John Silvanus Wilson on Universities, Democracy, & Lessons from HBCUs

Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.

• Learn more about ThinkND and register for upcoming live events at think.nd.edu.
• Join our LinkedIn community for updates, episode clips, and more.

Transcript

Suzanne 0:06

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to our monthly webinar series, Conversations on Character and the Common Good. This series is part of Virtues and Vocations, a national forum that is housed at the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame and supported by the Kern Family Foundation. I am Suzanne Shanahan and I direct the Center for Social Concerns. I am also host for this series. Virtues and vocations seeks to foster an interdisciplinary community of practice among scholars and practitioners who are keen to understand how best to cultivate character and moral purpose in higher education and the professions. This webinar series is one way we facilitate these conversations. Our conversation will run until about 1240, and then we'll open it up for questions. You can submit a question anytime through the Q& A mechanism, and I'll pose it directly later on. And with that, I'd like to welcome today's guest, John Sylvanus Wilson, on Universities, Democracy, and Lessons from the HBCUs. From 2013 to 2017, Wilson, a Morehouse graduate himself, was president of Morehouse College. He also served under President Barack Obama as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities and as the executive director of the Millennium Leadership Initiative for aspiring college presidents with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. His recent book, Hope and Healing Black Colleges and the Future of American Democracy, is now available at Harvard University Press. I'm delighted to welcome you, John. Great to have you. so I want to jump right in, and ask you a bit about your background. clearly you have a long history with HBCUs. But what did that trajectory look like? How did you get here? And why is this such an important conversation for us all to be having?

John Silvanus 2:12

Sure. Thank you. Thank you very much and thank you for having me on. I would say that, I've always known about HBCUs. My, my parents, both my parents were HBCU graduates. my mom, Morgan State, and my father, Virginia Union. My grandfather attended, Kentucky State. so we go way back, with HBCUs. And, so I've always had them in my blood, but I wasn't so keen on them until, Until I was in high school, and we moved from Philadelphia inner city to the suburbs and it was, it was an all white environment. And that was tough. it was not tough academically, it was tough socially. my parents were, were very, clear that underperformance academically Is off limits in this family. So they were not concerned about what we were being called and what we were going through during the day. They were saying, you're going to study and you're going to outperform whoever's around you, outperform your haters, basically. And we all did well, but it was tough. because the hate was palpable. And, I was, I was, I knew I had to go to higher ed. They said, you're leaving the house. it's either going to be higher education or the army. And I said, okay, I'm not into killing people. I, went to, applied to Penn State and, got in and got into Lincoln and at the last minute went to Morehouse. very last minute, too long a story to tell, but it was very last minute and basically, Suzanne, my life changed fundamentally. It was, I went from object to subject. All of a sudden, in, in third grade through 12th grade, I was paying this substantial bandwidth tax, having to deal with all of the noise. And I was now at Morehouse where People knew my name and the question mark that they tried to put over my head in high school became a crown and they challenged me to grow tall enough to wear it. basically, I, I could, I refer to it as the most psychologically wholesome four year period of my life. I was no longer marginalized or minoritized. it was wonderful and I got all of my bandwidth. my mental bandwidth back and was able to devote it to, my academic life. And then the idea, the question of who I wanted to be, and boy, it was just, it was a marvelous, experience. So then since we still had that high performance ethic, went to, Harvard University for three degrees, two, two masters and a doctorate. And I was never, no one could reapply the question mark over my head after Morehouse. Because once you feel at home in the world one time, you can feel at home, for the rest of your life. And that contrast between Morehouse and Harvard is eventually what took me, what kept me in a higher ed career and what caused me to write this book.

Suzanne 5:33

Great. so that your experience at Morehead is. formative in a number of ways. and you talk about this sort of whole human education that you received that really set you on a pathway. Are there, Are there particular things that you think happened at Moorhead or that epitomized that community that, afforded that change and that extraordinary sort of flourishing that you experienced that really has sustained you over a lifetime in certain ways? Are there particular dimensions to that? Were there particularly formative moments?

John Silvanus 6:18

Yes. Morehouse College is a powerful institution. I went there largely because, I knew, that Martin Luther King had gone there. And, my, we eventually went to growing up to a church that was pastored by a Morehouse man. And, I tell people, he had us thinking that Morehouse was so great. We thought Jesus went to Morehouse College. so we were, so you got Martin Luther King, you got the pastor, you got Jesus. So Morehouse is the place to go. and, As advertised, again, it was, they saw me, they knew my name, they knew my experience, personally, again, I got my bandwidth, I was able to devote my bandwidth to learning. But the other thing is, Morehouse, It was in the culture and in the air and in the water that you, sure, you're going to get a degree that's relevant to the kind of career you aspire to, but that's not enough because the world is broken and you have to be a force for good, a force for healing of the world. No matter what you're doing, no matter what your field is, you have to do that too. And if you don't, if you don't do that, if you are not a Morehouse man if you leave that out. All right. we had this dual sense. of, a dual mandate that we left Morehouse with. And the way I talk about it, I, I didn't have these terms when I was at Morehouse was I, I had my, there's this quote I was using as president, of Morehouse, from Mark Twain, who said the two most important days of your life are the day you're born and the day you find out why. And I had my second day at Morehouse College. I was I had an encounter with the legendary Benjamin Elijah Mays. And Benjamin Elijah Mays, looked me in the eye. I was, the long, the short story is I was one of several students who volunteered to help him get elected to be, on the city council, on the ed council in Atlanta. And. We were like, nobody has to campaign for Dr. Macy's going to be elected in a landslide, but he didn't take it for granted. He asked for volunteers. I was one of the ones who went around Atlanta and handing out pamphlets in that day. that's how you advertise. And, He wins in the landslide and sure enough to his character, he comes back to the campus and asks all those who volunteered and to get him elected to meet him in Du Bois Hall in the lounge. And I met him there and positioned myself at the end of the line and asked him to sign my copy of Born to Rebel. He signed it. He said, how's it going? And I said, it's not going well. He goes, Oh, I said, I love Morehouse, but I don't like it. And he said, why not? And 10 minutes later, I gave this litany of things and, you have to wait in line to register for classes and, takes a half hour to wait in line for food in the cafeteria, all these problems. And he looked me in the eye. I was a sophomore. He looked me in the eye and he said, I want you to finish Morehouse. I want you to go get, some further education and experience. And I want you to come back and make a difference. And I was like, I thought it was a voice of God, Suzanne. I was like, oh my God. and that was like, oh wow. So he converted me from a plaintiff about the place to a problem solver. I started writing in the school newspaper about how Morehouse needs to be different. And so when I was a student, people were saying, John, you ought to be President Morehouse, true to what he said. So it eventually happened. I had my second day at Morehouse is a short story, as did several of my other well known classmates, especially Spike Lee, who decided to become a filmmaker. our junior year at Morehouse College and the rest is history. And there are others I could name whose names you would know, but that's the kind of environment it was.

Suzanne 10:33

Yeah, I love that, twain line and how you personally found your second day and your why there. You've talked elsewhere about Morehouse as a version of King's beloved community, and that as a college, it is a beloved community, but It's one that is moving society toward the promise of that beloved community more generally, right? And you talk about this here, that you found your bandwidth, but that Morehouse also insisted that graduates be a force for good in the world. And this notion of force for good is one that very much resonates with the Notre Dame community that also uses that line of being a force for good. Are there particular things in your experience in addition to this extraordinary moment with Maze that sort of cultivated that throughout your time there? Was it about being seen and understood? Was it about particular Spaces, conversations, curricula that nurtured and cultivated that for you at Morehouse?

John Silvanus 11:53

yeah, it was all that. It was a mix of things. It certainly happened in the classroom, because professors were, Yeah, they were talking about, their own discipline, their own subject matter, and the connection between that and the careers we aspire to. But they were also talking about the world. And they were telling their own experiences about how they had, after teaching class, went into Atlanta to be a part of marches and everything. So it was really taken for granted that there is a connection between what happens on campus And the condition of the world that there is no line of demarcation between the two. And that there is high relevance between what we teach and how we teach and what the world is and what the world becomes. and there was, as I said, this expectation that you would be on the creative side of that. And on the transformative side of that, not a force to, preserve the common, the status quo, but you are a force for, to look at the broken places and fix them and heal them. look at the lack of fairness, look at the inequities and the inequalities and to, resolve them. That was. Part of what we had to do, that was part of how we understood, what it meant to grow tall enough to wear the crown that Morehouse is holding over your head. You are not tall enough to wear it, simply by graduating. You are to spend your life And conduct yourself throughout life in a way that causes you to grow tall enough to wear it. So there, and you don't just grow tall, enough to wear it by going into a profession, doing well, and making a lot of money. It's, as a matter of fact, a lot of money is not what will, that's not part of that pituitary gland. It's, it's the good that you do, with it. It's not the quality of your home or your, of the car you drive or where you send your kids to school. It's, it's the quality of the life you live outside of those material, and social status, symbols.

Suzanne 14:22

Um, you're describing really what is clearly an extraordinary environment. Were there times at which, growing tall enough? to wear the crown and really deserve to wear that crown. Is that a, at times, was it overwhelming? that, that's no small task to put in front of young people who are 18 to 22.

John Silvanus 14:48

it is no, I never, ever saw this overwhelming. I, I think it's because it's not hard to be good. It's just not hard to, it's not hard to do the right thing. ThinkND. com And what we're talking about is not, it's not rocket science. It's basic, it's Christianity 101. it's, helping the person in need. it's helping someone across the street. it's just, acts of kindness. And you do it enough and become conditioned to do it, becomes character. And all of a sudden you're not, it's not small acts of kindness though. They persist. You never get away from it. You're thinking of big change and scaled transformation. so you are now trying to address the big stuff and it's, I've never felt daunted by that, and I don't think my classmates and contemporaries felt, have ever felt daunted, because it's just not hard to be good. It's not hard to make a difference, a meaningful difference, a positive difference. And as a matter of fact, I would argue it's harder to be, mean and, and unfair, than it is to be fair. So I want to demystify that, Suzanne. I never saw it as a daunting task. Now I have to say, looking around, looking at this world, there's a lot of work to do, but that's why I wrote what I wrote. I think what black colleges did. In the last century to deliberately and aggressively shape the generals and foot soldiers of a movement that would materially change the quality of our democracy by pulling off the civil rights movement with all the changes in legislation that began to open this society up and make it more accessible and more, more consistent with the founding principles of the country than it had ever been. The work is not finished, so my book is less about black colleges than it is about what will happen to America and the world if all of American higher education, and I dare say higher education worldwide, does not come together now and do a version of what HBCUs did in the last century right now. We have to deliberately and aggressively create the foot soldiers and the generals of a movement to go at two challenges. And I talk about them in the book. I say there are two huge challenges facing us. one is our imperiled, democracy and the other is our imperiled planet. And, the mantra I. I cite in the book and use in presentations is a broken democracy cannot heal a broken planet. So we have to get at that, the democracy and get ourselves organized to coordinate and cooperate enough to heal the broken planet. it is the case that the planet is warming and human relations are chilling. And those two things are not good.

Suzanne 18:17

Great. I love this thought that it's not hard to do the right thing. and yet, to a certain extent, your work is a critique of our failure as a society to do the right thing. and, I think what's great about the book is it's using the example of what HBCUs were able to achieve to, as you say, offer a blueprint on how we ought move forward. and I think that's really one of the extraordinary strengths of things. But why is it that university administrators are so reticent to lead change in this moment from your perspective? Why haven't they taken up this challenge before them? Embrace this notion that it's easy to do the right thing. It's actually much harder. To be mean or deceptive or untruthful, unfair, unjust.

John Silvanus 19:22

that's a huge question, Suzanne. It's a huge question and I appreciate it. I would say I'm unintimidated by that as well. let's say this. I, that man I spoke about who looked me in the eye, Benjamin Elijah Mays, he was iconic. He was heroic. He is. The student he spotted on campus that he personally mentored, was named Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Morehouse, reading at an eighth grade level. that's what the Atlanta public school system was producing by design. That was a deliberate, outcome of that system. And he was intending to be a lawyer or a doctor because those were the professions that. That would result in a nice lifestyle. So he had consumed that Kool Aid. Benjamin Elijah May saw something in him. And the first thing he did was, King did not want to be a preacher because he didn't like, he loved his father, but he didn't see himself standing there and emoting the way. And May said, there's a different way to be in the pulpit. you can come, you can be more cerebral. And so he redefined that position. And it's safe to say that Martin Luther King had his second day at Morehouse because Morehouse was a second day institution like that. And, the rest is history. You come in reading at an eighth grade level, and by the time you graduate, you're ready to go to BU and get a doctorate and, Crozier Theological first, then BU, and then, Live the kind of life that results in a national holiday and the Nobel Peace Prize and, and, and a memorial in Granite on the National Mall. um, I think that was the environment then, and Benjamin Elijah Mays, he led the campus, but he went to meet with LBJ, the president, Linda Mays Johnson, and talked about, The civil rights of everyone in this country. So he connected just by the way he carried out this, his job, the, the campus, what was going on campus, what was going on in society. What was amazing to me was, there were others who had that courage and, this is, I'm glad to be hosted by Notre Dame, a Notre Dame president, Father Hesburgh walked. and protested with Martin Luther King Jr. during these movements. You would never see a college president do that today. this is because, it's unheard of because that president would be at risk of losing his or her job if they stepped out of this narrow box that we have presidents in now. Presidents are more contractors now. Um, Mays and Hesburgh and others like them, Mayor McLeod Bethune, they were contractors, meaning they, they executed the job, but they had an architectural instinct as well. they understood the design side of things and how I might design what happens on campus to influence the quality of our democracy and the rest. I think what's missing now is that architectural instinct, and in a sense, you can, I stick with the notion that it's not hard to be good, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take courage. And it takes some courage to defy those who will tell you not to do it. And there are people who will drive you out of your job or decide to walk away with their billions and not give you that transformational gift that will define your legacy as president. That's a courageous decision to put all that at risk and perhaps be out of your presidency based on your principles. But I, you will sleep better. You will be a better person. And my, as my grandmother would say, you will go to heaven.

Suzanne 23:41

I like this distinction between an architect and a contractor and I agree that the role of presidencies is, as in many ways fundamentally changed. I'd also say it seems at this moment that the role of higher education itself in the broader society is changing. As trust in higher education is on the decline. there are increasing surveys showing young people, choosing not to go to college in the same way they had previously. And I think that for many, this gives pause, in leadership when thinking about, being an architect and crafting social change. It's a, it feels like this, reinforcing cycle, if you will. do you think that it is possible for higher education itself to reassert leadership in progressive change in the country? Thank you. Because it doesn't seem to be just a matter of leaders who are reticent, but the role of higher education feels marginalized from conversation and debate.

John Silvanus 24:49

Yeah, that, that's a great question. I think the fact of the matter is, and I'm not sure this is, we're pretty close to change or die mode. I would, I think this is like the boiling frog syndrome. we've been in a mode for so long that we believe that this is the norm. And we don't have to, this is like, this phenomenon, don't look up, just don't look up. if you don't look up, you won't see the doom that's coming. I think the message is look up and deal with it because if you look, if you fail to look up, it's going to deal with you. and if not enough of us look up soon enough, then, nothing else will matter. I think we are living in a time when the same old just won't do. it's, it is becoming the definition of crazy. Okay. So, we have to look around and I basically, I like where you went with that question, Suzanne, because that, my experience at Morehouse and then Harvard is how I framed this book, because I came out, I wasn't at Harvard long before I concluded that Harvard needs exactly what Morehouse has. And Morehouse needs exactly what Harvard has. in my view, I didn't have these terms then, but I developed them and I put them in the book. Morehouse had character, that had optimized character. Because of the kind of the quality of the people Morehouse was putting in the world and the quality of the undergraduate experience, the priorities, the culture, the curriculum, the mix of the curriculum, the culture, the conditioning. Harvard, by contrast, had optimized you had all these great buildings, majestic buildings, you had these well paid, faculty members, you had a big endowment. and whereas half the students who entered Morehouse freshman year with me failed to graduate, more than half. and 99. 99 percent of the time, the reason was, They ran out of money. they couldn't afford it. I didn't see a single student at Harvard leave because they ran out of money. And I'm like, okay, so you have capital optimization and character optimization. I, by this time I was in the ed school at Harvard and I was looking around the country, had a great, perch from which to see. And I said, no one has ever optimized capital and character. on the same campus at the same time. So that for me, my entire career has been the Holy Grail, optimizing capital and character in the same place at the same time. I think Notre Dame under Father Hesburgh was one of those places that could have Really, really done that. I think, this is my critique, my observation. I think Notre Dame has gotten away from that a bit. I think their brand has been, has been, shifted, from that kind of thing that Hesburgh was about to football and a few other things. So I really, I would challenge Notre Dame because I think Notre Dame, they have it in their DNA, to do it. And they have the capital side, pretty sharp. but I insist it's harder to have capital and go after character than it is to have character and go after capital. So I'm waiting for the philanthropic community to, to really finally wake up and look at those institutions that they have tended not to invest in and finally do it.

Suzanne 28:59

um, I would think there are lots of people on Notre Dame's campus who think we do both. certainly always a room for improvement in both categories, but how is it that a university might, that has capital, go after character? And does, does for the very reasons you described, the pursuit of capital, undermine your ability to have character with integrity of some sort, right? Are those orthogonal goals or running against one another?

John Silvanus 29:40

That's a great question, Suzanne. I've been saying that a lot. I will say this. one, If a university has capital and is trying to go after character, this is going to sound self serving. They should read my book. Okay, that's one thing they should do. And the other thing you should do is watch this, watch this video, because this is the kind of conversation that people have to have on campuses. in order to, you have to grapple with this. And, I, I may have some things to learn about who Notre Dame is today, but I want to say this, Suzanne, and I say with confidence, a place that has optimized both capital and character I won't have to hear about it through some, oh my gosh, okay, they do. No, it sings. it's going to be very clear. It's going to be clear in the graduates they have in the world and what they're doing. It's going to be clear. it precedes itself. So it speaks for itself. And I think, even to the degree that Notre Dame has it, and I'm not aware of it, everyone has to step up now. So I would say Notre Dame should bump it up. I just, all I'm referencing is they've had an instinct in their institutional history to be associated even in the public eye with the common good. And Father Hesberg did that. and in my view, I know the history somewhat and I just wrote an article about this, so I took a deeper look at it, at Notre Dame. And so I think, I think even as good as Notre Dame has been, and still is to some degree, I, and as good as Morehouse has been and still is to some degree, we all need to step up. We all need to step up. So it's time to do better and the way you can do that. Move toward this toward being an example and expression of this is to begin having conversations just like this. And I can promise you that if you have these conversations and you have them in a way That elevates, and necessarily I think, the right things. You will be on your way to becoming a better institution. I think it's, it really is inevitable but you have to look up.

Suzanne 32:07

I think it was great. You've talked about looking up. I think you also need the moral courage to confront what you see when you look up. And, in another piece that you published this summer, you talk about, the signal to noise ratio, which I love that expression and talking about the noise of our tribal discord being louder than the signal of our patriotic harmony. And I think that This is one of the things that makes it very challenging for colleges and universities to really move toward that common good publicly, visibly, loud, clearly, and to embrace that notion of the right thing to do. is there, do you have advice for, colleges and universities who want to do the right thing but are nervous? about doing the right thing, right? Don't quite have it right, haven't embraced, don't feel quite tall enough for that crown yet.

John Silvanus 33:12

Yeah, I, the question about being nervous about doing this, you're right, Suzanne. that's where courage comes in. You really have to, but it's interesting you ask that question because I, the article that I just wrote that'll be out in a short while is about trusteeship. And I believe that trustees have a balcony view of higher education, and they more than any other force, they are not only mandated, commissioned to see what's coming down the pipe by virtue of their role as trustees, but they have to have a candid view of the dangers. They have to look up. Because the role of a trustee is to look out and see the dangers ahead for the institution, the opportunities and the threats. And they are the ones who have to set the stage for leaders to have the courage to do what we're talking about. They have to, their number one role is to choose a leader. They have to choose leaders for that purpose now. All right, they have to, and I just read where over half of American higher ed presidents are going to retire in the next five years. This is a wonderful time to be looking for leaders who will have this new mandate, this new instinct, who understand what it means to lead with a high signal to noise ratio. Because too often the case that our vices, the noise of our vices, is louder than the signal of our virtues. And we have to change that. We have to have a much higher signal to noise ratio. And I think trusteeship is going to matter a lot in order to make a difference in the presidency.

Suzanne 35:03

Great. you talked about this article on trusteeship, from my perspective, you're almost really encouraging a social movement and social transformation of higher education, to bring character and capital together. What, where are you taking this conversation, this way of thinking, this movement? What's next in your thinking? What are the missing elements that you're working on in addition to this critical notion of trusteeship?

John Silvanus 35:36

Yeah. right now I'm, on a book tour talking about the book and various places, a lot of campuses. and the common question is how can you do it? Most people emphasize, I prescribed three kinds of people we need in the world at the end of the book. One is illustrated by the second day. We need second day people. People who are living on purpose, who have had their second day, and who are living intentionally every day. That's hard to do. Eight billion people in the world, all of them have had their first day, obviously, they were born, but very few of them have had their second day. They know why they're here, and you can tell a second day person when you see one. you can tell. so we need second day people. We need destination people. That's from an analogy from W. E. B. Du Bois, who realized that he had made a mistake all of his life. He had been trying to get the right situation, the right job, the right house, the right He said it was as if I was moving on a Russian express train. My only concern was as to where I would sit. What kind of seat and what kind of car? And I wasn't concerned about the train's rate of speed and destination. College presidents and trustees have to look at the train's rate of speed and destination and situate the campus to educate for that. Right now, you talk about vocationalism. Vocationalism is the definition of I'm going to make enough money to have a great seat and live my life at a great seat, and I don't care where the train is going. you know what? Everything's at stake now, and the train is going to someplace bad unless we start doing something different. The third type of person I recommend is called a string shooter. And you'll have to read the book to find out about that. I put a story in the beginning of the book, and I framed the whole final chapter around being string shooters. And it's a great theme to have.

Suzanne 37:34

Great. some questions are queuing up so I'm just going to turn to them now. Yeah. The first one is thinking back on your education and upbringing. What would you say to young black students about leveraging their gifts and academic talents effectively? Absolutely.

John Silvanus 37:50

Wow. Um, really get into the life of the mind, get into doing well in school because it will matter, but not just that. Get into the life of the heart and the soul and the spirit as well. And, that may take you into a church or another religious, setting, but I guess what I would encourage them to really truly understand, and this is not just a message for young African American, children, it's a message for all children. And I know I've raised three kids. My wife and I have raised three kids. I know that, there is a certain kind of message because we live in a certain kind of world. But it, in the end, I think it translates into don't, when you're young, don't just be concerned about how, be concerned about why as well. And that's, that to me is core that gets you on a pathway to having a high character line.

Suzanne 38:55

That's great. And I think that echoes back to the Twain quote, which is great. Second question. You said that as an undergrad, you felt particularly home at Morehouse, that you felt at home in the world for the first time. But not all black students get to attend great institutions like Morehouse. Are there other ways to help students feel that they belong in the world apart from an education at an HBCU?

John Silvanus 39:24

Wow. It is more difficult, because, I'm, when I say I felt at home for the first time, obviously I, I'm not talking about my home environment because I felt there, but in an educational environment. K 12 was, was not it. So now it was bandwidth. This is where, on this question, I point to the importance Of offices that are now being pulled back and shut down. Those DEI offices? That's why they're there. They're there to remedy the othering that a lot of institutions do just because of who they are. They, the othering is in their hardware. And so you can go to these places. When I went to Harvard, I knew the place was not built for me. and most of our education was all male initially, and there are a lot of women who go, I spent the first 16 years of my career at MIT and I knew, and in environments like that, women feel almost as othered as people of color. So I want you to understand something. The othering that goes on has been going on in American history in a lot of institutions for a long time. And it's time to cure it. And the, those DEI offices, that's what they're for. And the more enlightened institutions are moved from DEI to belonging. That's what I was doing in the few years I spent at Harvard working with Drew Faust and Larry Bacow working on belonging. You challenge your institution, wherever you go, to ensure that everyone feels like they belong. You admitted us as students, you hired us as faculty. You should not tolerate marginalized sub communities on your campus. Whether it's Notre Dame or Harvard. Or Morehouse and Spelman, or, one of the state institutions, big state flagship institutions, or the small ones. It doesn't matter. You are duty bound when you shape a campus community to underline the word community. All right, there's nobody outside of that circle. And to the degree that you have people who feel marginalized and minoritized, whether they be of color or women, LGBTQIA community, whatever community it is. You embrace them and ask them how you can be better at getting them to feel like they get advice from them. There are ways to do this. this is a movement now. Unfortunately, in a lot of red states, it's being shut down and that is not good.

Suzanne 42:17

Great, thank you. you have mentioned courage more than once. How do we develop that in ourselves, in our children, or students? How do you cultivate courage?

John Silvanus 42:28

How do you cultivate courage? my God, these are good questions. These are great questions. I, I think that's where The, that second dimension comes when I say, don't just pay attention to how, pay attention to why. And I say, talk about, get you, get the intelligent side of things, the book learning, but, expose yourself to things that, that, that give you an understanding of what it means to grow in the heart and in the soul and in the spirit. And there's courage there. There's courage in that common combination of things. there, there's courage there. There's courage. When you find your voice in life, when you have your second day, it's Oh my, I know what I want to do. And you have a new kind of focus. Yeah. The final thing I'll say on that is there was a saying that we used at MIT because my wife and I, we lived and worked at MIT. we were what's called housemasters. on a campus, in a residence hall with 300 students. And so it was every day in the office and then we'd come home and be around students. And we'd sometimes run into students who were confused and lost and, lacking in courage and agency. and there's a saying that popped up around MIT, I think it's appropriate here. And that is, Perspective is worth 100 points of IQ. No matter how stuck you feel you are, no matter how much at a crossroads or point of confusion, if you figure out a way to change your perspective, you can actually take a leapfrog in intelligence and innovation and creativity. You can break free. from shackles or straightjackets or whatever it is that has you in bondage. So when you are confused or stuck, think of it in terms of your perspective, which is a broader cocoon for the way you're thinking and seeing the world than is just the particular question that you have that you feel has you stuck. It's a different perspective and you step back and take a different, take it from a different angle, what's troubling you, you can actually experience a liberation and find a new courage.

Suzanne 44:53

Wonderful. I love that expression. Next one. Do you have any thoughts on how we can deliberately and aggressively form K 12 schools to create the kind of people capable of repairing our broken democracy? So looking at younger cohorts.

John Silvanus 45:11

Yeah. first of all, I think the younger cohorts are already having an instinct. about. They're almost, they almost have an instinctive embrace of this sense of community. The younger folks, that is those that are not corrupted by their parents, especially, are less inclined to hate others. They're more inclined to do, they're more inclined to accept people and to see them for who they are, to not be homophobic or racist or, We are taught these things, right? so if you build a culture, every place has a culture. There are homes that have a culture, schools that have a culture. The best way to do it in K through 12 is not just you as an individual teacher, not just in your classroom with the people. You have to insist. Just as you insist on campuses that you bring in the leaders who care about the culture, you have to insist that the leaders in the school, principal up and principal down and principal across, they are building a culture where certain things are allowable and not allowable. and the culture is what you pay attention to. And that's what will, and you know what? the parents who are teaching their kids to hate others, their kids are going to be uncomfortable in schools that don't do that, and they're either going to have to change, or the parents are going to put them in a school that teaches hate like they do. All right. I would say the best advice I'd give to a school is pay attention to the culture and if you're a teacher in a school, insist on it. Talk about that more than the subject matter in your own course. It's not about you, it's about us.

Suzanne 47:02

Great. coming from an academic background, I think it's really easy to worry about, as you said, whether we're in the right seat, whether we get the professor job or make full professor or something like that. As someone who has taken the leap and worked in a number of different positions and roles, what motivated you to step outside the typical professor life?

John Silvanus 47:28

Wow. I will say again, I had my second day. I, that was a defining moment for me when I was 19 years old and Benjamin Lodge Bay said, he, it's the voice of God. I really thought that, wow, okay. this, so I never had a conventional view after that. I, yeah, I understood that for most, a pathway to a presidency was. Become a tenured professor and then a department chair and then a provost. And then I understood that, but the people who had done that, very few of them had impressed me really. I'm like, wow, okay. And that would, that you do that and that'll make you a contractor. I was thinking redesigned from the start. I wanted to do it differently. And And so I, and the other thing, this is good fortune or whatever you want to call it, but I started my career at MIT at the birth, literally at the birth of this billion dollar capital campaign phenomenon, 1985. I was in a room when our Stanford colleagues rushed in and said, we're going to do it. We're going to do it. When we said, do what? Said, we're going to try to raise a billion dollars. over a seven year period. Now, Stanford and Harvard and Yale and a few others, they've raised a billion dollars every year, more than a billion every year. So that's how the world has changed since 1985 when I started my career. I came up that side. I was a pretty successful fundraiser at MIT and having that skill set just made me nimble in my career. I could do a lot. I became, I went to GW as a professor, became a dean pretty quickly and got some relationships with people. So I, I didn't take a conventional route, but I was never beholden to the conventions anyway. So I, it was, I was on a mission. I had a North star in my life and I was going to stick. Stick to that.

Suzanne 49:29

So just one bit of follow up there, you talk about this second day at Morehouse. Were there other mentors that encouraged you along the way? Or did this just set you on a path that was immutable and you knew where you were going and didn't necessarily have mentors along the way who shaped you, nurtured you in this pursuit?

John Silvanus 49:57

Yeah, I, Suzanne, you ask great questions. I want to, I want you to know that was, so you're right. But there's, there was a, there's a man I met when I went to Harvard Divinity School and met him. He was my hero. He had been my hero. His name is Howard Thurman. He's a mystic theologian, right? And he had this saying, he said, if you put at the disposal of a single end, all of your energies, Then all of life will conspire to meet the goal you have set for yourself. So basically he's saying, he said, he's what he said happened for me. I had my second day and I was focused on it. And this, The stars just started lining up. It really was a magical, mystical, spiritual thing. I, I went to g I went to MIT and got that skill, which happened to be a core skill in, in a presidency. And then I went to GW and stayed there for a number of years and taught a course and started framing this book.'cause I knew what I wanted to write about. And then outta nowhere this. Unknown guy named Barack Obama gets elected president, and out of nowhere I get a call on a Sunday afternoon. about joining the administration. I had not campaigned. I didn't have any connections. I was just, and, boy that happened. And all of a sudden I'm at the White House and then I go to Morehouse. So honestly, God, it's not a secret formula, but the focus that you have and the sense of calling that you have, the stars line up. That's, I'm not sure there's another way to say it, but get into Howard Thurman. And this is the value of being, of having that spiritual side too, or that. The why side, because there's a lot of energy there. There really is.

Suzanne 51:59

That's fantastic. I love that story. And I love Thurman's quote there. as we wrap up, what are you most hopeful about right now?

John Silvanus 52:09

I, I think everything's going to be all right, Suzanne. I really, I went to divinity school for one reason, one reason only. I thought that all religions had something in common and I discovered the answer. They do. All religions agree that everything's going to be all right. At the end of the day, no matter how broken we seem, no matter how toxic our challenges and everything, that everything's going to be all right. It's got that love is going to win out over hate. That order will win out over chaos. that good will win out over bad. it may look bleak right now, but I'm not, that's just, that's in my hardware right now. It's not software for me. It's hardware.

Suzanne 52:55

That's great. I think we all need a bit of that hardware right now. So for that. And thank you so much for joining us for this lunch hour. It's just been wonderful to hear more about you and your work, and your just extraordinary life. So thank you. and for those who joined us today, please join us on Monday, November 27th for a conversation with author and educator Parker Palmer. So thank you. And really lovely to have this chat today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.