Freemen Freeman Hrabowski , i want to get your take on what is going on in the country in colleges. Thats a great question because it is everyones mind right now. More we know about situations, the more we realize we need to reflect and think carefully about options and strategies. The less we know the more quickly we want to jump and do something. So we are going through a period now, similar to others, the vietnam war where people had different points of view, lots of students protests, we have gone through student protests before on issues. We need to educate our students and ourselves more about the issues of the middle east. The one time of brown and carnegie said if there was one course every student should take, it would be comparative religion because we would understand the ways in which we are similar and different so my message to colleagues in talking with them is there is no right side or wrong side, there are issues somewhere in the middle that we so quickly can judge people by something they say without knowing the full story. For me, the number one goal is saving lives on either side. What do we do to help to save more life and prevent more lives from being taken . That means everything from supporting the hostages, praying for them, and it means not wanting to see more children killed on the other side so i strongly believe we should support our country and the president as he and the leaders are working to prevent the taking of more lives. To me, that is the most important, and i would ask americans to be more willing to understand that any College President is working to do her best right now. There is a winwin, but right now it is a very challenging situation. Well need to calm down, reflect on the situation, learn more about the issues and feel more for people on either side. Peter did you ever face anything like this at you mbc . Mr. Hrabowski yes. We have students from 100 countries and we have different points of view in the middle east and elsewhere in the most important thing to do is bring people together and have the Difficult Conversations and see if we can build trust. Trust that people want to do the right thing. There was no way to do that if people are not talking to each other and if we do not have a level of calmness, we have to learn how to disagree with civility, to listen to the other point of view. We are so quick to suggest or believe it is my side or no side and it is rarely like that. My grandmother, who had a sixth grade education, used to say, there is his side, her side, and the real side. Common ground is usually in the gray area. When we are talking about the differences in our own country, in international issues, we are going to need to find a way to listen carefully to the other side and find where are the points where we can agree. Peter a recent wall street journal oped said, it may be premature to call the antiisrael protests and assault to jewish students across the country a Tipping Point but it seems that recall lord of the flies, where the universitys best and brightest, are behaving like barbarians are prompting employers, parents, and High School Students to rethink the value of their degrees. Mr. Hrabowski i think a College Degree is more important now than ever. We need people who can think critically as we think about what it means to be a human being and we should all say we are against anything that speaks of antisemitism, we need to also say we need to save lives of palestinian children and we need to speak out against racism or a group of people, we have to speak out clearly about that but we also have to go beyond speaking out against something. We have to understand the issues. I know many of the students who are protesting about war are not against jewish people. There is a difference between being bothered by the leader of a country and their approach to war versus being against the people of the country. Many people in israel are not pleased with their leader right now. We know this. President biden knows this. We have to make these distinctions and be more clear about what we truly believe. I am not willing to accept the idea that this country will condone antisemitism. No. There are those who are really wrong in saying that and we have to say it. At the same time, i know that decent people do not want to see children and families on the other side killed. We have to get back to the fundamental human values as we talk about these things. Peter if this happened at umbc when you were president , how would you handle it . Mr. Hrabowski a very important distinction, i am president emeritus. They have a wonderful president. But what i always did and what i see people doing is finding ways to bring people together to have robust and Difficult Conversations. The challenge is when you are in the midst of a heated protest and negotiations, emotions rise so much and it gets so heated, you do not get to reason and the way to deal with things and that is part of what some campuses are dealing with now, they need the time for things to calm down. Some demands will just not be met but at the same time, others can, at least in terms of making sure we keep people safe. There are jewish students who do not feel safe now. People supporting the palestinian cause who say we need to stop the war, we need to protect humans, i think there is a way to do that. I am a strong believer in the right to protest peacefully. Peacefully. We get into problems when it is no longer peaceful. Thats the point. We want to support our president and help that country to stop the war, i understand we have to deal with issues about the hostages for sure and dealing with safety for people on both sides but as we protest, we must do so peacefully and for the president s dealing with these issues, first they have to work on the safety of their students. Ensure people are safe. One thing not set enough is sometimes when you have these protests on any campus some of the people protesting are not students and they have their own agenda. And that can be worrisome. I heard the dean of journalism at columbia say that and i know the president of columbia is concerned about the safety of her students. People are angry now but they are angry on both sides. It is easy to criticize the leader. The best the leader can do is remain calm, listen to the different perspectives, work to do the right thing based on listening to these people and to give the situation the time to quiet down so we can have more conversations and once we get that we need to have more challenging conversations. I read something in the last 24 hours saying there is not enough intellectual rigor to the conversations. It is just them or us and we need to understand the issues. That is why College Education is more important than ever and one that teaches people to listen to the other side, that is not just one point of view, we have these different points of view that must be taken into account. Peter Speaker Mike Johnson visited columbia. Lets listen and get your reaction. We cannot allow this type of hatred to flourish on campuses and it must be stopped in their tracks. Those perpetrating violence should be arrested and i am here today joining my colleagues in calling on the president to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos. If this is not contained quickly and these threats and intimidation are not stopped there is an appropriate time for the national guard. We have to bring order to campuses. We cannot allow this to happen around the country. Peter speaker of the house. Mr. Hrabowski my first statement, we must take the politics out of education. We must not be driven by political comments. We must be driven by moral principles. First, combing down. I am always bothered when people quickly call for the resignation of a leader when the leader is working to do the right thing as much as possible. Number two, really important, we have to separate the issues and think about them. Violence, no, we cannot have violence. Make sure people are safe. Whatever we need to do to keep people safe. Violence is wrong. We cannot have protesters become violent. When we do, there is a problem. Its a safety issue. Number three, we must look at the complexity of the issues. It is perfectly legitimate for americans to say, we agree with you President Biden, we need to do Everything Possible to stop this war, stop the killing of children, and we understand the need to protect the hostages and do whatever we can and there has to be some diplomacy used to do that but right now as these young people are showing and others, people are worried about the thousands being killed through a war that just means a lot of bombs and the fact is, i am a strong believer that we have to support a country leader, like america right now, as President Biden and his people are working to work with israel. I am also a strong believer that we need to look at how the israeli people are looking at their leader and the approach they are using so there are distinctions that need to be made. Because you are concerned about the killing of children does not in any way suggest that you are against jewish people. When we are in the middle of arguments, heated protest, things get jumbled and you were on one side or another and that is why Higher Education is so important, so we can take time to understand the issues with some depth. Not the quick answers, the quick speeches that say do this or do that, rather lets figure this out together. Peter lets turn our attention to your ok, the Resilient University and heres a quote. Elected officials have made into a political issues college tuition, student free debt, quality of education, critical race theory, workplace skills, free speech on campus, controversial speech speakers. This is a doubleedged sword. What do you mean . Mr. Hrabowski on one hand we must have freedom of speech. People need to be able to say what they think, it is one of our rights as americans. On the other hand, when the speech creates violence or becomes antisemitism and all of a sudden we see violence we have to do something about it. We make sweeping generalizations about the cost of College Without understanding the specificity. There are many institutions that work very hard to keep cost down. We should talk more about Community Colleges on the job they do come more about Public Institutions and private institutions that have discounts, and most important we need to see how much education transforms lives. Show me a family that has success with college in terms of their kids but would not want their grandkids going to college. Only one third of americans have a fouryear College Degree and we have millions who started college and for whatever reason did not graduate and they have a lot of bills so they do not feel good about it. Then over 60 who do not have the College Experience and do not know what it might do for their kids, its not just about finding a job. When we look at all the statistics on the lives of graduates and how they participate meaningfully in society we see how college is so important. Finding the family who has success and who does not say others deserve to have that right as well. Two year for years, the important thing is post secondary education. Not just in stem and technology but thinking about the role america plays in the world, it is because they have all these educated people who want their children to be educated. The challenge we face right now as i talk about, and i have wonderful colleagues who have coauthored this book, from a Vice President to Senior Leader to provost, all three of them, we talked with people throughout the campus and i spoke with people around the country and in terms of the Resilient University is this idea that we all get knocked down as a society and universities but we have to meet with the flexibility to get back up and say what must we do to take the institution to the next level and most important put the success of students first, put that at the core of whatever we tried to do. Peter what is the definition of a successful College Education . Mr. Hrabowski to be educated is to be ready to learn and grow as an adult. I am over 70 and i have studied french come up when i started several years ago my students laughed and said dont you think you are kind of old . [laughter] we are never too old to learn. Beckett, the irish poet spoke and wrote in french and said in one of his books, character is studying the dance of bees. When they dance they communicate. He was fascinated because the more he studied the dancing of the bees, the more he began to understand how they communicated, the more he realized there was so much more to know. The essence of education is developing the wisdom to know i can learn, i have learned some things, but they is so much more to learn and to have the lust for learning, to be grounded in the notion that the humanities will always matter because it is always about behavior of people, the arts, social sciences, and yes i am a mathematician, but my mother the english teacher always said at the core will be the humanities. So being a broadly educated person means being able to think about the different perspectives, to think about other points of view, looking for not just information but trying to gather from the information what is significant that can make a difference in our understanding of how to solve the problem. Quick answers are not the way. We have to take the time to think carefully and critically about these issues, about our country, about international matters. I would say to americans, and the book is the perfect example about getting back up, that we are divided right now but this is where history comes in. We have been divided before but we cannot lose 40 of americans on either side, we have to pull together to figure out what do we learn as a country that has allowed us to deal with all of the challenges we faced and yet somehow we finally come to the point of a Common Ground . That is the beauty of america, right now we are in the midst of division but when i was in college, we were in the midst of division. When i graduated, it was, will we ever be better than this . But then we had legislation, the civil rights act, and we became better and we will do it again. The point is resilience. The resilience that we can be better than we are today. Peter you graduated from undergrad in 1970. You graduated early. Where did you go to school and were you involved in protest . Mr. Hrabowski i graduate at 19. I went to hampton. My girlfriend, now my wife, we studied in egypt as Exchange Students and we learned a lot about islam and arab society and have a great deal of respect. Then we went to the university of illinois for graduate school and had an amazing experience and have spent quite a bit of time in israel. So we have been talking about the middle east situation for more than 50 years and again, the more we learn and understand both points of view, the more we realize there is a lot more to understand. We see how others do not really appreciate the role of religion in societys in the history of both sides and the ways in which we need to be supportive of bringing people together. Peter university of North Carolina has started a democracy initiative. Is that important . Mr. Hrabowski very important. I always go back to the last the last part of your question, i was involved in protests. I was a child leader in the civil rights movement. I was a kid and went to jail with dr. Martin luther king. So i understand the difference between peaceful protest and was involved in protests at hampton and i was close with the president of hampton and yes, i understand how sometimes we have to speak out and speak truth to power, to get people to think about what is important to the people, but the idea of a center of democracy, we have that kind of center at umbc and it is important to get people to look at the whole vote. We have to look at the policies different candidates promote but it is not just about going on voting, it is about more than that. Educating people about the issues all year long so that i the time has come to client by the time to vote, they know their opinion that matters and more importantly, i understand the implications or impact of my decision on what happens to human beings. Very important. Peter you were president of um before ci media and as it grew. How has it changed teaching, college life . Mr. Hrabowski now we expect answers from leaders like that. In the early 1990s, 1992 i had the first cell phone i could put in my pocket on the campus. People would see it and say, is that the phone . People did not go around with phones. A telephone had accord. A phone had a cord. It is very interesting that our mindset now as leaders is we have to get back to them, people are rating for a response. Waiting for a response. Before you would get a typed letter. But now people expect answers as never before. You can get a Quick Response but then that response but does the response reflect the careful listening . One of our challenges in our society right now is to understand, we have to be more deliberate in thinking through the response we give and that the response often does not reflect the depth it should because people expect a Quick Response in a few words. We are going through this extreme time where people expect like this, right away, and i think as time goes on we will bounce back from that and think lets be a bit more careful. I spoke with students preparing for commencement at a college and i asked what would you like to talk about and one student said, you read social media, you cannot help but be depressed. We are going to hell as a society. What can you tell us . Mr. Hrabowski i said i hope it wont be that bad. We have to know the history of our country. We have been through times before. Social media can present usually the breaking news and usually the breaking is the most negative stuff of all. It is a time where we have challenges, i am not sugarcoating but i am saying if we only focus on the negative side, we keep going down the dark hole. We must look for the hope. We must look at people and believe, even if w