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America at 250: How Higher Ed Can Cultivate Citizenship · C-Suite Perspectives

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Welcome to C-Suite Perspectives, a signature series by The Conference Board.
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I'm David Young, the president of The CEO Center, which was founded in 1942 as the
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Committee for Economic Development, and now is also the public policy center of
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the Conference Board, and I'm delighted to be the guest host of today's episode.
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Today's conversation is a special edition as the United States
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celebrates its 250th anniversary.
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At a moment of profound political, cultural, and institutional change,
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we'll explore what the American story can teach us about leadership,
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citizenship, democratic resilience, and the future of civic life.
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Joining me today is Katherine Rowe, president at William & Mary, the
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alma mater of the nation and one of the most respective and innovative
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institutions here in the United States.
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Full disclosure here at the beginning, I'm very proud to say that I am
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indeed a graduate of the university, so this is a distinct pleasure for
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me to be speaking with Katherine.
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Katherine, welcome.
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We're so very pleased to have you joining us today.
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Thank you so much, Davy, and as we say at William & Mary, welcome home.
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Thank you.
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So Katherine, let's begin by actually stepping back for a moment and looking at
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the broader sweep of the American story.
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Throughout our history, periods of uncertainty have often tested
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the resilience of American institutions and civic culture.
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As the U.S. celebrates this 250th milestone anniversary, how do you
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situate this moment for higher education?
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And from your perspective, does it resemble any earlier periods in history?
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Yeah, so let me start by saying William & Mary is 333 years old.
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So this university—
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Wow.
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—Chartered in 1693, predates the American story, and the Revolution is our backyard.
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In fact, actually, Williamsburg, Virginia, Yorktown, the decisive
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battles, and more importantly, the ideas that animated the first founders,
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the nation-builders of this republic, were cultivated here at William & Mary.
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So it's a summer that's incredibly joyful for us.
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Lots of festivity and hoopla in Williamsburg, let me tell you, and also
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a wonderful moment for reflection and for thinking about the value, the profound
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value of those original concepts and ideas in knitting together this country.
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So we've lived through, we've seen our way through multiple wars,
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multiple epidemics, world epidemics, and incredible transformations
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in technology, in public culture.
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And we're going incredibly strong right now.
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I see this moment, there's two ways of thinking about the
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anniversary that I've heard around.
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One is a kind of straightforward celebration of independence from England.
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But the more interesting one to me, the more important one to William & Mary, is
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the reflection on the founding principles of individual liberty and civic life, and
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I'll just give you a bit of a history.
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The very first, the beginnings of constitutional government under William
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and Mary, so our founders after the Glorious Revolution, are outlined
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in the Declaration of Right of 1689.
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John Locke, whose ideas about individual liberty were incredibly important to
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that document and those principles, was a tutor of Mary our founding
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monarch, and his ideas animated the education of William and Mary.
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The Declaration of Rights of Virginia that came in 1776, and then the US Bill
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of Rights, are based on that document, the idea of that legitimate authority rises
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from the consent of the governed, right?
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Legitimate authority rises from the consent of the governed.
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And it's anchored in individual liberties such as life, liberty,
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and the pursuit of happiness.
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And the human beings who wrote those words and coined those ideas, well,
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five of them were educated at William & Mary: Jefferson, Washington, our first
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American chancellor, and many more.
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Wow, what an incredible history.
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So you mentioned founding principles.
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I'm curious, when you look back at kind of the founding era, and you look at roles
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and values or forms of leadership, what do you think institutions of higher education
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now most need to ensure into the future?
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Open, curious debate.
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The ability to listen and learn from conflict.
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One of the things that I teach over and over again is pause, step
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back, respect the conflict because you're going to learn from it.
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Remember, the very first honor society, Phi Beta Kappa, was a debate society.
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It was founded at William & Mary in the Raleigh Tavern, so they say, presumably
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over a couple of pints, as one does.
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And it was dedicated to open debate about the core and burning issues of the day.
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That's where Phi Beta Kappa comes from, 1776 in Williamsburg,
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founded by William & Mary students.
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Those principles animate our students today.
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It's an incredible student body.
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I love, love serving them, in part because they care so
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deeply about forging community.
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So it's in that idea of curious, open debate and the marketplace of ideas,
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that universities are dedicated to, that we anchor ourselves right now today.
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I love that concept, the marketplace of ideas, and just
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this sense of curious, open debate.
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I've always had in my mind a professor, years ago, told me, "Say what you mean,
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mean what you say, but don't say it mean." And it's always resonated with me.
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So Katherine, today many Americans feel disconnected from institutions that
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once potentially anchored civic life.
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Trust in government, media, higher education, businesses, and many other
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institutions, the trust in those institutions has declined significantly,
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while polarization continues to deepen across political and cultural lines.
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Are you seeing this on your campus and in higher education more broadly?
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Look, that is the story, and there's a lot of truth to it.
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And higher ed needs to attend to the building of community in
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a way that we haven't before.
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But if we step back and look at, first of all, the data, I'll say a
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little bit about that in a second.
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And then second of all, the power of our students to, and their
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commitment, their sense of duty towards forging community, you can begin
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to see a slightly different story.
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In Virginia, for example, the data shows that over 80% of the citizens of
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Virginia are powerfully supportive of the local universities, their universities.
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People make a distinction between their university and
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universities more generally.
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I think that's probably true across the country.
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I know it's true in Virginia.
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And that strong commitment and approval, surveys show that crosses political lines.
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So we're at a moment where the public sphere of noise in social media defines
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what we think we know more clearly than the data surveying human beings tells us.
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And we need to look at that, that noisy public sphere and what it tells
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us, with some skepticism, because it's filled with disinformation and
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even with active misinformation.
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That's what the algorithms of social media are vulnerable to.
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So I see the building of institutional strength and trust as one of the most
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important things that universities do, and I see the ground for that work as
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much stronger and even hungry for trust than the noise in the system tells us.
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I'm curious about, you mentioned disinformation, and we now live in
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this world of rapid AI transformation.
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And my next question kind of touches on some of these challenges
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facing, well, let's just say American democracy and civic life,
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especially over the next decade.
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From your perspective, what do you think some of those challenges are?
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Is it beyond just disinformation?
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And also really appreciate just your thoughts and perspective on how
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higher education institutions like William & Mary can help address them.
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Well, let's go back to the moment in time that this most resembles for me.
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I'm a Renaissance scholar, and that was the 15th, 16th, 17th
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century, was a period in which the technology of print was taking off.
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And literacy was growing in a way that was not controlled by
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censors or by institutions in the same way that it had been.
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There was a lot of worry about accuracy in this rapidly proliferating media.
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And out of that grew what we now know as the Enlightenment, where
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literate people learned to test their ideas in that marketplace of ideas.
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Fast-forward to today, we're at a very similar moment where accuracy,
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truthfulness has a high value and needs to be taught and relearned,
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and we need to find ways to advance it within the new technology.
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So we're in a different public sphere technologically, but we can
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and we will and we are learning to build systems of accountability and
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trust within that new public sphere.
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And that's part of what we are invested in at William & Mary.
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We educate, in one sense, a classic liberal arts and sciences preparation,
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which is emphasizing the ability to think critically, to use judgment
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and moral assessment over multiple different kinds of evidence, connecting
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and synthesizing information, looking for patterns, and understanding
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what's a really good question.
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And at the same time, we teach technology literacy because that is one of the
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liberal arts and sciences of the moment.
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And an important part of that is being accountable for what you
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say and testing the accuracy of what you read and hear and know
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Really interesting.
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I think you've given me an idea for our next podcast, which should talk more about
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exactly what you've just spoken about.
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William & Mary and the Gates Foundation for Global Policy announced earlier
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this month the establishment of the Robert M. Gates Initiative in
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American Statecraft at William & Mary.
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Yes.
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In that announcement you said, and I quote here and again, this is another
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quote that's kind of resonated with me and really given me some of the motivation
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to have this conversation with you today.
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But you said, "By examining the lessons of the last 250 years of American engagement
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with the world, the Gates Initiative in American Statecraft will put the alma
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mater of the nation front and center in ensuring that American power is used
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well and wisely for the next 250 years."
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How, from your perspective again, and the purpose and mission here, how will
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the Gates Initiative and the university ensure that impact moving forward?
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First of all, leadership skills, and second of all, data at scale.
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So let me break that down a little bit.
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At William & Mary, we teach leadership skills to navigate conflict, whether it's
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interpersonal conflict or geopolitical conflict, and everything in between.
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Those skills are essential for citizenship, and they're
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essential for professional life.
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And I know you and I are going to talk about our Better Arguments curriculum
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in just a little bit, but we break down the capacities that are needed for
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navigating conflict in very systematic ways to cultivate them in our graduates,
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whether it's undergraduates or graduate students, in the service of really
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powerful research on how resources are being used in the world in order to serve
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the community and the country that any of our graduates is going to be part of.
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I think a lot about what our chancellor, Robert Gates, has
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said about William & Mary.
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He said, "What William & Mary gave me above all else was a calling to serve,
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a sense of commitment to community and country that this university has sought to
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install in each generation of students."
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And I spoke earlier about our students being human beings who bring to
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college a sense of duty to their communities, their professions.
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That's quite striking.
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It's different in this generation of college students.
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They're in the world in a way that prior generations were not because they're
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forced to be by social media, and they are hungry to understand how they can make
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the world and their communities better.
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So that calling to serve, the leadership skills that make one effective in service,
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and then the massive research that we do.
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AidData is one of our big labs.
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It tracks $6 trillion of development aid worldwide and shows where it's
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being invested by which countries every year and what the effects are.
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And so they are the group that broke China's Belt and Road Initiative more
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than a decade ago, just released the second iteration of that.
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The debt bubble in China is something that they revealed, too.
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And that work is being done by undergraduates and graduate students
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at William & Mary under the leadership of the folks who work there at AidData,
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which is a lab that's going to be informing the new Gates initiative.
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Absolutely fantastic.
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We're going to take a short break right now and be right back with more of
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my conversation with Katherine Rowe.
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Welcome back to C-Suite Perspectives.
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I'm your host, David Young, the president of The CEO Center, the public policy
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center here at The Conference Board.
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Delighted to be joined today by Katherine Rowe, the president of William & Mary.
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Katherine, before the break, you were sharing your thoughts and
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reflections around the importance of leadership skills to navigate
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conflict, which is a central priority to how you teach at William & Mary.
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And also, and this just has resonated with me over the last few minutes,
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just a sense of duty that you're trying to instill in all of your students
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to apply to every dimension of life.
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I want to continue the conversation, talk a little bit about leadership,
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courage, and civic responsibility.
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One recurring concern today is whether our political and civic culture
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still rewards the kind of leadership qualities that democracies depend on,
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and some that you've already alluded to: prudence, courage, restraint,
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and the ability to build consensus.
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William & Mary is often referred to as the alma mater of the nation.
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Super-curious here as to how the institution and the
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university came to that moniker.
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And also, how do you address civic culture today, and how do you weigh
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its importance moving forward?
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How is the university part of this revolutionary thought today?
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So many wonderful questions, David.
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Thank you.
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We are in the year of civic leadership at William & Mary, so
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we've been thinking about that whole array of questions very deeply and
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in a sustained way for the year.
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I'll start with why we're called the alma mater of the nation.
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Five presidents were educated here.
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George Washington took his surveyor's license at William & Mary by distance
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learning, at the time, and became our first American chancellor.
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It's a distinction that we're incredibly proud of because it rests on a tradition
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of core principles for civic life, the ones that you just listed before.
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The wonderful young woman who is running our year of civic leadership
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programming has framed the idea of what it means to be the alma mater
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of the nation in a way I really like.
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She says, "William & Mary has played a formative role in the life of
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the republic, and at this moment of anniversary, invites us to reflect on
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that legacy while recommitting to the responsibilities that come with it."
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And so we begin with understanding that we've played a distinctive
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role in crafting the idea of civic learning in this country.
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We begin with a set of principles that we borrowed from the Aspen Institute
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and then scaled to thousands of people.
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It's called Better Arguments at William & Mary, and it's focused on
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how you can turn a conflict into a learning opportunity in a community.
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We're among the leaders in adopting this dialogue-based model.
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It's entirely peer-educated.
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It's very, very systematic.
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Over 80% of our faculty and staff have done it, our leadership boards.
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It's part of new student orientation and has been since 2021.
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So at this point, every student at William & Mary has participated in it at some point.
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Wow.
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And our director of conflict resolution and peer mediation has
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built it into her work with students.
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Our ombuds office has built it into their work with faculty and staff.
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Our leadership boards, our board of visitors has participated.
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So it begins with a simple principle, which is to take winning off
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the table for this conversation, and then to listen passionately.
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And I could say more about it, but the most important part of it is to respect
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the conflict so you can learn from it.
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Those are practical skills.
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They're important to every employer.
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They're important to every community.
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They're important to American foreign policy and statecraft.
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I could say more, but to me, that's the core: the systematic building of a culture
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that sees, as our founders did, sees conflict as the beginning of a learning
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process and the path to a stronger union.
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I want to say a little bit about why this liberal arts and sciences model
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of learning through argument, through debate, through conflict, matters so much
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in the future careers of our students, as well as in their lives as citizens.
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Because those two things are so powerfully, I think, intertwined.
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There's a really wonderful study by the organization Strada, which
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looks at employment and college readiness for the workforce.
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And the findings of the study, came out May 19 of this year, have to do with the
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way AI is changing entry-level hiring.
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And the increasing significance in the age of AI in two things: critical
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thinking, that analytic judgment that I spoke of earlier, and communication.
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Those are valued much more highly in entry-level hiring than AI literacy,
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and more highly now because AI literacy makes other kinds of learning so swift.
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Yeah.
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So to me, that idea of being a really good communicator, be able to work with
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lots of different people across many different kinds of differences within
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the group that you are assigned to now.
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That's what we're preparing students with as they enter the
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workforce, and it matters more now, I think, than it did 10 years ago.
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We survey our students six months out of graduation.
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We ask them the question, "Are you in a role that's consistent with
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your future career aspirations?" And in the last three years, we've had
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over 70% response to that survey.
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Wow.
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Year one, 97% said, "Yes, I'm in a role consistent with my career aspirations."
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Year two, 100% said, "Yes, I'm in a role consistent with my career
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aspirations." And year three, which was last year, 97% again said yes.
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So that's a powerful measure to me of whether this combination of tech
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savvy, literacy, and broad liberal arts and sciences preparation
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to have extraordinarily good judgment, to be a moral thinker,
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to be able to work with others.
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Those two things together I think are positioning our students to be leaders.
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Yeah, I really couldn't agree more on this.
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Just as you look at this world of AI transformation and these two points
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you mentioned, critical thinking and communication, it's hard to think
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of them not becoming more and more important as you look at the years
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ahead and what lies ahead for us all.
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They will.
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Really interesting.
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I was just thinking, the founders placed enormous emphasis on civic
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virtue, personal responsibility, and also the obligations of citizenship.
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As we recognize, there is an ongoing debate about whether Americans
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still share a common understanding of what citizenship requires, and
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you've mentioned William & Mary's Better Arguments curriculum.
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I'm just curious, you've kind of alluded to the importance of that
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curriculum, but also be curious as to the reception and feedback you've
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got from students and faculty that have gone through this program.
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It's incredibly exciting.
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I'll be sitting in an event.
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We're talking about something really hard, one of the most pressing issues
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of the day, let's say, that challenges everyone to think in a reflective way.
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Let's say it might be the wars in the Middle East right now, And the student
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leaders will say, "OK, we're going to start with our Better Arguments
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principles. Here's the five principles. First thing, take winning off the table
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for this conversation." And in they'll go.
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I hear it in our student assembly meetings.
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It's quite powerful and leads to really productive meetings and
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decision-making by our student leaders.
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I talk about it with faculty.
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Alumni have loved it.
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They are continually asking us for more workshops, and we run those
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out of the Washington Center if anybody would like to hear them.
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We run them at events.
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We do it with parents.
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Parents are thrilled by it.
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Wow.
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And we started building, we won a wonderful grant.
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We're calling it We the Teachers, for the next three years from the Department
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of Education, nearly $3 million, to do teacher preparation, continuing
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education for middle and high school civics teachers, that is anchored in
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that same set of principles and in how we teach the core founding ideas
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of America using primary documents.
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So by the end of three years, we expect to have educated something
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like a million middle and high school teachers, history teachers, social
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studies teachers, in a refreshed 21st-century version of American civics.
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That's one of our birthday presents to the nation, as we honor the nation.
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Thank you for joining us today.
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This really has been a true privilege, as I said.
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At the beginning, I did go to William & Mary, and never really in my wildest
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dreams thought I'd be sitting down with the president of William & Mary
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to talk about the importance of the university and the path ahead.
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So Katherine, my sincerest thanks for joining us today.
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It's been such a pleasure, Davy.
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I really, really appreciate it.
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The pleasure is all ours.
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And thanks to all of you for listening today to C-Suite Perspectives.
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I'm David Young, and this series has been brought to you by The Conference Board.