3 Takeaways - Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow: The Value of a College Education, Investing in the Future and Free Speech (#70)

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Lawrence Bacow, President of Harvard University, shares how he sees the future of education and the values he leads by at Harvard. Learn the role of universities in a democracy, the importance of teaching students to think critically and why he believes the value of a liberal education is higher than ever. “I owe my life to higher education. I think it’s been an engine of opportunity for so many.”Lawrence Bacow is the former President of Tufts University and past Chancellor and Chair of the Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was raised in Pontiac, Michigan, by parents who were both immigrants. He earned his undergraduate degree from MIT and three graduate degrees from Harvard

Welcome to the Three Takeaways podcast, which features short, memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists, and other newsmakers. Each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers. And now your host and board member of schools at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, Lynn Thoman. Hi, everyone. It's Lynn Thoman. Welcome to another episode. Today, I'm delighted to be with Larry Bacow, the president of Harvard University. I'm excited to learn how he sees the value of a college education and looking ahead what he thinks education will look like.

Larry is a native of Pontiac, Michigan, and the son of immigrants. He attended college at MIT and went on to earn three degrees from Harvard, including a doctorate in public policy. He spent 24 years on the faculty of MIT, rising to chancellor of MIT, and then 10 years as president of Tufts. About three years ago, he was named president of Harvard. Larry, welcome, and thanks so much for our conversation today. Good to be here with you, Lynn.

Thanks for the invitation. I'd like to pick up on a conversation that you and I started on the day that you assumed the presidency of Harvard about the value and perception of a college education. But before we get to that, though, I'd like to start by asking you, why did you decide to become president of Harvard? You'd already had a full career as chancellor of MIT and then president of Tufts. Well, it was not a job that I went looking for, but when my colleagues asked me if I would consider it, I also couldn't say no. I feel I owe my whole life to higher education. As you

noted, my parents were both immigrants. They're actually both refugees coming to this country. My father was born in Minsk, came to this country before the war to avoid pogroms in Eastern Europe. My mother was a survivor of Auschwitz. She was the only member of her family to survive and actually the only Jew from her town who survived the war. I've often said there are very few places in the world where one can go, literally in one generation from off the boat with nothing. My mother comes here as an orphan. She was 19 years old on the second Liberty ship that brings refugees from Europe after World War II with one suitcase. And in one generation to become the president of Harvard.

So I owe my life to higher education. I think it's been an engine of opportunity for so many. And I took on this job in part to ensure that future generations would have the same kind of opportunity as I have. I was under no illusion that it would be hard. As you know, this is a time in which higher education has been under intense and sometimes withering criticism for being too costly, for being too politically correct, for leaning too far left, for all sorts of things. I thought it was important that given the opportunity that I should take advantage of the bully pulpit that's afforded to the president of Harvard at times to speak on behalf of all of higher education. That's why I took the

job. In preparation for our conversation today, I read all the speeches that you've given to Harvard students and faculty since you became president. Interestingly to me, they focus on what I would call values of the heart as opposed to the mind. For example, in your morning prayers on the first day of school, you talked about being, quote, open, generous, and understanding, unquote. And you also talked about, quote, kindness and respect, unquote, and applying kindness and respect to the everyday moments, not just the big moments. In your 2021 baccalaureate, you exhorted students, and I quote again, first, do not hesitate to connect. Second, do not hesitate to love. Third, do not hesitate to live, unquote. And you talk later in the baccalaureate about being grateful. In your convocation for the

class of 2025, you talk about students seeking meaning and happiness, both at Harvard and wherever life takes them. To me, what you focused on in many of your speeches at Harvard are values of the heart. What do you hope that a Harvard student gains from their four years of college? Well, I think we are blessed with extraordinary students at Harvard. And these are students who have achieved at every level that they've already been. They were spectacular students in high school. That's how they got to Harvard. During the time at Harvard, they drive themselves very, very hard, in part because I think almost

everybody who comes to Harvard worries about whether or not they are worthy of being there. And it's true not just of students. It's also true of faculty and staff and others. So in part, when I speak to students especially, I try to get them to pull back and ask themselves, what's really going to make them happy? How do they want to be thought of when they're gone? What does it mean to lead a meaningful life? I think that for those of us who are blessed and fortunate to be able to study at places like this, I think we bear a special responsibility to try and leave the world a better place than we

found it. And I want students to understand that they bear that responsibility themselves. It's not all about them. In the end, it's all about what they do for others. I don't know if you encountered it, but I also once gave a commencement speech, baccalaureate speech, in which I told students that it was most important that they be rich and that the only currency that really matters, and that is the love and respect that they might enjoy from their friends, their colleagues, and their family, and other things pale in comparison to that. So partly I'm trying to get them to reflect in ways that I think we're more likely to do when, candidly, we're in middle age than when we're just leaving the hallowed halls of college and going off into the world.

On the day of your installation as president of Harvard, you and I talked about, and you said in your speech, that for the first time in your lifetime, people are actually questioning the value of sending a child to college. There's no required curriculum at Harvard or many other U.S. colleges, nor does the United States have a comprehensive final test, unlike some other countries. The result is that there's no body of knowledge that students are expected to have mastered when they graduate. So what do you see as the value of a college education at Harvard or elsewhere? First, I take issue with your initial premise. We do have requirements. We have general education requirements that require students to sample broadly from different

ways of knowing, different intellectual realms, if you will. So there are language requirements, the requirements for students to study quantitative methods in a variety of forms. So we do more than say, come take whatever you want. The value of a liberal education, I think, has never been higher, in part because, well, first, the data will actually show that. If you take a look at the lifetime earnings college graduate versus a high school graduate, the gap's never been larger than it is right now. But what we really seek to teach students is how to think critically. And at a time in which we are assaulted by information, at a time in which technology has basically eliminated the editorial function, anybody can publish any idea that they wish.

It's never been more important for students to be able to understand how to differentiate the signal from the noise. What is fact? What is truth? The two are not the same. And I think that in the end, that's what a liberal education does, is that it helps students to understand both how to ask hard questions and how to bring to bear data and evidence to understand choices that they will make, choices that society will make.

That ultimately is the function of a liberal education, which is what I think we do, not just at Harvard, but many colleges and universities throughout the country. All right. I hope you don't mind if I ask you hard questions. Please. As you have noted, and again, I quote you, at a time of rising populism worldwide, of skepticism, of elites and of elite institutions. Universities are criticized for being islands, for leaning left, for being politically correct, and more intolerant of some ideas, unquote. Is there truth in this?

Well, there's perception and there's reality. Look, as a group, I would say college professors are more liberal than, let's say, corporate CEOs or those that you might find in most corporate boardrooms. But I think the notion that we brainwash our students is grossly incorrect. If you take a look at the United States Senate, for example, I think there are 15 or 16, I believe it's 16 Harvard alumni in the United States Senate. Nine of them are Republicans, six of them are Democrats. If you take a look at the composition of the Supreme Court, yes, we've got Steve Breyer and Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, but we also have Chief Justice Roberts. We have now Justice Kavanaugh who taught at the Harvard Law School.

We've got many others. So I think, though, that we as academic institutions, and I talk about this, and you've seen this, no doubt, reading some of my speeches. If we truly embrace the notion of veritas, which is our motto, truth, then we need to be willing to test ideas. Truth is to be distinguished from facts. Facts are incontrovertible, or at least they used to be willing to test ideas. Truth is to be distinguished from facts. Facts are incontrovertible, or at least they used to be. But truth, truth has to be tested. It has to be revealed. And we do that through vigorous debate. If we truly believe in truth, we have to be willing to engage with people who think differently from us. We have to be willing to be persuaded by a better argument, by new facts. So I think that this is, in fact, what we do.

It's what we need to do. And if people actually spent time on our campus, they would realize that there are far more lively, intense debates that occur routinely than some may be willing to recognize. How do you see free speech and public discourse? There have been some controversies on campus and elsewhere. All too often, I think people seize on a few cases of intolerance and then they're willing to paint with a very, very broad brush. And, you know, we have all sorts of speakers who come to our campus routine, who speak routinely.

Now, does that mean that they are all warmly embraced? Does that mean that they're challenged? Yes. Does it mean that there are protests? Yes. That's a form of exercise of free speech as well. What we should not do is to tolerate people who are willing to exercise the heckler's veto.

That has no place in an institution like ours. And I think we have some affirmative obligation to ensure that we bring to campus speakers who represent the broad range of views across the ideological spectrum. I often say that issues on which reasonable people can differ, the function of a university is to promote debate, not to silence it by embracing one orthodoxy or work. Larry, you have said that universities play an important role in supporting

our democracy. How do they do that? People should never forget that the original function of the university was to educate citizens for democracy. And so we do that in a variety of ways. We do that by conveying to our students that they have a responsibility to get involved. I've also spoken about the civic and social responsibilities of universities, but also of our students and of our graduates. One thing which I routinely do

is each year that's an election year, I make a point of giving entering students their first homework assignment. And that is, if they're eligible to vote, they're obliged to register to vote, to inform themselves about the candidates and the issues, and to cast a ballot. It's not a political statement. It's one of engagement. And so I think creating expectations is important. I think it's important that we encourage students and our graduates to pursue careers of public service, both in electoral politics, but also in civil society in a variety of ways. It makes no difference, in my mind, what your profession is. There are opportunities to become an active and engaged citizen.

And we need people to do that. I often say I've yet to meet anyone who believes the world that we live in is perfect. This is equally true of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. If we don't think it is perfect, the only way it gets better is if good people across the ideological spectrum are willing to work hard to improve. And that's a responsibility that we all bear. It's a special responsibility for those who have the privilege to get a college education to engage. Let's pivot and talk about the future of education. So much of the world's greatest areas of focus now are interdisciplinary, such as climate or health, and they are not housed

in individual departments or in individual schools. How do you see the future of individual departments and schools? And if you were creating a university now from scratch, would it have individual schools and departments? It would. Schools and departments serve incredibly useful purposes in the context of the university. The trick is, as in any organizational structure, to be able to find ways to address new challenges, to ask new questions, and to not let existing structures be constraints on your ability to do so. I'm sometimes asked, what are the similarities and differences between Harvard and MIT, since I've spent so much time at both? And my flip response is that organizationally

and culturally, they're identical with a sign change. Harvard is the most decentralized university on the planet. MIT is arguably the most centralized university on the planet. But each of these two institutions are among the greatest academic institutions in the world, which says to me that excellence is half independent of organization and culture. Similarly, I think that there are lots of different strategies and different approaches to ensure that faculty are able to organize and self-organize in some cases to do work that lies at the boundaries of disciplines or the edges of disciplines. And you see different approaches to doing that taken by different institutions. There's no one way of doing it, one right way of doing it. One of the things that makes higher education in the United States as strong as it is, as vibrant as it is, is the different approaches and strategies that in fact are adopted by different kinds of institutions who are competing in so many different ways.

They're competing to make advances in knowledge. They're competing for resources for students. They're competing for faculty. That competition ultimately is healthy. And we all watch what everybody else does. And I have no qualms of saying this, that if I see another university that's figured out a better way to organize to attack a problem than we have, I'll try and seal and copy and improve upon their target. This is clearly a pivotal moment in education, one full of extraordinary possibilities to educate people remotely as well as to pursue

new knowledge. Education has been a uniquely stable field, almost unlike every other field. And the leading educational institutions have been largely the same for the last, one could argue, 50 plus years or even hundreds of years. And what a college education entails has also been remarkably stable, at least compared to other fields or industries. What do you see as the future of colleges and a college education? What do you think education will look like in 10 or so years? I actually think that colleges and universities change far more than people give us credit for changing. In fact, if you look at Harvard right now, we're in the process of developing almost a whole new campus in Austin. We're making major investments in technology, in recognition of the fact, when I say technology, in expanding our School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which previously

was just a division of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Now it's its own school. We've allocated lots of new space to it. We're growing. This is in recognition that if we're going to have the same kind of influence over the next 385 years as we've had over the previous 385 years, we need to increase our footprint in technology. We're making important investments in things like quantum science, engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning. So I mention this because it's not just true of Harvard. It's true of many institutions. And in fact, if you go back and take a look at these places, while the buildings may look a lot alike, most institutions have really evolved quite substantially over the last 50, over the last 100 years. They do so perhaps at a slower pace than other kinds of institutions or companies at least. And I would say that that's actually not all bad

because one of the things that we do is that we are repositories for knowledge and culture, literally for society. And that should change slowly. That said, we've learned a lot over the last 18 months through the pandemic about how to reach people remotely, how to open the aperture that is the lens

for all of our institutions. And I think you're going to see far more of that going forward. We're going to be reaching a lot more students in a lot of different ways that never could have imagined being able to benefit the kind of educational opportunities that are provided by colleges and universities throughout the world. I think the residential college experience will still be prized and will continue to look a lot like what it is right now. There's a reason why students and faculty want to be together. Magical things still happen in the conversation that occurs naturally at the end of a class

that don't occur over Zoom. And so we'll try and preserve those opportunities as well. I could go on, we could spend hours talking about what the future of higher education looks like. Larry, what are you proudest of accomplishing at Harvard? Well, I'm proud of the fact that, and again, I wouldn't say that this is my accomplishment, far from it. But I'm proud of the fact that at Harvard, well, for example, two of the three vaccines currently in use in the United States that are helping us find our way out of this pandemic were in fact created at Harvard. The Moderna vaccine

came out of Derek Rossi's lab at Harvard Medical School, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine came out of Dan Baruch's lab at Harvard Medical School. I'm proud of the fact that our faculty have been on the front lines in helping people to understand what this virus means to the world. They've been rolling up their sleeves, and Rochelle Walensky went from the medical school to run the Center for Disease Control. I'm proud of the fact that at a time in which we've been wrestling as a nation with how to address issues of racial justice and inequality, that faculty in all of our schools have been focused on these issues for many years. Whether or not it's inequality in healthcare

outcomes, inequality in access to justice, in access to education, in access to housing, wealth, or income inequality, we've been focusing on these issues for years, trying access to housing, wealth, or income equality. We've been focusing on these issues for years, trying to shed light on them, try to inform the public debate. So I think this is an institution which is remarkable in its breadth, in the capacity to generate knowledge, which I think informs and helps shape the world. And I'm proud of all the people who make that possible. Certainly our faculty, but our students and our staff who enable their work. Harvard is indeed an extraordinary institution. I had no idea that the two vaccines originated in Harvard Labs. Yes. And not only that, but the basic research which made these vaccines possible,

which was done 40, 50, 60 years ago in some cases, curiosity-based research was also done. Some of it was done at Harvard, but it was done in research universities around the world. And that's why I believe institutions like ours, not just Harvard, but research universities more broadly, have never been more important to society. Larry, before I ask for the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today, is there anything else you'd like to mention that you haven't already touched upon? No, I think I've covered it. Thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation. Thank you. Larry, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with?

First, just building on my last comment, I think we as a nation need to keep investing in the future. We need to keep investing in curiosity-based research, which creates opportunities for us that we could not have imagined. Again, the vaccines, which have recently been developed in record time, were made possible because people were curious about what is the role of RNA, of messenger RNA, and they could not have imagined it would lead to what it has led to now. We need to continue as a nation to invest in the future, especially in our research in France. The second takeaway that I would like to leave people with is something which I said in my inaugural address, but I think it bears repeating.

Talent is flatly distributed, but opportunity is not. There are as many brilliant young people in the poor parts of this country, in poor cities, in poor regions, as you will find in the wealthiest parts of this country, in poor cities, in poor regions, as you will find in the wealthiest parts of this country. It is up to us as a nation to ensure that this talent does not go to waste, to seek out these people and to give them the kind of opportunity which they need to flourish. It will inure ultimately, not just to the benefit of those individuals, but to society more broadly. So that's an obligation we all bear.

Universities, I would tell you, have a special responsibility. And then the last takeaway is actually a quotation from my mother, my late mother. I spent my whole life on college campus. Lots and lots of interaction with young people, all of whom seem to want to change the world. God bless them for wanting to do it. But my mother used to say that

at some point in a young person's life, everyone should have to work behind a counter and to serve the public, to serve everyone who walks in. And I think that that's a wonderful piece of advice because it teaches one a lot about human nature, but also it gives one a sense of both the dignity of honest work and what it means to serve others. And as you alluded to previously, I think that's a responsibility we all bear. Thank you, Larry. This has been terrific. Thank you for our conversation today and for your leadership of Harvard. Thank you, Lynn. Thanks for the opportunity to have this conversation. If you enjoyed today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new

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