 Hi everyone. My name is Melody Friarson and I am the project manager with the Office of the CEO and President and Chief Transformation Officer at New America. I am so excited to welcome you to today's event to discuss Ann Marie Slaughter's renewal from crisis to transformation in our lives, work and politics. This event is presented in partnership with our bookselling partner, Solid State Books. Please support them. Ann Marie is the CEO of New America and author of eight books, including renewal. Renewal is Ann Marie's candid and deeply personal account of how her own Odyssey opened the door to an important new understanding of how we as individuals, organizations and nations can move backward and forward at the same time facing the past and embracing a new future. The moderator of today's conversation is Kiece Lehmann. Kiece is the inaugural McAlexander chair of English at the University of Mississippi, my alma mater and award winning author of best sellers like Long Division, how to slowly kill yourself and others in America and heavy an American memoir. I'm really excited to have Kiece in conversation with Ann Marie, and I just have to do a plug I don't have Ann Marie's copy in front of me, but I have a couple of Kiece's books, please, please go by them they are so wonderful and Kiece reading you is like going home and being at home. So thank you for all that you do and I want to thank everyone who has joined us today. I hope that you enjoy the conversation. Thank you. I want to thank Melody for being so incredible and also being one of the reasons that I came back to Mississippi. I found a lot of hope and faithfulness and actually like possibility for renewal in our conversations so Ann Marie, I am really, really, really excited. So I talked to a lot of people about their books. I've been talking to a lot more people about their books over the pandemic. But this is the first time I really believe that the author like wants to kind of get in there get messy. And let's see what can happen so but but I want to make sure that that's true. So, can we make this a sort of rigorous conversation as rigorous as we can get for 40 minutes. 100%. Yeah, if I can if I can't handle it I shouldn't have written the book. Okay, all right, all right. I just have ideas that I want to ask myself. Um, and so some of those ideas I want I want to push you on. Um, and there's a lot of things that you do in this book that I'm still sort of astounded by so I want to jump to the first chapter. When you invite us as readers into a crisis that you experienced as the leader. My first question was, were there people who told you, I think you're revealing a little too much about the insides of how New America works. When you wrote that initial chapter. Yes. And in fact, so this is a crisis, you know it's four years old. I wouldn't have written this book, you know in 2018 or probably 2019 2021. And we've, we've come through it long since I was very careful to both show our board chair and our, you know, our communications team, and, and at least key parts to my leadership team because obviously the last thing I'd want to do is to drag things up and or hurt, hurt New America. So I got approval. The other thing is, though, that, you know, the point of the book is okay this was my crisis. It is not the worst crisis anybody's ever been through and I'm very clear about that. I'm basically saying all of us have had some kind of crisis and I do think that my own experience can be instructive it was bad enough for me to really shake my confidence my sense of who I was. And that that's sort of the trigger but I was, yes, I was careful. You know there folks who said you just shouldn't reveal that much about yourself, you know obviously people who are close to me. But I, I think I couldn't write this book without bringing readers into where where I started in my own journey. Yeah, I mean, and one of the things that you do also is, you know, you ask us to risk. Right, I mean I feel like this book, and I think the us the subject positions of us are something you pay a lot of attention to but every single subject position in this book, must risk. I'm interested in how you thought about the consequences of risk for different people in different social strata. Right, because one of the things you also write about is this common past. In there and mix that up a little bit before we can get there. I want to, I want to hear you talk about the ways that like your risk in telling that story might differ from somebody else's risk within a different subject position, yet how you still believe and know that risk is something that we must do if we are to renew. That's a great way of framing that question. So, in the first chapter I say, you know, we had this crisis, I went and talked to a board member, he told me run toward the criticism. He actually said I didn't put this in the book but he said, you know, imagine you're having a fight or a conversation with your spouse or partner, and you're confident that your spouse or partner is 98% wrong, but maybe 2% right. He says run toward that 2% and that sort of launched me on a quest to ask a lot of people but what I was doing well but more importantly what I wasn't doing well. And I then say, and this will go directly to your question. I decided it was critical for me to look in the mirror and to see not only what I wanted to see, but what other people see. And I would say that the country should do the same thing. Now that is, I would not, I would give that advice to other white people of privilege, right, because I also and not all because I spent a lot of time mentoring younger women for instance, and what other people see is covered by bias and if they're young women of color then that's that's doubled or tripled. I'm not actually telling everyone to look in the mirror and see what others see and take it, you know, as given, and even some of the criticism I got I said, Oh, you know you wouldn't have said that if I'd been a man or you know absolutely not but what I am saying and I do think this is right. And all of us are defensive about something. You know Van Jones always says all of us have a blind spot in the sore spot. And we, and it, I think you have to find the courage to explore that. You know I that sort of standard therapy jargon if you can't name it you can't change it but I wanted to show what it's like to take that risk. You need to keep your confidence and and I'd frame that differently for different people. But I think an awful lot of people in this country need that advice. And when I'm talking about the country looking in the mirror. Yeah, again, I'm certainly talking to white people more than people of color, although their communities are, you know, Hispanic communities who have their own, you know, biases and prejudice against darker skinned people so it you know very few people are really completely immune. But mostly I'm saying to folks like me, you know, we got to look in the mirror and we got to look in the mirror as a country and see a very different reflection. I love that I love that you write early in the book. My larger goal is to encourage us all to reflect more on what individual experience can teach us about the path to collective renewal. I'm a writer who's really big into sort of bombastically letting folks know early on what they're getting into and I think you do that in this book, a few times early on, but I really want us to kind of untangle this idea of individual experience, teaching us about collective renewal. How can you, how do you, and I think you've done this in the book, but for those folks who have not read the book, how do you prove to us. Let's just call us possibly cynics that their effort has been something that could be renewed. And for those of us who find very little kindness, perpetual organization perpetual care reciprocity, and this American experience. How do you talk to that person and say, we need to renew when that argument is like no we might need to raise, right, right, like raise, like, yeah, why raise the right, not right. Yeah, so talk to me about renewal, as opposed to raising. Yeah. And I think that's one of the hard parts of the book. And I'll just say I'm married to one of those cynics so not that he has not had a terrible hand dealt him but he he's, you know, I'm definitely the kind of person who keeps the hope alive in the family. So I write about this also that in early when early on a new a new America when I when I joined new America we already had renew as part of our mission statement and I kind of sharpened that, and would talk about renewing America and then I and I would talk about it like a renovation, you know I'd say, you know you go into a house and you tear down a lot of stuff you do raise stuff you know if you've got asbestos you wipe that out you, you look at things that people thought were beautiful 100 years ago and you think it's awful and you get rid of that. And then you renew the parts that are good. Even that, I think is not enough. If we're really going to look at the country I've settled and I was educated I'm not going to lie. Really had to hear people saying just what you said you know like I, there's not parts of America I want to renew. I've settled on renewing the promise of America, and there I basically looked at Martin Luther King, you know that idea that the Declaration of Independence is a promissory note. And it was right where we're announcing that we believe we now here we is white men of property, you know and in 13 colonies but actually in the decorations fewer than that, saying, you know, all men are created equal. They meant all white men of property but we, there is a promise there I think, in part because they didn't say all Americans they said all men of of what it could be, if you really were created equal if you really lived in an equal society. So I now think of it as renewing the best of yourself, if you're thinking about it individually, if you're an organization or a country renewing your commitment to principles that you espouse, but that you always fall short of. And I can understand why for some people that's not enough. I say it's between restoration and Revolution, we don't want to make America great again. I wasn't great for a lot of people, but I for one, I'm worried about Revolution. I'm not at all sure who's going to win I don't want to go there. And, and I will say also this. This is a book designed to speak to multiple audiences and I know that if I'm speaking to the white people I grew up with. They're going to have to find something to hold on to. And that's very deliberate. Yeah, I mean you know I really liked how early on in the book you you're very specific about the audiences that you want to speak to. And for, and I think that that setup prepares us for the big ideas right like you talk you actually call them big ideas you talk about big ideas. But I think, in order for big ideas to actually be, you know, to saturate us. Sometimes we need to hear from authors like where they situate us audiences so I really appreciate how you did that. I want to go back to this idea though of a common past, which is tied to this if we're going to make a schism schism between folks who might say renewal, and folks who might say, raise, or you know folks who might consider themselves. You know, glowingly right, folks who might consider themselves neon left. Why is it so hard for us. And I think it is hard to accept a common past. And does your idea of renewal necessitate that we accept the common past. So, you know, at the end of the book I say, I would like to see in 2026 that we change the national motto from e pluribus unum out of many one. Yes, to Pluris at Unum, many and one and I'll just say I had to have my Latin corrected because I said pluribus at Unum and somebody wrote back and said pluribus is not the right. But, and that is how I now think of it, I don't think there's one common past indeed what I am saying I mean I you know above your head is the word is passed you know by Clint Smith. And he was a new America fellow when he wrote it and that is a book that is retelling the story of Monticello that I grew up with right as Monticello plantation. And it's going through place after place, and I could give you a narrative of most of those places that I grew up with the past he's telling is not my family's past, except probably. I mean I come from the south I'm there are certainly people in my past to enslaved the enslaved others enslaved African Americans so, but that's not a common past, but I do think. I think we can be many and one at the same time and and for many people that's frightening. I think for many others it can be. It's not a rainbow coalition that's that's just too sweet for me but it's, it's that multiplicity of stories that if you can hear them and sit with them. You can learn this this is not been easy for me initially, then you can start to appreciate the richness of the country in a way that I still think you can say is we are one. I don't think you can say we are the same that's the point that you have to be able to be different and the same at the same time. Right. I love that answer. So, you know, we're reading the book. I kept thinking about growing up. I'm sure before this but I remember my early teens. It was the first time I started to remember a lot of older men started to use this sentence. I don't regret anything because if I did do something different I wouldn't be the person I am today. When I was 13 or 14 the first time I remember thinking man that's faulty logic, because it would be, I would hear it from people who had every reason in the world to want to be different today than they were yesterday. But but that sentence right something we've heard from Trump, something we've heard from lots of powerful particular man, right I don't regret much, because those mistakes made me. When I hear that now I hear a particular person who does not have the stomach to remember. Yet your book is calling on us to have the stomach the gall the will the skill to remember to actively regret and to do different. How do we get to the do different. If we collectively right now don't even have the will to individually remember when we've done harm to ourselves or other people. So I think part of the answer is to redefine what strength and courage are, and that is exactly why I try to be as unsparing as I can be on myself by by saying look. It is much harder to face yourself, your past with what I call radical honesty, right, and it is to deny it all. And, and I think it's not accidental that you say men. And I think this is this is written into masculinity and you've written about this right then there are codes of masculinity there. And I've written a lot about you know about gender that say you know never explain never complain never examine and you know interestingly I thought a lot of men would really just not even want to open this book and there probably are a lot of them like I've heard from a number of male leaders already saying, you know you kind of gave me permission. And what I want to do I'd say it to my sons I'd say it to a lot of those men you're talking to, you know if you're really the man you think you are, then you've got to have the guts. And I want to say that to the country to that's again, a way of saying, you know I'm not anti American there's a whole part of there that really talks about patriotism and love of country. But I don't think you can do that honestly, unless you are willing to say, you know, I'm gonna look at the past and I was wrong. Right, right, right. And, and, and I think from a leadership sort of position, there's one way to talk and write about it. But I think I think what actually makes it harder for me is that, you know, we often want lead, I mean I'm putting myself in a collective weed and I don't necessarily feel a part of but this conversation. We often want leaders who don't do that right like because strength, as you say, is somehow equated with not looking backwards. Yeah. And what I love about your book is like if anything it is a tutorial on the importance of every single individual looking back every single individual looking back at the ways that they've harmed somebody. Yeah, directly, indirectly, and by harming that some person, I think what your book really is is arguing subtextually at least is that you are harming yourself. I don't care if you're a multi gazillion millionaire like you, Donald Trump has done so much harm to Donald Trump in the last 70 years, for years, well, you know, 70 something years, right. But I want to get to this idea though, that it was really percolating in the text and also that I saw in the text as like an art object right like this to me feels like a narrative experiment. Like, it seems to write this book, it seems like I mean I don't know I don't know you I don't know, but it seems like a, I mean, like, there's a part of me would be like, we need leaders. We need leaders in this in this nation to write books like this and I would say it and never expected to be done. So you've done something that I've not seen done before it in and of itself is an experiment. If the experiment fails, there will be consequences but you will be okay. So you did in how you see renewal and experimentation, sort of relating when we think about the groups, the millions of people and particularly like younger people in our country, who are not given the leeway to experiment, and not only is that experimentation like sort of disciplined. Often, it is incarcerated. So like how do we deal with experimentation, which this book is really calling for when we see carcerality sort of hitting us in the head some of us from the time we're one to the time we die and telling us do not experiment in this particular way. How do we do that part of what you're calling for. So I think there are a couple possible answers. And one you're absolutely right the books and experiment. I've never written anything like it was by far the hardest thing I've ever tried to write and wrote. It's also an experiment in form right it doesn't have subheads there no subhead heads it's it's really I tried to write it more like my favorite novels that kind of weave together different pieces, and you can kind of weave them together differently. And that so that was an experiment as well. One point on leaders. I do think we're in a time that leaders who just are rigid and I'm right and I'm not going to show any weakness that you're going to, you know, it's like the, the, the whole thing about the, the read bending before the wind rather than the wall get knocked down. Things are coming at you so fast. Nobody can actually know what to do you need a lot of people and you need to be able to say what I thought of this but I thought this was true but it isn't and now I'm going to revise. Probably I think the times we're in are more conducive to a kind of leadership that is flexible and adaptable and to do that. Again, you just have to to be willing to say no, I thought this I was wrong. I often I say somewhere that their days at New America where I measure how right I am by how often I change my mind. Right because I was really listening hard and and kind of adding evidence. But the point that you're making this goes back to that my discussion of risk risk is is a marker of privilege. Right, so I talk about you know the risks I've taken and I, you know I went to law school I thought I was going to go to a big law firm and I dropped out. I didn't drop out I became a research assistant to a law professor but they're about four years there where I didn't really know what I was going to do. You know, by my fellow students and my peers, I was taking a risk, but in the larger scheme of things that could always go home to my parents and I had, you know, fancy degrees, I was going to be fine. And I talk, I cite a lot of research that shows if you really want people to be able to experiment to either, you know, start a company or invent something new or get a degree that's very different than you know the path their parents wanted them to be on. They cannot be in a situation where one false step lends them in prison, or where you know if they take a risk and lose some money they're going to lose their house. People will not take risks in that setting. And if the United States as a whole narrative of being risk takers and entrepreneurs, we actually are going to have to provide not just a safety net but a whole foundation for people. We want more people to be able to take those risks. So I would not tell somebody who is facing, you know, who knows that that, you know, incarceration is two steps away. No, in those settings and a lot of parents in those settings say stick to the rules, don't make waves. I think we're losing a lot of talent that way but I wouldn't expect somebody who's got that much to lose to take the kind of risks that I can or my kids can. And I love that you say it so bluntly right like we are losing a lot of talent that way. And so and then it seems counterintuitive for the way I imagine leaders because when I imagine a leadership I do imagine some sort of like you know cardboard cut out of morality. But I know there's a lot of million kinds of leadership but my, my understanding of leadership is often very narrow. But what incentivizes leaders who often did not have to fairly compete to like broaden the talent pool that could one day subsume them. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Well, a lot don't right I mean it is clear that a lot of people are willing to, you know, talk the talk of diversity and you know shared power until it comes down to actually moving over or stepping down. You know, for me, no, have I stepped down to hand off my, my job to somebody else who has not had nearly as many advantages as I have. I haven't, I've split my job though. And I think that's something that a lot of people could do and in splitting my job I've created so I'm CEO and there's an opportunity for president. You know, to create space that just didn't exist. Right. So for me to talk about the payoff, the payoff is partly from us, just in general and maybe it's also because I'm older. There is so much talent, and I just, it kills me that we are not tapping it, you know as an American, we have just extraordinary opportunities. And leadership is so much more fun this way. You know, I also had this image that you know I had to know what, what to do and again, I've got to make decisions that are tough decisions and if, if there's really, you know, people can agree, you know, the buck does have to stop somewhere so there is that leadership, but leading with other people, and really sharing the problems of your organization or whatever it is you're leading is, is just much more fun. And I'm also much more confident that that at least for this moment in history, we're leading because I'm confident that I have to hear different voices. This is not just, oh yeah, different life experiences feed in differently. This is, we're in a time of change. I've got a lot of young people who want things that are very different than when I was coming up and I need, I need other voices. But I just want to make a reminder from the audience to please submit your questions via Slido, which is the box located to the right of the video. We're going to make time for hopefully all the questions but definitely as many questions as possible. So again, just the box located right to the right of your video. So fun is not a word that I thought I would hear, but, but, but it's a word that I that I want to, I want to sort of explore a bit more right because, again like when one, the way you wrote the book, I think invites not just different readerly sensibilities, but also different sort of narrative threads. So the one of the threads that I saw was the thread of pleasure and joy. Right. And so I'm interested in what fun, pleasure and joy have to do with something that feels so soulfully like achy as renewal. I've never heard leaders talk about joy, pleasure in relationship to renewal, but I wonder if we could just do that for a bit. Well, of course, one thing is if you, if you, if you've known darkness light is that much brighter than I you know I say like this time of year as the light fades I always I often have a hard time. And certainly yeah that first chapter first couple of chapters, it was heavy. I mean, that's the name one of your books but you know I also write about resilience and resilience being I say resilience is a team sport, which is something else I had to learn I thought of resilience is kind of like making like a rock and hunkering down and just letting things kind of wash over you and I discovered that it's it's much you know forging relationships going through an experience with other people made a made a big difference. And, you know, then as I started to kind of learn and I also think a lot about attaching a larger meaning and purpose to our lives that that is that that is something human being seek. And for me anyway the sense of growing and learning is a deep source of pleasure of joy, you know I I've changed a lot of jobs often because I love to just kind of keep challenging myself and learning and I learned a lot through this process and you know and I read a lot and a lot of what I read was wonderful. And I also you know it's partly during the well it was the only the end of it was the pandemic but you know I write about about birding about grace about books that I love in the bitter sort of my friends. And, and I would say and again this is something I really think I learned it certainly wasn't true when I was needed the School of Public and International Affairs. I love my colleagues, I really genuinely feel privileged to be able to, you know, to work with them on on work that I think has meaning so I don't see why leadership. It's not not going to be fun all the time that's impossible and raising money is really hard, but there's lots of parts of it that are fun. And this idea of of work as a site of potential transformation. But but first, I think you're arguing that work can also be a site of sort of like of fluidity. I'm interested in what happens to the worker who loves to read this book at home, loves to talk about these ideas possibly with someone they love, but feel completely and utterly terrified to bring much more of who they are as a human to a space that historically punish them and people who look like them for being human. So so so so I'm interested in like how we deal with that part of what you're of what you're calling for. When, when, like when I wrote heavy for example everybody my family do not put that shit out in the world. Why, because people were like, you haven't put it out in the world and people have pummeled you anyway, we don't need people looking into our families. And obviously I push back, but but how do you make the argument that not only should we push back, but their sites, their sites of labor, that should be places where people open themselves up much more. I'm speaking particularly about people who have already been made vulnerable by workplaces. Yeah, exactly. Yes, and I will say I should have said that to begin with when I read heavy I did at the end of it I thought wow. If you can do it and you are you are, you know, it's a heavy book, right there's a lot of really tough stuff in there and I was so impressed. And I said I read Darnell Moore's No Ashes in the Fire right it's not very similar kind of I took fabulous books, but he really lays it out and in the same way he's talking about family he's talking about being challenged personally. But so again, I do. You know I write at the beginning, what if I've learned anything over the past decade, it is to be very conscious of the we, you know, as you say that positionality. So, I imagine New America employees reading this book, and I imagine some number of them are going to say yeah she talks to talk but we have a long way to go. I mean, there's no question that we're in a transformation, but it's, it's hard and slow. I think that there is a different responsibility for those of us who have power and privilege I write about I've always talked about leading from the center and I've always said you know instead of being at the top of a hierarchy. I think of myself as the center of a web, but I wasn't thinking nearly enough about the folks on the margin of that web, the folks who really feel as you said that the entire workplace is not designed for them. I can't access that because the workplace was designed for men not women and I've certainly experienced that plenty. But again, it's taken me a lot to realize just how hard it is for somebody who has been historically disadvantaged who's who's gotten to where they've gotten by fitting themselves into somebody else's box, and who, you know, who am I to then say yeah and it's up to you to go and tell the boss what she's doing wrong. I think that's where allies come in, but I also think it's up to me as the boss to try to create the spaces where where people are feel more safe. There's another reason why it's so critical to have folks who you know women folks of color in power positions because they're going to hear stuff that I'm never going to hear. Right and they can tell me because they've got they've got more more power. But I think, yeah, you know this is, we don't need to put more on those who have had not nearly enough to begin with. But we, we should be telling folks who have more power. This is your job. I love that I love that. Um, and the we and we should be telling folks if this is your job. I want to I want to make sure I get this question in because we need to be jumping to the questions from the audience pretty soon. Because so much of this book is about risk is about experimentation. Um, and, and I think you know I'm just someone who believes anytime you write a book, you should attempt to obliterate the genre that people think the book is in and I feel like you've done that. And if anybody, like, thought for a second that you didn't like when you when you jump us to 2026. And, you know, and we are there right like, I love that move. And I'm interested in if there was any fear and just making that move in a book because this is a move that we've rarely if ever seen an American leader make in a book like were you afraid to do that. Jump there. That's interesting. That part I was not afraid, although was so first of all the highest compliment you could possibly give me is to tell me that I managed to break a genre because I was very consciously trying to do something different. And, and I feel good about that, you know, and I again I devour tons of fiction and tons of narrative nonfiction trying to, and a lot of it's pushing these boundaries. And the 20 the CODA says yes it's 2026 and here's what's happening and one of my friends you read it said I really thought that was right I thought that was this was. And I said well it's so part of it is. The agenda that I'm laying out that is also a challenge to me and to new America and a lot of the people I work with. But I also say you know what's your vision of 2026 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And as I start out I say you know in 1976 when I was 18 manning a bicentennial booth at the University of Virginia it was like Jefferson Central. It was triumphalist, you know it was the great United States and 1776 and we conquered the frontier and we, you know, no self examination. The time is going to be very different. And so I thought, and I, I was, you know, the CODA is called the America that has never been yet, yet must be, and that's from Langston Hughes poem, let America be America again. And I thought, you know, if he can have the courage to imagine this America that is never been yet but he says, yet must be. And that's a statement of faith. And if, and if somebody, you know, somebody on the right would say that is deeply patriotic. That's how I read it. So for me it was, I thought, you know, I'm just going to lay it out there but I'm not going to pretend that's everybody's vision and a lot of people would might find that a nightmare. I'm going to ask readers to fill in their vision because I think I do think this country needs that we are so, so mired and division and polarization and hate and sadness and death, and because that's all happening. But I don't think you can change with again going back to the personal I have to have a vision of who I can be before I can even try, even though I know I'll never get there. Right. And I'm sure you've talked to people about this vision. And, and I'm sure you've looked in people's eyes and saw vacancy at some point right. So where else they think I'm just crazy. Right, right, right. I like that I like that a lot better than that. Okay, what's this woman on. But so, but so how do you deal with people who you know have the power to make substantial change in millions or hundreds or thousands of people's lives, looking at you, either vacantly or like you're out of your mind like how do you deal with anger is one of the questions that I wanted to ask this book anger at your at your fellow leaders, do you know what I mean, like not just anger like at home. I think anger at home is anger at fellow leader but like how do you deal with looking in the eyes of folks who you know could and should possibly look backwards and revise publicly. How do you how do you deal with people saying no, that's not how I want to leave. Yeah. So part of it is I say, I obviously don't have the power to bring about all this change I have more power than a lot of people. And this is a, as I said at the beginning of this book is part manifesto and this is my manifesto when I want to try to work with others and and it's a manifesto developed by on top of the work of many others right I didn't invent all those things in the in the coda they come from work that I know other people are doing. So part of it, and this is just the way I get up every morning at a time when, you know, the reading the news is like putting a 30 pound sack of rocks on your back. Right, but and in your head right you have to constantly fight to think, we're not going to come apart we're not going to start shooting at each other how can people be like this. This is my act of faith. Right, and I do, I do believe and I know from a lot of the research I've read, we are not as divided as the media makes it out. We really aren't particularly in in towns, you know, in places where people still do know about each other. There is of the possibility of of coming together around a shared love of many things about our country, not everything but things and I find this with southerners it's interesting because you know I'm a I grew up in Virginia you go to the north and everybody thinks you're practically on the plantation if you're white. And then you encounter other southerners many of whom are African American and that you share a lot of stuff, even as you of course have plenty of issues. So that's, it's, it's an, there is a lot of anger, and there's a lot of despair, frankly, but this is, you know it's that old thing about lighting a candle this is my effort to try to do what I can but also to invite others to say, you know, yeah it's hard, it's not impossible. Yeah, you know I play basketball in college and my coach used to always say, you know, if I made a bad pass, we would always say my bad my baby we will try to say, you know we'd be like, look, I'm correcting myself. You don't have to. And I had a coach named Sach Selinger, who was like, no, no, no, no, no, if don't say my bad in this gym, unless you're going to stop and explain to the entire gym why you made that mistake. I actually believe that if you did that, you were then holding yourself accountable. And so one of the things I think you're doing in this, which is, which to me makes it one of the riskiest books I've ever read is that you, you are putting you and your leadership on the table. I mean, look at me, spend me around, look at me, hold me accountable for not just who I've been, but for the future that I want. And I do wonder what happens if we demand that of our leaders of our boards of trustees of our presidents of whatever. I'm still faithful and goofy enough to believe that some sort of change would happen. But then again, I do not think that our leaders have been educated enough to write a book like this to do the work that it takes to look back with will and skill. So how did you, and it sounds like you're saying you sort of collected like memoir and lots of different organizations over here but how did you educate yourself into where this book renewal was a possibility, because I think it is a product of not just privilege and power, but a particular kind of radical education that it seems like you might have had to go out on your own and find. Yeah, and I would say again that's that's part of the from crisis to transformation right if there hadn't been a crisis. I'd have sailed along you know thinking I was doing just fine recognizing that you know there's seen there were there were some tensions here and you had to solve for that there. What happens is so there's a crisis but what really gets me is I realize that I don't have the confidence of a lot of the people I'm leading. And then I look back and think you know this has happened before, not the same way and in a very different context, but something's going on here and I need to figure it out. And that's where, yeah, I mean new America educated me, people who worked with me educated me many I write about, you know, a young woman, who I work with who I had mentored, but she, she mentored me, I mean I you know she really she gave me stuff to read she, but she also, I knew her well enough for her to say, you know when you said that this is what people heard. Right, this is what it sounded like. Yeah, or you know I gave a talking Barnard and I was full of confidence that I was doing the right thing and then I read a lot and I thought you know this is like this is black feminism 101, you know, wife woman steps in and says well I'm going to give the speech. And, you know, I, I, I really, I really do think that that has to happen, it's not so bad because the, on the other side, I've been, you know, I've read stuff and worked with people and seen things that are such a richer version of this country that that's what I'm telling people is, you know, you just have no idea what awaits us if we can make this change and all of us are going to make it in generations. You know, when the, when the Woodrow Wilson School changed his name which I came to deeply support my father who's 90 and who went graduated from it 1953. He's not going to change his views. And okay, I get that, but there are a lot of us who can, and we've got a lot at stake, and I'm willing to hold myself to account, I know I will not get to all, you know, I, I'm never going to get all the way there but if you try you'll get further than if you don't don't set yourself up and and and holds yourself count. Yeah. Thank you for that and thank you for making a book that I that I know most of us have never read before. Alright, let's try to get to these questions. As many of them as possible. So the first one sounds sort of like something we might have gone over your book closes with an image of what 2026 might look like. Did you write that imagining it realistically, or idealistically. So I think a lot of the things I wrote about could happen. So I'll give you one example and I hope to propose it to the Obama and Bush foundations I say the Obama and Bush foundations come together and create a commission to identify an equal new founders, right from the original founders and I got that idea because Barack Obama's told said in his eulogy for John Lewis he said John Lewis was a founder. And I thought that is exactly right he has, you know, we're in some ways we're constantly refounding the country but certainly in 2026 that there's this moment of reflection of commemoration of lamentation I mean it's going to be a lot. We could absolutely identify a set the same number of founders as we had originally with a commission of conservatives and liberals and there's some people would be obvious right, and then there'd be other so that's something we can certainly do. Are we going to change e pluribus unum to flourish at unum in five years, probably not but we might get started. And could we have 15 states that have ranked choice voting and so we'd be moving toward a genuinely multi party democracy. Yeah, we could do that because we've got to now. And it's something that that can actually gain steam so it's both it is certainly it's idealistic but it's each one of those things is being advocated by somebody. And gaining support and I want people to use 2026 as a kind of, I got five years I'm going to set a big goal. And even if you fall short, you got the next 25 right because we're really, we're really working for 2050. Right. All right, I like a little bit. I like that a lot. The second one is, if you could give one piece of advice to the next generation. I guess it's connected on renewal and resilience. What would it be. I think it would be two, but so one would be be willing to, to give us a little grace those of us who are older and I cite a situation where, you know whether it's on gender pronouns or race or ethnicity, a lot of us are going to make mistakes and I quote Loretta J Ross on calling rather than calling out and just extending a little grace right we may not deserve it, but it'll be better if you give it and so and you know my sons and I joke about this all the time but that would be one thing, but the other is, don't compromise in what you're asking for, you know, we really are at an existential moment in many ways. So be tolerant of mistakes and failings, but don't give up the idea that really transformational change is both needed and possible. Yes. Yes. Um, oh. Okay, third question. What was the most surprising piece of feedback you've received on the book. Oh, that's a great question. Yeah. Well, all right, I'm going to be radically honest here. I think I think I know where you're going. So, but this book went through three drafts over a good bit of time, and the very first draft, I gave to melody whom you what you heard from and she pointed out to me that my sources were incredibly white. And, you know, for particularly for this kind of book, like what am I doing, but even worse when I read, you know, I read the New York Times op ed page and I am constantly upset because particularly in foreign policy male op ed writers are citing men, and they don't cite women it drives me crazy and I suddenly realized, Oh my, you know, obviously if I were of color I'd be looking to see who she reading. And I totally, you know, I really went back and started to look and thought, you know, what, I can't write this book and make this mistake, and I, but I didn't expect it, you know, I really thought, you know, no, no, I know I'm reading broadly. No, I wasn't reading broadly. And I think this is this is connected to the fourth question which is, I noticed you cited a lot of scholars in the book as you were writing. What works did you find most influential. And for those of you who haven't read the book. Again, I just can't reiterate it. It's travel writing memoir, sort of like literary analysis. Futurality studies, you know, you're doing a lot of different moves in here. But this is a great question. I noticed you cited a lot of scholars. What works did you find most influential. There's so many. So I will, I mean I'm not flattering you I thought heavy and no ashes in the fire and Greg hard lows air traffic which I all read together, those three. They all take risks, big risks. I write about I said, you know, look, this. These are our folks who didn't grow up in with privilege and who are really laying it out there. So those were very important, and I read those together. So then this is this gonna sound funny but I'm not a historian, but there's one chapter in there of history, where I base it's called rugged interdependence. And I say, you know, here's the history I grew up with Emerson self reliance and you know the wagon train and the pioneer and the spirit of the frontier and rugged individualism. And I went back and did my best like really on the wagon train stories I read what women had written women's diaries of who had been you know with the guy up on the wagon. And they told stories that were completely different they told stories of relying on their neighbors you know but for our neighbors we never would have survived but for the other folks in the wagon train. And it sounded like, you know, a communal experience it was the antithesis of, you know, of this rugged individualism, and then I read. God, I'm suddenly blanking on the Underground Railroad, I'm blanking on. Right Colson Whitehead. That was really profound and there's a line in there that just just is burned into my brain where he's talking about this enslaved woman Cora who finally makes it to the north. And he says, she looked around and folks are singing a song they used to sing on the plantation and she doesn't understand how they could sing that. How could they do that when they're working. And she says, she realized this was freedom but it wasn't what she imagined it was freedom as community, something lovely and rare, and I thought that is what the United States is missing. You know all of our liberty and I believe in liberty but the idea that liberty that freedom could be community. That was revelatory to me. I mean that's the bedrock of the book. That's the bedrock of your book. So powerful and that's a novel. Right, you know, it's so important. All right, I'm gonna try to get these next two and before we before we have to go. There's been an erosion of public trust and higher education in recent years. What is the path forward for these pillars of American democracy. And just want to add this because so what so we can so we can just kind of go out with a bang. It is often hard to stay optimistic these days the book is deeply optimistic. What are you holding that is giving you faith today. So maybe you can talk about education. Yeah, no I love that. At least at least they didn't ask what I'm on. What do you want to do. Yeah exactly what are you taking. So on the first one this is a really important question and we know that there's a tremendous decline in trust. So what you need to build trust is psychological safety, and a sense of familiarity, and some cross cutting identity, right so kiss a you and I might say well you know we both grew up in the south. Right, we got a lot of differences but we've got these things or you know we both love the same sports team or, but the psychological safety piece is what's so critical so you have these forums and stuff nobody says what they really think you know they're So this goes back to where I started, I think if you are willing to say I was wrong here, this is what I thought, but I was wrong, or this is what I did, and I was wrong. That's an opening that helps you move toward psychological safety and more trust. I just think it's because it immediately says I'm making myself vulnerable to you, you know, and that means you got to trust something. And I don't think we can address trust in the macro until we can find it back in our communities and our friends so that's an education should be able to do that I'm not sure it is but it could. The last thing is, again, you know, I read the news and I am scared. I'm genuinely scared I think, you know we are becoming a plurality nation that is a huge transformation, and that kind of change in any country can cause huge upheaval. I guess I do believe, I mean this this is the patriotic part I believe this country has got stuff that can hold it together, and I genuinely believe that that, you know, Americans of every color that that diversity we have is such an asset. And if we can come to see that as an asset that it connects us to the world that we, you know that we have again this tremendous reservoir of innovation and talent because culture and ideas are colliding that that can be the container, as my friend Keith Yamashita says that can be the container for a nation big enough to hold us all. And that that gives my life more meaning as I think about fighting for that. And that's the only way I know how to be otherwise I'd be a little, you know, puddle in the corner. I love that Emory thank you so much for daring to be wrong publicly, which is always like daring to revise publicly. I mean we should not have to thank each other for daring to revise, but we do so thank you so much for daring to revise. I want to thank all of you again and this is just a reminder that you can purchase your copy of renewal through our bookselling partner solid state books by clicking on the button in the right hand corner of the screen. And you really need to get that book and you really need to talk about talk with this book with folks you work with folks you eat with, and folks you really purport to love thank you for giving us more important work to do. Thank you all for spending an hour with us today. Thank you. Can say thank you, and thanks to the audience. That was just a fabulous conversation. Thank you.