 Welcome Aloha, and thank you for joining us at think Tech Hawaii. Thank you for having us. And we have the honor and pleasure of having with us today, three people with a lot of leadership experience in a diverse range of areas, well beyond law into nursing state government and other areas and emerita. Randall University of Dayton School of Law now in Florida. Professor emerita and Davis from University of Toledo School of Law now visiting prof at Washington and Lee School of Law. And Doug Chen, good friend and former Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General of the state of Hawaii and share of our book and music festival. Doug has branched out into areas that reach out to truly all the community ages backgrounds, tastes and interests. So in thinking about leadership now and this is probably a timely moment to be doing that given elections in play in underway elections coming Hawaii's primary is next week. What are things going on. Not just what do we really need in leaders right now, but what do the leaders that we really need right now need to be able to do well to benefit our communities at all levels, local state national and others. Peter, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General. What do you think our leaders really, really need to do well now. I guess I'll start as simply as possible and I'll remember the, like one of my first mentors was actually Peter Carlisle. He was a prosecuting attorney for Honolulu for for several years. He eventually became the mayor of Honolulu and that's how I moved over into city government and served with him as the managing director. It was so simple, but I remember then I was just in my 30s, and I get caught up in, you know, what's the right thing to do in this case and how do I strategize this and what should I plan to do. And he would always just look at me and say you got to do what's right. It's overly simplistic. But, but I think it, it makes a lot of sense because thinking about what's right and focusing on that kind of gets you away from all the calculations of, you know, what is expedient or what is, what is practical or what will allow me to remain in power, or what will allow me to remain well liked and well regarded by people and be able to get other things done. There's so many, there's so many motivations that go into decisions that are made. And, and a lot of them just are ones that need to be sifted out. And so, and so I think about decisions about the police commission as well. So, so that's that's how we made some big decisions yesterday. And I was just thinking about how a lot of the commissioners were kind of focused on different decisions for why we should be what should be guiding our decisions, and ultimately where we coalesced around was well I think we just got to do what's the right thing to do in this situation and we took action in that regard. That's a great place to start Professor Randall. You've been involved in leadership in healthcare and academics and government over many years. What do you think leaders really need to be able to do best now. I think the great question and coming from my typically as to mystic point of view. I have come to believe I didn't always believe this but I have come to believe that incremental change is problematic. The systems can change to undo, incorporate co op, or otherwise do incremental change. And the problem becomes, I think if we have incremental change that was always going to build upon itself. And the people who were going to come get in was going to always build upon it. I might not be so pessimistic. But what I see from increment what I have seen over my lifetime is that different people bring in different priorities, different ideas about what is right. And whatever incremental change you think you have made in a system, they're unwilling, they're willing to undo. So I think we need leaders prepared to say, we're ready to go bold, we're ready to ignore system norms, policies, procedures, processes, because that's what God is here today. And, you know, we need to go big or go home. It may end up going home true enough but incremental change is, is problematic to me. That's a great insight. Ben, I can kind of hear the wheels turning in your head. You've got some thoughts on this. I second both of your comments. For what it's for what it's worth. I'm a strong believer in individuals experiencing what I call a contradiction between what they think is right. And what is going on outside in society, in terms of something, whatever it could be in any area. And I think that the difference in leadership is, is the capacity for people to not just sort of go along with to get along with that contradiction. But to try to find some way in to, to, to fight back against that contradiction between what they think is right. And what the society is throwing at them. Now, in a big, we're all at different levels, it might best be somebody writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper. That is the thing that they're capable doing obviously some other people may be giving money, or something like that some things running for office. Sometimes it's choices of jobs, but I'm strong believer in that being willing to recognize you're experiencing a contradiction between what you've been raised to understand is right. And what society is throwing at you, and to not just let the other priorities, getting your way because, for example, right now, one of the things that I think about is that I can't see how any self respecting American whatever their political persuasion, could vote for a candidate who has not broken with Donald Trump. I just, I don't care, you know, you can vote for other Republicans and all that stuff. But it just makes no sense to me that after all we've seen at this point that. We've seen people who are so called leaders. And I see who breaks with with the risks, and who didn't, you know, and reveal something about their cowardice. Is that sufficient. Breaking with Donald Trump is that sufficient is getting Joe Biden in for another four years sufficient. I'm not saying anything is sufficient. Okay, I'm just saying that that basic kind of thing of breaking with Donald Trump look how hard it is. Look at how. Yeah, but we won't even break with Biden. I, you know, if we're going to talk about breaking with the leadership of a party, which I don't disagree. Let's talk about breaking with Biden. I'm happy to, I'm happy to talk about breaking with Biden. But the point that I'm just trying to focus on is that, you know, there was the insurrection, you know, on January 6. That was like enormous to me. And, and everything that I've watched at this January 6 committee. And I'm just like, how can people in good conscience, or whatever reason, opportunistically, vote for anybody who wasn't broken with that vote for anybody who still believes in the big lie we just saw Arizona. Arizona's got a bunch of people have been put in in the primaries there who have not broken with the big lie and I you know I look at those. I look at Arizona's and say, you know, what kind of crazy is that quite honestly, what kind of crazy is I mean you might want to vote for a Republican if you want to that's fine. It's that what kind of crazy still believes the big lie. All right. That's not that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting neither Republican or Democrat that they both are problematic but when we, when we tee up the golf ball. Who hasn't broken with Trump, without TNF the golf ball of who hasn't broken with Biden, then we set ourselves up to continue the ineffective leadership that we have in the Democratic Administration, because all we're looking at is whether or not they broke with Trump. Okay, but okay, well, then I would start. I'll start with that one. Beyond that, the, the other thing that I, I just look like in leaders is, I don't know if all of you are getting these but I certainly been getting a lot of requests for donations. Since the Dobbs decision, enormous amounts of donations for the elections coming up this fall. And my thing was that no, that's not good enough. You know, you got to do things now, and then we'll take a look later. Okay. Yeah, so it's been looking at doing things now. And one of the things that I was really happy to see was was yesterday, the day before is the Kansas vote with people in Kansas said no, or hell no to getting rid of women's rights. But I've also seen that there have been efforts to pass laws that will codify various types of rights of privacy at the federal level. And now they're in the Senate, having to deal with those things. That's now, not after the election, I want that now, and see how far people will go to the wall to try to change those laws to address it. That's what I call leadership now, not just giving money and you know the pie in the sky in the fall after your elections I promise I'll be the guy, or the woman to do this thing, but it's like right now what are you doing to make sure that basic human rights are being preserved. That's, that's kind of what I look for, because I sense a lot of people and I really going through, particularly horrific times, since that doubts decision. Not from what I, when I read about it all. There's other decisions that are there, but let's say there aren't other horrific, but I'm just saying that there's like serious trauma going on. And whether you're trying to address it right now, or not, is kind of part of what leadership is to me, I don't know. Let me ask a question is, we know, whether it's public or private sector that really effective leadership has to assemble and unify, and bring together and move forward with teams the things that Doug, Professor Randall, been are talking about all can't be done by individuals requires different teams that span different areas. Doug you've been in city and state leadership is collaborative leadership in these times, even possible. I think it's possible at the city level. I think it gets, I guess, it gets much harder once you go into that I'll say I think it's harder once you go into the state level. And then it gets extremely hard when you get to the federal level. And I think it's just because a lot more polarizing issues take place. So I think at a lower level, when you're not talking about morals or values or things like that. You're just talking about how are we going to get the street fixed, or how are we going to build some infrastructure. I think there's a lot less of that. A lot less of that polarized polarization that I think we see happen. And so I think there's a lot more room for collaboration. I've actually been listening carefully to what everyone's been saying and I find I learned a lot in the last 10 minutes because I think when I was first. It helped me to rethink about what I was talking about because, first of all, I talked about doing what's right. And I think I, and now that I've listened to what everybody else was saying I think I meant more in the sense of doing what's right and shifting aside. The idea is that well this will not be a popular decision or this will I won't be liked because of this decision. I think I've learned from mentors and from experience that that it's better just to do what's right because ultimately that's what you got to live with at the end of the day. When I heard a big challenge I liked what I was very interested in what I was hearing about how, you know, sometimes incremental change might not be something that we were all trying to go for might not actually create the the effect or the result that that we're looking for. Because then what I think about is, is that I think about well practically speaking, when you get into those polarized areas. The only way that such can be made the only way that anything can go forward is to have compromise because if you don't have compromise, then nothing happens at all. And so I found that very interesting to hear about, well, maybe we shouldn't be trying for incremental change and then I and then I think we then went into a discussion about, you know, certain. What I'd call like threshold issues, you know, sort of like well you know if you if you believe the big lie, you know, you need to reject the big lie or you need to, you know, you need to take a strong stand on abortion rights or you need to take a strong stand on one issue. I think that's where things get a lot more complicated. What was what was awesome about the abortion vote in Kansas is it was so simple, right so it was just it's a very simple value that people were either for or against and the voters spoke. I think when it comes to, are we going to be supporting, are we going to be supporting Biden or are we going to be rejecting Trump. Then that it's it's so much more complicated, right because it's not it's not just one. It's not just one thing going on with Biden or it's not just one thing going on President Biden, there's a lot of different things happening. And so, and so the decisions that people make might be based on well I don't like it because of this or I don't like it because of that. But then how do you how do you deal with a president who has 100 things that you could like or not like about them. And you could say well, I'm going to vote for them or I'm not going to vote for them or I'm going to vote for a third candidate that there's no possibility that they would win, which essentially means my vote is is not, you know, it's it's in a practical perspective. I've lived with my conscience but I haven't necessarily had an effect on that. And maybe there's a long term effect because you know the 10,000 people who voted for a small candidate that that evolves into something over time. So, I hope that made sense but I really appreciate what I'm hearing because I think it makes me think a lot about, like, you know, leadership and also how do you get something done in a polarizing polarized society. This may be it may be different for you in Hawaii, but city politics, school board politics, city council politics in Dayton, Ohio was hugely problematic, especially for those in the community that felt unrepresented by the politics, which turned, which was either Democrat or Republican, and especially for the West side of Dayton, which was black. And so, I would haven't worked there for 30 years I, I found that city politics, when there's a division within the population. That is not clean either that that and often. I'll give you an example. We just wanted the school board to stop suspending kindergarten to third graders. That just seemed the right thing to do. And everybody on our side thought it was the right thing to do but the school board for some reason couldn't put their minds around doing that and I don't want to go into the but but the thing is is that, and there was a big division and it was really affected by those suspensions were black hits black K in the garden to third graders were being disproportionately suspended compared to white and Hispanic kids. So, you would think so it I think that that. So I said, the that city politics can also be as froth with mind holes as state municipal and being and I, my own feeling coming out of the all of the work that I did that is, we really needed someone to blow up the school board. Not physically blow it up, but just get on the school board and say no, no. No, this is not right what you're doing no, we're not going to have these close meetings. No, we're going to vote for where we're going to have to publicly explain why you don't want why you're willing to allow this to continue. We needed someone who was who was going to be an advocate for us on the city council for police on the school board for the city council for for funding for this, the West Dayton, and for the school board so would that be effective, probably not. But what has been happening isn't effective either. So at least we could walk away, feeling like there was an advocate for us in these places, and it wasn't just about, you know, what could get done, but, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, it's like the Yeah, one thing that strikes me in what you're saying. Professor Randall is the idea of what is the nature of civility, what is the nature of decorum in those spaces. And when you're talking about extremely desperate feeling things for those parents of those kids who are kindergarteners to third graders, being confronted by a kind of system that is basically not valuing their kids. This is huge pain you understand that I'm trying to speak to that, and you're going up before a school board that seems tone deaf and the rules of the core and civility are such that you're the impact of what you're trying to do. Kind of lost, because you're supposed to be playing the second order game of sort of, did you wear the right clothes or did you speak with the right accent or, you know, or this kind of thing. And I see that there's a lot of that sort of formalism, if I could say it like that, that is distracting from the substance of the actual complaints that people have. And one of the things that we've seen most recently just take the whole situation you value. Okay, that whole process that it's gone through for months now to find out what really went on. And then as and all the efforts to distract to deflect to deny to hide, you know, and it's still going forward right. I just saw today, something that makes me think of one of the things that is about leadership this being willing to be the lawyer to take the case to bring the lawsuit. I mean if you look at this case about Sandy hook and Alex Jones. That's where they had to get to to counter the fakeness being said. The other one is the Breonna Taylor case that's just got put in. So, that's the other side of it to, you know, which is for police officers are being charged on the federal level, but they've been a whole state local process that absolve them. And sometimes it's the lawsuit that has to be the one. But then that's a very inefficient way of doing things too is that these lawsuits is a way of countering, you know, the kinds of oppression. Especially the settlements. As we know settlements, don't change the law. And it really drives me crazy that a lot of the civil rights leadership is using settlements. And that gets money to the family. Maybe there's something in the settlement that changes how police operate or the school board operates, but that is not disclosed in fact one change leadership things we could make is to say there will be no such things as private settlements. And they go to certain issues. If they involve. And if they involve the police if they involve the school board if they found any level of government. If they involve discrimination. Even in corporations. Settlement sign private. Because the public has an interest in knowing and messing aside. That's sorry. So how do we connect those dots between the moral and ethical courage and boldness that you're talking about to do the right thing and truly prioritizing protection and support for the interests of those who have been most marginalized. Most underserved. Because that's the theme that we're hearing underneath this. These are the people who are still being left out, who are still being essentially victimized by the deficiencies in those leadership qualities to have the courage to do that. Are there people out there now who exhibit any of that kind of moral and ethical courage. When it comes to thinking about things taking a perspective of short view or a long term view. And, and maybe there's a bit of a balance of, you know, when you apply the short view and when you apply the long term view. The example that I think about. It doesn't necessarily go to advocating for disadvantaged populations, but I think about Liz Cheney. And just, you know, the leadership role that she took in the January 6 commissioner she was allowed to take by the by the people who were part of the January 6 Commission. I mean, we'll see whether or not she's voted out because she took that position. But clearly, she was looking at things from a long term point of view. And so, and and was guided by that principle in terms of how she was going to be running the community or how she was going to be conducting herself on the commission and the statements that she was going to be making. I think a lot of her colleagues have a short term view. And so that's why they end up saying what they say. And so anyway, that's that that's someone who jumps out as somebody who, you know, would have would have that kind of principle in mind. Are there others out there Ben. I mean, I think that probably the most influential non political person for me is Reverend barber and his efforts to build coalitions in different parts of the country as part of the poor people's campaign. I think for the years that I've seen him working and I think Reverend Theodorus, the two of them together. It has had a concentration on the most vulnerable parts of our society. And they've had some successes in some places, you know, but they didn't seem to ever lose sight of the ball, if I could say it like that they seem to be very clear and what they're doing they haven't been, you know, bought off or something like that in some co opted way we talked about being co opted before. And, you know, that has been, you know, just a really an example of leadership, at least in my view, that really is focused on the least of these. Insights so in our last couple of minutes, when I ask each of you, what would you most want to see or hear from someone who was a candidate for a leadership position to make you think maybe this person offers at least some of the kind of hope we need. Mr. Randall. Recognition of the flaws of the existing system. That's and how, and I see this at state at local state and federal level. And how the exists that the existing one party system capitalism has with two branches Democrats and Republicans have contributed to a system where we're locked in because we force people to choose make choices that they're unhappy with. And just so that the other side doesn't get in. I want public recognition that I want people to say that, and to say while I may be running as a Republican or Democrat are an independent or green party. I are socialist. I recognize that we have a one party system. And that as long as we continue to have this one party system. It's going to be difficult to make change. I'm going to do the best I can under the system if you elect me. You don't hear people say that. Yeah, people don't talk about what's broken in order to be able to talk about how to fix it. Doug your thoughts you've been in government leadership. Sure, I think in effective leaders, they, they govern through fear and through anger resentment and through power and control. Whereas I think effective leaders they they have vision. They, they're, they have the ability to inspire people. And I think as cynical as we want to get about everything that's that's really, those are the leaders who really stand out for me. Ben, you want to finish us up for today. Yeah, I would say that leaders who see the flaws, see the poor, see the middle class and see doing things for them to make their lives better. I wanted to think of when you look at these billionaires and all that. I remember that TV show borders, where you see this person with the house with all this incredible stuff. Well, I look at them as being borders of money. Right. They look they need interventions because their relationship to money is very, very sick. And when you think of the, the income. You know, I think average salaries or something since 1970 have not increased for the average worker in the United States while they've been these productivity gains all through there that are essentially gone. It's like no more that's got to go back in the pockets of the poor in the middle class. I'm not, I'm not held up on $15 an hour, you know, I might be $30. The number is, but that there's got to be more going into poor people's pockets and more health care for poor people and more good schools for poor people so it's not related to your property tax and what area, and, and more. Let's see in that bright eyes of those little kids you see all the time and having that brilliance be encouraged. Excuse me. As opposed to being, as opposed to being pushed down, you know, and I mean in every neighborhood. I see these kids, you know, and I'm just like, look at all that brightness and magic, right. And then, you know, has it been encouraged, or has it been sort of the beating down of life and so bad. So to me it's like, leaders who do that. All right, you know, don't worry about the rich folks the rich folks will always take care of themselves, but make sure that you know food clothing shelter health care for the poor and jobs, those kind of things bread and butter. Those are indeed the questions. We have a horribly broken imbalance between privilege at one end of the spectrum and protections for those at the other end of the spectrum. It's, it needs to change we need to think and talk about what that's going to look like, and what needs to happen to get there. Thank you all for your. Wonderful contributions. Come back and join us again in a couple of weeks. Think Tech Hawaii. Professor Randall. Thank you. Doug. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at think tech Hawaii.com. Mahalo.