Donald Trump’s Vision for Higher Education

What the administration's attacks on universities tell us about their priorities

I spent the first eleven years of my career working in higher education. I’ve been faculty, staff, and consultant; I’m also married to someone who spent over a decade in university admissions. It’s been common conversation in our home for years that higher education is facing a reckoning and will be forced through massive change. We’ve hypothesized about a lot of the things which could push it to evolve - the demographic cliff, changing technology, cultural shifts.

I gotta say, though. We never considered a presidential administration that would come after the most powerful schools in the country with such ferocity.

On today’s show, Beth is joined by dear friend of the show,

Vanessa Zoltan

, to discuss the Trump administration's attacks on universities, specifically Harvard, and what that tells us about their priorities. Vanessa has spent a significant portion of her life and career at Harvard and is clear-eyed about where it thrives and where it needs improvement. She helps us get into the details about what taking federal funding away actually means for a university and why, though students might be the first to suffer, the ramifications of these changes will impact us all eventually.

-

Alise Napp

, Managing Director of Pantsuit Politics

Topics Discussed:

• The Trump Administration Comes for Harvard

• Antisemitism and Campus Protests

• Outside of Politics: What Happens and Guiding Art

Want more Pantsuit Politics? Subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode and get access to our premium shows and community.

Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• Reimagining Citizenship from Pantsuit Politics

Higher Education

• President Trump’s Executive Orders (EOs) and Actions Impacting Higher Education (American Council on Education)

• Trump Administration Says It Is Halting Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students (The New York Times)

• These Are the U.S. Universities Most Dependent on International Students (The New York Times)

• Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades (The New York Times)

Vanessa Zoltan

• Vanessa Zoltan Website

• What Matters

• Not Sorry Productions on Substack

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Episode Transcript

Beth Silvers [00:00:08] This is Beth Silvers, you're listening to Pantsuit Politics. Sarah is out today and I am delighted to be joined by our dear friend, Vanessa Zoltan. Vanessa is one of my favorite people and thinkers and she joined me today for a very broad discussion of higher education. The Trump administration has taken fast and furious executive action concerning higher ed. Impacts all of us, even those of us who have no connection to any college or university in a huge variety of ways. And Vanessa and I are going to dig into that. She is such a wealth of insight and perspective, and I hope that you enjoy hearing from her as much as I enjoyed talking with her. And then she sticks around for Outside of Politics to tell us about What Matters, a program that she's created to help find meaning in life through literature. We have a very fun discussion about characters as avatars for us, as our personal guides and coaches and patron saints. So I can't wait for you to hear it.

[00:01:03] Before we do that, I just want to say Congratulations to everyone. We have powered through Maycember, and we are rounding the corner into summer. We have lots planned for you. For our subscribers, we have our 30 days of meditation starting next Thursday. Re-imagining Citizenship is the name of that series. We'll count down to the 4th of July. We have the Pantsuit Politics Film Club launching with women talking and 12 angry men. Our very own Norma is leading that. It's going to be so much fun. We have The Good News Brief. We have More to Say. We have Sarah and I sharing our spicy takes on bonus episodes. So if you have not joined us in the Pantsuit Politics premium community over on Substack, we hope that you'll do that today. And then here next Tuesday, we will have our 1000th episode with the one and only Jen Hatmaker. There would not be a Pantsuit Politics without Jen Hatmakers generous invitation to host Sarah and me on her podcast many years ago. We still hear people saying that's where I found you. So we wanted to bring Jen over to celebrate this milestone. And we are so happy that she said yes and can't wait to share that conversation with you.

[00:02:05] And then next Friday, we're beginning our flashback series. We're going to be talking about the year 2015. 2015, so long ago. So many seeds of where we are today. It felt like a different universe listening back to our episodes that year and it was really helpful to put today's events in some sort of timeline. So we hope you'll join us for that trip back in time. We're going to have a lot of fun this summer together. Slather on the sunscreen, charge up your AirPods, and join us for lots of deep thinking, but laughter and fun too. Next up, Vanessa Zoltan of Common Ground, Not Sorry, many wonderful podcasts, including Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, Hot and Bothered. So many things that Vanessa does. We'll be here to discuss higher education with me. I am so thrilled to be here with Vanessa Zoltan. Vanessa, you do so many things in the world that I'm just going to invite you to tell people what you want them to know about those many things.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:03:15] I really think it's so important that people understand that at least two or three days a week, I get a good nap in.

Beth Silvers [00:03:21] That's good to hear.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:03:22] Thank you. That is the thing that I'm most passionate about, that I participate in. So relevantly to today is actually a caveat that I sound more affiliated with Harvard University than I am. So I graduated from Harvard Divinity School 10 years ago. I'm a non-denominational chaplain as my career, my vocation. And as I was getting my masters of divinity from Harvard, I was living on campus as a freshman advisor in Proctor. I actually stayed on for seven years in that role. And I was the assistant humanist chaplain at Harvard for four years. And then I took a big old break. I had no affiliation with the university for five years. And as of last year, I am back adjuncting one class at Harvard Divinity School. And so my affiliation is teeny, teeny, tiny. And I have great affection just like a lot of people at Harvard. And it's been strange to watch it. It was a strange place to live, because it is like living in a tourist location. I lived in the middle of Harvard Yard. And it has just gotten stranger and stranger as a place to be affiliated with, as the federal government is obsessed with this place that really does end up feeling just like where you have a bad apartment.

Beth Silvers [00:05:01] I want to talk about that. I really want to know why you think there is an obsession with Harvard specifically. There is a higher ed obsession in general. There is DEI obsession. There is an antisemitism. There's a lot of obsessing happening right now in the administration. And I think that that's an objectively fair thing to say, even if you agree with some of what they're doing, that the speed and velocity and intensity of action all concentrated in the executive branch, not partnered with Congress, is obsessive.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:05:33] Yes.

Beth Silvers [00:05:34] Why do you think Harvard specifically?

Vanessa Zoltan [00:05:37] I do think some of it was just too good to be true for Republicans in Congress in terms of a flashpoint of October 7th happening as a Black progressive woman was made president of Harvard. The University of Pennsylvania's president was called before Congress; Harvard's president was called before Congress. And Harvard was the one that was able to stick out like a sore thumb politically. And I think that some of it really is just circumstance. I think there are billionaires affiliated with Harvard who have taken advantage of the Trump administration to get back because of personal vendettas. Bill Ackman in an interview that he did with New York Magazine last year essentially said that his vendetta started with Claudine Gay because she didn't call him back fast enough. And so I really do think some of this is teeny tiny petty stuff. And then I think Harvard does have this princely, outsized, overfunded, overprivileged, and deeply complex reputation. And I think we should be skeptical of anything that has that much power and prestige and that many billions. And then Trump likes to take anything down that he sees is potentially shinier than he is. And I think that people's distrust of places like Harvard is fair. So I think he's playing on that.

Beth Silvers [00:07:32] Can you say more about why you think that distrust is fair?

Vanessa Zoltan [00:07:36] Yeah. I personally think we should be skeptical of anything that has so many billions of dollars that are so protected and that has so much secrecy around it. I think it's very telling that the board of Harvard is called the Corporation. And I don't think that any single place should amass as much power as a place like Harvard has. I think that all of the billions of dollars of research that Harvard does probably should be spread out more amongst more public universities. Well, now I immediately want to start contradicting myself and saying all the good things about Harvard. But no, I think we absolutely should be skeptical of any single entity that has the amount of power and prestige that Harvard has.

Beth Silvers [00:08:30] Well, I want you to do that too, though, because there is a part of me that has struggled with how to talk about all of the administration's very pointed attacks, specifically at Harvard, but on higher ed in general, because I am aware that the Ivy Leagues are a tiny, tiny percentage of the population in terms of who gets to go. College in general is a small percentage of the population. When we're thinking about ranking the order of problems in society, where does this go? It's really tough. But I think you have a great perspective on how this does actually ultimately get to everyone. It's not as much about the student experience as about the learning that takes place.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:09:13] There are a couple of different ways to think about a place like Harvard. And one of them is by looking at the financial statements. And if you just look at it as a business, the fact that Harvard happens to teach is so low on the financial statement. It is mostly a hospital and research institute. And by a hospital, I mean, many hospitals. And the federal funding that goes to Harvard is actually federal contracts where the federal government has been paying research hospitals to do biomedical research that the government isn't otherwise set up to do. A good friend of mine for five years was doing research. Technically, she was an employee of Harvard University, but she was doing research on early intervention on psychosis in children across the United States. So children who were showing signs of potentially having psychotic episodes later in life on how to intervene to potentially we know that the more delayed early symptoms start, the better chance that people have for fully integrated lives as far as mental health. And so she's meeting with people all over the country in doing this research. And this is cutting edge behavioral health research. And it looks like she's employed by Harvard, but she's funded by the federal government.

[00:10:48] And this is absolutely research that is pivotal for all of our lives. As we know that the mental health crisis for young people is scarier and scarier every month. And then what's really frightening about stopping funding right now is the amount of biomedical research that is funded through Harvard and Columbia and other places where the Trump administration is trying to stop funding. Biomedical research, if you pause it, cells are growing for them to do research on tuberculosis, on staph infections, on real things that we could know truly this is life or death. We could know someone who will die in 10 years because funding has been halted on these experiments. It's not a light switch that you turn off and turn back on. These cells are not growing and so everything is going to have to start over. And then we can talk about what this does, not just biomedically, but brain drain stuff. But this really is life or death research. It is beneficial when certain places have a lot of money so that they can build the right facilities to do this cutting edge work. And then you attract the best people. And this takes decades and decades to build these teams with these systems in place and it's just frightening how quick it is to destroy it and how long it's going to take to rebuild it.

Beth Silvers [00:12:32] I spent this week reading the Make America Healthy Again Commission report.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:12:36] Thank you for your work.

Beth Silvers [00:12:38] Well, thank you for saying that. And it was interesting because so many of the priorities in that document are really at odds with these research cuts. That document expresses a need for so much research on environmental determinants of health, environmental factors, PFAs, chemicals that we're exposed to. It makes, I think, a pretty compelling case that we don't know enough about how the chemicals that we interact with every day interact with each other and our long-term exposure. We do a pretty good job making sure things are safe in isolation, but not in combination. And I thought it was a good point.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:13:19] Yeah, that's so interesting. It's like your pharmacist being like, no, don't take these drugs together.

Beth Silvers [00:13:27] Exactly. I didn't go into this report expecting to find a lot of things that I thought, "Yeah, I agree with that." But I did find some of them, and all of those things that I found myself agreeing with stand at complete odds with these funding decisions as to universities because we really do have to outsource this research somewhere. I don't know where people think it's going to go if it's not being conducted at the university level. I also wanted to mention I love your look at the financial statements to think about how many schools are first and foremost hospitals. I read this great piece this morning from the Kentucky Lantern, which is a wonderful state news media outlet. We're so lucky to have it here. And it was about a program in Louisville that is focused on treating and preventing child abuse. And it is funded through Medicaid. And its partnership with the University of Kentucky.

[00:14:23] And it talked about how they keep trying to get upstream. How do we eventually not just treat children well who've been abused, but also work with these families to stop the abuse. And especially working with single parents where child abuse happens not because the parent is abusive, but because they don't have childcare options and they end up leaving the kid with someone they think is safe, who turns out not to be safe and then here we are. They talked about how the University of Kentucky has a camp for new dads to just learn parenting skills and how those kinds of programs are how we really make an impact, and it's incredible. And so it's easy to sneer at funding for higher ed until you get into that specific work that's rolling out in communities for people who will never go to college or an Ivy League institution maybe, but it's still really, really impactful in their lives.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:15:20] Here's another way that we need funding for universities. The nursing shortage in this country is in large part because you get paid more to be a nurse than to teach at nursing school. And so they can't hire nursing teachers. You've been a nurse for 20 years. You're not in a financial position to take a cut of your salary to go teach, even if you're like, "I have 20 years of learning behind me. I want to." And so we subsidize universities to pay nursing staff so that they can make the same amount of money, or hopefully even a little bit more, to be teachers of nurses so that they want to teach future nurses,. This is just so important. There are long waits at ERs because we are not funding nursing schools. So it's like I really understand why this feels so abstract and like Harvard has a billion dollars, what does it matter? And we can also talk about ties around endowments for a long time. But also, yeah, it impacts you the next time you go to the emergency room whether or not we are federally and state funding universities.

Beth Silvers [00:16:45] It's this tight dance as you talk about the endowments and some of the less socially useful aspects of these universities. Because I think sometimes if you are critical of the Trump administration's actions in a whole variety of areas, it's like you're saying, don't change anything; everything's perfect the way it is. And that's not where we are.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:17:08] No. I have feedback for Harvard and I have always been happy to give it and I will continue to give it. No, I don't know. I'm skeptical of power probably in an obnoxious way, so I am highly skeptical of places like Harvard. I just don't think that the Trump administration is attacking Harvard based on the reasons that Harvard actually should be critiqued and held to account.

Beth Silvers [00:17:44] Well, let's talk about some of the broader attacks on higher ed from the Trump administration. They came out of the gate. If you think late January through maybe end of February with all of these anti-DEI orders. Fully connected to the sentiment that he campaigned on, that woke ideology has gone too far, that all of our institutions are spending more time on diversity initiatives than actually doing what they're there to do. I think that there's maybe some fairness in that argument. Certainly a lot of people bought it. What that translated to in terms of policy are a bunch of orders, that as a person with legal training, I can't make heads or tails of what the obligations actually become for universities. Because we just over and over see these orders saying, you will lose your funding if you unlawfully discriminate. And almost any effort to make your facility one, your institution one, where all people are recruited retained and welcomed seemed to fall in that umbrella of unlawful discrimination. So I'm curious what, if any, experiences you've had in the wake of these orders.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:19:08] In the wake of these orders, I have yet to see the fallout. What I will say is that what I saw in my seven years as a freshman advisor at one of the most diverse universities in the world at Harvard was how bad Harvard was at taking care of its diverse student body. These brilliant students, 1600 on the SATs, 4.4 GPAs would come from first-generation college students and a poorer school district. So I'll give an example. One student who she arrived at Harvard wanting to be a computer science major, they did not have AP computer science at her high school. She is an African-American student of mine. And introduction to computer science at Harvard is funded in large part by Facebook and Zuckerberg. And they want kids to graduate after eight semesters of CS at a certain level. And that means that intro to CS has to start at a certain level. So intro to CS at Harvard is not an intro class. You cannot come in without any computer science background. And it's designed that way. So that means that only kids who went to rich high schools that had AP computer science can actually be computer science majors at Harvard because of funding. And that is disgusting.

[00:21:02] That an 18 year old who has just gotten into Harvard because she is the best and the brightest in her school is set up to fail. One of the majors just isn't available to her. And that is why initiatives like DEI are created, to say we really want the best and the brightest kids and it shouldn't matter where they come from, and 18 shouldn't be too late. And so we have to understand how to take care of our entire student body, and that means kids that didn't go to prep school. I just saw this girl's heart get broken as she realized at 18 at Harvard, it was too late for her to become a programmer. This was like eight years ago. This is not a long time ago. And so these programs are necessary in order to figure out how to make the country more equitable. Because if we want kids from poorer school districts to have the same access as kids who can afford private school, then it has to happen on that level. And so I'm not involved enough at the university now to have seen what it looks like post cut. I will say these measures are necessary if we want these schools to be equitable spaces.

Beth Silvers [00:22:35] And I would think that most Republicans would agree with this critique of Harvard and this program specifically.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:22:43] I would hope so.

Beth Silvers [00:22:45] I mean, this seems like a race neutral DEI initiative, right?

Vanessa Zoltan [00:22:50] Yes.

Beth Silvers [00:22:50] And because it is still under that DEI umbrella, it's unclear to me whether it would be offensive to this new way or not. And I think it's unclear because the people riding these orders are not in the details enough to understand what they would really disagree with substantively and what they wouldn't. And that's why we can't have the policy made at this level, in my opinion. I think we as a society were arriving at the conclusion that some of our DEI efforts were well intended but not working.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:23:25] For sure.

Beth Silvers [00:23:27] I think we’re getting there. I think that's why in some ways this resonated from his campaign. I just feel like we needed more time to work out in our context what that meant instead of having it come from the president of the United States down into these programs where there are pockets of money doing things he would agree with if we just sat down and had a conversation, but that people are now scared to spend because they don't want to have billions of dollars in research funding yanked from them.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:23:59] I would not know if I had not sat with a brilliant girl as she realized that the moment that she thought doors were opening up to her, they weren't. And not because of the color of her skin, but because of school she went to. Guess what? We actually have to talk to teachers and talk to frontline workers in order to understand where these inequities are coming from and how they are harming all of us. The world is worse because we don't have this young woman in her chosen profession. We would all be better off with this brilliant girl who can do anything if she was able to learn all the skills that she wanted to learn. We would all be better off.

Beth Silvers [00:24:52] Well, and if this is a student who made it to Harvard, and the doors are still slamming for her, think about what that indicates downstream.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:25:04] And of course, DEI initiatives weren't well done. They've been done too late and from the wrong place of motivation. A lot of these DEI Initiatives were done in the wake of George Floyd's murder. And people did them because they were scared, not because they actually saw inequality. And we all know emergency mode doesn't get us to long-term solutions. It's better than not doing it at all. And you have a heart attack and that's when you realize that you have to stop smoking. And those drastic first moves aren't necessarily the most sustainable moves. Eventually you're going to be like, no, I am going to eat cake every once in a while, whatever it is. But we're not grateful for the emergency and we don't want to hold on to our big emergency responses. But, god, shame on us if we don't learn from the heart attack at all and if we are like, "Well, my diet hasn't made me 100% healthier immediately, so I guess I'll just go back to smoking."

Beth Silvers [00:26:19] I hope that we can get to a place (I think that's such a great metaphor) where we're in maintenance mode, where it's more rather than needing specific offices for this, it's just part of our continuous improvement, it's just part of how we try to do better all the time. We're not there yet. And I'm just frustrated because I feel like we were maybe going along that path. And this might provoke a backlash that has the opposite effect of what's been intended here. It's very frustrating.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:26:50] And this is something that you and Sarah talk about a lot, but I just think that the political fallout of this is all going to happen not while Trump is in office.

Beth Silvers [00:27:00] Of course.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:27:01] And so I'm so scared that Democrats are just really bad at naming that narrative. The first people are going to be dying of sepsis because of bad biomedical research hygiene ending when Trump is, well, God willing, no longer in office, if he's not in office for the rest of his life. And it's going to look like a failure on a Democrat's watch.

Beth Silvers [00:27:34] Yeah, because Democrats are always in the heart attack.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:27:37] Yes.

Beth Silvers [00:27:38] I think that that's the problem. It's always very, very reactive to the current moment. It's like how everyone keeps talking about Democrats have to go on podcasts now because the 2024 election was the podcast election. And I think, well, that was the last one. That's not what the next one's going to be. We have to be looking ahead.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:27:57] Figure out what the next one is, guys.

Beth Silvers [00:28:00] Let's talk about antisemitism. Because it is strange to put the orders with this laser-like focus on Jewish students next to all of the orders that tell us any identity-based focus is unlawful and discriminatory. So I'm curious how you have been reading the Trump administration's stance on student protest around the Israel-Gaza war and protecting Jewish students on campuses.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:28:30] Yeah. So I am Jewish and we had an election just last night. I am free to represent all Jews on this podcast today. And it was a unanimous election. So I speak for all Jews.

Beth Silvers [00:28:46] Jews famously monolithic in their views.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:28:48] Monolithic in other viewpoints. I don't even agree with myself by the time I get to the end of a sentence usually. So I come from a very specific place on this as every single person in the world does and as every Jew does. I would like to say I am the grandchild of four concentration camp Holocaust survivors and am the child of immigrants. I'm a first generation American Jew. And just to put all of my cards on the table, I think the Trump administration claiming antisemitism is twofold. I think that there are some Jewish billionaires who have certain desires as far as Israel, and Trump has strategically aligned himself with a couple of those people who have very specific policy requirements and Trump is able to sing that tune and get their support without it costing him anything. And then everything else that the Trump administration says about caring about antisemitism, I would say is one of the most antisemitic things that they could do. They are using Jews as a scapegoat to do what they want politically.

[00:30:20] And this country has liked arresting dark skinned people who they think of as potentially Muslim, even if they're not Muslim. I would say since 2001, but probably since long before that. And so now doing this in the name of antisemitism, I feel is so similar to like blood libel stuff, except that Jews aren't the ones being attacked by the government. We're just being used in order to attack others. No. I'm like, you are completely objectifying and like taking advantage of me and my identity in order do your political will. And this has nothing to do with protecting Jews. This has nothing to do with protecting Jews. And I would argue as far as the Trump administration, it doesn't even have anything to do it with Israel. I think that they are using what is going on in Israel, and more importantly what's going on in Gaza as an excuse to do what they will. And evangelical Christians do this with Jews professionally. That we need Jews in Israel in order for the Messiah to rise. This is just Jews being used for political will. Please stop doing things in my name. I'm good. I am fine. I don't need it.

Beth Silvers [00:32:02] It feels very similar to me to the opportunism that you referenced around the hearings with college presidents in the wake of these protests. The protests were just such a visual, easy to understand moment for a person who is removed from them, that it created runway. We know that the goal of this administration is to deport as many non-citizens as possible. I mean, that's not a paraphrase. Stephen Miller this week yelled at ICE professionals in the Oval Office about getting those deportation numbers up to 3,000 people a day. It's explicit. It's explicit that the goals is to deport as many noncitizens as possible and so I do think that you're right. Revoking these visas was always part of the plan. The campus protests just gave incredible cover for that plan.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:33:02] It's not just cover. It gives them a look of heroism with this narrative of we are protecting Jews. And it's a look at heroics with evangelical Christians of where you're protecting Israel. Which they're not protecting Israel, they're protecting an evangelical Christian idea of what Israel and its borders should be. It's just narrative. This is not safer for Jews. It is not safer for anyone. It's just getting a certain type of deportation number up.

Beth Silvers [00:33:44] When I did consulting work for businesses, I talked about the drama triangle all the time. That drama is spending time and energy on a problem that you can't solve. And there are three roles in the drama triangle. The perpetrator, the victim, and the hero. And all three of those people are bringing drama to a situation instead of just trying to solve a problem. And I'm looking at this administration more and more through that prism these days because the deportation situation has completely lost the plot to me. I understand that we have a challenge at the southern border that we're not managing well, and that is not respectful of anyone's dignity. Not the people who live in those border communities, not the people crossing into the country, not the people charged with doing law enforcement there. That is a problem that someone needs to solve. But all these efforts just feel like drama around that problem to me.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:34:49] Yeah. And distraction. I went down a rabbit hole doing research on blood libel stories in the 19th century in Europe. A lot of Jews were killed under the false story that there is a Jewish tradition to kill Christians and use their blood for matzah for Passover seder. And not only tens of thousands of Jews were killed at night during pogroms in trumping up these fake things. And then individuals’ lives were ruined on individual cases. And then you look at it and it's like the individual cases, sometimes people were killed and children were kidnapped. And no justice was done for those children. It's serving no one. It's not serving the like victims of the crimes that actually happened either. And so this just seems like a different version of that where protestors who-- the most American thing that you can be is an immigrant who protests. I can't imagine anything more American. And the idea that people are being arrested in my name it just really makes me sick.

Beth Silvers [00:36:22] I really appreciate you sharing that. I can imagine that's not easy to talk about and I'm grateful that you're willing to do it. I also would love to pick your brain for a second. Sarah and I have been talking about campus protests since we started making this show. And I feel like every time we talk about it, there's a moment when we say, "Ugh, this is just bad that this is on the national news.".

Vanessa Zoltan [00:36:45] Yeah, let kids be kids.

Beth Silvers [00:36:46] Because there are so many dynamics on campus that you just can't be aware of sitting on my couch in Kentucky. I wonder if you have seen anything that you think this is the way you deal with a difficult campus protest. Like, here is a healthy, good way to at least process what's happening, if not be in the center of it trying to help students learn some lessons and resolve some difficult tensions.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:37:15] Yeah, oh god, nothing broad. I definitely think that that is the level at which schools are schools. Like they are operating as schools and students are learning what it is to be political citizens and I agree with you, I think it is just a shame when they get national coverage. Harvard students at the end of the day, at least the undergrads, are around 18 years old, right? Like between 18 and 22 years old on average. And I definitely don't want to be publicly seen for actions that I'm taking locally for anything that I did at that age. This is where the spaces that I'm in when I am on campus, which again is very infrequent these days. I just think treating them as students is the way to go. My dear friend Matt Potts is the minister of Memorial Church in the middle of Harvard Yard, and he made sure that bathrooms were available to the students who were in the encampments. And I'm like, right, because they're students. And so you keep the doors open. And there were other buildings on campus that weren't letting them use bathrooms. And so I'm, like, I just think it's really important. They are there in capacities as students. And so treating them as students feels like the most important thing to me. And that means everything is pedagogy. Like everything should be about pedagogy. Like whatever it is on your ID, if your ID says researcher, I think you should be treated as a researcher. If your ID says therapist, you should be treated as therapist. If your idea says student, I think he should be treated as a student.

Beth Silvers [00:39:17] I think that's a really useful framework. And a good transition, the last piece of this, we could talk about specific actions that the administration has taken towards universities for 15 episodes. I want to go very big picture for a second. Are you worried that this will discourage people from going to college, teaching college, like participating in campus life?

Vanessa Zoltan [00:39:44] Yes. As you know, I love literature, and I make meaning of my life through literature. And I just read Demon Copperhead, the Barbara Kingsolver book. And she has a quote in it about why schools in Virginia are funded the way that they are. She puts this in the mouth of a teacher and then reset through the narrator, Demon, of nobody needed to get all that educated for being a minor, so they let the schools go to rot. And they made sure no mills or factories got in the door- coal only. And to this day, you have to cross a lot of ground to find other work, that this is by design. And I really do think that this by design. I think that the Trump administration and the people who are interested in that are trying to keep people out of universities. I'm worried I sound like a nutty conspiracy theorists, but I think that they want to keep us stupid and keep us in curious.

[00:40:50] Signs of wisdom and maturity are curiosity and compassion, and at its best universities are supposed to be places where you reward curiosity and passion and deep learning. And I think that by making universities the boogeyman, you're going to keep us stupid and incurious. And I don't think that universities are the only place to be curious or learn compassion. I think people are doing that in a million ways every day and in a billion different spaces. And I definitely don't want universities to be the only place that we invest in to do that work at all. But I do think that there's a reason that they are going after these places and it's by design. What do you think?

Beth Silvers [00:41:48] I can't figure out what the big vision is, because if I put this alongside the tariffs, alongside this reindustrialization focus, I understand believing that Americans just having this white collar service economy doesn't serve enough people. I think that's undoubtedly true.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:42:10] Of course.

Beth Silvers [00:42:11] And I think there is a way to have a lot of lifelong learning and intelligence and wisdom in the trades and in craft and in all kinds of things that people do with their hands and their bodies all day, every day. And I am for efforts to lift up that work and increase the opportunities available to people doing that work. Yes, absolutely. So there's like that piece of it. The administration is also (I don't think it's too strong to say) in bed with the tech giants. And envisioning a world where AI is completely unregulated, where cryptocurrency is completely unregulated.

[00:43:02] And I cannot reconcile that with this vision of reindustrialization that actually helps people. I think what they're setting the stage for if we actually get to more things being manufactured in the United States, those things will be manufactured by machines, not people. And if the service economy has been wiped out in part by AI replacing what people used to do, and in the rest by our failure to invest in universities and our cultural dissuasion of people from attending them, I just don't know what the vision is. I don't know what we're left with.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:43:49] A small group of billionaire oligarchs.

Beth Silvers [00:43:53] And everyone else, what? It's their problem to like benevolently dictate? Is that the vision? I don't know.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:44:03] Yeah. Like to steal our water. Yeah, I think so. I just think there's a deep lack of care. I really do think that becoming a billionaire is like getting an infection that it starts really corrupting your brain. It's like a brain virus that goes in because you start to believe if you equate more money with better, then you're like I've done the most better. I've done the best. And therefore, you can't tell me that anything I've ever done is wrong. I won at life. And therefore there is no feedback that is negative. Like everything I've done I've turned to gold and everybody else is wrong and you have to eventually just start believe in such a severe kind of individualism. It can't be based on any kind of logic because it's more money than you can spend in a million lifetimes, than your children would be able to spend. And so at this point, I just have to believe that their brain has a virus that I can't operate within the logic of that.

Beth Silvers [00:45:19] I think it's a supercharged version of some really good advice I got in law school. My third year of law school, I had a really good professor. She was a teacher in every way. And it was obvious, probably, to anyone who knew me that I was not going to be happy or successful in big law just because of who I am and how I operate and what I find meaningful. And I really did not enjoy my summer experience in big law, but I got the offer letter and it was more money than I ever imagined I could make and a 401k and health insurance and a whole bunch of things I hadn't really thought about before, but that suddenly seemed extremely important. And I thought about all that my parents sacrificed to get me through school. And so I was thinking about taking the job and I was talking to her about it. And she said, "Do not take this job. Do not take this job because what will happen is you'll get in and what you have, you'll want to keep. Once you start making the salary, you will not know how to live a different way. And you will be told if you leave it's because you couldn't cut it, not because you wanted to."

[00:46:38] Because these institutions-- and they're not full of bad people, I still have many friends and love the folks I worked with. Because I did take the job. These institutions depend on you believing that you did something great to belong there. And if you leave, it must be because you weren't great enough. And all of that turned out to be exactly right. She was just exactly right. I probably should not have taken the job. It was very difficult to figure out how to live differently once I made that amount of money. So many things she was just exactly right about. And I can imagine if that was true in my little life, on that tiny scale, what does that mean when it's just exponential in every way? Every bit of it has just blown to the top.

[00:47:30] So I think you're right that we do have this relatively small group of people who cannot fathom that there's a different way to live than the way that they're living if you are a smart person who cares about the world. And I'm sorry for that amount of pressure. Every time I read about Elon Musk, I think, I'm really sorry for all the things that you're going through. You seem to be going through things constantly on the biggest stage of the world. And I can still tap some empathy, even though he is like one of the wealthiest people on earth. The inconsistency across the administration that that influence has wrought, I think is going to become an enormous political liability. At least I hope it will.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:48:17] I hope so.

Beth Silvers [00:48:17] But I'm even more concerned that substantively we're going to start to see everything become more impoverished because there isn't a worldview driving at something real.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:48:32] Yeah. I think that you start to see the world as assets and people just as ways of getting you the money and data points. No, I think it's terrifying. I am a hopeful person, but billionaires scare me.

Beth Silvers [00:48:56] Yeah, the path that we're on right now I think ultimately cannot be sustained. I remain hopeful because I think it is becoming increasingly obvious that none of this is for anyone, except that tiny, tiny echelon at the top. And even that group can't totally agree on where we should be going.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:49:19] Yeah, thank God for that. Thank God for the fact that they all became billionaires in slightly different ways and they all think that the way that they became the billionaire was the right way to become a billionaire.

Beth Silvers [00:49:30] And we have lots of examples in history that show us that doesn't sustain. That the people eventually say, no, this has to be for more people than this tiny, tiny group.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:49:43] Totally. And this is a conversation coming from a space where I talk about religion a lot. Absolutely. And there have been a million apocalypses and there are apocalypses all the time, right? A cancer diagnosis in your family is an apocalypse. A storm coming through your community and destroying your home is an apocalypse. People pass away and we persevere and we grieve and we are changed, but we survive. And the AI of it all and the tech of it all, none of it is new. And I am scared that some of this is new in new ways. But people thought that about the printing press. People thought that I don't want to be the one calling end of the world. People have thought so many things were the end of the world. And you go back, people were outraged at the foundation of the novel that this was just going to ruin the world. Women were going to be getting ideas and what was going to happen? And Beth, I'm here to tell you maybe that is where everything went wrong. Maybe it was the 19th century novel.

Beth Silvers [00:51:01] The women getting ideas?

Vanessa Zoltan [00:51:01] Yes, it gave women ideas and that's why we are where we are. So, no, I think new technology always has scared people and has always made people worry about the end of the world. So whenever I am worried that these new technologies are going to be the end the world, I like to remind myself that I'm part of an ancient tradition of being afraid of that.

Beth Silvers [00:51:23] Yes. And that I am lucky to live in a country where we can quickly change course if we don't like it. Look how quickly we changed to this course. And we can do it again and again. And every day, I can't even keep up with the judiciary restraining this administration, stepping up and saying, no, this is not how we live here. This is not what we do. So I really am long-term optimistic. I really, really am. I think that we are having a lot of questions put to us pretty sharply and specifically in the context of higher ed. And I'm so glad that you were here to talk about it. Let's get back to those problematic novels and literature and making meaning of life in our Outside of Politics segment. Vanessa, you know Sarah and I always like to end with just like an exhale because it does get a little intense here. I mentioned at the top that you do many things. I honestly think I'm a very hardworking person but I don't know that I hold a candle to you in terms of all the things you do and think about.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:52:35] I'm not that hardworking of a person.

Beth Silvers [00:52:35] Okay, well, let's talk about that first. Tell me about that. Because it seems from where I sit like you make and do and think about a huge number of things every week.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:52:44] I don't do anything alone. There's not a single project that I do alone. I truly think this with my whole body, and I think that yours and my friendship is proof of this, I think I have exceptional taste in people and that I'm great at grouping people into being my friend and working with them. And so there's literally not a single project that I've ever done that I have done alone. Like certainly nothing worthwhile. So I just am along for the ride. But, yes, one of the things that I am working on, which you very generously are letting me talk about is this program that I run called What Matters as part of my company. And the reason that I think your audience would be interested in it, the point of the class, it's a school year-long class. And the idea is that you have a year to discern what matters to you and learn how to live up to those values, make some commitments on how to life up to those values. But we do it with novels and with storytelling and chaplaincy and some things. And so I'm curious what book you have used in your life that you are like-- or not just because you know me, I also use Gilmore Girls. But what piece of art has helped you realize what matters to you? Like what value you hold dear?

Beth Silvers [00:54:21] The first thing that comes to mind for me is Moana.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:54:25] One of my favorites.

Beth Silvers [00:54:27] I love Moana so much. And when I did some work with a parenting coach a couple of years ago, I worked with Mary Van Geffen. She asked me to think of an avatar in literature, film, or television that embodied how I want to feel as a parent, and Moana's grandmother was it for me. And it has changed my life not to be hyperbolic about it. Because I yap for a living. And I love words and I tend to think I can talk my way through every problem. And I realized when Moana's grandmother came up for me, how little she speaks in that movie, but how big her presence is. And how her presence for Moana is not just comfort, but it is that. And it's not just challenge, but is that. And it's not just I've been here before, I've seen some things you can learn from me, but it is that too. And that's what I want to be for my daughters.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:55:27] It's also joy.

Beth Silvers [00:55:29] Joy and fun and lightness and creativity and playfulness. She just embodies how I would love to feel to my kids. Now, I still talk too much with them. I know. But I really have learned a lot by thinking about that example. And the character is such a beautiful guide post because it is somehow easy to extend what we know about her from one short film into almost any situation that we're in.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:56:05] A woman who worked with us for several years, she's now a chaplain intern at Johns Hopkins. Her name is Natalie Folkert. She taught a class for us, I think it was called Discerning Your Own Patron Saints, where she had people pick a character from literature, film, TV, and design a patron saint story for them. I know. I didn't take it, but I think it's our most highly-reviewed class that we ever offered. We're reading Women Talking in What Matters this year, which is one of my all-time favorite books, and there's a character in that named Salome, and she is the angriest woman. She is just so angry except at her children. She's angry at the world for her children, and she at one point in the novel carries her daughter on her back for three days to get her medication. And she will like pre-chew pills for her daughter.

[00:57:12] Just like the intimacy of her and I think about Salome all the time. Like am I willing to embarrass myself for my kids? What am I willing to going to do for my kid? And it's just like, well, anything. I will literally carry them on my back for three days and I will like chew things and spit them out. And I don't care what the rest of the world thinks of me when it comes to like the fierceness of my kids. One of my best friends, Julia, who also loves Salome, wanted to name her daughter Salome after Salome when we were talking, and her husband was like, "Can we not name our daughter after someone who wants to murder like every man she sees?" And she was like fine.

Beth Silvers [00:57:57] I mean, it's a reasonable ask.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:57:59] It is a really reasonable ask. But these characters, and I think because we owe them less because they are fictional, we don't have to hold them in all of their complications, we just get to make them our patron saints. I did not know that about you and Moana's grandmother.

Beth Silvers [00:58:18] She's very important in my life.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:58:20] I love that.

Beth Silvers [00:58:21] Another literary reference that I think about all the time, it's amazing how sticky these things are. I wish that some of my religious texts stuck with me the way some of this does. But in high school my English teacher had us read a Faulkner short story. I can't even remember what the short story was or what it was about. But it contained the sentence, "Calpurnia endures" about one of the characters. And I think about Calpurnia enduring. At least once a week when things seem really hard, it just comes to me like Calpurnia endures. And I try to think, me too. Just like you, I'm here enduring as well. And I feel bad that I can't even call up what all is behind that reference anymore. But the sentence has really stuck with me.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:59:07] So my favorite novel is Jane Eyre, and the first line of the second chapter is I resisted all the way. And she is being dragged and locked into a room. And she doesn't get anything out of resisting all the way. She's being dragged kicking and screaming, and then she gets ignored. But I'm just like that's going to be me. I'm going to resist all the way. Like pull me by my hair and I will go kicking and screaming.

Beth Silvers [00:59:37] I love that.

Vanessa Zoltan [00:59:39] Anyway, I really love thinking about this. And I love bringing intention to it. I love this coach being like who is the character? Because I think that you can make your whole life more meaningful. I really do.

Beth Silvers [01:00:01] Well, I agree with you it's different to have a character than to have five steps, or these specific words that we say when our kids do X, Y, or Z. I think a lot of advice in life, whether it comes from a religious perspective or an expert perspective or a coach, whatever, a lot advice in like just feels confining and it feels like you're trying to exercise control over situations that you don't have a lot of control over. And so the genius of like what is your story? Like what is your character? What is your posture? No matter what else is going on around you has been really powerful for me.

Vanessa Zoltan [01:00:47] And the thing about picking these characters and stories that speak to us, it's saying follow whatever it is that you already love and love it with purpose. Like you already loved Moana. I'm not trying to sell you on Moana. You already Love Moana. How do you love it all the time and live up to it? I think that often we talk about things that we love as guilty pleasures. And I'm like, no, how do you just love it better? Like you shouldn't feel guilty about it. Just carry it with you all the times.

Beth Silvers [01:01:24] So tell me about, if I sign up for What Matters, what's my expectation, what's happening for me?

Vanessa Zoltan [01:01:29] You're so sweet. So it is a nine month program. It's a small cohort where we spend a lot of time in small groups, really getting to know each other. And there are sort of three tracks. One is sacred reading where we close read books in order to have a shared vocabulary for meaning making. This year we're doing Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Women Talking by Miriam Taves, and Station Eleven by Emily St. Mandel. And then we have a whole class called Meaning Making, where you are thinking about how to make meaning in your own life. And then we have whole class called storytelling, where you learn how to tell a story about who you want to be and how you want to live into your values. And we have one-on-one chaplaincy sessions.

[01:02:22] And so, it's really supposed to be a year of looking closely at your life in conversation with story. So hopefully you can tell yourself exactly the kind of story that you're telling about the kind of mom you want to be of like at the end of the day I want to be-- I want us all to have these like grounded islands that we can stand on of like this is bottom line who I am. And I think that we grow and change and so the narratives we were raised with as kids don't work for us anymore, and then we have to go find new ones. So we're trying to create a space for people to find new ones. And we have scholarships available if you want to take this class, but also you can do this at home on your own. You can just start thinking closely about your favorite books or TV shows or movies and living in conversation with them. Try this at home, Beth, no one gets hurt.

Beth Silvers [01:03:15] I love it. I also think it's just a hugely political thing to sink deeper and deeper into your sense of what's important and who you want to be. Because I just did this thing for Memorial Day for our premium listeners, where I went back through every Memorial Day since 1971 when Congress made it a holiday and found one historic event that happened on that day. And it was so interesting because we say all the time, like, "I'm ready for some precedent in times." And what you realize, the more you look at history, is that these times are precedent. And we have been here before. Every year has felt chaotic in its way. I think all the time about the Washington Post piece that said when people say the good old days, they mean when they were eight. Everybody has a good old day and it's when they were eight because they didn't realize what was happening around them. And so, exercises like this, where you're able to be like whatever else happens, here's who I am and what I'm about and what I'm aspiring to and what support I need so that we can just keep on keeping on. I think that's hugely political and valuable.

Vanessa Zoltan [01:04:27] Yeah, it happened for me as someone, a friend of mine in school, was like, "I just want to make sure that we're all ready to share water when water resources run low." And I was like that's me. That's what I want to spend every conversation of mine. I want it to be about us loving each other more so that they're ready to share water. And whenever I get confused as to what my work is, I'm like, is this going to get us better at sharing water? And sometimes the answer is no and I have to do it anyway, and it helps me get back on path. But it's so nice to have this grounding principle of like that is what I care about. I care us turning to our neighbor and saying, "I have enough water, do you need some?" And, yeah, I just think everyone needs their answer.

Beth Silvers [01:05:31] I think maybe Jewel gave me my answer to that question. Do you remember her song Hands that started if I could tell the world just one thing, it would be we're all okay? That's my answer. That's what I try to find as like my guiding light for work.

Vanessa Zoltan [01:05:48] Yeah. I love that. I want to know everybody's now.

Beth Silvers [01:05:53] Yes, what are your things? We'll put all the information for What Matters in our show notes.

Vanessa Zoltan [01:05:57] Thank you. That's very nice.

Beth Silvers [01:05:58] And I hope that people will take advantage of the opportunity to work with you. I have not done this program, but I have done other things that you create and I can attest to the excellence of the people that you surround yourself with.

Vanessa Zoltan [01:06:11] Evidence, you.

Beth Silvers [01:06:13] And the care that you pour into these programs for the people who participate in them. So, I highly endorse anything that Vanessa Zoltan is part of.

Vanessa Zoltan [01:06:23] I don't get nervous for a lot of things, but you and Sarah have such a high standard for the brilliant podcast that you put out. I was so nervous being here. Thank you so much for having me.

Beth Silvers [01:06:34] Thank you so much for doing this with me. I had no doubt that it would be fantastic. And I think it has been, just to toot our own horns as we head out here.

Vanessa Zoltan [01:06:43] I adore you. Thank you for making this podcast.

Beth Silvers [01:06:47] Thank you for making it with me and for being my friend. Thank you all for listening. We'll be back with you again next week. Everybody, have the best weekend available to you.