm a socialist when they have some policy overlap is basically a semantic one, particularly for the reasons you said, right? How many voters think idiomatically in those terms? But I do think Sanders and Warren have very different conceptions of power and they have very different political strategies. And that comes out in the versions of populism that both of them embrace. So Elizabeth Warren has a piece of legislation, a plan, I should say, called the Accountable Capitalism Act. And it's got lots of good stuff in it. It requires workers to elect 40% of the board, requires boards and executives to sell stocks, requires 75% of execs and shareholders' approval for political expenditures. This is a lot of good stuff in there. And the 40% one's quite big. I don't think the labor party have even put a number on that high. Yeah, and I think Bernie's just put out proposal where it's a little bit higher. But I love this arms race. It's like, we'll give them 40%, I'll give them 50%. You've got to be careful though with the workers on boards because I don't know about in the US where union density is very low. But in this country, like workers on boards can sometimes be used by companies to sort of elbow out the union. And so I think that's one thing I prefer to with Sanders over Warren is that he has been using his support base to gather support for like, yeah. And he also wants to repeal the, I can't remember what the legislation is called, I don't want to say Taft legislation, but I might be wrong about that. I can't remember what it's called. But basically, it's like the American anti-union legislation that doesn't allow things like solidarity strikes. So for me, that is where he's more socialist. Sorry, I interrupted you. That's okay. Well, I mean, so they, but again, they both have, they both have, they're both pitching plans to make it easier to join a union and things like that. But, you know, Bernie is actually using his list to direct supporters to pick at lines and things like that. Elizabeth Warren, I don't think has talked as much about the strike wave that's been happening in the United States. So that's, that's another distinction. But I just want to talk a bit about here about this, this, this Twitter thread that Warren did about accountable capitalism because it starts off pretty good. She says, year after year, corporate profits soar for executives and shareholders, but workers' wages barely budge. I'm reintroducing my accountable capitalism act to empower workers and help fix this fundamental problem with our economy. So it's not exactly Eugene Debs, but it's pretty good stuff. Now, a few more tweets down this thread. She says, 181 CEOs signed a biz round table non-binding pledge to account for workers and consumers in their decisions.  And she says, for most of America's history, when our companies did better, our workers did better, and America built a thriving middle class, the Accountable Capitalism Act will help realign our skewed market incentives so companies and workers can once do again well together. So this is a lot closer to a kind of language of liberal corporatism and one that, one that's aiming for, you know, kind of generously a kind of cross-class consensus. Whereas, you know, Sanders, if he was pitching, I mean, in many, in many respects, he's pitching these same proposals often a little more radical. But, but when he talks about them, he says things like, if there's going to be a class war in this country, it's time the working class started winning it. And again, a lot of commentators will look at this and they think that this is a real, this is a semantic distinction. And functionally, if they're, if they're running on similar agendas, there's no difference. And I disagree pretty strongly with that. And I mean, the other thing we might talk about, and I think you alluded to it, Michael is, is, or maybe it was you, Ellie, that the bases of support that both of them have at the moment are so different. Elizabeth Warren, I think, wins in every poll with people who make over $100,000 a year. You know, Bernie Sanders, I think it's in the single digits, the number of people who make that much who've donated his campaign. And the top three employers, by my last count of people donating to his campaign were, I think, Amazon, Walmart, and Starbucks. So these are people who are serving coffee. They're working behind counters. This this is the working class. And I think that a transformative policy agenda has a much better chance of succeeding if it's being carried out with, you know, the agency of those people, rather than as part of a something that is, you know, heavily based in the professional managerial class, which I think really needs to be that's a section of the democratic base that really needs to be antagonized if any of this stuff is ever going to have a chance of getting, of getting through Congress. Is there a chance that the polls are misleading us? So if you think about the fact that Elizabeth Warren's, I mean, we know this, that Elizabeth Warren's support base is more educated, more middle class, more, I suppose they're both urban, but different areas. There was that great map, which showed that where each of them were getting their donations from, and Bernie Sanders was getting the most donations in nearly every part of America, apart from a particular part of New York, which was Warren and a particular part of Washington, which was Buttigieg. And then I think Klobuchar from whatever her state was, Minnesota. Yeah. So the question was, if Bernie Sanders more working class support base means that there might be an electoral shock or an electoral surprise in the same way that I suppose we were talking about Brexit earlier, one reason why there was a big shock when Brexit one is because they're the type of people who are less likely to appear in opinion polls, but might turn out on the day. So could we see an upset and Bernie actually wins this one? I mean, I'd like to think so. I mean, I do think that there are, you know, despite his poll numbers not having moved too much, and despite Warren undeniably, I think surging ahead of both him and Biden, I mean, he has received more individual donations. I mean, he's breaking, he's breaking records. And as you alluded to, there's that map that just showed he's strong all over the country. He's getting money from, from everywhere. And I think his, his strategy is premised on pretty heavily on bringing people in to vote who've been really, who've been disengaged with the political process. I mean, voter turnout in the United States is terrible. And when you look at the, I wrote, I wrote an essay a few weeks ago about non-voters.  I mean, they do tilt much lower income. And when you poll them on why they don't vote, they do say it's because I'm not, I'm not represented. There's nothing, there's nothing for me to vote for. And I think Sandra's strategy understands that and is very actively engaged in trying to bring lower income people and non-voters into the process. And when pollsters do these analyses, I mean, my understanding is a lot of their calculations are based on past trends, which demographics have turned up before and things like that. And so I think that Sanders may have support this not being captured in some of these polls. I'd certainly like to think so. I want to go to another clip. So this is a clip that went completely viral, I think, about a week ago. It was Elizabeth Warren in the, I think it was an LGBTQ town hall. There was actually, unfortunately, we haven't shown that clip, but there was a Joe Biden moment where he says, there's people in the bathhouses having orgies in San Francisco. I don't know, it's a very strange thing for this. Oh, did you remember the clip? I confess, I didn't see this. It must have happened once over here. I should have put it in the script. I'll tweet it after this show. It's very funny. In any case, Elizabeth Warren gave this response, which was where many people in Britain sort of I saw lots of people from the BBC sort of tweeting it saying, God, she's good. Like, yeah, she can win. And I kind of watched it and I wasn't that sure, but I'm interested to see what you both think about it. So can we get that clip of Elizabeth Warren, please? Let's say you're on the campaign trail and you're approached. You have a supporter approaches you and says, Senator, I am old fashioned and my faith teaches me that marriages between one man and one woman, what is your response? Well, I'm going to assume it's a guy who said that and I'm going to save them just marry one woman. I'll find one. I kind of thought it was a flop. I mean, it reminded me of Hillary Clinton's deplorable comment because it's sort of just like dismissing a vast wave of the American population, which is a kind of weird thing to do if you're running for president. Also, the fact that the question did that kind of accent, I thought was a little bit weird. But I do value success and the fact that it's been viewed 12 million times on YouTube, mainly by people sharing it, you know, saying this was such a great burn, has made me think maybe it was a good answer. I don't know. What do you think, Ellie? I'm scared that I'm going to get cancelled for saying this. Someone sent it to me being like, this is great. And I, my first thought was she's going to lose the election. And the reason that I thought that is because it's not because I think, like, I mean, obviously I don't think that any politician anywhere ever should ever express or pander to in any way, homophobic opinions. And obviously that that's not what I think. And I also don't think that, you know, the voters that Trump won over Clinton in, like, Rust Belt States are like, just de facto homophobic because they happen to be like blue color. Like that's also not what I'm saying. I'm just, my, my feeling, my anxiety about it is that it just seems a little bit smarty pants. It just seems a bit kind of like, well, I mean, I'm, you know, the fact that I'm saying this is quite astonishing, really. But like, it was just like the, the kind of inherent like manhating in it. Like, well, I'm going to assume it's a man that's got that shitty opinion.  Also, like, when, when I'm like getting drunk with my female friends, like, I'm kind of, you say all sorts of things about homosexuals. Yeah.  Like, you know, when I'm getting drunk with my female friends, like obviously we will like make a lot of salty comments about men, of course. But just like, I don't know. Like, I just sort of think if I was like a man living in one of those states and you have this kind of like, apparently like wealthy woman, sort of just being a little bit smarty pants about it and then like just dropping in that kind of manhating comment, like it's just a Harvard law professor saying, if you can get a woman, yeah, it's just a bit like, who are you appealing to? Like, I feel like you're going to appeal to people who already vote for you.  But I just, it was just the attitude of it that I like, it reminded me of Hillary Clinton, this idea that like this kind of privileged, like wealthy, kind of upper middle class woman is like somehow, I don't know, like somehow kind of in some way part of the oppressed and the men of the oppressors. And that's what, what, like, is that what we're going to sell? Is that what like they're going to sell? And like, she is going to sell to people who live in former coal countries in America? I mean, yeah, it just made me kind of nervous. Luke, what did you think about the clip? And also, are you worried that Elizabeth Warren could do a Hillary Clinton campaign, Mark II? I mean, I have an alternate, but I think equally cynical reading of it, which is, comes from a fairly, perhaps dubious source, which is the Washington Free Beacon. That's the best kind of source. Yeah. And the headline here is CNN failed to disclose Warren Town Hall questioner was maxed out donor. So people can, people can look that up. Apparently, allegedly, Morgan Cox, the questioner has, has donated a lot to Elizabeth Warren. But I think for me, watching the clip again, I mean, it does, it does seem a little canned. I mean, perhaps, perhaps partisanship is clouding my, my judgment here. But, but yeah, I don't, I don't think, I don't think Warren is, I mean, she's, there are maybe people that want to compare to Hillary Clinton and I would, I would distance myself from, from that and that I mean, she's clearly, her politics are clearly, you know, significantly to the left of Hillary Clinton's, Hillary Clinton's politics, I think, were often very hard to, to nail down. Warren does have particular concerns that she's been very consistent on at least since she's been in, in politics in as long as she's been a Democrat. But, which isn't that long, which isn't that long, it's true.  But perhaps that was a little below the belt. But, again, a caveat, usual caveats about partisanship, clouding my judgment. But I mean, I think there is a sense in which a clip like this does have a kind of Hillary Clinton campaign energy to, to it, to me, or not the clip itself, but the sort of viral quality of it and how it was received. I think that I'm, I'm obviously a lot more comfortable with the program that Warren's running on than the one Clinton was running on, which was, I think, pretty openly contemptuous, not just of the socialist left, but of the, of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. I mean, I think it was very much a center right kind of campaign. But I think, given how kind of professional and managerial a lot of Warren's most enthusiastic support is, things like this, you know, the good things Warren is running on the side, things like this do have a slight vibe of, you know, the birth of another sort of middle-class personality cult, right?  And I think that, to say the least, is a, is not a good analysis of, of, of, how, how change has worked historically or how it could possibly work in America in, in 2019. I think she's like, got substance and that, that differentiates her from Clinton though. Some data that showed that Clinton spoke more about herself and less about policy than any other candidate for which like those records exist. Wow. That's amazing. Because it was all about, I'm the most qualified woman ever to be United States president, but she didn't have any policies. Whereas Warren's got a plan for everything. There's a paper that I will send you the link to if you want to tweet along and put like on the YouTube with the show, but like it, it's sort of, that's what it said. And the other thing that it mentioned as well actually is, as you were saying earlier that Bernie's donations from small donors is actually like unprecedented, unprecedented in 2016. So I think like, you know, Clinton's whole, like apparently one of the slogans they were thinking of coming they were thinking of using for Clinton before they settled on. I'm with her was hashtag it's her turn. So the Clinton's whole campaign was like, coordinate me. That was, that was her, that was her message to America. I deserve this, coordinate me. Whereas Warren has substance, you know, she's, she's talk, she's making arguments. She has policies. She has ideas. And, you know, and I think that gives her a better shot than Biden against Trump. And it certainly gives her a much better shot against Clinton. But you know, as you say, it is this kind of like middle class personality cult. That makes me really anxious, because there are a lot of Americans who feel very excluded by that who need to vote for this person, who didn't vote for Clinton, Democratic voters who didn't vote for Clinton, and they need to feel, they need to feel like it's worth them going and voting for this person.


Alright so let's talk about what a layer 4 lucid dream is. This is the one of the highest levels of lucid dream that you can actually attain and it has some distinct differences between layer 3 and layer 2. So firstly let's just recap. Layer 1 is just the base level you're just having a normal dream. Layer 2 is where you're semi-lucid so you're sort of aware that you're dreaming but you're not really in control of what you're doing. Okay and then layer 3 is where you're having a normal lucid dream so you're dreaming, you're aware of the facts that it's not real and you're able to sort of decide what you do. By the way before we get on with this video please just go ahead and subscribe it'll take two seconds and then you'll get all the updates for my future videos. Like I said I'm doing daily videos now so you really don't want to miss these. Anyway on with the video. Now layer 4 is where you're lucid, you're in control, you're aware that it's a dream and you're at a higher level of control and there's not really a sort of linear way of deciding whether you're actually a layer 3 or a layer 4.  So for example with the layer 3 you might be lucid but then you might lose lucidity. That can still happen. Whereas with layer 4 it's a much more stable experience. Layer 4 lucid dreams are very sort of rock solid and stable. You're not going to likely wake up from a layer 4 unless you want to or unless you know you've had a very long time in the dream. Whereas with the layer 3 lucid dream you can be you know aware of the facts you're dreaming but then you could wake up. You could excite yourself or get carried away. So like I said layer 4 you're not going to likely wake up unless you choose to. It's not the sort of layer where you would be distracted or you'd have sex because you know that these things would wake you up and distract you and collapse the dream. Okay so in layer 3 you can be lucid, you can be aware, you can be in control but you will tend to do low level things in layer 3.  Nothing you're trying to achieve. It's more just sort of about the feeling of the dream which is fine. Like there's nothing wrong with that at all. It's actually really good. It's a good experience but layer 4 is what you should strive for. Layer 4 and above. So layer 4 you want to be when you're in a layer 4 dream you're going to be focusing on the more profound aspects.  This is where you'll be in a stable dream and you'll talk to your fears or you'll talk to your subconscious mind because at this level because it's so stable and it's less likely to collapse you're going to be able to interact with your subconscious mind in a way that you never could in layer 3 lucid dream. And to be honest with you layer 4 is what we should all be aiming for. This is the holy grail of lucid dream. This is where the most work happens and the most results happen. All of these benefits that you've been hearing about where you can you know there are two types of lucid dream benefits okay. Two reasons why people want to lucid dream.  And then you've got the other type of experiences which is the more personal and inward journeys the more profound meaningful and spiritual journey things like overcoming your fears talking to parts of your subconscious mind you know connecting with lost loved ones traveling to different places talking to your subconscious as I said interacting with the dream itself and actually working on various aspects of your psyche okay. This is what you achieve in layer 4. You don't do this in layer 3 because in layer 3 it's not stable enough. So if you're in layer 3 and you're just normally lucid there are a few things you can do to get to layer 4. So firstly you've got stabilization you can do things like spinning around on the spot like meditating in the dream itself like gathering Chi energy. You can do things like rubbing your hands together. You can also use dream commands. So this is a dream command is where you actually shout out to the dream itself and you say things like increase lucidity or make this dream more stable. Now these are dream commands that are very simple to shout out but you must really expect them to work in order for them to actually do anything. So you need to really expect that when you say increase lucidity the dream is actually going to respond and it's going to change the dream experience and the dream scene and that is how you go from layer 3 to layer 4. Just by doing these techniques and these you know doing these stabilization methods you're going to go from one lucid dreaming layer right to the next layer. You don't need to practice this outside of that you just need to become lucid and then when you're lucid tell yourself right I need to stabilize this in order to go deeper in order to go into a layer 4 lucid dream. Now a layer 5 lucid dream is something that I really want to make an entirely new video about but just to sort of set the tone for it just to get you prepared right for what you're going to need to do to get to a layer 5. You really need to be building the basics into your routine. You need to be meditating for at least 10 minutes a day. At this level you need to be meditating. You also need to be writing your dreams down every morning. You also need to be doing reality texts during the day but beyond all of that you need to be doing a holistic sort of self-development routine. You need to be focused on what you want to do in life. You need to have some sort of goals some sort of passion about something that's going to drive you to do things. You also need to be eating healthily and sleeping right. These sound like simple things but you'd be surprised how many people don't do these things and still expect to have these profound life-changing lucid dreaming experiences when their sleep tools screwed up or they don't eat the right food or you know whatever they take drugs or whatever. So in order to go into a layer 5 lucid dream I'm going to make another video about it like I said but just try and prepare yourself mentally and physically for some deeper level of experience. This is going to be much more profound than any of the other layers combined. A layer 5 lucid dream and beyond is really serious stuff. This is where you're directly interacting with your subconscious mind in a way that will actually change your mind and the way you think. It's not to be messed around with or taken lightly. So make sure that if you are going to go beyond the layer 4 or even the layer 3 actually just be prepared for it. Be wary of the fact that you are interacting directly with your mind. You are potentially changing your fundamental beliefs and your thoughts and the things that make up who you are you're going to be actually interacting with these things on a direct sort of one to one level. Anyway so to recap a layer 4 you're lucid but you're much more stable. You're in control but you're not being distracted by things that would collapse the dream. So in a nutshell that means you're not really doing things like having sex or running around or fighting. You're doing more profound calm and relaxed things because you know that this is how you stay lucid for longer.


Hi everyone. I'm Beth Daley. I'm the editor and general manager of The Conversation. If you don't know what The Conversation is, we are a non-profit independent news outlet that sits at the juncture of academia in journalism. And if you imagine our newsroom, our reporters are all the academics across America who work with our editors to translate their research into digestible journalism that then goes out to over a thousand news outlets every month. So that's us. I'm just so pleased today. I've been excited for this webinar the whole week. It's something that's near and dear to my heart as a woman leader. And the women we're going to meet today are just so incredible. And the title of our webinar, Women's Transformative Power in Higher Education and Beyond, is fascinating. We're going to learn so much. So I'm going to jump right into introductions and then I'll talk a little bit about the book that brought us all here today. And I'll explain a little bit more. So without further ado, let me first introduce Michelle Ozumba. Michelle Ozumba is the principal and founder of Michelle Ozumba and Associates, a consulting firm which helps organizations develop effective programs through adverse diversity, equity and inclusion. She's a former president of Women's College Coalition and the past CEO of the Women's Funding Network, a global philanthropic organization. There's a lot more to tell about Michelle and all these women. The other thing I will say that Michelle is a conversation board member and a mentor of mine. And I'm just so incredibly grateful for her insights and wisdom helping us on so many ways, especially and including our diversity initiative here at the conversation. So welcome, Michelle. Next, I'm just so pleased to introduce Carol Christ, the 11th chancellor and the former executive vice chancellor and provost of the University of California Berkeley. I knew her being in Massachusetts because she was the former president of Smith College from 2002 to 2013, probably. And I have many friends and many people who went there and just loved it there because of your leadership there. Before that, she was a professor of English and an administrator at Berkeley for more than three decades. She's an advocate for quality, accessible public higher education, a proponent for the value of liberal arts in a broad education and a real leader and champion on women's issues and diversity on college campuses. So welcome, Carol. Again, your bio is too long to fully go. And lastly, I'm just so pleased to introduce the president of Oberlin College, Carmen Tully Amber. She's an attorney and academic and the current president, obviously, of Oberlin College in Ohio. She began there in 2017. And prior to that, she had been the ninth woman to lead Douglas College and was also dean of Douglas College and also was president of Cedar Crest College, if I have that right, Carmen. She holds a bachelor's degree in foreign service from Georgetown and master's degree in public administration from Princeton, a JD from Columbia, I think, many degrees. And we're just so pleased for you all to join us today. Your schedules are busy, your lives are busy, and we're just so, so happy to have you. And we're here really because of this book that Michelle, Carmen and Carol edited. It's amazing. It's junctures in women leadership, junctures in women's leadership around higher education. And it's a fascinating look at 12 case studies of women written by leaders themselves, often looking at a moment in time of a problem, a juncture, a challenge and how they resolved it. And how that changed institution. And it runs the gamut of leaders at public universities, private, urban, I'm forgetting all the other ones, but it's very broad and it's a fascinating read. So without further ado, Michelle, I'm gonna jump in if that's okay with you. And I prepared a few questions for you. And the first one I have is, tell us about the 12 stories in the book that were selected. I'm sure there are many other women you could have highlighted. And each essay is really powerful. Can you talk a little about the process? Thank you, Beth. And I'm really thrilled to be here. So thank you for the opportunity. Before I tell you about the stories in the women profile, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the other contributors to these chapters, because in addition to Carol, Carmen and myself, we have nine women who are themselves stellar leaders in higher ed and researchers who brought their skills and their insights and their passions to this project. So really, when you go through the book in addition to the women who are being profiled in each chapter, the bios of the writers and the contributors are very compelling as well. So I just want to thank and acknowledge all of them. And to also give tribute to the late Alison Bernstein, who was the visionary for this whole series, and looking at women's leadership in a diversity of sectors. And so we want to thank the Institute of Women's Leadership at Rutgers and Rutgers University Press for really including an opportunity to feature women leaders in higher ed. So with that, the 12 stories, I mean, they are compelling. And I want to start by the first chapter is Bernice Sandler. And Bernice unfortunately passed away a few months before publication. But in many ways, even though she wasn't a university president, she really was the pathway for a lot of the women who are featured in the book because of her work on Title IX. And what inspired her, what really inspired, but what ignited her was when she got her PhD, she was a part-time lecturer. And there were seven open, full-time positions in her department and none of which she was considered. So she asked a male colleague, you know, why wasn't she considered for at least one of them?  And so after sort of crying and beating herself up for saying, yeah, maybe I talked too much, she then kind of doubled down and really began a really amazing creative and impassioned advocacy campaign and research into and introduced a whole idea of sex discrimination. And what she discovered by looking at the civil rights movement in terms of racial discrimination, she discovered that in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even though it mentioned no discrimination on sex, race, religion and so on, it excluded educational institutions. And so that really was the opening that she saw to bring forward what ended up between 1969 and signed in 1972 by President Nixon was the Title IX Act, which was an amendment to the civil rights legislation. So that groundbreaking work sort of opens the door for this whole conversation around gender equity, as well as racial equity in higher ed. So the book really features women who brought their individual diversity, as well as institutional diversity. We feature women who are leading, leading private and public research universities, community colleges, there's an HBCU, there are women's colleges, there are private liberal arts colleges. So the institutional diversity was important, as well as their individual path journeys to those positions of leadership. So there, of course, there are lots of women, 12 is just a snap profile. But I think what these women, what their careers gave us an opportunity to do was really hone in on women who came to their positions at a time of transformation and challenge and and really they give examples of what it means to manage complex systems and what it means to prioritize examples of what it takes to to create a unified purpose when there's competing interests, competing challenges, and a diversity of stakeholders, which Carmen and Carol know all too well in their own roles. So that's really in a nutshell about the 12 stories. And you know, there's Juliet Garcia, who was the first Mexican American woman to lead a community college become president. And she really did an amazing job out in Texas, with a creative partnership, Judith Shapiro, who who carved out Bernard's identity really stood to keep it as independent from Columbia, even though it's a sister school, the Columbia University, Geneta Cole, who became our first sister president, you know, and put Spelman on the top as a number one HBCU in the country that continues to hold that spot today, how many years later. So there's just a lot of really rich, compelling, interesting stories that I think anyone who picks up the book will find some inspiration and models of leadership there. Yeah, it's fascinating. Before I ask, I have a couple of follow up questions, but I should do some housekeeping. We have a Q&A, I see people already populating questions. One that Michelle, you might know is someone is asking if there's a way to have an audio for the book. I don't know if you know that answer or not, but we will get that answer if you don't know it. I don't know that we have an audio version, we don't have an audio version of the book. I mean, we can check back with the publisher, but to date, it's available on Amazon just as a print copy. Okay, absolutely. And we'll be sharing how to get the book at the end of the webinar for sure, because I'm seeing other people ask that same question. And so after I'm done asking Michelle some questions, and Michelle will have a conversation with Carol and Carmen, I'll jump back in and start fielding our audience questions, which are already coming in, fast and furious.  Did that come about purposefully, or was it when you were editing the books that these themes emerged? Well, it was sort of purposefully in looking at them all together. And of course, these categories are not mutually exclusive. You could take a leader like a, like a genetic and put her in structural and cultural and social, you know, and that's the same for a lot of them. But what what the idea was was to create a design to provide a framework for analyzing the context of their leadership decisions, and really help bring some context to the challenges they were faced to what their particular juncture was, and what the impact was on their decision, what the major impact was of their decision making on the institution. And so if you look at these culture, social and structural, you could say, okay, Juliet Garcia was very much structural, putting the unique partnership together of the university, partnering with a community college to create a pathway for her largely Latina students going having an opportunity for four year education without having to travel 250 miles. So it was a very courageous thing she did. Again, I would say Judith Shapiro was more structural in terms of what it took to create Bernard's independence. And I say genetic holds social because if you read her chapter, she talks about having to sort of pay attention to southernness, and what that meant in terms of being relational and accessible, and demystifying the idea of being president, because that's how you kind of build trust. And she hadn't lived in the south, except for the year she spent it to, I believe, to the left of the undergraduate she went to in the south. But anyway, so I feel she was social in sort of us, the way her personality and her compelling draw that she had with all kinds of people really pulls Spelman into this really amazing social attribute to the whole country. It wasn't just here in Atlanta. So those are just some examples of that framework of culture, social and structural. So fascinating. So I'm going to let you talk to your co editors now and sort of jump in and I'll come back with audience questions. I do want to I will put the name of the book in the chat. Some people have asked about that already. But I'll let, well, actually, I do have one more question to sell because I'd love for you to tell us just sort of briefly story of Molly Corbett Broad. It would be fascinating, the first woman to lead the University of North Carolina and president of the American Council of Education. Would you you tell us about her and where her strengths come? Sure. Well, Molly Broad came to UNC Chapel Hill to lead the University as the first woman, the first non North Carolinian and the first Catholic person to head this major public institution in North Carolina. And I would say what inspired her was really both of her parents were school teachers, not very well off. And she had one cousin who went to Syracuse and that's what she knew she wanted to do was go to Syracuse. And her father said he couldn't afford it. But luckily for her, she she managed to be such an outstanding student, she got a full scholarship to attend. And so she really started her higher education career at Syracuse and later came back to start her administrative career at Syracuse after she got married and headed up some major administrative positions there. And then she left to go to head up and become CEO at University of Arizona. And from Arizona, she was recruited to become the senior vice chancellor of California State University. And from there she was recruited to UNC. And California State, I believe had 23 campuses. So one of the reasons she really was desired at UNC because UNC has 16 campuses and a very, very diverse campuses, five of which are historically black college campuses. There's one campus that's primarily for Native Americans in North Carolina. And then of course you have UNC Chapel Hill, the flagship. And so she brought her experience with managing multiple complex institutional higher ed institutions to UNC. And her major initiative was something called the Focus Growth Initiative. And what she did was there were amongst the 16 campuses, there was such a disparity between all the assets and infrastructure at UNC Chapel Hill and the other 15 campuses spread out across the state. And after putting together a committee to study infrastructure needs, she came up with a plan that called for an investment of $6 billion to try to bring some parity to infrastructure and across the campus wide, across the university wide. And this was also because she looked at some of the campuses, for example, couldn't take more students because they didn't have the capacity. But enrollment was being projected to increase by 30-some percent over a certain period of time. And so she saw the need to really, she was looking ahead at what the needs were to meet the changing demographics of the state. She also, as an economist, saw the university as an economic driver for the state's economy because North Carolina had moved from being agricultural-based to being biomedical, technology, and so on research-based. And so we know the research triangle market that's there. And she saw that. And so anyway, she was able to bring together unlikely allies, all right? Between Jesse Holmes, Helms at the time, and African American elected officials, they were able to actually agree on the need for high-quality education across the state. So she was succeeded in getting a bond measure passed, not for $6 billion, but for $3 billion. And the other smart thing she did was extend it to community colleges. So $2.5 billion went to the university systems. And the remaining money about I think it was $6 million went to the 59 community colleges in the state. And so she was able to really involve the community, parents and people in barbershops and hair salons who all share this aspiration for their children's higher education to build the public support that was needed to get the bond approval and elected officials. So it passed. And that was her signature major defining this, I would say policy and experience at UNC that brought about the most example of what it took to build a unified purpose across a wide constituency of stakeholders, what it meant to be participatory in her leadership by really bringing in people from the community, bringing in faculty and so on to be part of the decision making and a very smart media messaging campaign to really build public will. So she was there for eight years and then went on to become the first woman president of ACE, the Association of Higher Education Council. And so her career basically is really her leadership in higher ed administration across the board. I'm sorry, I was going to feed back a little bit. I apologize. It's so interesting to really speak to this idea of, I mean, being so thoughtful about how you're building support for such a transformational change such as that. So yeah, this is a great example. So now I really, I'm going to duck out and I'll be back in a little bit with audience questions, please write your questions in the Q and A preferably everyone and I'll see you in a bit. So Michelle, it's back to you. Thank you, Beth. I'm going to start with talking with Carmen first about her chapter on Ruth Simmons and Carmen, nice to see you. Ruth Simmons story is both compelling and inspirational for many reasons. And would you, as the first African-American person to head up Ivy League University, can you sort of briefly give us the highlights of her story? Right. So Ruth Simmons is certainly an inspiration to many, many folks, but certainly to Black leaders in higher education. I think that she really stands out as someone that many of us look to. She was born in 1945. And so that gives you a sense of the era that she was born in that very much impacted her growing up in the sort of Jim Crow south in Houston. And Jim Crow across the country really, but we'll call it Jim Crow south for the purpose of this conversation. She was the youngest of 12 children. She was the daughter of sharecroppers. And that sort of background very much influenced her. She was farming early on in her career, but they, the family moved to the fifth ward in Houston and dealt with all of the sort of segregation and Jim Crow issues that were a part of our country at the time. And that is very much important to her authentic self. She talks about it a lot when she talks about how she thinks about her work in higher ed. She still, she retired and she came back out and has been doing great things down in Houston right now and went her career through USC, Princeton, Spellman in terms of leadership roles and Smith as well. A lot of women's colleges connections here on this screen and through many of the women in these roles and then came to be the first African American leader of Brown. I think it's interesting that when you ask her the thing that she is the most signature part of her career, it would not be what we're going to talk about right now. She talks about the decision to help Brown be a place that meets full need is probably her most signature achievement. But this formation of this steering committee on slavery and justice is what people talk about a lot and it's in part because remember she's doing that 20 years ago in 2003. Those headlines seem somewhat interesting to us now, but she was really at the front line of this discussion about how do you redress an institution's past and the committee was formed to look at Brown's role in the slave trade. It was controversial because the community had had this kind of a call over it in believing that the institution had no role in the slave trade and yet there were pockets who felt strongly that there was and there hadn't really been any investigation of it and so she formed this committee to do it. One of the things I thought was interesting, I'm sure Carol will appreciate this. So those of us who are college presidents know that the measures of our success are things like fundraising admissions, curricular issues, faculty awards, salary, all those strategic planning and so I thought it was fascinating. She does this in her first year or so at Brown and I ask her why did you choose to use your political capital for that and it was interesting to me because as presidents we only have so much political capital and typically we want to use that political capital on those things that people measure our success by and there was nothing really visible in the choice to form this committee that could lead a direct line to those things that we are quote unquote measured by and so I just thought it was a fact like wow and all of her colleagues and friends thought it was a disaster meaning her decision to do it, thought it would ruin her career, thought she'd be run out of breath when she decided to do it and so the interesting thing about her are all the discussions that we had about how you make decisions at the leader, about what helps you think have clarity about the choices that you make, about how you bring your authentic stuff to your leadership and that's what makes this story interesting. They formed the committee, ultimately it's a success, many wonderful new initiatives come from that work when she's asked this to be published, she's spoken at the United Nations, at Goldman Sachs, at so many places about this specific choice and it makes her compelling in some ways. Yes and what word comes to mind when I think of what you just described is courage, the courage that it took to do something that no one thought of and what it led to subsequently in more recent years right in terms of reckoning our history with what we're dealing with today and you could look at what is it George Washington University in D.C. and what they're doing with the ancestors. Well you could look at almost every institution is thinking about these issues. Ruth just did it 20 years earlier which feels very much like Ruth for those of us who know her so the other thing I would say about her is you know when I wish oftentimes I say this when I talk about Ruth and we did a transcript of her of my conversation with her I had two really significant conversations with her and I almost wish we could just do a book that just put that interview in it because there's so many jewels dropped but I will remember that one of the things she said to me that I've taken to heart in my own leadership but I was just beginning my presidency at Oberlin when I was interviewing her and she said to me it didn't feel bold it just felt right and it's something that I keep on my mind a lot because she talks about just trying to do the right thing as a leader and moving away from this natural desire to try to please people which she views as a futile attempt and so what you should really do is try to do the right thing and so all through this chapter you see her tapping into her kind of authentic self and by the end of this chapter she gives some advice to all of us about what we bring to the table as leaders and that notion of who we are is exactly what people are looking for in leadership and coming to accept that as a leader as an important part of our think of her success. And so you know leading with conviction is another way to kind of think about what that means in terms of the courage it takes to kind of do something that's quote unpopular but driven by your instinctive sense of doing what is right. Can I ask you Carmen this may not be a fair question but given that profile of Ruth Simmons and what you just said about leadership is there anything you can share during your tenure at Oberlin that's challenged that part of your leadership? So we began at Oberlin thinking about how we were responding to the changing landscape of prior education and how it's impacting small private liberal arts colleges right people questioning our value questioning our costs questioning all aspects of who we are and at Oberlin we had to do the work of starting to rethink ourselves and so I too sort of put together this large group to help us sort of assess how we were doing our work it was not without controversy people's questions about that and what was great for me was that I was interviewing Ruth right as I was doing that and one of the things she said to me it was controversial when it began here at Oberlin and one of the things I'll never forget that she said to me is things how things begin and people's upset and angst as things began oftentimes have no comparison to how things end and so it was a reminder to me that people's angst and upset it doesn't mean that Ruth didn't pay attention to people's concern she's a collaborative leader and she's very interested in people's perspective but it's not upset that bothers her and I needed that at the time to know that that's not how you judge whether this is the right thing to do or not people's upset doesn't mean you don't respond to it and so you know I think the thing I was saying about Ruth that I have come to appreciate now I'm in my I don't even know what year I'm in in higher ed but I've been a college president maybe this is my 13th year and one of the things she said to me that I think those of us in leadership have to come to at some point and she's squarely there now is that she said I came to trust myself and to trust my leadership and one of the things I think that women in particular um have to work towards because we have all sorts of things in society that sometimes encourage us not to trust ourselves uh is to come to trust your leadership now she had some evidence which she can use to trust herself right how she made decisions but she was saying that to me in the context of a question I had for her about how she might have handled this situation when she was younger in leadership versus how she handled it now and so this ability to learn how to trust yourself in leadership is I think part of the work that we're all are striving towards and figuring out what markers help you trust yourself you know how do you gather data how do you put the right people around you how do you think about decisions so that by the time you get to a certain level in your leadership um as I say to my team all the time it's not so much that I always feel totally confident about the decision I've made but I'm pretty confident about the process I go through that make decisions and that's what gives me confidence in the decision uh and so our route is um you know just an example to us all of how to take your authentic self onto the table um and to trust yourself in the leadership role you're in thank you excellent advice uh thank you Carmen I'm going to now turn to Carol hi Carol hi and um your chapter was on Hannah Gray with as when she was doing her time when she was president of University Chicago and very intriguing story given what she inherited when she stepped into that role so tell us a bit about her story and her journey to to leadership yeah this has been such a fascinating conversation because each of these case studies provides so many lessons in leadership and the lessons and leadership that I took from Hannah Gray's story with following first of all how important it is to understand the landscape generally of higher education one of the things Hannah said to me in our interview which was so interesting is she said the temptation when you come in as president is to try to fix everything that's wrong immediately and she said you have to be selective about your issues and picking well depends both on understanding the landscape in higher education and also really understanding the institution that you're leading so you're looking for this conjunction of an issue that's significant in the larger world of higher education but is particularly relevant to the historical moment when you're leading the institution and Hannah Gray um became president of the University of Chicago in the early 1970s this was not a good time for higher education it was a time of stagflation the University of Chicago had declining enrollments it was in financial trouble so and but what she decided through this kind of double lens she had was on the one hand um that she felt graduate education really needed rethinking at the University of Chicago and secondly she wasn't convinced that the undergraduate program the graduate program and professional school programs were uh were were ideally in balance the way she went about you know these are fundamental institutional changes and um institutional changes in areas where the faculty usually thinks that they are entitled to make the decisions and the way she went about it was really really interesting I say the various ingredients of it were first of all she selected two outstanding leaders on the faculty to lead two task forces to come up with recommendations and reports and secondly she communicated she communicated she communicated she had lots of conversations with individual faculty with groups of faculty she used every organ of communication that was available to her and she also really used the understood and used the governance structures of the University so she changed the University of Chicago profoundly but it was hardly by coming in the first day and saying I know what's wrong but that that's the way it is it's a the process of universities are very complex organizations and the authority tends to be really distributed so if you want to create major change you have to be able to to to get people to to join your parade and actually think they're leading your parade is the best way thank you and you know when I read your chapter and and she said they didn't even have a budget to the office when she took over that's a huge question yeah and then also what impressed me with her story is that she actually began with questions she didn't come in with answers that's right and sort of you know and I looked at her when I thought about the uh the different categories I saw her as as one a great example of structural and cultural because she so much was a believer in the culture of University of Chicago in terms of the independence of the faculty the real rigorous attention to rigor and in academic in the academic life and she didn't want to lose that but at the same time when you talk about the model of that she put in place for graduate education in particular that became a national model that's very much a structural change so she kind of had this intersection of both the culture that she wanted to protect and preserve and also change the structure but retain that culture so I saw that as really what what stood out to me as her her major contribution and her juncture so um yeah and um the other thing that came across was she said that there was a lot of time when people would approach her as you know being a woman how does she respond to this propensity to just identify her basis of her gender as opposed to her skills I she really didn't like that she said people are much more interested in my gender than they are my ideas about higher education but I have a kind of funny story to tell that I told in the in the in the chapter Hannah Gray was born in Germany she was the child of German Jewish refugee parents they fled Germany first to the UK and then to the United States where her father finally wound up teaching at Yale and she grew up in a house of a Jewish immigrant you know Jewish refugee mostly academics and so she's fast forward many years she becomes the president of the University of Chicago and her inauguration the chair of the board of trustees says and now I am so excited to present to you the very first president of the University of Chicago who big pause was born in another country yes yes because I'm sure everybody was expecting the first woman right yeah right so uh yeah that's intriguing because you know when they when Allison conceived conceptualized this series it wasn't so much sort of down that rabbit hole of oh the difference that women are as leaders in terms of biological differences or whatever but really just trying to really create a platform for us to distill those qualities of leadership that these women these leaders who happen to be women bring to their institutions in higher ed that really have been these 12 profiles each of them really really demonstrates uh even though they tell the stories that weren't so successful but they did have success in their major junctures of decision making that any leader would be challenged to succeed in I mean universities are a business model that is so complex I don't know how you all do your jobs and come here smiling like this in the midst of of what's going on around in the in the whole sector right now so it's just an amazing both uh Ruth Simmons story and Hannah's story as as a child of immigrants uh are fascinating in their pathway to get to leadership too like where they started and um I don't know if you want to uh Carmen you mentioned it earlier about uh the influence of um of uh of of Ruth's upbringing as a parent sharecropping and how that inspired her doggedness about education and Carol likewise Hannah came from immigrant family obviously was educated and privileged in many ways uh but she came to a university that was totally in shambles almost at a time and she had to call on other skills not just her academic brilliance but really these interpersonal skills that are so much a part of what it takes to be have success as a leader in any any any sector yeah I don't know if any of you all want to comment on any of that before we actually uh just um just one thing I I this is also a theme in this conversation um Hannah attributes a lot of her leadership and her achievement to having gone to Brynmore a women's college and that's right and one that took women's aspirations for graduate degrees very seriously she also had as Ruth Simmons had varied institutional experience she was dean at Northwestern she was provost at Yale uh she originally was a faculty member at the University of Chicago and comes back to be president so um I I think that multiple institutional contexts give give give people perspective and experience that helps them make the decisions yeah and I think Ruth would say that that is certainly important part of her own sort of framing of her own leadership I also think that Ruth talks she doesn't use this term it's a term that I use but I I'll just say it in her stead this sort of outsider's integrity I think that sometimes comes when you are a person who has been left outside the system sometimes in particular ways and so oftentimes these women um were through their upbringing or other things were not in the system and they bring a kind of a critique that is helpful to making large institutional change and so that's not a gender perspective but it is true that many women have found themselves in that path because of how our country's been built and those are some of the integral sort of attributes that they bring to their analysis of the thing that they should do the work that they should be thinking about and also have to help their constituencies respond to change because they typically have been in these moments of major change in their own lives and so they also are able to help their constituents respond to the challenge of change and if leadership is is anything it is helping shepherd all the people with whom are part of your organization through change I mean that's what it is and sometimes big women have had a perspective on that because of their careers and their personal experience thank you so Beth I think you're coming back in to bring us home I actually just want to continue listening but I did promise the audience who have have are peppering us as questions both in the chat and I apologize that Q&A wasn't working for a while so I got questions in the chat even got some by email so um okay I feel like I have so many questions based on that conversation about this idea of trusting yourself it's fascinating Carmen and um well let me ask the questions from the audience first and hopefully we can get to some of the ones I have personally so one question is I'm just going to read it if your heart and mind tell you to make a decision that you feel is is right you know the processes went through get pressure from other forces or perhaps finances pull you in a different direction how have you rectified this and I asked I'll guess I'll ask Carol first this and then Carmen I think conversation is so important I mean when you're in an executive position like this not every decision you make is popular but I find that you have the best chance of keeping the community with you if you really listen to their points of view and you explain what is bringing you to the decision that you're making that kind of sure route to lack of success is to just decide decide something without consultation it can be the rightest decision in the world but if you don't let the community into your thought process it's going to be much harder for you yeah I tell you that I would I would say two things that Ruth said to me about this kind of very topic the first thing she said to me is that at the end of the day the truth does not so discord and so when Carol's talking about explaining how you got there what your decision how you are thinking about this I think sometimes as leaders we can shy away from giving people the facts as we know them and being clear about what's making us think in this direction and and being willing to accept that the constituency can understand nuance and complexity and that there's not always clarity and then the other thing that Ruth said to me about this is that one of the things you have to do as a leader is to get comfortable with the idea that there may not be a clarity in the outcome right and I think that once you can get comfortable with that like you know I'm comfortable enough on on this campus I would say yeah I don't know what the outcome of that is going to be here's why I think we should go in this direction here are the things that we're considering here's how I'm thinking and here's what I hope the outcome will be but helping everybody know that there is lack of clarity in the outcome sometimes I think also takes some of the pressure off from this push and pull of I think it's the right thing but these things are constraining me and I'm often times saying my caps I don't care if that's too so let me tell you what came across the trends I mean like let me just show tell you what it is right as opposed to this kind of strata secrecy that I think sometimes breeds much more interesting things than this really true Carol yes yeah the lack of communication gives room for the rumor mill right yeah and I think also when you when you leave from conviction and you communicate as Carol said and you and you have the authenticity like Carmen said you can bring people along they really want to trust your leadership you know in that basis I just think it's so important to trust your own instincts because in my own experience looking back it's when I didn't trust it that the decisions were not as optimum as it could have been because you're listening and and you know to to move away from with maturity you kind of you're not doing performative leadership you really are leading from something deeper and that really comes with experience and and passion and commitment to to to your role into what it is that you're leading so it's all it's a combination of those factors that's a great it was a great question Michelle I'm going to turn this to you Virginia has a question who says very nicely I love this conversation thank you Virginia question to panel how did you get into leadership in higher ed was it a conscious decision to find opportunities or did the universe sort of speak to you Michelle why don't you take it first well actually for 12 years I was a senior lecturer at the University of Nigeria and that was my entry into into higher ed I my husband's Nigerian and he was recruited to come back to Nigeria to head up to be part of a of the foundational professors to form the first University of Technology he was a computer engineer so when we went of course you know my family thought I was a little crazy going around the world across the ocean with my little three kids and him and and the University of Nigeria is in the town of has a huge campus of professional schools in the town that where we lived and where his university was so he was at a state university technology and I was at the University of Nigeria and I was the first woman faculty member in the department of estate management my my master's degree is in city and regional planning they didn't have an urban planning department so I taught urban city planning in the department of estate management which was kind of the closest thing to the kinds of subjects that you would do in city planning economics land economics and so on so that was my and I spent 13 years and had an opportunity to also chair the department to take a term as a department chair so that was my interest you know entry into academia and coming back to the US I my career has been in the nonprofit sector but also with issues related to gender and racial equity with reproductive health with women led philanthropy and then just before leaving a couple years ago president of the women's college coalition that gave me an opportunity to really learn and work with women college presidents across the country in a very intimate way and so that's my experience and really you know they're they're similar there are things that carry with you when you're in leadership whether you're in a university or heading up an NGO or maybe handling a business there's leadership qualities that trans trans cross that that there's not oh I'm a leader in higher ed so I only do this they cross pollinate if you will yeah so that's me and they do I'm sure so I'd be called the name of the the forum higher ed and beyond you did that very well Carmen how about you and what tell us here how you know I think mine is sort of a combination of a choice but also sort of stars aligning so I'm a lawyer by trainee but I was interested in education policy so that's where my focus was at Princeton and my master's degree so I honestly thought I would be the general counsel that's kind of what I thought I would be doing at a college or university when I went back to Princeton to run the graduate programs that I was connected to the thing that happened that I think it's kind of the universe reaching out when I went to think about being dean of Douglas and the folks on this panel are connected via Douglas too so that's another women's college that we're all connected to I was sitting in the interview and it was one of those typical higher ed type interviews with 25 people around the table interviewing the candidate in this particular instance and I was relatively young applying for this role and so someone sort of jokingly said what do you want to be when you grow up I think I was 31 or so and I can remember just kind of going you know in your mind like okay what do I say I'm applying for this role as dean and I just said not really thinking that I want to be a college president and there was an African-American woman on the panel that was interviewing me share a wall at Rutgers and she said to me before this group of 30 people not knowing me at all you will be a college president you will be one and that was it and that was the thing that pushed me into this role you know Cheryl recently passed away but she came to Oberlin to introduce me as the new president of Oberlin and when you bring people who know you she was integral to my career and was the first person that planted that seed of that is possible you can do it absolutely this is what you should do and it was just frankly I think a more senior African-American woman looking at a young upstart African-American kid really and saying affirming for her affirming for me what I had imagined in an instance that that was possible and she wanted me to know sort of sister to sister you will be one that's really powerful I mean that's amazing um oh Carol we want to hear we want to hear your yeah I am much hey my path was much more evolutionary I started doing the things that faculty members just expect they're going to do I chaired my department um but then as I was given the opportunity to do more and more um you know jobs with bigger portfolios I realized how much I liked this and so um so it was really I didn't have any any ambition when I was young or when I was in graduate school of being a leader in higher education and I'm curious how you had it how did Smith occur did you did was that I was the um executive when I was in graduate school I always wanted to go to a small liberal arts new England college and I got a job offer from Berkeley as my first job and I remember crying all night because I knew my dissertation director would never let me turn it down it was a really good job um but then when I finished being the executive vice chancellor and provost here in the 90s um I went back to the faculty that's what I thought I was going to do and I realized no I've really changed careers I'm really in educational leadership and then Smith started knocking on my door and I thought oh I do England college I can't have it so I went there then I came back to Berkeley to retire and um and I was tapped to be an the provost resigned very suddenly for personal reasons and I was tapped to be an interim provost and then asked to be chancellor so this is a kind of unexpected piece of my career I thought it was going to end when I stepped down from the presidency of Smith good leaders never never end you never go this is gosh we're running out of time so well this this is from Laurie um we I'm going to read a directory we Dr. Amber's approach to uh at Oberlin you were dealing with the value of a liberal education as well as the value of an arts and society through your conservatory which is a wild wildly expensive model of education how did you parse those two and where did they land um you know arts and education are inextricably interconnected to Oberlin yeah I'm not quite sure we parse them in the sense that I think that the the value of Oberlin is because we have those two divisions and it's because they come together in this unique way that we sort of talk about as a third space right I jokingly sort of say this is where innovation and creativity breed right that's what happens here at Oberlin it's true that they are that our model this in general a higher education is a high cost model some of the work that we're all trying to do is to help our families appreciate the value of this experience and in some ways I think the experience we've had in the pandemic um has um helped people reevaluate what it means to be on a campus and to be part of a residential experience it's not to say that the other methods of delivery don't have value they do but we all have recognized what we lost in not being able to be together and the only thing I think we have to do at liberal arts colleges is to help people see um how liberal arts is engaged in the way that helps people think about their lives after Oberlin and what that work will be in very clear distinct ways that still keeps the broadness and the rigor and the critical thinking cultural competency all those things that we know the liberal arts brings but also says to our students that they're going to launch effectively from our institutions and so we try not to break it up in that way but just try to demonstrate our value in different ways to our families and I think that you know well one of the things that we'll be doing at Oberlin is guaranteeing a funded internship for every Oberlin student so we're going to launch that in a few months here and that's sort of demonstrating that you can take this degree and have a broad framing on it and still be able to launch effectively into the things that you really care about right and always in particular but students at liberal arts colleges more broadly want to make the world be different. I say all the time the world needs more Oberlin graduates and it's because they want to change the world for good and what happens at a liberal arts college in particularly Oberlin is that they get all of the skill sets that they need to go out and meet the world as it is but also change it for good and that's that's the value of this experience yeah. Good I'm gonna well I have one question coming in that I a couple questions have come in that we're not going to be able to get to but I'll try to respond to the participants afterwards and maybe catch Michelle um but but you know I realize this is leadership in general but what I'm very curious and one of the um participants are what do you see the biggest challenges in higher ed? I know we can go up but that could be a whole separate um issue but you know through the lens of leadership and through the lens of um women leadership and Karen I'll start with you. Well I think there are two um really big challenges which are also opportunities. I mean one is the growing diversity of the population of the United States and the fact that our institutions are not becoming as diverse as the population is and I just this early this morning I had an orientation for new faculty in the first presentation was about how you teach to a diverse student body. So I think diversity is not only diversity equity inclusion belonging is how we put it um is a huge challenge generally in our country but particularly for higher education with its um requirements that we change the kinds of institutions that we are and the second thing which is both a challenge and an opportunity is the pandemic. I keep looking for super linings in the pandemic. The pandemic has cut the the the link between place and instruction and and so we have this new set of digital tools that people are newly fluent with look at us on zoom we wouldn't have done it this way two years ago and um and so what do we make of that? So those are two of the two of the big ones. Yeah I would I would agree absolutely and I would say on the second one so the first one I've been saying and Carol has too that the institutions that get this right the the piece around racial equity diversity and inclusion and how we change ourselves will be the most sought-after institution in the country. So you know those of us who can try to figure out how to get that right we will be the institutions of choice. On on Carol's second one I think that you know we've been marching towards this challenge of place to divide for a while and the pandemic just codified it and made it really clear that we have to figure out how we're going to think about how we deliver this experience in all sorts of ways and how it impacts those things that we know are really valuable about our institutions and so we all are trying to figure out what I've been jokingly calling COVID learning right what have we learned from what have we learned from this that we got applied to this experience. So just one quick example you know in Oberlin Ohio we don't get a chance to get the sort of I'm traveling down the east coast to go to all the schools because we did virtual recruitment all last year but there was more equity across our competitors we are bringing in the highest number of students that we've ever brought in in Oberlin's history after a pandemic. That just shows you that there are some things we need to take from COVID around how we recruit virtually even though we may go back to a system where we have in-person admissions right so there are things that we can learn about our institutions that we're going to need to change and COVID has helped us but it's also been a tremendous challenge for many colleges and universities and how many of us will emerge from this stronger that is a question mark right because of its challenge. If I can just play in a little bit I know we have almost out of time but I think what I think about in terms of where the sector's opportunity is is in a larger sense we have to really do a better job of making the notion of education so important and essential to a healthy democracy and get off to defensiveness about the value of education. I think that's the call of the entire sector and the leadership needs to I think in higher and I come in as a little bit from an outsider in the sense of majority of my career being an NGO world of activism we're not the best advocates for our sector and so we were caught put on the defensive by you know the technology world and everything was sort of reduced to what's the earning power of your degree. Well you know philosophy still has relevance if you look at the history of democracy it's up to us to figure out how do you frame that to be relevant to the 18 year old today that it has values so I think Carmen's model about making this internship for our liberal arts students is so important because becoming relevant to solving the complex social problems is key if this sector is going to really endure in the future. So I think the key thing is preserving our democracy and and really making it clear and educated citizens is key if we don't have it Langston Hughes said the US will either kill ignorance or ignorance will kill the US and it's sort of he said that how many years ago and now here we are. Great well the conference that's great question coming in I wish we had another hour but we do not and I'm so sorry wonderful conversation I'm so grateful to Michelle to Carol to Carmen for joining us we will we did record this this will be extending out to all the participants and all the registrants as well as turning into a story we will embed this as well so stay tuned to watch it more thank you so much for everyone I'm sorry we couldn't get to all the questions but what a fascinating conversation thank you all thank you all thank you thank you bye bye I'm going to and here's the name of the book as well for people to join in I'm going to end it now bye