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Higher education is undergoing dramatic changes driven by shifts in culture, technology, and economics. What does the future hold for universities, and how can they remain relevant in a rapidly evolving world? Jonathan Cole, a renowned expert on higher education and former provost at Columbia University, explores the challenges and necessary transformations facing American universities.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 5, 2024

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This video is a detailed discussion about the challenges facing academic freedom and inquiry in the United States, highlighting both historical and contemporary concerns. The speaker emphasizes the threats from state and federal governments that could restrict universities' ability to discuss certain topics and influence academic curricula.

The speaker notes that attacks on academic freedom have occurred periodically, roughly every two decades, and cites various historical instances such as the post-World War I Red Scare, the McCarthy era, and post-9/11 sentiments. They argue for a robust defense of academic freedom from university leaders and faculty, advocating for a rejection of bureaucratic pressures and a return to faculty engagement in student admissions processes.

Furthermore, there is a critique of the current admissions systems that rely heavily on standardized tests like the SAT, arguing that these do not account for multiple intelligences and diverse talents among students. The speaker calls for universities to adopt a more holistic approach to admissions that considers creativity and real-world accomplishments.

This video also discusses the necessity for universities to adapt to contemporary challenges by promoting interdisciplinary studies and integrating diverse academic fields, thus addressing complex societal problems, such as sustainability. The speaker encourages universities to foster collaboration across disciplines and to create an environment where students can engage in research and problem-solving efforts from an early stage in their education.

Moreover, the importance of foreign students is highlighted, underscoring their role as sources of intellectual growth and soft power for the U.S. The discussion touches on the broader implications of immigration policies on the availability of talent and contributions to academic and cultural life.

Lastly, the speaker advocates for creating avenues for social mobility for underrepresented groups, asserting that barriers are often more structural and psychological than actual, and that opportunities for education should be accessible to all talented individuals, regardless of their background.

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Here are five key points derived from the video:

1. **Threats to Academic Freedom**: The video underscores a significant challenge to academic freedom and free inquiry in the United States, citing potential federal and state-level attacks on universities and efforts to limit professors’ discussions on certain topics. This historical concern has seen various phases of attacks since the early 20th century.

2. **Need for Change in Admissions Processes**: There is an argument for eliminating standardized tests like the SAT in college admissions, advocating for a faculty-driven admissions process. This shift could lead to a more diverse and capable student body by focusing on multiple forms of intelligence rather than standardized test scores.

3. **Encouraging Interdisciplinary Education**: The video emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary studies and flexible movement among different academic disciplines. It suggests that universities need to adapt their structures to facilitate collaboration across traditional boundaries to address complex societal issues effectively.

4. **Academic Leagues for Collaborative Research**: The proposal includes the creation of "academic leagues" where faculty members from different institutions can collaborate on shared areas of study, such as inequality, using technology to connect students and resources across participating universities.

5. **Importance of Immigration for Knowledge Growth**: The video highlights the historical role of immigration in enriching U.S. universities with diverse intellectual talent. It argues for opening pathways for talented international scholars to contribute to American academia, reinforcing that this influx can enhance knowledge and foster peaceful global relations.

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Here are some key quotes from the video you :

1. **Challenge to Academic Freedom**: "Think we face, an enormous challenge over the next several years, particularly in terms of sustaining academic freedom and free inquiry."

2. **Threats to Universities**: "there is a big threat within the states and even in the federal government, where, the possibilities are that there will be federal attacks on universities, efforts to constrain professors from talking about certain subjects."

3. **Historical Convideo of Attacks**: "Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been attacks on academic freedom... after the first World War, the first red scare, then there was the McCarthy period... then there was the Vietnam period... Even now, it is episodic and not necessarily new to American history."

4. **Fear of Intimidation**: "What he really was, was afraid of all the faculty members who would not talk up and be critical because they were afraid of being prosecuted or persecuted."

5. **Concerns About Meritocracy**: "It's based on the idea of so-called meritocracy... standardized tests... fail to do is to create a group of people who have multiple intelligences."

6. **Call for Faculty Involvement**: "get rid of the SAT scores and get rid of the standardized tests for applications. Bring the faculty back in to the process of admitting students at the undergraduate level."

7. **Need for Multidisciplinary Approach**: "the whole sweep of the move and growth of knowledge is really towards multidisciplinarity... A biologist cannot work without a computer scientist."

8. **Innovation in Education**: "The creation of academic leagues... on the level of disciplines that require the expertise of people at the different universities."

9. **Importance of Immigration**: "Immigration has been one of the great, great seeds of the growth of knowledge in the United States."

10. **Crisis of Leadership in Universities**: "We had great young talent, but we didn't have great leadership at the time."

11. **Social Mobility of Immigrants**: "the so-called barriers to social mobility, I think are more in the minds of people that they're being denied opportunities that knowledge is something that's important."

These quotes encapsulate the speaker's concerns about academic freedom, the role of standardized testing in admissions, the importance of multidisciplinary approaches in education, and the contributions of immigrants to American knowledge and society.

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Think we face,

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an enormous challenge over the next several years,

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particularly in terms of sustaining academic freedom

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and free inquiry.

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Uh, there is a big threat within the states

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and even in the federal government, where,

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the possibilities are that there will be federal attacks

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on universities, efforts

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to constrain professors from talking about certain subjects,

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trying to invade the curriculum

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as the work we have to fight that.

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I mean, there, this is not new in the United States.

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What's interesting is that about every 20 years, in fact,

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since the beginning of the 20th century,

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there have been attacks on academic freedom.

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Initially, they were from the people

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who were the benefactors of the colleges like Stanford

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and others who would, take out their ire on professors

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who disagreed, disagreed with them.

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And then there was, the, the following attacks

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after the first World war, the first red scare,

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then there was the McCarthy period 20 years later.

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Then there was the Vietnam period

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around roughly 20 years later than that.

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And then there was the, the,

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the post terrorist attack in 2001.

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So, strangely enough, I think it may be coming now,

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but it is episodic

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and it is not necessarily new

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to American history by any means.

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And there have been over time, great defenders of

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academic freedom, especially within the universities.

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The presidents of universities, even trustees

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of the universities, and even billionaires who have come

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to their defense will be a bit of a struggle.

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I think the, as Robert Hutchins, a great president

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of the University of Chicago, who, was the president

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during the McCarthy period, said he's not

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so much worried about the, the communists

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or the left wingers who were on the University

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of Chicago campus.

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What he really was, was afraid of all the faculty members

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who would not talk up and be critical

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because they were afraid of being prosecuted or persecuted.

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We need to, to, to have that backs up

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and really, defend ourselves.

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And that includes the presidents of universities

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who should not be led by lawyers

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and, bureaucrats into the, the,

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the halls of Congress.

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They should be able to stand up with courage

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and defend what the American university is

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and what it has done for the country.

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The elite institutions, which we normally talk about,

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which gets most of the press, are the ivy plus institutions,

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the Harvards, the Yales, the Princetons, the Stanfords.

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Now, they, they represent about 29,000

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new students every year.

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The United States has about 1 million new entrants into

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college, and we rarely talk about them.

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So we focus our attention as if all colleges

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and universities are like the Ivy League

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and are proud of the fact that they have,

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denied admission to 95% of the applicants.

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Well, why, why should one be proud

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of these fabulous people being denied high quality,

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undoubtedly great education.

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And that is a perspective that we've had for a long time.

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It's based on the idea of, so-called meritocracy,

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and it supposedly tests like the, you know,

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whether they be undergraduate tests, SAT scores

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or a CA scores,

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or you could go on to the law school,

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standardized tests.

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These things do measure one form of intelligence,

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but what they fail to, to do is to

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create a group of people who have multiple intelligences.

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That is, that have, as Howard Gardner has said 25 years ago

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in his book on multiple intelligences, if you look around,

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there are many, many, many people

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who are incredibly creative who are going

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to be stars in whatever they do,

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and they probably don't have very high college board scores.

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And in the American society, if you have high board scores

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and low high school achievement,

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you're called an over tester.

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If you happen to be a person who has very high

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undergraduate, I mean, high school record

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and lower board scores, you're called a grub.

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You're not called an under tester.

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And that is into the vernacular

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that has gotten into the mind

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and as part of the mythology of, admissions.

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So the first thing I would say is get rid of the SAT scores

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and get rid of the standardized tests for applications.

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Bring the faculty back in to the process

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of admitting students at the undergraduate level.

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Faculty would, would actually go up in arms

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if you tried to dictate

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who their graduate students were gonna be

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or who their postdoctoral students could be.

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But when you have 50, 60,000 applicants

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for 1800 positions, the bureaucracy takes over.

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And you have very smart, very able young people

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who don't know a huge amount about universities,

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and they are bas they are basically the people

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who are admitting meeting students out of this a lot

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of 60,000.

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Now, if we brought faculty back in from various different

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fields who are deeply committed to undergraduate education,

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and they would've actually set out the criteria

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and overlook the process,

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I think we would get a much more interesting class.

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We would have a class of artists, musicians,

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we would have people who are scientists,

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computer scientists, chemist biologists, physics

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sociologists even might get in there occasionally.

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So, it, it would be a a, a different type of process

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that I think would be far less, bureaucratic.

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I do think they do in their own fields.

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And they, they have a, a sense of what will predict,

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someone being very good.

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For example, I have a very good friend

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who is a world class astronomer.

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He never admits graduate students at Princeton on the basis

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of their math scores, on the,

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on the graduate record exams,

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because they all have 800 for one thing.

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Uh, they all have perfect scores,

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but he does look carefully at their scores on the verbal

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side of the, of the equation

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because he says, the people who are most verbal,

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most poetic are generally the best astronomers.

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First of all, they should allow more undergraduates

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to move at their own pace.

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That is, we have a sort of a rigid format of first year,

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second year, et cetera.

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But there are many of these young people who are very,

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very talented at the outset,

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and they ought to be able to move into sort

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of research laboratories

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or to help in certain kinds of problem solving.

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For example, at the Arizona State University,

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an undergraduate recently, discovered a,

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a very important part of a new form of laser beam.

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And there are many examples at Arizona State, in fact, of,

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undergraduates participating in research

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and being able to, come up with very important,

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contributions, shall I say.

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Uh, so that is, that's one way.

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But I think that we also have to understand that

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these are research universities.

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When I go out and talk to alumni, the only thing they want

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to talk about is undergraduate education.

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They don't want to talk about all the teaching

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that goes on at the graduate level,

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at the professional schools and journalism schools

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and architecture schools, law schools,

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they never ask me questions about that.

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And they never ask me questions about what are the,

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what are the most recent five important discoveries

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that have been made by Columbia faculty.

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What they wanna do is talk only about undergraduate

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education and very conservatively, I might add, since

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what they're interested in is sustaining the old curriculum

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that they knew when they were 25

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or 30 years younger than they, than they are.

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So I think that's one thing that we should do,

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but we also should rethink the way in which our

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disciplines are structured.

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You'll not, you'll not find in the future a lot,

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a a building at Columbia that will say physics on it

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or we'll say chemistry or philosophy.

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The whole sweep of the move

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and the growth of knowledge is really

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towards multidisciplinarity.

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A biologist cannot work without a computer scientist.

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These, these days, a mathematician

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and a physicist are essentially the same.

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So what we have to do is recreate, as I must say,

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Arizona State has done a brilliant job

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of this under Mike Crow's leadership, who I must say to,

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to be fully disclosing.

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Um, he worked at Columbia for 10 years

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before he took the presidency

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and has done amazing things over the last 20 years.

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But he has created new schools,

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by folding together different disciplines

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that were traditional disciplines.

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And he, by bringing together those things, he is able

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to use them to try

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to solve complex problems which exist in today's society.

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We're already in the, the middle of the beginning

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of a redesign of the American Research University.

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It's, it's the greatest, it's the greatest institution

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of knowledge that's ever been formed in the, in the world,

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in the 20th century.

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But it evolves like everything else. And it must evolve.

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And as I was saying to in response to your last question,

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that we have become much more multidisciplinary.

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And so it seems to me that the, the structure

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of the university has to increasingly be multidisciplinary

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and that the, the, the majors, the minors, the courses have

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to have embedded in them multiple disciplines.

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And we have to create space for students

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to enter those disciplines

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to solve extraordinarily important problems, many

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of which are practical problems that we face.

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Um, have a college of sustainability.

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Every discipline you can imagine would go into a college

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of sustainability.

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Economics is not the only one.

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I mean, not and nor is GE Geological Sciences.

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It would take 20 disciplines to really begin

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to cover that ground.

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So first of all, interdisciplinarity and movement,

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and much greater movement and ease of movement.

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For example, there are real barriers at Harvard

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to moving across school lines, traditional school lines,

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because that's the way their budget is constructed.

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But other universities have more flexibility.

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Take Stanford for example, or as I say, a SU

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and a variety of other state universities.

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So I would say that that's the first thing.

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The second thing that I, I would hope would emerge

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is the creation of academic leagues, not sports leagues,

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but academic leagues, which involve,

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as the, as the, the key part

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of them would not be the institution itself.

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In other words, it wouldn't be Columbia.

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Um, in a sense, linking up with

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Ohio State or Michigan or Wisconsin

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or the University of California, Berkeley

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and just sort of collapsing into one, a merger of sorts.

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You know, it would be much more on the level of disciplines

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that require the expertise

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of people at the different universities.

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And now by virtue of technology, we have the ability

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to create seminars, for example.

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Let us, let's take the subject of inequality

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of income and wealth.

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Well, there are phenomenal professors at Columbia

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like Joseph Stig.

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There are people like ob, obviously Thomas Pickety.

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There are people whose in France, there are people in,

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California.

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Like Thomas says, there are a whole bunch of people

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who could form their own league in terms

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of attacking the problem of inequality, of, of wealth.

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And they can bring students along, students in any

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of these universities who could participate potentially

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in the seminars that they give

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or in research activities that they are either in the middle

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of or going to begin in order for them to be able

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to expand their effective scope worldwide,

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rather than have it limited to the institution

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to which they are, admitted and are graduating from.

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We have to up open up the, the, the barriers to immigration.

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Ironically, in the United States,

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there's all this talk about stopping immigration,

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but immigration has been one of the great, great,

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seeds of the growth of knowledge in the United States.

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The best example, of course,

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is in 1933 when basically Hitler came to power.

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There were all these Jewish intellectuals

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and scientists who were forced out or had to escape.

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They came to Britain, they came to the United States,

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they populated some of our great universities.

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They became the leaders of those universities.

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And we had great young talent,

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but we didn't have great leadership at the time.

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And they propelled forward many, many of the disciplines

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that grew up in the 20th century.

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Well, there are enormous number of, I'm

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probably using enormous too often,

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but there are a great, great number of

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extraordinarily talented young people who want to come

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to the United States and are either are denied,

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exit from their own countries, or we deny them entrance.

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So to give an example, there are

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fabulous Iranian scholars, and there have been engineers

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and others, over the years, well,

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they can't get into the United States anymore.

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Um, and they're even, thinking about, you know,

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cutting down the number of Chinese, 90%

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of the Chinese students who come to the United States,

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stay in the United States.

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They're a source of not only enormous intellectual energy

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and the source of knowledge growth, but they also,

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and I think this is not fully understood by many people.

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They are the source, the, the, the source

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of soft power.

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Um, this is one of the ways in which the United States

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can begin to influence the world without threatening people

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with military force.

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And when you have an integration,

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on essentially networks of people who have different origins

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with different destinations working on similar problems

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and finding solutions,

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there is I think a much greater probability of that leading

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to peaceful solutions.

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People think that there's been a suppression

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of social mobility,

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or that social mobility has not continued to exist.

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There's a wonderful book by a Stanford, scholar

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and a Princeton scholar, which, shows

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that social mobility hasn't stopped.

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In fact, it's at as higher rate as it's almost ever been.

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Uh, the sources have been somewhat different so

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that the sources have been from South Asia, from Asia,

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but when they come to the United States, they have as rapid

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mobility as immigrants from other groups have in the past.

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And one would hope immigrants from other countries would

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have if given the opportunity to be here.

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So the, the so-called barriers to social mobility,

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I think are more in the minds of people

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that they're being denied o opportunities

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that college doesn't matter, that, you know,

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that knowledge is something that's important,

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but it's the product of intellectuals

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and people who look down on us, et cetera.

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So they don't try. And I think we're cutting that off

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because of our political stances rather than,

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using the opportunity that we have to not only encourage,

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reinforce, and to fund young people who,

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would like to go to college

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but may not, may not be able to afford to,

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and who have great talent, in potentially the service,

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not only of the United States, but of the world.

Challenges to Academic Freedom in America

00:00:00 - Think we face, an enormous challenge over the next several years, particularly in terms of sustaining academic freedom and free inquiry. there is a big threat within the states and even in the federal government, where, the possibilities are that there will be federal attacks on universities, efforts to constrain professors from talking about certain subjects, trying to invade the curriculum as the work we have to fight that. I mean, there, this is not new in the United States.

00:00:38 - since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been attacks on academic freedom. Initially, they were from the people who were the benefactors of the colleges like Stanford and others who would, take out their ire on professors who disagreed, disagreed with them. And then there was, the, the following attacks after the first World war, the first red scare, then there was the McCarthy period 20 years later. Then there was the Vietnam period

00:01:08 - And then there was the, the, the post terrorist attack in 2001. So, strangely enough, I think it may be coming now, but it is episodic and it is not necessarily new to American history by any means. And there have been over time, great defenders of academic freedom, especially within the universities. The presidents of universities, even trustees of the universities, and even billionaires who have come

Defending Academic Freedom and Diversity in Higher Education

00:01:40 - I think the, as Robert Hutchins, a great president of the University of Chicago, who, was the president during the McCarthy period, said he's not so much worried about the, the communists or the left wingers who were on the University of Chicago campus. What he really was, was afraid of all the faculty members who would not talk up and be critical because they were afraid of being prosecuted or persecuted.

00:02:11 - and really, defend ourselves. And that includes the presidents of universities who should not be led by lawyers and, bureaucrats into the, the, the halls of Congress. They should be able to stand up with courage and defend what the American university is and what it has done for the country. The elite institutions, which we normally talk about, which gets most of the press, are the ivy plus institutions,

00:02:45 - Now, they, they represent about 29,000 new students every year. The United States has about 1 million new entrants into college, and we rarely talk about them. So we focus our attention as if all colleges and universities are like the Ivy League and are proud of the fact that they have,

Challenging Meritocracy: Rethinking Educational Assessment

00:03:14 - Well, why, why should one be proud of these fabulous people being denied high quality, undoubtedly great education. And that is a perspective that we've had for a long time. It's based on the idea of, so-called meritocracy, and it supposedly tests like the, you know, whether they be undergraduate tests, SAT scores or a CA scores,

00:03:44 - standardized tests. These things do measure one form of intelligence, but what they fail to, to do is to create a group of people who have multiple intelligences. That is, that have, as Howard Gardner has said 25 years ago in his book on multiple intelligences, if you look around, there are many, many, many people who are incredibly creative who are going to be stars in whatever they do,

00:04:19 - And in the American society, if you have high board scores and low high school achievement, you're called an over tester. If you happen to be a person who has very high undergraduate, I mean, high school record and lower board scores, you're called a grub. You're not called an under tester. And that is into the vernacular

Rethinking College Admissions: A Call for Faculty Involvement

00:04:48 - and as part of the mythology of, admissions. So the first thing I would say is get rid of the SAT scores and get rid of the standardized tests for applications. Bring the faculty back in to the process of admitting students at the undergraduate level. Faculty would, would actually go up in arms if you tried to dictate

00:05:19 - or who their postdoctoral students could be. But when you have 50, 60,000 applicants for 1800 positions, the bureaucracy takes over. And you have very smart, very able young people who don't know a huge amount about universities, and they are bas they are basically the people who are admitting meeting students out of this a lot of 60,000. Now, if we brought faculty back in from various different

00:05:54 - and they would've actually set out the criteria and overlook the process, I think we would get a much more interesting class. We would have a class of artists, musicians, we would have people who are scientists, computer scientists, chemist biologists, physics sociologists even might get in there occasionally. So, it, it would be a a, a different type of process

Reevaluating Academic Admissions and Undergraduate Flexibility

00:06:25 - I do think they do in their own fields. And they, they have a, a sense of what will predict, someone being very good. For example, I have a very good friend who is a world class astronomer. He never admits graduate students at Princeton on the basis of their math scores, on the, on the graduate record exams, because they all have 800 for one thing. they all have perfect scores, but he does look carefully at their scores on the verbal

00:06:59 - because he says, the people who are most verbal, most poetic are generally the best astronomers. First of all, they should allow more undergraduates to move at their own pace. That is, we have a sort of a rigid format of first year, second year, et cetera. But there are many of these young people who are very, very talented at the outset, and they ought to be able to move into sort of research laboratories or to help in certain kinds of problem solving.

00:07:32 - an undergraduate recently, discovered a, a very important part of a new form of laser beam. And there are many examples at Arizona State, in fact, of, undergraduates participating in research and being able to, come up with very important, contributions, shall I say. so that is, that's one way. But I think that we also have to understand that

Rethinking Undergraduate Education and Interdisciplinary Collaboration

00:08:04 - When I go out and talk to alumni, the only thing they want to talk about is undergraduate education. They don't want to talk about all the teaching that goes on at the graduate level, at the professional schools and journalism schools and architecture schools, law schools, they never ask me questions about that. And they never ask me questions about what are the, what are the most recent five important discoveries that have been made by Columbia faculty.

00:08:36 - education and very conservatively, I might add, since what they're interested in is sustaining the old curriculum that they knew when they were 25 or 30 years younger than they, than they are. So I think that's one thing that we should do, but we also should rethink the way in which our disciplines are structured. You'll not, you'll not find in the future a lot,

00:09:11 - or we'll say chemistry or philosophy. The whole sweep of the move and the growth of knowledge is really towards multidisciplinarity. A biologist cannot work without a computer scientist. These, these days, a mathematician and a physicist are essentially the same. So what we have to do is recreate, as I must say, Arizona State has done a brilliant job of this under Mike Crow's leadership, who I must say to,

Transforming Higher Education: Embracing Multidisciplinarity

00:09:44 - he worked at Columbia for 10 years before he took the presidency and has done amazing things over the last 20 years. But he has created new schools, by folding together different disciplines that were traditional disciplines. And he, by bringing together those things, he is able to use them to try to solve complex problems which exist in today's society. We're already in the, the middle of the beginning

00:10:18 - It's, it's the greatest, it's the greatest institution of knowledge that's ever been formed in the, in the world, in the 20th century. But it evolves like everything else. And it must evolve. And as I was saying to in response to your last question, that we have become much more multidisciplinary. And so it seems to me that the, the structure of the university has to increasingly be multidisciplinary

00:10:51 - to have embedded in them multiple disciplines. And we have to create space for students to enter those disciplines to solve extraordinarily important problems, many of which are practical problems that we face. have a college of sustainability. Every discipline you can imagine would go into a college of sustainability. Economics is not the only one.

Fostering Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Academia

00:11:20 - It would take 20 disciplines to really begin to cover that ground. So first of all, interdisciplinarity and movement, and much greater movement and ease of movement. For example, there are real barriers at Harvard to moving across school lines, traditional school lines, because that's the way their budget is constructed. But other universities have more flexibility. Take Stanford for example, or as I say, a SU

00:11:52 - So I would say that that's the first thing. The second thing that I, I would hope would emerge is the creation of academic leagues, not sports leagues, but academic leagues, which involve, as the, as the, the key part of them would not be the institution itself. In other words, it wouldn't be Columbia. in a sense, linking up with

00:12:27 - or the University of California, Berkeley and just sort of collapsing into one, a merger of sorts. You know, it would be much more on the level of disciplines that require the expertise of people at the different universities. And now by virtue of technology, we have the ability to create seminars, for example. Let us, let's take the subject of inequality

Building Academic Alliances to Tackle Inequality

00:12:55 - Well, there are phenomenal professors at Columbia like Joseph Stig. There are people like ob, obviously Thomas Pickety. There are people whose in France, there are people in, California. Like Thomas says, there are a whole bunch of people who could form their own league in terms of attacking the problem of inequality, of, of wealth. And they can bring students along, students in any of these universities who could participate potentially

00:13:29 - or in research activities that they are either in the middle of or going to begin in order for them to be able to expand their effective scope worldwide, rather than have it limited to the institution to which they are, admitted and are graduating from. We have to up open up the, the, the barriers to immigration. Ironically, in the United States,

00:14:01 - but immigration has been one of the great, great, seeds of the growth of knowledge in the United States. The best example, of course, is in 1933 when basically Hitler came to power. There were all these Jewish intellectuals and scientists who were forced out or had to escape. They came to Britain, they came to the United States, they populated some of our great universities.

Talent, Immigration, and America's Intellectual Influence

00:14:33 - And we had great young talent, but we didn't have great leadership at the time. And they propelled forward many, many of the disciplines that grew up in the 20th century. Well, there are enormous number of, I'm probably using enormous too often, but there are a great, great number of extraordinarily talented young people who want to come to the United States and are either are denied,

00:15:05 - So to give an example, there are fabulous Iranian scholars, and there have been engineers and others, over the years, well, they can't get into the United States anymore. and they're even, thinking about, you know, cutting down the number of Chinese, 90% of the Chinese students who come to the United States, stay in the United States. They're a source of not only enormous intellectual energy

00:15:37 - and I think this is not fully understood by many people. They are the source, the, the, the source of soft power. this is one of the ways in which the United States can begin to influence the world without threatening people with military force. And when you have an integration, on essentially networks of people who have different origins

Challenging Perceptions of Social Mobility

00:16:11 - and finding solutions, there is I think a much greater probability of that leading to peaceful solutions. People think that there's been a suppression of social mobility, or that social mobility has not continued to exist. There's a wonderful book by a Stanford, scholar and a Princeton scholar, which, shows that social mobility hasn't stopped. In fact, it's at as higher rate as it's almost ever been.

00:16:41 - that the sources have been from South Asia, from Asia, but when they come to the United States, they have as rapid mobility as immigrants from other groups have in the past. And one would hope immigrants from other countries would have if given the opportunity to be here. So the, the so-called barriers to social mobility, I think are more in the minds of people that they're being denied o opportunities

00:17:13 - that knowledge is something that's important, but it's the product of intellectuals and people who look down on us, et cetera. So they don't try. And I think we're cutting that off because of our political stances rather than, using the opportunity that we have to not only encourage, reinforce, and to fund young people who, would like to go to college