The ThinkND Podcast
The ThinkND Podcast
Virtues & Vocations, Part 26: Civic Virtue
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Episode Topic: Civic Virtue
Rajiv Vinnakota is the President of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, where the mission is to strengthen civic life in America by empowering young people to tackle civic challenges with bold, fresh ideas. Listen in for a conversation about his background, the institute, and civic virtue.
Featured Speakers:
- Rajiv Vinnakota, Institute for Citizens & Scholars
Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/7c2f97.
This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Virtues & Vocations.
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.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our webinar, Virtues and Vocations: Conversations on Character and the Common Good. In this series, we're s- we share conversations about how education and work can promote human flourishing. This series is part of Virtues and Vocations, a national forum housed at the Institute for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame and supported by the Kern Family Foundation. Virtues and Vocations seeks to foster a community of practice amongst scholars and practitioners across disciplines who are keen to understand how best to cultivate character and, and moral purpose in higher education and the professions. This webinar series is one way we facilitate these conversations. I am Suzanne Shanahan, and I direct the Institute for Social Concerns, and I'm host of this series. Today, we are delighted to be joined by Institute for Citizens and Scholars President Rajiv Vinokota. Again, Rajiv is president of Citizens and Scholars, where he leads the mission to strengthen civic life in America By empowering young people to tackle civic challenges with bold, fresh ideas. He works across higher education, communities, and workplaces to build coalitions that help the next generation become effective, engaged citizens. Rajiv's career has been defined by a commitment to expanding opportunity and civic participation. He co-founded the SEED Foundation, the nation's first network of public college preparatory boarding schools for underserved youth, and he went on to serve as the executive vice president of the Aspen Institute, where he led youth leadership and civic engagement initiatives. He is also a prolific researcher and author with publications including The Civic Outlook of Young Adults in America and Gen Z Civic Vibe Check, and he appears regularly in outlets such as NPR, Forbes, and the Associated Press. A Princeton graduate, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rutgers University in 2025. Welcome, Rajiv.
Speaker 2Good morning, good afternoon. Great to have... Great to be here.
1Wonderful. So, uh, we usually like to start a little informally with- Sure a sense of your background. So how did you come to this particular set of interests and this work in general? Go as far back
Speaker 2as you want. I, I warned you about this, so, um- Yeah, uh, so, uh, I actually... Yeah, I'll go back to the origin story, as we called it, right? Yeah. Uh, I was actually born in Switzerland. Uh, I know you can probably tell just by looking at me, but, uh- You look
1very Swiss.
Speaker 2Exactly. I was kidding. So I was born in Lausanne, uh, and I was in Lausanne because my father, uh, both my parents are of Indian descent, uh, won one of two worldwide scholarships to do his PhD in civil engineering, um, at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne shows up there in 1964 without a coat and not knowing French. Uh, but ends up actually getting his PhD, and they asked him to stay to be a professor. And so he first went back to India to get an arranged marriage to my mom. Uh, who, and they moved out, back out to Switzerland. I was born there, and then my sister was born there. Uh, and we moved to the United States when I was seven years old. My parents were like, "Switzerland, 1970s, a little too xenophobic. We'd like to raise our children in the US." And I ended up, actually of all places, in Milwaukee, where my dad ended up being- Wow a professor at Marquette University in civil engineering for 35 years. Um, I then went to college. As you said, I went to Princeton, um, and I majored in molecular biology. Um, I, uh- Oh. Yep. I studied virology. Uh, and, uh, at that point was very, uh, interested in trying to be involved somehow in tackling the AIDS virus, um, or HIV virus, AIDS, uh, and, uh, seeing what I could do. Um, ended up also getting a certificate at the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs in conventional arms policy. So don't even try to connect all those things. So, um, and, uh, but I was, uh, I w- I was fairly burned out after college, so instead of going directly to get an MD PhD, I ended up, uh, doing what a lot of people did in the early '90s. I went into management consulting, um, and ended up doing- uh, business consulting for three years But also realized I didn't have it in me to go back to school for nine more years, uh, to get an MD-PhD. Uh, and so one of the next deviations was I left my job to start the nation's first urban public boarding school, uh, the SEED School of Washington, DC, with a, a business partner. And for the next 18 years, we grew that school, uh, to 400 students, started a second school in Baltimore, a third school in Miami. Um, so by the time I left in 2015, we were serving over 1,000 young people, grades 7 through 12, who were living with us Sunday night through Friday afternoon because of whatever home circumstances or challenges that required them to be in a much safer, uh, environment in order to be able to get the type of college preparatory education that we think is, uh, you know, should be something that every single child should get, so. So it was while I was doing that, that near the end of my tenure, that I got a random phone call from Walter Isaacson, who was then the CEO at the Aspen Institute, and Walter basically asked me, uh, whether I'd be interested in coming over to, uh, the Aspen Institute, 'cause they were starting a new operating division focusing on working directly with young people. And, uh, 18 years was a nice run, uh, at SEED, and so I was like, "This would be a great next thing to do," and so I went there. And Walter gave me kind of very open, uh, choice of where and how I wanted to, uh, develop the mission of this work. And so this now coming back to, uh, the subject of today's conversation, I ended up deciding to focus around the notion of the question of how do we develop civic virtue in young people, right? The Aristotelian conception of taking the needs and interests of the community above your own personal, uh, desires. Um, and we started a series of leadership programs, worked across the country. Did that for three years, and in 2018, Walter retired. Um, I left soon after. Frankly, I was worried about our democracy. Our house was on fire, and I wanted to get involved, uh, in a much more proximate way. And I ended up actually syndicating a national study to rethink civic education. Uh, it was very broad, uh, but it was a way of kind of thinking about where was civic education going and why was it that it wasn't succeeding given what we were seeing in the, uh, American society around us. And, uh, with the help of others, I was able to syndicate a group of funders to support us, and the three funders were the Hewlett Foundation Michael Bloomberg and Charles and David Koch, uh, which is the first time that those three funders had come together in a joint project of this sort. But I thought that that was really important to signal that there are certain things that are worthy of joint investment, no matter your ideological background. And frankly, what could be more important than how we teach the next generation self-government? Um, and so that was the work that I was doing when I was approached by my current employer about, uh, whether I'd be interested in applying, uh, for the search. Now, my current employer then was still known under its, uh, original name, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. So we'd been around since 1945, um, uh, spun out of Princeton University in 1948, so we're our, our own nonprofit, um, and focused largely around expanding the pipeline into the professoriate, right? There are thousands of Woodrow Wilson Fellows over the generations. Um, and that is where the work has been largely focused. My predecessor, Arthur Levine, expanded that mission to focus around teaching colleges and how they could do a better job of preparing the next generation of teachers, especially in STEM and K-12. When, uh, the search committee came to me, I said, "Look, I think the greatest education problem we have as a nation is we've forgotten how to develop citizens. Um, that's where I'm spending my time." Um, and they said, "Come on in and make the pitch." So I did, a- and I got the job And so I started here in June of 2019, um, and spent the next year focusing on, on a strategy of how we work with young people. So if you think, uh, that, you know, there's roughly 68 million young people between the ages of 10 and 24, um, that means they're entering the public square as we speak, and we have probably about a decade to help develop them into the kinds of citizens or the types of citizens that we'd like to have. Um, and so how do we go about doing that in an effective manner? And how do we do that at a scale level that actually starts to make a difference? And so we developed a strategy around that, uh, which was approved in the summer of 2020. Uh, very soon after that, meaning literally minutes after that, I turned to my board and I said, "I'm really excited about this direction, but frankly, we can't be about developing a full citizenry and be named after a man who didn't w- you know, believe in the equality of Brown and Black people." And so we ended up actually, uh, announcing and then going through a name change. We became the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, or frankly, more better known at this point as C&S. Uh, CNS, um, is the term that we use for ourselves. So I know that took you through a lot. No, no. But, uh, hopefully you get a sense that, you know, I'm someone who came here as an immigrant whose family believed dearly in the ideals of this nation, what it stood for, uh, the opportunities that it provided. I was blessed in so many different ways to be able to take advantage of that opportunity to do so much work, and I've been in working in education and, uh, youth development in different ways for the last 30 years.
1Wow. So what I love about this story is sort of the nonlinear start to, to what you're, you've been up to. Mm-hmm. And I, I just wanna talk a little bit about that. So, um, it seems in, right, in narration that, uh, you went to college almost pursuing things similar to your father, sort of a trajectory that was much more science-oriented, but, uh, while at Princeton, mixed in some other elements. Um- Yeah, yeah I think the management consulting, um, is a frequent, it's, it seems like a good thing to do when you graduate- Yeah in lieu of other visions. Um, but th- it seems a pretty big jump to get from management consulting to this boarding school system for underserved youth. So is, was this something you had, like, in your back pocket that you were mulling? Like, how did you make that leap? And I'm just wondering, yeah, sort of how your parents re- reacted to that one, because that's a big
Speaker 2one. Oh. Oh, yeah. Um, so I, I'm actually gonna answer this on three different levels. Yeah, great. I'll give you the, kind of the technical answers, then let's kind of- Yeah dive into this even further. So, um, it was as a management consultant, and, and I was doing really well, and I loved it, but I actually said it wasn't the social footprint that I wanted to leave.
1Oh,
Speaker 2yeah. Um, and so I think there's a deep, and I give this, especially my parents, especially my mother, sense of obligation, responsibility of giving back, societal, uh, responsibility, um, that's always been kind of part of my story a- and, and how I think about what my role is. Um, and so that portion of it was like, "Okay, consulting, great, but, like, what do I really wanna do?" And- Um, I knew that urban education, this was 1993, '94, right? I mean, it was- Yep trying to figure stuff out, and it was such a challenge. Um, and it was actually a group of friends and I who, at a college reunion, started talking about this, and one of my friends said something very simple. He said, "There's boarding schools for rich kids. Why aren't there boarding schools for poor kids?" Um, and that really kind of set me off on- Yeah on trying to do this. Which leads me to kind of the more general second answer, which is I've always been fascinated by challenges, by trying to solve kind of really major problems. So if you think about AIDS, right? I mean, like, trying to figure out how do we actually tackle this? Like, what does that look like? What do we think about it from a molecular biology angle? To the work I did at SEED to the work I'm doing now, it's all about, like, there are major problems, and I get really motivated about how to go take those on. And that's where the scientist in me, the sense of thinking about this in a analytic manner, like, what's the problem? What are the root causes? You know, what's the hypothesis here, right? It's the scientific method from all of us growing up- Yeah. Yeah so far back that, uh, I've incorporated. And so that part of it, you know, has got just better because you've, you know, had the scientific method and certainly how I did science, but also management consulting is about problem-solving. Yep. Yep. Solving problems for our clients and so on and so forth. So think that that's the second way of thinking about it, is I'm really motivated, right? There's a term, uh, I'm a social entrepreneur, uh- Mm-hmm um, is the way I think about trying to solve these problems. And then there's a third aspect, and you just alluded to it, which is, you know, how did my parents react to this? Um, I will say my dad's first reaction was, um, you know, really worried for my health, not in a kind of mental health perspective, but like, "You're gonna go work in Anacostia? Uh, you're gonna go walk around and you're gonna try to start a school there? Is that really the safest thing to do?" Right? Um, so there was certainly that notion. Uh, my mom was completely supportive. Um, she was a second grade teacher in the Milwaukee public school system. Uh, she loved the idea of me teaching and so on and so forth. Um, and so education was part of our way of thinking about this. Um, I'll leave this portion just with a story. So, um, I'm actually named, uh, Rajiv after my, uh, grandfather, a person I'd never met. Um, he raised my dad, uh, three other brothers, two other sisters, so he had six children. He was a rice farmer in Andhra Pradesh, one of the poorest states, uh, in all of India. He earned 30 rupees a month. He spent 24 of them paying for his six children's education. All of them went on to get college degrees. All of them live in the, in the US, right? We've got doctors, engineers, and so on. So literally from the moment I was given my name, I was also given a responsibility. Yeah. How can education propel f- people forward, uh, in really deep ways? And I think I've held that in some kind of very deep sense- Mm-hmm uh, throughout my life.
1Yeah. So I, I... That's just beautiful. I love that. I think, um, you know, one of the... We have this group of fellows here at the institute called the McNeil Fellows, and- Mm uh, this year we read, uh, Bregman's book, Moral Ambition. And sort of what I love about that is hi- a- and it reminds me of your story, how do you take, uh, your gifts, your skills, your abilities, and try to tackle life's big questions?
Speaker 2Mm-hmm.
1As opposed to trying to get, you know, the highest paying job or the greatest, you know, opportunity. It's really about how you tackle it. And so I love that story of starting with AIDS and sort of how does that unfold, so that's just fabulous. Um, so here you are. Um, the timing of taking on this particular role was interesting. Mm-hmm. Um, right? Sort of shortly after you have, uh, the pandemic, you've got really racial reconsideration. Um, i- if you think about the name change, um, from Woodrow Wilson, there are, there are lots of simplistic stories one might tell, but as you think about Citizens and Scholars as the new name- Mm-hmm for you, what does that represent? And what is it,
Speaker 2i- Yeah
1that's emblematic of the kind of leadership you brought to this institution and the vision you have for, um, both what you're trying to do, but for a world you're trying to create?
Speaker 2You know, it's, uh, so I, I love that question, and, um, I actually wanna focus on the portion of that name that I don't think we spent much time on when we were creating it, but has really become, uh, uh, the, uh, fulcrum around which all of our work, uh, focuses on, which is the ampersand. It says, it's the and portion of Citizens Scholars. Okay, yeah. What we've come to recognize in our society is that it's the and. It's young and old. Yeah. It's right and left. Yep. It's different views that we need to come together, that, you know, this pluralistic experiment here, uh, in this United States of America has always depended upon being able to bring people together of very different perspectives into joint conversation and problem-solving. And so let me tell you a little bit about even kind of how our s- Yeah our work has evolved, right? Kind of we set a strategy, um, and we decided, we've ended up focusing on three, what we call, uh, essential civic skills. Okay. Um, and the reason we focused on these is because, um, our, uh, uh, partners, especially our college presidents, have said, "This is where we need help." And, um, we've looked at and said, "This is a place where, um, we don't have someone we can simply say, 'Oh, go talk to them.'" Right? So as examples, right, if someone came to us and said, "We'd like to dive deeply into the content of faculty development for K12 teachers around, uh, around civics," I'd say, "iCivics, Bill of Rights Institute, they're doing great work." Yeah, yeah. "Go to them." Right? Or if a college president comes to us and says, "We're thinking about really incorporating how our students think about the election, and voting, and da, da, da," I'm like, "Let me introduce you to All On Democracy. They're doing great work." Right? There's no need for us to be doing that. However, when it comes to the skills of having productive conversations, how do you actually engage with people who don't necessarily have the same perspective? How do you empathize with them? How do you do the perspective-taking and so on, right? That was a big part. The second is, how do you teach young people to discern and use credible information, right? This is the opposite of mis- and disinformation, but how do you differentiate fact, opinion, misinformation, disinformation, especially at the speed at which this is coming to you? And then third, right? And these other two skills really help, uh, become a foundation. So the third one is, how do you do collaborative problem-solving, especially with people with whom you may not agree, right? And in some ways, that's an en- encapsulation of what our nation's about. We're all in the same boat. We're gonna have to figure out what's the direction that we all row together, and that collaborative problem-solving and the skills required there are really important to actually develop. And those three sets of skills, um, are r- really how we focus everywhere that we do our work in higher education, uh, in workforce development, and also working directly with young people in communities. So when I say, like, our name and so on, it's the ampersand. Yes, yes. It's recognizing that we're actually all in this boat together and that we actually have to figure out how we develop the skills to stay in that boat. That's become by far the largest single, uh, aspect of our name.
1Fabulous. I love that. Um, so you are working in these three different spaces, so within the context of higher education, working with leaders, faculty, students, um, workplaces, and then more direct with community. Could you talk a little bit about what you do within those spaces? Sure. I, I think this, oftentimes this webinar, um, services a more higher education space, but I actually think the workplace and the direct to community is, is really interesting as well. So I would love, if you don't mind, sort of a, a snapshot of what that work looks like.
Speaker 2Absolutely. And let me start with the higher ed portion, because it actually was the first of the three portfolios that we really got very deeply involved in. Um, so late 2020, we've done the name change, we have an overall strategy, uh, and direction. I start to reach out to college presidents with a very simple question. I said, "What do you do to civically prepare your students?" Right? And somewhat like the funders that I was able to wrangle together a few years before that, I, uh, decide to choose a very diverse set of college presidents. So I reach out to Michael Roth at Wesleyan, Jonathan Holloway, who was then at Rutgers, Mitch Daniels at Purdue, Ron Daniels at Johns Hopkins, Wayne Fredricks at Howard, Hiram Chodosh at Claremont McKenna College, so on and so forth. Yep. Um, Joan Gable at University of Minnesota. And, um, it was really interesting because they all, not surprisingly, gave me very different answers.
1Yeah.
Speaker 2But there were two themes that were consistent across all of these, uh, responses. The first is that they said to a person that higher education's pendulum had swung too far toward it being viewed as a private good, that we had forgotten and needed to re-emphasize the public good responsibilities of colleges and universities, right? How are you doing, and what is your role around developing citizens? What is your role around being a bulwark for our democracy? And that, you know, we needed to bring that back into balance. The second thing that they told us, uh, which was related but separate, was that when they wanted to take bold initiatives in this area, that the blowback from stakeholders made it nearly impossible to sustain that work over time.
1Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2Now, these stakeholders could be different in different situations, right? They could be internal, like students, faculty, administrators, boards, donors, alumni, or they could be, uh, legislators, policymakers, parents, community leaders, so on and so forth. But presidents found it very hard to continue to have enough tailwind and push this work forward. So we kept hearing this over and over again, and finally we said, "Wait, would there be value in creating a coalition of the willing?" Right? Kind of collective power, support for each other, maybe even, uh, being able to push work, um, across multiple institutions. And a number of presidents raised their hands. And so we started to have virtual convenings, and finally then we got to in-person convenings. And in January of 2023, 14 presidents met and said, "It's time for us to go public with our work." And so that's when we c- created College Presidents for Civic Preparedness, um, you can go find it at collegepresidents.org, um, and announced later in the year, in August, that we would start by focusing around three major items. The first, we said presidents needed to retake the mantle and the leadership around free expression and critical thinking on our campuses. There was a lot of good happening, but we needed to be doing even more, and pres- presidents need to step up in different ways on this work. The second thing our presidents said, and this is really interesting, to a person they said- We could benefit from having a place that our faculty could go to learn how to bring contentious issues into a classroom effectively.
1Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2And we said, "Well, we can't be the first. There's gotta be other work out there." And we ended up doing a landscape analysis and figured out actually there isn't. There are really good professors who do this work at different institutions, and Suzanne, you probably know some of them, right, from your time at, you know, in Raleigh, Durham, and other places and so on and so forth, and they're doing great work. But it's largely focused at that point, right, on what they- how they were supporting, uh, their own, uh, faculty members, and there was no place to be able to go with more. And so we stood up a faculty institute, which now has had six sessions with more than 170 faculty members from 55 institutions, who come not only for a two-and-a-half day training, working, understanding best practice, engaging with others, but then 18 months of support from us.
1Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2And then the third thing that we did is our president said to us, "Raj, we're really excited to go on this journey, but there's a problem. Um, we don't actually know whether or not we're making progress because we don't know how to measure this."
1Yeah.
Speaker 2And so we stood up a measurement working group, uh, to both identify what existing data measures were being captured at our institutions, plus what additional things that we needed to build. So that was August of 2023. A few other... W- We come out publicly. A few other presidents join us. Um, then October 7th happens. Mm. And suddenly many more presidents recognize that this needs to be a priority. To make a long story short, we started with those 14 presidents. We're now at 140 college presidents across the country: public flagship universities, Ivy Leagues, elite liberal arts colleges, HBCUs, regional, uh, public institutions, small liberal arts colleges across the country, um, m- minority serving institutions, and now also community colleges, uh, have also joined this work. Um, so all of that's been happening. I wanna point just one other thing in the higher ed portfolio of our work. Um, about a year into this work, I suddenly started to recognize, or we as a organization started, recognized that every university or college had a center on campus that was focused on this work in some way or form, that every school could point to one or two faculty members who did this work very well, that almost every school invited someone or someones to come in to role model productive conversation and what it looked like. But what the real challenge was is that they were almost always opt-in work. Mm-hmm. And so every institution was really serving a minority of the population of undergraduates who were coming. And so what we started to push is say, how do we start to build out programming in a way so that every single student not only learns, but then gets opportunities to productively pr- to actually practice the skills that we've just been talking about? And that program, uh, ended up becoming what we now call campus wide immersion. And of our 140, uh, colleges and presidents, right now we have 40, and we're right now recruiting for that next fourth cohort, schools that have said, "We're going to actually drive culture change so that every single student who comes to us not only starts to learn this, but practices this multiple times, productive conversation, using credible information, uh, collaborative problem solving with people with whom they don't necessarily agree. And that requires a multi-vector, uh, approach, right? You can't do just one thing. So it's gotta be everything from onboarding to the curricular approaches to gen ed potentially to residential life, co-curricular, extracurricular activities. And it is that expansive and kind of comprehensive approach that we work now with so many college presidents to both implement and measure so that we have a sense both at the intervention level and at the campus climate level, are we actually moving the needle?
1Great. So can I, uh, sort of ask you a question about the nature of this work, right? So, um, you began, you know, sort of around 2020 engaging in these questions, working with presidents. Um, higher education seems to be in a wildly different moment in a very short time, where- Sure I, I think there- Yeah there's a lot of apprehension amongst leaders on campus. Um, we recently saw the Yale report, uh, Michael Roth, who you mentioned, uh, had a New York Times piece editorial on it, um, where he felt that the focus of the report, which said, you know, we need to return to generating and disseminating knowledge. Um, I, I wonder if in your work the past 18 months or so have felt different. Has there been greater engagement ways to think about this, or are, are you finding an apprehension around the, what the mission is of higher education in general?
Speaker 2So this is one of those moment, those F. Scott Fitzgerald moments where both things can be true, and you've gotta figure out how to hold it in your head, right?
1Absolutely.
Speaker 2So I think that that's really what's going on. Right? So, um, I think the recognition, um, certainly from my perspective, I s- I, I deal with presidents the most, but also with faculty and certainly students. Um, I think the recognition that higher education really needs to step up, especially in terms of its public good, has been, you know, something that we've understood, you know, well before the last 18 months, two years- Yeah five years, uh, or so on. Um, I think what's happened though is that, um, many of these events, um, these reports and so on, have been catalysts to helping us think about what do individual institutions need to do and what can they do better. Um, it's one of the reasons that our measurement work is so important, right? It helps us set a baseline, like how we're actually doing. How comfortable are students engaging in these conversations? And are we actually developing the skills for them to then take out into the world? So you've got that happening at the same time that, you know, college presidents have a target on their back right now, and especially if you're a public institution leader. And so that makes them a little more worried about trying to take these things on, uh, and getting out over their skis or taking risks. And I think that that's actually one of the ways that CNS can be very helpful. Come be part of 140 plus college presidents- Yeah you know, project where we're all acknowledging that we need to get better at this. And frankly, we're also acknowledging that, you know, we're in uncharted territory. And so what for me is exciting when I work, uh, with the 40 schools that are already into the pipeline with our campus wide immersion work is no two schools are tackling this in the same way. So we're gonna learn a lot, right? Let's say that, you know, there's some schools who are like, "We're gonna really drive this through residential life." Right? There are other schools that are like, "We are redoing gen ed," uh, and that is, you know, the, the, the primary level, lever. We've got others that are doing much more co-curricularly. So it's going to be interesting to see what we learn as these schools all have a North Star, but are trying to tackle it in different ways. Now, going to my second portfolio because this feeds d- Yeah directly into it. It's our most nascent one is our workforce portfolio. Mm-hmm. One of the things that's been interesting to us is it's was the US Chamber of Commerce that came to us to have a conversation that said, "Look, our employees could benefit from these same skills." And could we talk about how it is that you could help us implement those into our HR training, into how we think about approaching this? And so not only are we starting to pilot that, but that has an influence back into the higher ed portfolio.
1Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2Right? There's a, you know, AAC&U came out with a report actually a few years ago saying more than 75% of employers are looking for these skills, right? Now even more so, right, over the last certainly since, you know, Claude Code in January is a recognition of, wait, what is the value add? What does it mean to be a college graduate and having a bachelor's degree? These skills are so critical, right? So there's a lot of external forces that both put a target on your back, but also act as amplifiers in helping to push- Mm-hmm in this direction as well.
1Great. So one of the things I noticed, um, you had recently shared a statistic about Gen Z and their actual interest in engaging in- Yep conversations. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I, I think the, the rap of Gen Z is, like, we're not, we're not talking to anybody.
Speaker 2Yep. I, I, I... So thank you for, uh, uh, for raising that, because actually that also answers your prior question- Yeah which is tell me about your portfolio. So I've told you about higher education- Yeah which is by far our largest portfolio and growing. Um, our nascent workforce portfolio. And then the third is this community portfolio, where we support young people, uh, to actually engage in, uh, collaborative problem-solving in their communities. Um, and, uh, we've had a national fellowship called the Carnegie Young Leaders Fellowship. We have 500 fellows that we selected last year. We're now going through the selection process, uh, for the next cohort. Our intention is to try to get to, by July 4th of this year, is to announce fellow- fellows in all 50 states, um, who are working on this. Um, so that's the, uh, overview. Now let me actually get to your question, the background. Um, we did a survey called our- the CNS Civic Vibe Check in late 2025, and what we found is that 90%, 9 out of 10 Gen Z, Gen Z-ers, actually want to engage in solving problems in their community. Uh, which was great, right? You're right, that there's this, uh, perception that, you know, they've checked out, they're slacking, right? Yeah. They're not... Right? Here's the... A- and it gets even better. Um, 77% of them actually want to engage in problem-solving in person, not virtually. They actually want to go work with people. I think, uh, the more kind of that social media infiltrates everything, there's also a recognition that it doesn't in any way compare to actually working in our community, you know, shoulder to shoulder, in person, trying to solve and, and work these problems. Um, but, but, um, what Gen Z says is that there are a number of reasons why they're not. Uh, first is they actually don't know how to enter the space. Like, how do I actually... Where do I go? Like, how do I enter? What do I do, uh, uh, to do this work? Um, uh, they're also seeking mentors, uh, and people to be able to help them, uh, do this work. And then the other part of this is they don't see other Gen Z-ers, they don't see other young people doing this, and they want to see role models. And one of the ways that's very exciting to us, our Carnegie Young Leaders Fellowship, one of the impacts it's had is many other young people raising their hand saying, "I can do that. I, I'd like to do that." Like, right? So you're starting to see kind of a secondary and almost tertiary effect as they look around and go, "Hey, wait, John's doing that? I can do that in my community." Right? Uh, and so on. So we need to figure out pathways by which they can engage and how they get mentors, but also they need to see other peers like them engaging in the community to act as catalysts.
1That's great. Um- So you talked about sort of an Aristotelian notion of civic virtue.
Speaker 2Mm-hmm. Um,
1and so this, this Initiative Virtues and Vocations is really about understanding, uh, how to live one's life attendant- Yep virtues, and you've talked about the importance of humility, grace, and curiosity. So for you, why those particular virtues, and are there particular virtues you think are critical to the work you're doing a- as a broader mission?
Speaker 2Yeah. And- So, um, the answer is, uh, yes, to all of the above. Um, uh, when we talk about our work, we talk about the notions of intellectual humility, of empathy, right? Because this productive conversation and then actually how do you collaborate requires having an emotional connection in addition to just the analytical question. Mm-hmm. Uh, we talk about curiosity. Um, you've gotta be constantly curious as you're trying to work through and solve these problems. Um, and then we talk about courage, usually intellectual courage, uh, right? But since- Mm we talk about intellectual humility, we usually think about, ta- talk about this about courage, uh, to be able to ask difficult questions, to engage and continue to engage and, and work through, uh, work through problems. Um, the item I didn't mention, which is literally in our operating value between the-- besides the ones I've just talked about, is this notion of grace and graciousness. Um, I think it is absolutely critical, uh, that we recognize that we stand on shoulders of other people in any and all work that we do. Mm. Um, and that, uh, we also, that that is the only way, uh, in which we'll get things done over the long term. Can you push things through with, uh, partners and other institutions and so on so that things get done? Yes. Uh, but if you don't do it with a sense of grace, uh, and graciousness that you're working with others, in the end, it's actually gonna rebound back at you, right? Like you need- Yeah to do it, right? Um, and, and sometimes you need to do that, right? I, I get that, and sometimes guess what? There's organizational structure, and I'm the president, and I do get to make the decision, right? Yeah. So I, I, I don't wanna kind of over, uh, play, but I just think, um, I think grace is a lost value. Um, but at the same time, when we see it, we know it, and we, uh, we, we... It really kind of makes us both feel whole, but it also makes us feel like these are people I wanna work with. Suzanne, before we got on this call, we actually mentioned two people that we both know in the civic education world, and right? We talked about them and their names, not because of their educational, intellectual prowess, but because the people that they showed up as. Yeah. And I think that both of them show grace, right?
1Yep, absolutely.
Speaker 2Yeah.
1Um, so a- as a, as a leader of an organization, um, are there particular ways that- F- that you try to enact grace in your- I do day-to-day existence. Like, are there Yeah, just sort of, yeah, things that you can think of that- Yeah okay, here's a grace moment.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, I, you try to do it as often as possible, right? And, and- Yep, yep and, and, the challenge that you have right now is twofold. Number one is with everything coming at you, you never feel like you're actually making progress. Uh-huh. That's number one. Uh, and number two is there are so many mountains that we still need to climb, uh, and you wanna always focus on the next mountain. So I don't want in any way to suggest that I'm actually an expert at this, or actually best practice. Um, right? Um, but I think that grace is best emulated in the small acts that you do.
1Yeah.
Speaker 2Right? So I'll just give you an example. One of the things that I've, uh, incorporated into my just work is I, I write, I write thank you notes and then mail them out. Mm. And I try to do three or four every week. Yeah. Just to people who I've come across, people who are doing work for me, and especially people who may not see me, like my colleagues. Yeah. And I just write them a note, and I just say, "You know, I just wanna tell you how much I appreciate the work that you're doing, uh, how we worked on this together," and so on and so forth. Um, I think, uh, just spending the time doing that- Mm-hmm uh, actually somebody that It makes me feel better, right? Right. But it also, uh, uh, conveys that you've spent the time thinking about how people are, are giving to you. Um, and then the other thing you have to do is just constantly, uh, see and mention to folks, especially colleagues, "Hey, I really appreciate what you're doing."
1Yep.
Speaker 2Not best practice of this. Raja Nicode is not best practice. I, but you know, I try, right? And then part of it is about just simply, uh, being in the arena, it's, to quote Theodore Roosevelt, right, um, and actually doing the work.
1So, um, when we were talking before, you currently live in a fairly small community in Maine. Mm-hmm. So I'm surmising that much of your team is virtual, and, um- Yes and yet so much of your work and what you're trying to do is deeply, deeply relational. Um, how do you personally balance the kind of virtual work with that kind of relational work that 77% of young people wanna do in person?
Speaker 2Well, so I just got off of a flight from California at 1:00 AM last night, uh, and I traveled 40 of the 52 weeks last year. So I-
1Okay. So that,
Speaker 2that's a
1lot.
Speaker 2Exactly. So I, I, in some ways I'm just affirming your question, which is like- Yeah do you have to do it in person? Um, uh, it's hard. Um, a- and I wanna just, uh, I wanna point another thing around the virtual that just makes it difficult. It's very hard to fill your cup on a Zoom call. Um, and when, um, we have team weeks and we get together in person, right, I feel like the cup overfloweth, right? It just feels great, uh, even when we're doing hard work and difficult work and challenging work. Um, it's just, you know, you get re-energized, uh, being able to interact with people, uh, and, and to be in the room together. Um, and so that's very, very difficult. Um, if I could ma- you know, kind of wave a magic wand and say, "Can we all go in the office at least three days or four days a week?" I-
1Mm.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'd wanna do that, but I, I think I'd also lose many of my colleagues, um, who, uh, you know, are, are, are all over the country. So, um, part of what we try to do is make sure that our colleagues do go to conferences and go spend time at schools talking with, uh, people and engaging in the work. Um, I think it's the trust building on the front end that requires, uh, you know, especially a significant amount of investments. And so I think I'm pretty sure that almost all the work that we do has a portion that is in person. Um, I'll use as example our Carnegie Young Leaders, right? When we selected them, when we had the 500 fellows, right? The, the leads of each of those teams came together last summer, and we engaged together for two days in person, um, because that builds connections and trust that can last you through other virtual, uh, interactions. But you do need to have the interactions, the relational, the connection, the, the hum- the human touch, uh, in order to, to be able to make that work well.
1Great. So I wanna turn to some of our questions which are queuing up here. So, um- So how is it, if at all, you have incorporated vocation as part of your endeavor or mission?
Speaker 2So, um, uh, uh, well, is this a question about Raj Venkatakota and how I've incorporated vocation? Or is this a question- No, I think you were- about CNS as incorporated vo- I think you were a model of vocation, so. Okay. so. Yeah,
1but in the work of CNS, a- have you thought about vocation? Does that fit...? Yeah.
Speaker 2Absolutely. Um, and, you know, kind of do a follow-up if I'm not answering this question, uh, in the right way. Um, uh, look, um, even though I'm a scientist by training, I went to a school that believed deeply in the liberal arts, right? Um, and believed deeply in, in a set of skills that I continue to use to this day, uh, because those skills are transferable.
1Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2The skills that we are focused on, that we call our three essential skills, are incompletely transferable. Avocation, vocation, kind of how you think about it. And I'd like to say, and I'm having conversations with many college presidents, that they're going to be even more important- Mm-hmm um, with, you know, how AI is being incorporated into the work world. The ability to empathize and work through problem-solving is so critical. There's a lot of research that's coming out, for example, that says, like, in the end, um, the technical aspects of trying to solve some of these real big world problems aren't the techn- aren't the reason why you don't have enough affordable housing. It's not because we can print so many more with 3D printers or because we figured it out. It's because there's a whole set of policies around zoning, around what are our value priorities as a nation or as a state, and so on, that we need to work through and figure out. And those are the constraints. AI doesn't solve for that constraint. Human interaction, being able to solve problems actually does that. And so building these skills in our students, building these skills in our fellows, for anyone who comes, you know, and grows up, um, allows them to engage in the public square, um, and allows them to engage in the workspace that way. So I don't know if that's responsive, but hopefully it is.
1Yeah, I think it is. Okay. So thank you for that. Um- Next question. Shared problem solving requires an ability to share a vision of the problem, uh, or put simply, to see the same problem. Yeah. How in your work, uh, do you deal with the first steps, shared definitions of the problem worthy of collective problem solving?
Speaker 2So that's why we have those three points, right? We had productive- Yeah conversation, and then the middle one was actually d- using and discerning credible information, right? Right. Or said kind of less... more vernacular, right? It's like actually agreeing on the facts. Yeah. So, um, and, uh, and so that's how we approach that and think about it. This is really hard, um, and we are spending a, a fair amount of time actually n- right now trying to identify what are some of the best practices out there for how we do this, right? So there's work, for example, that's coming out of Stanford and Simon Weinberg and so on about how to do some of this. It's largely focused around K12, but the skills are still important. Uh, Chris Coward and University of Washington, uh, who are working with us is, are, is doing some of this work and thinking about kind of, you know, how do we think about facts and so on. So that's important. I wanna raise a third piece to this, though, because this has happened a few times at our faculty institute, where we'll have a faculty member say, "Well, you need to have lines, right? You need to draw lines on, on certain facts and so on. And, you know, for example, you know, the 2020 election wasn't stolen. Joe Biden is our president, and if anyone says otherwise, um, you know, that's the line I draw." Even there, I would actually argue you need to engage in the conversation. Why is that? Let's assume that you have a student who has grown up in a place where everyone in their town has told them that the election was stolen. All the news feeds that they listen to tell them that the election was stolen. This person's parents has told him or her that the election is stolen. Why would they not end up in your classroom telling you that the election was stolen? Right. Right? And so it requires that intellectual approach to say, "Okay, so let's look at this. Let's look at the data," right? Not drawing lines, but actually saying, "How do you know?" Right? And then going through that process to actually look at what information's available to us, and then coming to a conclusion. And so this is not easy, right? You gotta pull those things apart. You've gotta have a posture that says, "I actually want to educate this person and go through the facts." Um, we're just at the leading edge of this. We're just at the starting processes of this. And, you know, as we learn more, we'll be sharing it with the rest of the world and communities.
1That's great. Um, okay, so you knew this was gonna happen. Does AI make the knowledge dimension of civic education less important and the character dimension more important, or does it threaten both?
Speaker 2I think it challenges both, and let me tell you why. Um, one of the things that's really important, like I use AI every day, right? But one of the things that I do is whenever I look at any kind of analysis and I go, "Wait, does that make sense to me intuitively?" Right? Um, and, uh, and I'll use a very simple example. Just about three weeks ago, I had, uh, AI actually write a quick summary that I needed, and I said, "The summary needs to be 750 words or less," right? And I looked at it, and the summary was great, and I was like, "This is a long summary." And so I copy and pasted it and put it into WordCount, and it ended up being 1,200 words or something. And I'm like, "This wasn't 750 words." And AI came back to me and said, "Oh, I'm glad you pointed that out," right? But like, right, there's a perfect example of just kind of intuition telling you, "Uh, huh," right? Okay, so where does intuition and knowledge c- it comes from knowledge, right? From your own experiences over time of looking at something. So I think that understanding content is going to be critical to be able to test and question whatever the output is, right? And you're gonna still need to be able to say, "Do I really trust this?" Right? Even if it's cited everything, then you have to go and check the cites and read some of them and test them and so on and so forth. So I think you still need to have kind of a curiosity, maybe even a little cynicism to it and say, "Do I really believe it?" Um, I think on the character side, uh, I- I think that if we somehow or the other think that AI is going to solve our relational problems- I, I, I, I don't see it personally, right? It may give me three options for how to think about solving the problem, but then I have to go think about, okay, so how do I actually get from here to there, and how do I actually make that possible? And so I still need to develop my capacities and my virtues in order to be able to do that.
1Yep, great. Um, the landscape of higher education is shifting. Uh, smaller liberal arts colleges are closing. Funding is shifting. Is there a version of the college experience that is genuinely transformative for democratic character? And if so, is it scalable, or is this inherently reserved s- for smaller opportunities and experiences?
Speaker 2Uh, this is hard. Um, so I just came back. I said I was in California. I came back. Uh, I was at the Claremont Colleges for the last few days. Um, had a chance to see, uh, Hiram Chodosh, uh, at his, uh, kind of celebration as he retires from being president at Claremont McKenna College. Saw a number of the other presidents and, you know, those are small schools. Um, but the depth of the relationship that they built at each of those institutions is amazing. And I was talking with a few of the professors and said, "You know, one of my other partners in this work is the University of Wisconsin, which has 45,000 undergraduates, has more than 10,000 entering freshmen, and how do we do this?" And they're like, "It just has to be fundamentally different," right? It's not about taking something that works for 450 kids and now is gonna work for 10,000 students. And so part of the work we're engaged in is how does this work with the University of North Texas? How does this work with the University of Wisconsin? How does it work with Pitt and with Rutgers versus how this works, uh, for Claremont McKenna College? And I, I, I hasten to point out, how does this work for Benedict College, a small HBCU in South Carolina, about 800 students, which is much smaller in terms of the relationship, but isn't as well-resourced? The answers are going to be different. So the answer to the question is, I don't view any of these things as scalable. I rather view that there are going to be lessons that we learn in how to think about different approaches that can be picked up and used at different institutions, but then you're going to have to figure out how you implement it within the culture of your specific institution and its size.
1Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, is there a difference between preparing students to participate in de- in democracy and preparing them to defend it?
Speaker 2Yes, the question of the day. So here's how I talk about this, right? Um, I think, um, that there are two... Uh, so I, I, I talk about this from an institutional perspective first, then we can talk about it on an individual basis. Um, there are organizations that are right now in the work of civic renewal.
1Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2Right? Uh, and there are w- institutions right now that are in the work of political resistance. And your posture is different, the work itself is different. The kinds of people that may come to do that work might be different, right? And these are fundamentally different things. Each are important. Each are necessary for a democracy to be able to eventually flourish in the way we want it to, but they require a different mindset. Um, you know, hopefully both of them come from an abundance perspective, but you know what? Sometimes you're also engaged in zero-sum games when it comes to political resistance, right? And you have to. So I think that those are two different sets of things. How you develop that in individuals are different, but we can hold both things in our minds. I know many people, I'm one of them, who engages in both at different times of the day, you know, in different venues. But y- but you have to think about it differently in terms of the skills and, uh, who, how you go about tackling those issues.
1Great. Um, how do you educate for democracy when students, uh, and their families are losing faith in democracy? How do you get students to reengage with democracy?
Speaker 2Yeah. Um, the way that you do it is you do it small. So, um, um, you and I actually, we were talking about this before, uh, the session. Um, we just announced in February this major initiative called And You, ampersand You, to get 20 million young people to engage in simple civic actions. Um, and the idea behind that is that as you engage with others, as you build your own muscle, that over time you'll get more and more engaged and start to make and see a bigger and bigger difference. So, um, there's a tendency, and it's, it's especially true because of social media, and especially true because of this administration, uh, for the oxygen to just get sucked up with what's going on in Washington DC or what's going on globally and so on. Do we need to keep it, pay attention to that? Absolutely, right? Are we going to immediately change that as one individual? Probably not immediately. So what can you do in your communities? How can you engage in work that actually makes a difference? Not only is it more likely, but it's going to be more tangible, and you'll probably see the outcome faster, right? So all of our work, for example, with the Carnegie Young Leaders, is about what problem do you see in your community that you wanna tackle, that requires working across difference, and how do we support and help you on that? So you have to start with the small steps. You don't go to the gym and start trying to bench press 450 pounds on day one, right? Great.
1So, um, you have this wildly capacious goal of working with 20 million young people. Um, in this work, which, you know, is in universities, is in communities, is in workplaces, what are you most hopeful about? Sort of where do you find your greatest hope in the
Speaker 2work? I mean, this is pretty easy, right? It's, it's, it's actually engaging directly with the young people. To, to what you said earlier- Yeah like how do you actually go and do the work? Um-
1Yeah
Speaker 2the data shows us, as we said earlier, right, nine out of 10 Gen Z'ers wanna engage, that they wanna engage in person and directly and so on. So all of that is great. Being on a college campus for the last three days and engaging and interacting with young people, coming up to them, them coming up to us and, and just having conversations, and you realize that the energy and intent is there. Having said that, I get why so many people have lost faith in democracy, especially this generation that has been, you know, literally grown up in, uh, us being at war all of the time, in seeing existential issues in front of them, and a national government that isn't tackling them in any way or form. Why should we be surprised that they're saying, "Really? Are we sure that democracy works?" Mm-hmm. Our responsibility is to tell them two things. Number one is if you all engage, we can make it work. Yeah. And oh, by the way, there's probably not any other better way to actually try to take this on, right? That's what history teaches us. That's what political science... Right? There's a whole set of things that we can teach young people to be able to demonstrate democracy is the way to go, right? It's the best form of government except for all the others that have been tried and failed. It's the worst form of government, excuse me, except for the all the others that have been tried and failed. So that- Yeah that is our charge.
1Yep. Um, so, uh, final question. Uh, what's something you're reading that you would recommend to the audience?
Speaker 2Uh,
1I'm really into my books. You've got a lot of books in
Speaker 2there. Right? So, um- What would I recommend? Um, so I've... Okay. Let me... There's a book called How Big Things Get Done-
1Okay
Speaker 2um, that I'm reading, um, that, uh, I'm only about halfway through, but it's about how you actually create the systems, um- Okay to be able to actually make these kinds of changes that we're talking about, not at the, only at the individual level, but how we think about it on a societal level, and it's got some very interesting lessons there. I'm trying to then figure out how we apply that across all of our portfolios, but stay tuned.
1Okay, wonderful. Well, this has been a delightfully inspiring conversation, so I really, really appreciate it. And for the audience, please join us for our final conversation of the year with Jennifer Wallace on mattering. So thank you. This was great fun. Yeah. Thank you, too. Huge admirer of all the work. Enormous- Thank
Speaker 2you. It's been an honor to be here
1and happy to see you present.
Speaker 2Appreciate
it