S1: good afternoon. i, we decided that uh four P-M is really Michigan time which is ten after the hour or close to it. i'd like to welcome you. my name is Earl Lewis and i'm the Dean of the Graduate School and it's my pleasure, uh to have you and and Nancy Cantor be part of this evening, uh program in the afternoon at Rackham series that's been going on now for the last two and a half years. um <COUGH S1> excuse me, we've been talking here for the last year and a half about American values and, what thoy(sic), those values mean, we we question what it means to be an American what constitutes American culture, and how do we understand the connection between who we think we are and in the institutions that we attempt to build, and as part of that series we've been_ uh it's been our great pleasure to invite a number of, faculty and colleagues from around the country and in- also inside the university. the list has included uh not only Larry Levine who is (a historian now) at George Mason University and Edward Said he's at Columbia, but as recently as last week, uh Kate Stimpson Katherine Stimpson some of you know her as, former dean of the graduate school of (Rutgers) she's now dean of the graduate school at N-Y-U, and in between she was at the McArthur Foundation. um the list also in- includes uh, (Gail Lowman,) uh and uh, Nicholas Lemann and others who've (come to) really talk about, where we are and what place we_ sort of the challenges we face and i can't think of any greater challenges that we face than, to deal with the future of higher education but particularly the research university. which in many respects is a mid-twentieth century creation and we're still struggling to figure out what it looks like, not only after adolescence but now in, sort of middle age, and where we're gonna be in the in the twenty-first century and, if you look around uh this room we all puzzle and struggle with the challenges we all struggle now with the idea of just this learning, we think about and try to figure out how we might be able to integrate technology not only into the classroom but also into our research endeavors, we struggle with (xx) the balance the need between teaching and also bringing in research dollars. and we deal with the reality, that the future before us is_ won't be like the past but we're not sure of what that future will be and so sometimes there is great anxiety, other times there's sort of (hammering) and other times uh great anticipation, of what this world will look like. well so it was a_ with that framing that i asked Nancy Cantor, uh to come and to talk to us uh, she sits now in a very special place inside this university. not only (will) she think about these ideas but she also should help lead us as the chief academic officer for the university. and Nancy agreed some time ago, uh to come and speak not knowing what events would unfold in the intervening period, and, least of all that she would be, spending a lot of time with the military, and um which as some of you know she's on the commission that has taken her all over the country now, getting to know what it means to not only salute but i guess something about chain of commands <SS LAUGH> and and and all the other, uh things that go along with it. um Nancy as many of you know is a wildly widely published scholar in the area of personality and social psychology, and she's been the recipient of many awards. she's a nineteen seventy-four graduate, of Sarah Lawrence, uh College and she received her PhD in Psychology from Stanford, in nineteen seventy-eight. in nineteen eighty-five she was honored by the American Psychological Association and (with a distinguished) scientific award for early career, contributions to psychology, and from nineteen ninety-two to nineteen ninety-three she served as the president of the Society for Personality, in Social Psychology. her academic career has been spent moving between Princeton and the University of Michigan, and she came back <S1 LAUGH> she looks at me she came back, uh to Michigan to be dean of the graduate school and i have a note here to say something personal and i and i think i will, it was_ uh i- i was sitting in my um, office one day, uh about two years ago and i think Nancy's the only one who knows this and the phone rang, and i got a call from someone i'd heard of but didn't know and it was Nancy on the other end, asking me had i ever thought of coming to_ spending a little time at the graduate school, and uh it was after a long conversation and much conversation, in uh she made me the kind of offer i really couldn't r- refuse which was one to join her, and be part of a team trying to figure out the future of graduate education at the University of Michigan, uh but she also did so in such a way s- says well you can also figure out what it is you really want to do here and i thought i've never had a job offer where the portfolio was that wide open. uh l- little did i know, what what happened eighteen months later <SS LAUGH> and that she would be the provost of the university and i would be standing before you, um but i am pleased indeed uh that Nancy is provost and also i'm i'm glad to be here in graduate school, and i wish you uh will join me in welcoming Nancy, Cantor, to the podium 
S2: thank you Earl i can't imagine a better person to be in the graduate school than you, so, okay um, it's wonderful, always for me to be back, speaking in Rackham um, a f- great fondness both for, this institution and this building and, for what it means um, for the university. er- as Earl said i'm_ when he, called me, quite some time ago to do this he said it was a series on American values and, um i hafta, say that i was just newly into the provost office then and thought, oh my gosh <S1 LAUGH> i'm not gonna have anything to say on American values after spending, um hours and hours in the provost's office thinking about, how we're gonna get our next dollar and what we're going to do, to make sure that we are, presented, um appropriately to the world i i have to say after now, um thirteen or so months in the provost's office um, i think we actually do have a lot to say about American values in the provost's office and i hope, i can start that conversation now many of my colleagues are here and, w- will join me i hope and, i hope we'll just really have a discussion today um, about American values, i can't think of an im- topic more important actually for this university and all, major research universities to think about than American values and i- and, really can't think of a place more fitting than Rackham to be the centerpiece for this engagement, um Earl asked me to speak about challenges that i see facing faculty students and staff at the U-of-M, from the perspective of a provost as those might inform American values, and i suppose that means essentially from the perspective of a central university, faculty administrator um, dealing with both budget and, the academic, sides of the university and trying to put those two together so it's in that respect that that, i'll talk today. and i think that we're really um, in starting to think about those challenges one really needs to think about or i need to think about three values or three contexts or frames that really inform, those challenges they they sort of bump against them if you will on a daily basis in our office and for the university, and so i want to spend a little bit of time in the beginning talking about what i see as the the sort of three values or frames or contexts, that i as provost and and my colleagues i think, um think about the university and its role in in shaping American values. the most global frame of that is to really think about Michigan as a great public research university and all that that entails, as we address our mission. the next, sort of level down of values or of contexts or frame, that i'll talk about is the central versus decentralized organization, of our communities here the sense in which this institution, is a multi-layered or nested set of communities and how do we, how do we bring to bear all of those communities both each individually and then together, to inform our sense of statement about values and where we wanna go. and lastly and you'll forgive this but a provost has to spend as much time as she can bringing in, her own scholarship because one doesn't get, a whole of time to do it if you don't bring it right directly into one's um, daily work and so, lastly the frame i'll talk about is one of as a social and personality psychologist and what i see, that framework doing to inform where we take institutions like this. so what i want to do then is intermix a discussion about the kinds of concerns that, come across a provost's desk, with a discussion about these kinds of values these three f- value frames if you will. so let's think first about this great public research university that we have. there are very few of them, really i would argue in this country, and we are absolutely one of them, and it's the conjoining of all of those words that really give in- i- make the importance of our mission. so it's the greatness, it's the publicness, and it's the research university those things all conjoined together make for a frame, that enables us ultimately to have enormous impact on American values and American society. and i think if we think about what it means to be a great public research university for me, it means something more than the traditional definition, of inf- of a place of information creation and transmission. obviously that's very much at the center of our mission we create knowledge we transmit knowledge, we communicate we work with each other to push, the boundaries of knowledge, but i would like to argue that a place like Michigan does, even more than that and that indeed what Michigan is as an institution and Berkeley is as an institution and there are, others of course, is that we are really grand societal experiments we are really, institu- as an institution, we are experiments for society. Earl mentioned my my military travels of late i'm on a, congressional commission on, women in the military or gender-related issues in the military, and i hafta say that that_ which is hard to say for a child of the sixties but i have come to have, enormous appreciation for other great societal experiments the military being one indeed, where we do_ where they do what we try to do, you take individuals and you bring them into the boundedness of a place like this an institution like this, or boot camp as a as, um i've become fond of all the boot camps around this country, <SS LAUGH> you take people in, particularly at a very_ at an age or a time in life, when they're leaving something very defined something culturally defined, often bounded in our country often segregated in racial and ethnic segre- cultural religious segregations we have very, well-defined communities. and you bring people from multiple versions of th- those communities from multiple corners of this country of this state of the world indeed, not in the military but, but here you bring them, together, bump them up against each other, and create an organization or an institution create a community or a set of communities, that is indeed, working as much on learning how to live together and be together, that is how to be the institution, as it is learning how to, transmit that knowledge or create knowledge. so that, if you think of a great public research university as a place in which, the mission is, as much about how to be that university, for society as it is about, what it is we plug into the heads and send out forth, um into the world. i think it puts a special relevance for these kinds of institutions a special cherished place i would argue that this country should have for these kinds of institutions, because we are indeed able we have the luxury if you will, to play with crossing boundaries to stretch out from the communities we came, to build together a different kind of community, we have a certain luxury of the time in life, for many, undergraduates for sure f- graduate students and i would argue that many of us faculty sort of, love the university cuz we keep preserving that sense that we really still could figure out who we are if we ever grew up, that we really are indeed in a place, that is about change about creating new boundaries about learning new ways of talking to each other, of listening of learning from each other, of, hating each other of loving each other it's not always s- sweet i mean certainly, we know the vitality of this institution over the years has been, that it isn't indeed always sweet that there's a lot of bumping up and tension and and from that i hope comes vitality. i think that Michigan has always played that kind of role i've gone back over the years, over the last year with colleagues at the Bentley Library and looked at, various statements from for example um just coincidentally provosts from the past, and here's one from, the U-of-M Provost in nineteen forty-eight James Adams who said, among all the_ and i quote <READING> among all the program- problems now in need of solution for the benefit and happiness of our people, those dealing with human relationships are of compelling importance. unless we can make more progress in that area, we shall not reap the full benefit of our other resources. human relations must be a major concern to institutions engaged in tesing teaching and research. </READING> that is the value message i would take in large part about what we do over and above what we actually transmit and create and teach. we are institutions given afforded the luxury by the state and by our donors and by the parents, and people who pay our tuition we are afforded the luxury to try to figure out new forms of human relations. new ways in which we can all mix and create community. and i think Michigan has indeed, been addressing that, ever since and certainly even before um Provost Adams made that statement. um, David Hollander when he f- did a a history actually a fifty year history of Rackham, as an institution uh, wrote about the need for Michigan to do and i quote everything reasonably well, that there was this sense of inclusiveness of breadth, intellectual and social inclusiveness and breadth to this place that we cou- we didn't allow ourselves to just, deal with one special corner of the world that we were indeed, needing to create this broad research university this inclusive university, this societal experiment i would argue. we do this not just demographically but certainly indeed demographically but we do it in the ways in which we mix professional con- schools and liberal arts we do it in the ways in which, we create a variety of communities, and indeed we do it by retaining, permeable boundaries between the ivory tower, and the communities around us. so that part of our publicness, is indeed an actual publicness a sense of, merging, with the community that has allowed us to be this societal experiment, and then of pulling back and of defining our own boundaries and i think, one really good example of this is the dialogue that's going on now about master planning, in the university the sense in which, we as an institution are bounded we own, our campus we own our sense of wh- how we're gonna define ourselves on the campus, but but do we really? well we're not isolated we have a responsibility to the broader community with which we don't, really_ (can't) hide from and indeed must have those permeable boundaries with so in the master planning, that we're going through as a campus um, (xx) meet constantly for example with, people in the city in the community and have a sense of what what it would mean for them if we built, North Campus in a particular way. what it would mean for us if they do something to the Broadway bridge in a particular way. so our sense of being both, private in that we own our boundaries we are within ourselves a community allowed the luxury of figuring out how to define ourselves, and yet public in the sense, that we're always looking out, to define ourselves with an_ with a r- sense of responsibility for who's out there and what they are feeling and thinking i think is a very critical, value if you will and i think, it is indeed an American value to have institutions, like ours institutions like the military that i have been spending, so much time with of late, institutions then that are both private, and publicly owned and publicly ceded, that both, are private in the sense that they are given the chance, to try to be a community to try to take people from their homes into this community and build community, and public yet in the sense that they have a certain, ultimate tie to what they can do for, the broader social community. i think we see that in all our pre-college programs, we see that, in our um industrial col- and corporate and academic relationships um, some_ again, all of these things are sort of, f- replete with tension, and yet the tension is there precisely because we want to do, for those groups what we can, but we want desperately to preserve a sense of integrity, and identity, and playfulness within this community we don't want to be owned by the corporate community we don't want to be owned by the city of Ann Arbor we don't want to be run by the federal research agencies that give us our our food and our and our sustenance we don't want to be managed by the donors whom we are so, deeply indebted to, so yet we know that we have a sense of responsibility back outward, that we can't, just be a place, where we create the ivory tower here that we hafta, h- create a relationship, that goes both ways that that really draws us out. so how do we then, form this societal experiment here within, within our own boundaries when we get to be playful and private and create, a community here, how do we do it? well Michigan has clearly over the years always valued what i would call layers of community. it's always valued, both the notion that we are, one university, and yet within it we are really layers and layers of nested communities within that. and we fiercely value, the right to engage in our own, well-defined little community, be it department, dorm, school or college, team, whatever it be, be it one's own area in the central administration i_ one of the things one learns as provost is that, even though, we're always labelled, central administration as opposed to the the decentralized units in schools and colleges in fact the central administration has as much nested community within it, there are layers upon layers of communities fiercely, um prideful of their own autonomy. so a question that one gets to ask and, has to ask really in my uh role in the university is how do we preserve people's engagement in the university as a whole, while still allowing this autonomy, to engage in the nested com- subcommunities of this institution. perhaps the most obvious way, in which a provost gets to ask that question and be informed, by the value of both centralization and decentralization is in the university budget model. i mean for example how do we give schools and colleges enough autonomy, so that they can make indeed informed decisions about the opportunity costs of using their resources, in one way or another, while at the same time preserving a sense that we all have fiscal common fate? that indeed we need to be able to support enterprises, that we value as a collective, but indeed will not be self-supporting. so how do we do that dance, if you will, between the whole and the parts? and how do we really get to convince ourselves and each other, that the whole, of which we may sometimes only have a teeny part for ourselves, that the whole is in fact greater than the sum of all those teeny parts that we have? what are the public goods of a great, university this is a question, we ask all the time in my office. now there are obvious ones and indeed ones we are deeply committed to supporting like the library system and the museums, there are public goods on the athletic fields so you go from Hill to the stadium, although i have to tell you if i hear one more word about the stadium, i <SS LAUGH> it is very perilously close to be taking off the list of public goods in my mind, but, nonetheless <SS LAUGH> there is, there is the trip from Hill to the football stadium the big house as i gather we need now call it, but there are also less obvious ones that i think we also need to think about as public goods as things that we are all committed to because they create the whole of the university, not just the subparts that we're a part of. so think about the transportation system, on this campus. think about, safety as a public good. how do we as a university, commit, to the safety, of our campus and of ourselves what does that mean? think about financial aid as a public good. this institution has always had what i find to be a remarkable commitment, not paralleled by many other institutions for example in the state to meet the financial need, of all in-state residents who are part of the university. that's a public good that is a policy we set, but it's a shared public good, that requires some sacrifice from all of the parts, all the schools and colleges in our current model, contribute to that central public good of financial aid. here's an even trickier one that i must say i think about more and more and that goes right to the heart of American values and of why we are indeed a societal experiment, and that is the public good of a civil community. what is what is_ does it mean to create, a civil community on a campus like this? in what sense do we legislate, civil behavior do we regulate behavior? in what sense do we need to have, rules and regulations for how we act to each other how we use our power and our position and our privilege how we abuse it where do we cut, that line between use and abuse? in what sense do_ are we all jointly responsible, in that sense as a public good, for creating a civil university a civil community? now one could say that we are responsible only to the small nested subcommunity, that we indeed bump against, on a daily basis. and many people do take that attitude and reasonable people can reasonably disagree on this, but i should say, that i personally as provost feel very strongly, that we have, a right and a responsibility, as a university as a whole, to think about civil community to think about climate and collaboration to think about the roles people play and the ways in which, we transmit a sense of respect and belongingness um for each other and for those different communities. it's not so easy to do in a time when we're constantly being told to, cut costs and be more efficient, i mean for example, one of the things that i feel very acutely is that as we try to be responsible as an institution and to, hold down the costs for example of central administrative staff which we are, committed to doing, we run a very grave risk of defining people who are critical as public goods for this university that is our staff, defining them as not somehow, belonging as much, as the rest, of the other, nested communities so we we create the potential, that what we are calling the university as a whole, has some favored nation status within it some some, New York and California states and there's those little ones uh, Delaware and Maryland and uh whatever and they're gonna be our staff and and the faculty and students are gonna be these these, big ones holding up the bookends of the university. we can't afford, that kind of, pulling apart, and yet, it is certainly the case that we have to face, the kinds of efficiencies and calls for efficiencies um, that are that are coming to us. so let me get, then to the third of the value frames and then really talk about some specific issues that, come across a provost's desk, a provost who likes to delude herself into thinking that they could be informed by these values. the third one is indeed a personal value frame that i would bring to the issues facing higher education right now, and it is my most cherished construct in psychology so, you will forgive me, um by bringing it to you. i need to do that whenever i can. this comes really for me from um, a personality psychologist actually, George Kelly in the mid-nineteen fifties who s- taught at Ohio State, of all places. well before, uh the notion of post-modernism ever surfaced, Kelly argued that human creativity and indeed human well-being, was rooted in the proclivity to alternatively experience, the same event. so rooted in the proclivity for me to experience you, differently, from one moment to the next, or, for you and i to experience a third person, <BUMPS MICROPHONE> sorry <LAUGH> differently, depending on the constructs that were salient for us, at that moment. so Kelly wrote a theory of what he called personal construct theory, that argued indeed that one's experience of the world, was deeply driven, by the salient constructs at the moment in the head. but that what was distinctly wonderful about people, is that we don't always need to bring the same constructs to bear. from moment to moment. so Kelly was a clinician, and his concern indeed was with what he called our pervasive underachievement of our creative potential. he was concerned, with how we limit our construals of the world how we rigidly cling to familiar construals and inappropriately force them on our experience, how we come to value what i- what we we know what is familiar what we've seen what we've heard over and over how we come to devalue, that which looks different that which seems different. Kelly argued that much of the, distress in human behavior that he saw in the clinical realm, could be attributed to this kind of narrowing and rigidification if you will, of the way in which people construed, themselves in their social world. my colleague John Kielstrom and i when we wrote a book on social intelligence argued indeed, that there was a double-edged sword to expertise to just the kind of thing that you and i, treasure in being in the university, that we can be experts at something that we can transform students into being, experts at something, that expertise however has a double-edged sword to it. one way to say that is that sometimes it's our own very own knowledge, that limits our understanding, because we automatically construe the world through that frame, and are not open quite to the possibility to see it differently. Kelly's phrase was con- what he called constructive alternativism. that you could alternatively construct the world and your experience, differently from moment to moment. it seems to me that that is absolutely critical, to what it means for this great r- public research university, with its nested layers of community, to indeed fulfill its promise as a societal experiment. this is in my mind at the core of why diversity in this campus is so critical, because one of the royal roads, to challenging automatic habits of mind and constructs that have become rigidified is indeed to bump up against somebody, who just doesn't quite see it the same way, because indeed their automatic constructs for the world, are just, quite different from yours or mine. it's exemplified in why we need our undergraduates at a great research university to stretch beyond the confines of their own, discipline their own major their own comfort zone if you will intellectual comfort zone, and indeed, to take advantage of what a great public research university has to offer it has to offer medical faculty to L-S-and-A students it has to offer artists to scientists it has to offer the kind of clash and and bumping up against that will then ray- lead people to be creative in a Kellyan sense to to really alternatively construe, and it is indeed, for me at the core of why, we need to so vigorously cherish our interdisciplinarity and our multidisciplinarity and the working groups and all, the cl- groups of people that come together on this campus, becau- not because we think that disciplines are problematic but rather because we will do better in our disciplines if indeed we are coming across others who will have construed the problem differently, and it isn't just that you see the problem differently. it's that you, see a different problem. so that's the Kellyan point, (i mean) that indeed you see something, in there that the other person will not have seen, because they are used to seeing it through their own lens their own expertise. now what does that mean institutionally then, if we are indeed going to be, infused um, by a a Kellyan notion of construing the world alternatively? what it means is that we must institutionally create structures create communities, that really force exploration, that force the kind of diversity of mind and thought and behavior and affect that comes, from getting different groups of people beyond their comfort zones outside their disciplines away from their teams away from their roommates and their old communities at home, all the various mixings that you can think of. but there is indeed a psychological irony and Kelly was the first to note this, or certainly did note it, there is an irony to the fact that exploration, rarely comes without a sense of place and security. so the role for a great research university if we're gonna be a soc- a societal experiment that encourages exploration, intellectual and social diversity in its true day-to-day meaning and fulfillment, the role for us is to allow people place and security, allow social groups to form on campus, allow disciplines and make sure disciplines are as well-supported as our interdisciplinary activity, allow schools to be_ have some autonomy and some control, but also allow, the kind of crossing that comes when you take a pan-university, perspective. we need_ if you forgive the maternal um or parenting analogy we need to think of us constantly in the role of young toddlers ranging outside the security of the familiar caretaker, but we know from all the developmental work in the world, that toddlers don't range outside, of security, unless there is security, that you indeed need to be balancing the place and the exploration. as a as a very um, specific version of that i get asked all the time when i talk about, affirmative action on campus i got asked this the other day by a reporter who said well i went into a dining hall and all the students of color were eating together and all the white students were eating together so, so what's this big deal that you h- bring, students of color to campus and you bring white students to campus why is that a great achievement? that's a great achievement because, where they came from, they wouldn't have been even in the same building, next year, when they range out, we're gonna try to make sure, that we provide institutional structures that allow individuals, to n- get_ after getting that sense of group and identity, to then mix and, come together. but it's not gonna be_ it's_ by having mixing we don't mean that we don't have identity, so those things have to range together they have to b- co-occur, and the second thing an institution like ours needs to come to terms with if we're gonna fulfill this societal role, and really influence American values, is indeed also exemplified in the example of whether students, of color and white students eat together and that is, exploration is hard. it's tension provoking. it is not fun. people ask me every day if i m- am enjoying being provost is it fun to be provost, no way. <SS LAUGH> and i don't think it is fun to work on the hard problems of a societal experiment. if it were fun and easy and with no tension, it would be done every day in all the communities you and i, came from and go back to. we_ the reason we have the luxury in some sense that, we didn't have in our home communities, is indeed because we also have the burden, of being willing, to engage the hard problems we do it in our work every day from classrooms to laboratories to archaeological digs, to telescopes we r- we work on the hard problems, why would we think we_ it's gonna be, something we should work on, when it has to do, with the most fundamental problems of how we get together and learn from each other and be with each other, but it's not going to be fun. or easy. it's not gonna be fun or easy, um, not only, because indeed it's stretching beyond, one's comfort zone, but also because it's new. not new just in the sense of novel, but new in the sense of uncharted territory. we don't have many cultural institutions, in this country or elsewhere, that tell us the rules, for stretching beyond boundaries. one of the things that one finds in interdisciplinary work all the time, is that people say, it's just not easy, to actually do something meaningful and substantive, because it's hard to talk to each other, and it's_ and, what they have to say sounds so silly and what i have to say sounds so right, and why don't they see that? well, it's all a part i would argue of the same process. so those are the three value frames what do they have to do, with being_ with the challenges that faculty, staff and students face, um on this campus and that we think about, um in the provost's office. what i want to do um in the remaining few minutes and and then i hope there's some time for discussion is, to liter- just list off, the kinds of issues that come before the provost's office, that i think are_ need to be informed by those three value frames by the n- sense of mission, of this university as a great public research institution, by the sense of the need to incorporate these m- multiple layers or clusterings of communities, and by the sense of the need to encourage as an institution, the kind of constructive construals and alternative construals of the world that Kelly talked about. as being at the base, of s- of creativity and well-being. clearly affirmative action in admissions that we deal with every day, questions of affirmative action throughout questions of diversity, can be informed greatly by thinking about, the notion that there is somehow... a role for us as a as a, societal experiment to create boundary crossings to challenge people's automatic habits of mind. how do we support public goods we think about this every day in the provost's office so we think about, what should be central and what should be decentralized, should staff benefits be thought of a public good? it clearly is in in many respects. should childcare be thought of as a public good? how do we deal with the intellectual property, that faculty and students produ- and staff produce on this campus? is there some sense of publicness, to that property, and how does it feed back, to the institution as a whole? what about internationalization? is that a public good? is that something, that, should be, owned at an individual nested sub-level or should it be something, that is, shared jointly and that is institutionally encouraged at a at a high level of of centrality for example. um, what about, the environment what about questions about_ this is a campus with people working on environmental issues, everywhere everywhere you turn, should we should we think about, centralizing that in some way should we think about empowering those, subcommunities should we think about that as something that we all hafta s- have a say in, um more generally. how should a budget follow these values? um we spend a lot of time trying to think about, academic units on this campus that are other- might otherwise be orphans that might otherwise be_ go un- uncherished and unnurtured um, the library being the biggest potential orphan um a museum being um a potential orphan there are lots of places on this campus where very critical academic work gets done, and where very critical, creativity is_ needs to be fostered, but somehow, it doesn't_ they don't get state's rights yet they don't get that status, how duh- does one_ how do we do that how do we get donors for example to think, um just very pragmatically to think about um, the library the way they think about uh the stadium or the way they think about_ to pick a, a favorite uh, one, or to think about_ you'll have Tom Goss next time right so Tom can uh <SS LAUGH> um can can counter that um, what are the protocols for cooperation, that one wants to instill? how do we get faculty to feel fully free to bring grants that cross schools and colleges and that that indeed um, benefit everybody but not perhaps benefit anybody all that much um that is in terms of direct indirect cost. let's go on to, what for me is is a, huge brewing issue and that is how does this university, counter the bad press that that major public research universities or, research universities not all public, are getting, for_ in terms of teaching undergraduates. if you believe even a bit of the value system i have just laid out, it is precisely at these kinds of universities that undergraduate education ought to be and i would argue is indeed flourishing because it is precisely the variety and diversity both human and intellectual, that is enabled by this university that can be brought to bear on undergraduate education. that can f- stretch somebody who comes for example from high school thinking that the only thing in life is math or engineering and stretches them to see that they too could be a starving artist or a musician in the future. h- how do we get people, to be able to recognize that it is the access to, variety and diversity and richness in this place that indeed is what is our special value added. how do we get people to see, that there isn't only one person one can learn from and that person isn't only a senior faculty member, that in fact and i, hafta say this standing in this great building, that graduate students can be spectacular teachers, for undergraduates. many many ways closer as potential role models as people who can open up possibilities for the future for undergraduates, that doesn't mean we send graduate students into a classroom, without the proper training that would be irresponsible but it does mean that we indeed are creating communities and subcommunities here, that are not solely, dependent, on an individual apprenticeship model of faculty to student, because that won't be as lively it won't engage, the alternativism that Kelly would have argued for, and i think we need, a better P-R campaign if you will um on on that subject matter. and since i'm talking about P-R campaigns let me talk about the growth of resources, one of our greatest need for a P-R campaign. uh, Lee Bollinger was talking n- just a few_ an hour or so ago to the Senate Assembly so Bill and Barba- um, give my_ bear with me as i repeat some of what i think will be a mantra that you will hear from me and from Lee for, quite some time and from our colleagues. this state for example is supporting prisons at a, hugely increasing rate, directly in contrast, to the support, and, since the Ann Arbor News is here let me say this a little carefully, directly in contrast, to the, levels of increases of support, for higher education. we need to think about as a state, and we as a university need to mi- ha- engage that conversation. we need to think about, the policy choices that are being made, when we create, more and more prisons and prisoners and fewer and fewer resources, for institutions like this and others, that indeed can create a different way, of relating and a different sense of what the world, could be about. we have always been deeply grateful for the support we get from the state, but we absolutely need to be our own P-R group with respect, to how important what we do for the state, and for, the nation, more broadly is. we have always been dependent on receiving as an institution, more than for example the consumer price index would, allow us to get. we have always been dependent as an institution since the Second World War, on being able to do new things each year not just to support, what the consumer bread basket could, lead us to support from last year. we need a constant sense of growth, because we indeed are taking on more and more, for the state for the country, and in order to do that we need, our resources to keep pace. now we have a responsibility in turn, to be as efficient with those resources as we can. one of the, problematic things to try and explain about institutions like ours is that when we're efficient it doesn't mean that we're gonna cut costs. it doesn't mean that we're gonna reduce tuition when we create, efficiencies, what it means is that we'll be able to reinvest in the academic, ventures that we_ allow us to do more and more each year. and that's what we need, to get the message out. we need to get that message out by fulfilling our promise in terms of public outreach. so we need to engage in the kind of technology transfer that gives direct, successes if you will, to the broader community we need to think about our K-through-twelve programs which are r- very rich and and, active on this campus in terms of pre-college programs but which we need to advertise we have wonderful programs in the arts of citizenship, that really allow us to think about public art and what it does, for the community with the community. these things all go hand in hand because if we're gonna fulfill our promise, as a great societal experiment we have to do it, with the resources and seeding from our society. the state, and our donors and our parents who are paying here, hafta be partners in the sense of seeing, what comes back what comes out um in return. we have, all kinds of issues of interdisciplinarity on this campus constantly and we need, to think about how you break down those barriers because indeed, bringing different groups of people together, will be the best way to create those different construals. what that means is that the professoriate, cherished our cherished core professoriate, may look different in different ways have different faces different roles, different needs. we need to know how to evaluate tenure, when you're dealing with a faculty, that is doing, a variety of things that might traditionally not have been in the portfolio, of a tenure track faculty member. so the changing nature of the professoriate as it's often um, spoken of these days, requires, going back to the analogy between_ for a toddler it requires both place and exploration it requires us, to cherish our core, and yet to allow, some breadth and diversity and change because the the tasks are indeed changing. now how_ what are we gonna do, about efficiencies and about information access how are we gonna bring, the campus together to feel this sense, of oneness and of of unity and integrity. um i hate to even mention this word but but clearly the Pathways, um Project the M-Pathways Project is is a, very big attempt large scale attempt to say, that we could make information accessible, across different groups and different cub- subcommunities of this campus. it is putting enormous stress on our staffs at the moment, and we need to think about the ways in which, we are build_ in trying to build one community and trying to have information flow back and forth easily up and down, that we are indeed creating lots of new jobs, for people, and asking them to do old jobs at the same time and that's not easy. how do we create, climate and c- and a climate of collaboration on this campus this goes back to the notion i raised earlier of belongingness and of a civil community. um, how d- how do we protect individual rights and yet get this sense, of collective, well-being and of of, awareness of how much it hurts, when one engages in in harassment for example of any sort. how do we, learn to live with the tension created by intergroup relations and yet at the same time celebrate, the fact that that tension means we are addressing, the hard problems. and then the final one i would leave you with is the notion of, how we actually create some new communities, within this campus one would think given all i've said that we've got enough communities already we don't need, any new communities in this campus, but i think indeed, we do and i think one of the areas that we are talking about creating new communities, is indeed in the undergraduate program and that is to think about, the ways in which we create some living learning communities, that pull across that stretch outside the boundaries of let's say L-S and A or engineering or the art school or music, and then bring faculty and graduate students and undergraduates together, in a way_ and staff together in a way, that... sort of, solidifies a new community, that is not permanent because, typically those would be experiences that one comes in and out of and so, it'll be a new form of sets of communities we_ we're not, arguing that one would, dismantle in any way the typical liberal arts concentration or, the professional concentrations in in, music or art or engineering but rather, that one would find ways of pulling people into some new communities, and then, sending them out again. now these are all issues upon which reasonable people can reasonably disagree and we do. uh <S1 LAUGH> not a one of the issues that i have raised um has has consensus i suspect in the_ in any way, but i really believe that we can continue to prosper, if you keep in mind something like the three values, that_ frames that i suggested earlier. something like the role that Michigan has always played, as a great public research university committed, to trying out for society intellectually and socially, what it doesn't have the luxury to try out, on a daily basis itself. something like the permeable boundaries that include inclusiveness and the wide-rangingness of this place and a connection to the community that comes and goes that waxes and wanes. now i think Michigan (as) a multi-layered community is something that we all um need to keep in mind and the balance between the autonomous and the public good, is something that that, at least for me um is is a sort of, not as much a value as a tension, (a ways) that that leads itself then to be valuable, for us, and finally um, Michigan as an institution that i deeply believe is exciting precisely because it is willing to construe itself and reconstrue itself, alternatively quite frequently, that it is a place where people are ready and waiting to get, beyond the comfort zone, of their habitual ways of thinking, to try to be with someone different to try to think about something different, and indeed maybe even to change a habit, um, once in a while. so, those are the values um, those are the tricky problems, some of them are pretty nitty-gritty some of them are pretty lofty, um, but they come um floating, across our desk um on a regular basis and i think, um they are, finally convincing me in trying to put together this talk that, a provost does address, something valuable, sometimes <SS LAUGH> so, thank you 
S1: um, if there are questions we do have time, to answer a few questions and there will be a reception right after. but are there questions?
S3: uh Nancy um, i was uh very glad to read this summer that the administration had uh, increased the appropriation to the library, by ten percent uh this year and i think that's uh wonderful news for all of us, uh it's wonderful news for those especially of us who, come from the humanities side because, i think of this library as our, as our workshop our quarry uh where we get our building materials we use it a lot. uh but it's true for uh, for everyone, and uh people uh like myself who've used uh, research libraries in Europe know that there's nothing like the great American research library and ours is one of the best. uh so i'm very happy to hear about that, but i was little alarmed 
S2: i knew there was gonna be a but to this, this_ <SS LAUGH> you can just stop right there Bob 
S3: i was a little alarmed when you said that you wanted uh, to get donors as interested in the library as they were in the stadium and i'm wondering if you're going to put a maize and blue halo (xx) <SS LAUGH>
S2: i knew i couldn't get through today without hearing_ but we're not gonna put conquering heroes.
S3: okay
<SS LAUGH> 
S2: Will
S4: now it seems that the present system is (competing) and i i wonder how we, address that nature problem i mean i_ there's no doubt that, that you know, we gain safety by locking away, a certain part of our population and i sit here and i say now isn't there something that we can do, in understanding quote the criminal mind or soon to be criminal mind so that we could sort of, start, affecting the competition.
S2: that's interesting... i mean there certainly is and we certainly have, many programs on this campus actually addressed 
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