The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Dr. Caroline Levander - How to Reform Our Universities (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_934)

00:00:00.000 I'm delighted to report that I have joined, as a scholar, the Declaration of Independence Center

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00:01:05.780 Hi, everybody. Start of the new week with another fantastic guest. Today, I've got Carolyn

00:01:10.980 Levander. I'll mention who she is in a second. How are you doing?

00:01:14.600 I'm doing well and really happy to be here. Thanks so much.

00:01:17.900 Likewise. Okay, so let me just read very quickly who you are. You're a professor of English at

00:01:22.640 Rice University and the Carlson Professor in the Humanities. You're the Vice President for Global

00:01:27.900 Strategy, responsible, I took this from your website, responsible for expanding Rice's global

00:01:32.860 impact through the development of new international campuses, academic programs, partnership, and

00:01:38.280 research collaborations. Your latest book with MIT Press, which we're going to talk about today,

00:01:44.000 Invent ED, How an American Tradition of Innovation Can Transform College Today. I've spent 32 years as a

00:01:50.560 professor. I can talk a lot about that. But let me mention some of your other books.

00:01:55.160 Hotel Life, The Story of a Place Where Anything Can Happen, co-authored book. Where is American

00:02:00.180 Literature? Cradle of Liberty and Voice of the Nation. I didn't read the subtitles. Anything else you want

00:02:06.700 to add, Carolyn, before we begin?

00:02:08.820 No, I think that sums it up.

00:02:10.980 Okay, well, by the way, you know, in soccer, when you talk about a one club player, that's someone who

00:02:17.160 spent their entire career wedded to one club. You're a one club academic, all your degrees at Rice,

00:02:24.640 your academic positions at Rice, boy, you're a loyal gal.

00:02:29.840 You know, it's partly, I've just had so many wonderful opportunities here that I've had chances

00:02:35.080 to leave, and it just never quite made enough sense.

00:02:37.520 Right. Well, I've been once to Houston. I've been many times to Texas. I went once to Houston,

00:02:42.780 I gave a talk at the University of Houston, I think in 2004. And I remember that the host who took,

00:02:50.420 you know, was taking me around to show me Houston, took me to, I'm sure you'll know the area,

00:02:54.200 I don't remember what it is, took me to an area of really astounding wealth, where every home

00:02:59.440 looked like a small private college. Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:03:02.700 I know exactly what you're talking about. That would probably be River Oaks.

00:03:06.400 Okay.

00:03:07.060 Yeah, no, or Memorial. Those are two very affluent areas in Houston.

00:03:10.800 Can Rice University professors in the business school buy a house there?

00:03:15.180 Not quite. Not quite, not quite.

00:03:18.940 All right. So let's start with your current book. It's not out yet. It's coming out?

00:03:24.860 It's coming out next week.

00:03:26.640 Okay, beautiful.

00:03:27.620 Yeah, yeah. A week from tomorrow.

00:03:29.400 Okay. So tell us all about InventED. Take it away.

00:03:33.180 Yeah. And so this is a book that is really about the history of creativity and discovery in the United

00:03:38.940 States. So it starts back with the founding fathers. And it explores how that history and tradition

00:03:45.320 of creative discovery can be optimized on university campuses today to ensure that,

00:03:53.120 you know, everyone who attends college gets the most out of the experience and develops the kind

00:03:59.120 of educational tools that will help them make the most important discoveries yet to be made in our

00:04:04.600 country. So now, is it that we adhere to this ethos, you know, 30, 40, 50 years ago, and we've somehow

00:04:12.720 veered off that train? Or is it something that we've yet to do in our university ecosystems?

00:04:18.480 You know, what I what I show is that our wonderful universities in the United States have been places

00:04:25.080 where ideas get developed and thrashed around, but we have not intentionally developed an undergraduate

00:04:31.960 education that optimizes for creativity building in our students. It has tended to be more as it should

00:04:41.780 be, you know, the, the learning of a particular discipline, that's very important. InventED argues,

00:04:49.320 in addition to that, every undergraduate student needs to come out of college with an ability to think

00:04:57.380 creatively, to problem solve creatively, and that we can do that on our campuses.

00:05:02.960 So as a as an evolutionary psychologist, the frequent sort of dichotomy that you hear of is nature versus

00:05:09.600 nurture, right? How much of a particular phenomenon is due to my innate disposition versus, you know, I learned it.

00:05:16.020 So does what you just said, inherently imply that much of our creativity could be foster rather than

00:05:24.940 some humans, human beings are, you know, Elon Musk is innately creative, whereas Joe Smith is not?

00:05:31.460 Absolutely. What I show in InventED is that, you know, what you're talking about is the difference

00:05:36.860 between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. And in a fixed mindset world, you say, wow, I'm just not

00:05:42.620 good at math, or I just can't write. In a growth mindset, you approach it as a muscle you can build

00:05:48.580 and develop. And I argue and really show that creative capability is something we can build.

00:05:54.800 It's not innate. It's not like you were born with the color of your eyes or your height.

00:05:58.760 It's something that we can teach students. And if we teach this to students really well,

00:06:05.180 they're more high value in the marketplace, particularly in an era of AI, which is so transforming

00:06:11.740 how people work. We need to be more creative in the workplace. It is a clear signal we're getting

00:06:17.320 from World Economic Forum, from Harvard Business Review, from all of the important kind of monitors

00:06:24.880 of what the workplace needs in the United States.

00:06:27.560 So can I offer, so, you know, I've been railing against some of, you know, the lacuna in academia,

00:06:34.120 and I think it might serve as a nice bridge to what you're talking about in terms of fostering

00:06:38.860 creativity. So first point, there is this idea that academic, well, not just academic students,

00:06:46.040 as you mentioned at the start, should be hyper-specialized. I'm a history major specializing

00:06:51.140 in American history, right? And of course, certainly as you go up in your university education,

00:06:56.460 there is an expectation that you're hyper-specialized because for you to be able to make some relevant

00:07:01.780 contribution, you certainly need to know this area well. Whereas I have argued, I think reasonably

00:07:08.240 convincingly, that you also need to be a generalist because some of the biggest thinkers

00:07:14.460 are those who have a synthetic mind. So for example, my academic career, not to imply that I'm a great

00:07:20.180 thinker, but my academic career has been very much shaped by the fact that I don't care about

00:07:25.880 interdisciplinary boundaries. So many people told me, warned me, don't only, don't publish in medicine

00:07:32.160 and politics and economics and psychology, because that makes you look like you're a frazzled person,

00:07:37.640 whereas you should publish only in consumer psychology or evolutionary psychology. And I said,

00:07:42.100 no way, life is too short. So interdisciplinarity, a generalist synthetic mindset, a sense of consilience,

00:07:49.840 unity of knowledge. How would those terms fit within your rubric of creative inducing pursuits?

00:07:56.360 You know, I think you and I speak the same language here, 100%. So I'm thinking, and this is the history

00:08:04.220 of our country, right? Samuel Morse, right? You know, the inventor of the telegraph. We don't really

00:08:10.280 remember he was an artist first and foremost. And, you know, it was his inability to support himself

00:08:18.440 with his painting that caused him to go into scientific discovery. And in fact, he mocked up

00:08:26.180 the telegraph on his easel in his studio. And so that's what you're talking about. You're talking

00:08:33.320 about the ability to move between disciplines to see new things, right? And that it is that act,

00:08:40.580 that method, that inventive method that makes your contributions higher impact. That principle

00:08:48.200 is visible in the historical record. And, you know, I would never want to say that the United States

00:08:55.540 is better than other countries. Every country has got its wonderful history and contribution.

00:09:00.220 That said, there was just the reality of building a nation out of a huge wilderness that was very

00:09:09.800 conducive to our earliest inventors using that method. Because they didn't have universities that

00:09:16.840 they could go to and take deep lessons in, you know, this field and that field. They had to kind of do it

00:09:22.560 themselves. Right? You know, I, so many of the people that I gravitate toward in terms of,

00:09:28.860 you know, former intellectuals or current intellectuals that I admire, seem to all possess

00:09:35.520 many of those traits. So, for example, I was just reading about, I don't know if you know, the,

00:09:40.860 the, some argue he's the sort of the father of the scientific method, Francis Bacon. And I'm currently

00:09:47.580 reading an intellectual biography on him. And as I read some of his positions, I said, boy,

00:09:52.420 that could literally be my own biography in that, you know, he was both a statesman and a lawyer and

00:09:59.100 a philosopher. And he's just, he doesn't care. Do you think that 500 years ago, it was inherently

00:10:07.040 easier to be this kind of synthetic thinker, and that the universities have kind of browbeaten us

00:10:13.480 into being the sort of stay in your lane folks? Well, yeah, I mean, that is something that Event

00:10:18.840 Ed really shows is, you know, this was not intentional. It's an unintended consequence

00:10:24.260 of disciplinary rigor. And we all know over the last 150 years, you know, universities have

00:10:31.480 transformed. There are more departments now. There are more subfields. As knowledge has become

00:10:37.300 ever more complex and intricate, you know, we moved away from thinking we could know it all.

00:10:42.100 And so we, you know, we let some people have this shop, piece of the shop, some people this piece.

00:10:48.940 From the beginning, though, you know, our leaders worried about that. You know, Vannevere Bush,

00:10:55.560 who was the founder of the National Science Foundation, worried in his, you know, presidential

00:11:03.100 letter justifying the NSF, he worried that the focus on too narrow fields of work would

00:11:11.860 make our scientists too narrow. And so that concern, I think, has been with the research

00:11:19.500 university in the United States from the start. So you're absolutely right. It's not been malice

00:11:24.380 of forethought. It's been the unintended consequence of, you know, being research engines creating new

00:11:30.460 industries. My contribution is to say, how can we get some of that wonderful inventive spirit back in

00:11:38.600 our undergraduate education? Because that's really where it's important to know physics,

00:11:43.400 absolutely, if you're a physics major. And you need to be able to think across disciplines the way

00:11:48.820 you're describing.

00:11:50.440 What, maybe you could give us a bit of a sense of the genesis of why this program and this ethos

00:11:58.500 developed at Rice University. Is it largely because you're there? Or is there something in the water

00:12:04.520 that, you know, everybody agrees yet? That's what's the mechanism by which you said, this is what we

00:12:09.760 must do next as part of our strategic mission? Well, you know, look, my book in Ben Ed is not in

00:12:16.420 any way a university mandate. I certainly see on Rice campus, some wonderful instances of this kind of

00:12:23.940 creativity capability building in place. I think here of our Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen,

00:12:31.540 which was literally a formal, former central kitchen on the campus that got sort of appropriated by the

00:12:39.300 engineering school. And now undergraduate students, you know, are given real world problems and to

00:12:47.080 design solutions for using what they know of engineering. And so that's an instance for sure,

00:12:53.320 but every university has a distance to go in really committing that every undergraduate student

00:13:00.820 will come in and leave with the, you know, the creative capability building as a North Star.

00:13:09.380 So it's work that we all can do. And InventEd shows very simple ways that universities can help

00:13:16.920 solve for this challenge without spending huge amounts of money. Because as you know, universities

00:13:21.740 in these days and times don't have huge amounts of money to, you know, build new buildings and do all

00:13:26.460 this important, you know, infrastructure building, that does not let us off the hook of really thinking

00:13:34.060 how can every aspect of our campus experience be more about fomenting creative expression.

00:13:41.220 Is the idea to pedagogically ensure that irrespective of which field you're teaching,

00:13:48.200 there's some sort of creative inducing element? Or can I do a creativity major as my undergraduate?

00:13:55.540 Or is it both?

00:13:57.220 You know, I think regardless of what you major in, you know, we're faculty, we know when we go into

00:14:03.920 a classroom, and I teach in the humanities, so we use the Socratic, you know, it's very much dialogue

00:14:10.020 driven, even in a pedagogy or a teaching style that seems to be about conversation. It's very easy to

00:14:19.200 reward the fast, smart answer, the student who is there fast, right, with the right answer and rely

00:14:25.540 too much on that student. That is tacitly reinforcing a fixed mindset in students because

00:14:31.540 they think, okay, you know, Joe is the smart guy. I'm not, you know, I'm not the smart, so I'm going

00:14:37.500 to be more on the sidelines. And so even in those classrooms that we think are more about developing,

00:14:44.760 you know, ideas over a long time, we all as faculty take shortcuts, understandably. If we

00:14:52.420 actually are mindful of that, and we understand that doing that short circuits, the building of

00:14:58.540 a growth mindset, sort of learning over time, slow learning, trial and error, being important to

00:15:04.780 developing strength, you know, if we really come into our classrooms sensitized to that, we can change

00:15:10.880 some of the implicit messages we're sending. Right. Earlier, I was talking about sort of

00:15:16.080 interdisciplinary bridges and conciliance and so on. May I take an attempt at linking my work in

00:15:22.600 evolutionary psychology to your work in literature? Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. So usually in,

00:15:29.380 from what I know of literary criticism, we're going to do an analysis using Foucault or postmodernism or

00:15:36.240 feminist or Marxist or whatever, there is a field called Darwinian literary criticism, Carolyn, whereby

00:15:43.960 the idea of the discipline is that the reason why literature moves us is because it is a window to our

00:15:51.380 innate human nature, right? So that I can listen to a Greek tragedy from 2,500 years ago, where the person

00:15:59.580 who wrote it may not know what an iPhone is and may not know what a car or X is, the platform,

00:16:05.780 but the software running his mind is exactly the same software as yours and mine. Therefore,

00:16:11.260 the reason why I could connect with what was written 2,500 years ago is because there's a few

00:16:16.360 underlying fundamental evolutionary drivers, paternity uncertainty, sexual longing, sibling rivalry,

00:16:24.900 parent-offspring conflict, and these few blueprints is what drives much of literature. So I can take

00:16:31.700 an evolutionary analysis to study literature. This is what I mean by synthetic thinking,

00:16:39.320 linking fields that heretofore had been completely unconnected. What do you think of that?

00:16:44.760 It makes total sense to me. And I think I would add to it, dear colleague, that I think one of the

00:16:52.420 great pleasures that comes from reading Cicero or Plato or Socrates is that recognition,

00:16:59.900 that you are part of a longer arc of human history at a time when, you know, AI is threatening all kinds of

00:17:09.280 our, you know, workplace comforts and securities. It's very, I think, comforting and also courage building

00:17:23.540 to realize that the long march of human history has some constants in it and that we all desire to be

00:17:30.260 loved. We all want to be the most cherished, you know, in somebody's eyes. We all want to succeed.

00:17:37.420 We're all scared of death. You know, there's some real human feelings that are what it means to be human.

00:17:44.720 Yeah. So it's interesting that you said, I think you call it the long arc. I recently had separately

00:17:50.280 two co-authors that, two historians, one from Harvard, one from Princeton. They wrote this

00:17:55.780 massive compendium called The Golden Thread. And so it starts, so it's kind of the golden thread of

00:18:02.280 civilization beginning in ancient Greece, you know, going on to, you know, the Renaissance. I mean,

00:18:07.700 the usual sort of thread. And so you're exactly right. But interesting, I mean, you were mentioning

00:18:11.680 that there's comfort to know that, you know, you're thinking along the lines of Cicero and Socrates.

00:18:16.800 I mean, yes, that's true. I actually felt at one point frustrated by it. And let me explain to you

00:18:22.940 why. So as I was writing my previous book, it was a book on happiness. And I had no intention on

00:18:28.720 actually writing a book on happiness. But people would keep writing to me saying, what's your secret?

00:18:34.340 You deal with all of these difficult subjects. You tackle some very thorny issues. You know, you get

00:18:39.400 death threats for criticizing this or that. Yet you always seem to be happy and joyful. What's your secret,

00:18:45.340 professor? And so I thought, okay, well, let me see if I have the temerity to actually put it down

00:18:50.140 into a book. And of course, you can't write about the good life and happiness without going back to

00:18:55.880 the ancient Greeks who've written a lot about it. And every time I thought that I had this unique

00:19:01.760 insight, and you know, I'm starting to tap myself on the back, then I'd say, oh, goddammit, Epictetus said

00:19:07.920 this 2,500 years ago. So in some sense, it's beautiful to know that you're standing on the

00:19:13.680 shoulders of giants. But on the other hand, there's always one upping me.

00:19:18.700 Well, that's true. But let's face it, the definition of discovery is putting existing

00:19:25.540 pieces in new combinations, right? That's the creative practice. And so you just did that linking,

00:19:31.760 right, Darwinian theory with literature. And so I would say that, in fact, it is, getting back to

00:19:41.360 your comment about interdisciplinarity, it is that practice that is playful, right? There's play involved

00:19:48.360 in that. And happily, U.S. universities have got so many wonderful tools. They've got all of our

00:19:54.720 disciplines, all of our subfields. I mean, it's a playground with every fun toy out there for students

00:20:03.840 to go exploring. And so this is why, you know, often, right, we hear about universities closing

00:20:12.360 departments or reducing, you know, Greek classics faculty. And, you know, my response is, boy, that is

00:20:23.080 really cutting off our nose to spite our face. Because just as biodiversity, you know, reflects the

00:20:30.020 diverse physical, biological health of our planet, and we want all that diversity as a sign of health,

00:20:37.160 so too is disciplinary diversity a sign of the collected wisdom of the, you know, human history.

00:20:47.040 And important to have that visible and alive on our campuses, so that students can play with it.

00:20:54.780 So that, you know, in high school, guess what, they probably didn't, you know, have a, I don't know,

00:21:01.500 an anthropology class. You know, and so being able to discover those new ways of thinking and then put them

00:21:08.980 into new combinations. That's where discovery lies. And I'm thinking here of, I don't know if you're familiar

00:21:16.140 with the, there's this pioneer investor, this guy, Bill Miller. And he, he was sitting, he, Johns Hopkins

00:21:25.120 student, sitting in advanced philosophy class, an entire semester devoted to John Searle. And he's sitting in

00:21:33.020 this class, and you might say, well, this class is the most esoteric, and how can there be a whole class devoted

00:21:38.220 to one philosopher? And it, but it was in this class, that he suddenly had a eureka moment, where he

00:21:45.700 realized the full potential of Bitcoin. And so he was one of the pioneer investors, he saw that potential

00:21:54.200 in the most unlikely place, right? But he made that radical connection from advanced philosophy

00:22:01.400 to monetary systems. And so, yeah, and so that's, that's what we have in our campus to offer our

00:22:09.240 students.

00:22:10.380 As you were speaking, you mentioned two words that made my ears rise up. You said, children,

00:22:17.800 not children, students have toys to play with. And you said, play. Now, that's very interesting,

00:22:23.640 because one of the chapters in my happiness book is titled, Life as a Playground. And I basically argue

00:22:31.520 that the highest form of play is intellectual play, right? Like, I'm literally akin to a child,

00:22:38.340 but instead of putting together a puzzle, I'm putting together the puzzles of life, right? There's a

00:22:44.760 million variables floating around in nature, and I need to find a way to make it all make sense by

00:22:50.480 linking in a meaningful way, variable A with variable Z. Therefore, I am engaged in puzzle

00:22:56.040 making. And so I love the fact that you use those words, because that very much resonates with me.

00:23:01.380 One other point, and then we can head off to some other areas to go. I want to talk about literature,

00:23:05.840 because I've got a literature expert, and my fiction writing is lacking. My nonfiction,

00:23:13.280 you'd be hard pressed to find someone who reads more voraciously than me, but my fiction,

00:23:17.260 I need your sage advice. Well, one part of, I think, creativity is what's called analogical reasoning.

00:23:26.260 And so actually, not to forgive me, I'm not trying to plug the happiness book, but in the happiness book,

00:23:31.020 where I talk about variety seeking, intellectual variety seeking, food variety seeking, I talk about

00:23:37.560 that one of the elements that allows for interdisciplinarity is if you're able to create

00:23:44.820 a cognitive process of analogical reasoning. For example, Kepler, the astronomer, used to do that

00:23:53.000 a lot, right? By demonstrating that there's an analogy between this phenomenon and that phenomenon.

00:23:58.340 Is this something that you talk about and invent, Ed?

00:24:02.880 Absolutely. And a number of examples of, you know, mathematicians, you know,

00:24:10.900 moving to poetry writing, that there's a deep logic that undergirds those two very different

00:24:20.280 disciplines, right, that encourages discovery in each. And it's no accident, you know, Edgar Allan Poe,

00:24:28.780 right, one of our great American writers of, you know, the mystery was an advanced cryptographer.

00:24:33.520 And so the movement between creative writing and thinking and mathematical logic and systems

00:24:44.080 is, it's not just something of last week. This has been alive and with us for a very long time.

00:24:51.520 All right. So now, as promised, I need your sage advice. Well, first,

00:24:56.440 do you find that people tend to specialize in terms of being fiction readers or nonfiction readers? Or,

00:25:06.560 for example, are you omnivorous in your reading diet and that you can go? Because I have a very

00:25:12.460 hard time, given whatever limited time I have to read, I'm always going to tend towards reading,

00:25:19.580 you know, a biography on Francis Bacon. But I know for a fact that I'm losing out greatly and not

00:25:27.000 reading all of these great classics. I mean, I've read more than the average person, but I still think

00:25:31.400 that I'm lacking. Whip me into shape, Professor. You know, there are too many books, and life is too

00:25:40.340 short. And so I would say, you know, follow where your curiosity leads you. There's nothing worse

00:25:48.200 than reading a book and not, you know, after 100 pages, sort of still not liking it and feel you

00:25:53.860 have to chug through it. That said, I often move between, you know, different kinds of reading,

00:26:01.400 just to keep my world as full and vast as possible. And so certainly history, certainly, you know,

00:26:10.920 fiction writing. Let's remember, I mean, history is inevitably fiction, and fiction inevitably is

00:26:19.720 connected to history, too. So sometimes these distinctions we draw may not be as complete as

00:26:28.500 we think they are. Well, to my earlier point about linking evolutionary theory to literature,

00:26:33.360 I recently just had a paper accepted in an academic journal where I was saying that,

00:26:38.660 you know, Dostoevsky is Dostoevsky, because whether he called himself an evolutionary psychologist or

00:26:45.240 not, he was an evolutionary psychologist, because he has to write certain prose that resonates with

00:26:53.340 people. I've had that moral angst. I understand what's happening, and I mean, not that most people

00:26:59.180 kill the way it happened in crime and punishment, but you know what I'm saying? I can see what he's

00:27:04.040 writing here. And so I can understand how we can still learn a lot by reading literature. If I asked

00:27:09.760 you, since you are an American literature expert, all right, God, here are the five guys I need you

00:27:17.340 or gals or books I need you to read, what would they be? You know, that's an impossible question.

00:27:25.860 That I can't answer that question until I really know who you are.

00:27:29.300 Because for me, the reading is not just the words on a page in a book, it's who you are when you open

00:27:37.560 that book, and what you might need that you don't even know you need. And so I don't think it's a one

00:27:43.860 answer for all. I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, like people will say, I'll go read Moby Dick.

00:27:48.640 You know, maybe so, maybe no. It really, it really does depend on the reader, because it's a

00:27:55.080 collaboration between the author and the reader. There's no one Moby Dick for everybody. You would

00:28:03.940 read Moby Dick differently than I would read Moby Dick. We would have two very different experiences.

00:28:08.960 Right. No, that's fair. And that's a great question, that sort of the matching process.

00:28:12.400 That the same book is going to be consumed in completely different ways as a function of the

00:28:19.900 reader coming into that process. The book didn't change, but the individuals reading it have

00:28:24.200 changed. So I get that. So a book that I recently for, I don't know why it is the old man in the sea

00:28:32.560 or end the sea? Old man in the sea, yes. For whatever reason, it's somehow, you know, the guy goes out,

00:28:39.400 I don't know if he's thinking or whatever. I thought, oh, maybe I should get this. And I

00:28:42.660 actually, I'm also an anti, I mean, I'm a huge book collector, but now a lot more antiquarian.

00:28:47.980 So I went to check antiquarian first edition, $3,000. I'm not sure that I'm paid enough as a

00:28:54.460 professor to afford those books. But would this be, I mean, again, I understand, notwithstanding

00:29:00.480 the point that you made, you don't know enough about me. Does this seem like it makes sense that I

00:29:05.120 should be attracted to this book and take a shot at it?

00:29:07.280 You know, what's funny about that? That is a book that is often required reading in high school.

00:29:13.640 Okay.

00:29:14.800 And because it's short, because it's perceived to be straightforward, you know, placing less demands

00:29:20.960 on young readers. Most of the time, you know, a 16 year old reading this book won't get it quite in

00:29:30.860 the way that you or I would get it after we are more seasoned in life.

00:29:35.140 Well, I like seasoned rather than old. Although you're not old, but maybe I am.

00:29:41.580 It's all relative, actually. But yeah.

00:29:46.400 Yeah. Let's talk about, so your position has global reach as part of it. So I, as I was sort of doing

00:29:54.280 a bit of background, you know, in preparation for our chat, you know, you opened up, you meaning Rice

00:29:59.940 University opened up in Paris, in, with India sources, in Venice. Wow. Gorgeous place. Tell us

00:30:09.000 about that. And then I'd like to later talk about some of the ways that I've been able to fortunately

00:30:14.860 achieve global reach, but take it away.

00:30:16.800 So I think it's very important for students today to have some kind of international experience as part of

00:30:25.140 their education. And that's, you know, something that is not, it's not, you know, a nice to have, I think

00:30:35.080 it's really a got to have. Because let's face it, students are going to go into the world and businesses

00:30:42.200 they enter, more often than not, will have global headquarters. Or if they're in the medical field,

00:30:50.340 they will be working with patients from around the world, colleagues from around the world. So,

00:30:54.900 so it's very important, practically, of course, for students to have an experience beyond what they

00:31:02.700 already know. But also, even more fundamentally, I think, for us to really understand how the world

00:31:08.680 works we have to be in the world, rather than, you know, sequestered on a beautiful university

00:31:14.300 campus island. And so that was one of the reasons that it has been the priority of the university,

00:31:21.240 and certainly my job, to really make the university more global in its reach. And so we opened this

00:31:30.260 beautiful little campus in the center of Paris, students are there, faculty are there. It's been,

00:31:38.680 a very important experience for our students and faculty in terms of just thinking about

00:31:44.340 education anew and differently. Because, you know, universities in Europe function very differently,

00:31:51.820 and students are very different in Europe than they are in the US. And so it's important for us to be

00:31:58.040 aware of that. So there is the institutional attempts at global reach, as you're doing,

00:32:05.220 but at the individual level, at the individual faculty level. And so this is where I'm going to

00:32:10.820 bring in my experience. Maybe I'll start with the following. So this is actually I discussed this in

00:32:17.680 chapter one of my 2020 book, The Parasitic Mind. So I had been invited to speak at the Stanford Business

00:32:24.560 School, about my, you know, evolutionary psychology stuff, and how I apply it to consumer behavior, and so on.

00:32:30.040 And the gentleman who had taken me out to dinner, who's who's a faculty member at the Stanford Business

00:32:36.120 School, as we went out to dinner, he, this was 2017, I think. He looks at me and says, Oh, I didn't know

00:32:44.480 that, you know, I was doing some background on your bio. I didn't know that, you know, you're good

00:32:49.160 friends with Joe Rogan. I said, Yeah. He goes, Oh, and you know, you've been often on a show. I said, Yes.

00:32:55.060 He said, Yeah, well, and now I'm going to try to put the orgiastically smug face that he had on.

00:33:01.600 He goes, Yeah, well, you know, we don't condone that at Stanford. I said, You don't condone what

00:33:05.400 at Stanford? He said, Well, you know, we don't do our research so that it could be sexy enough so that

00:33:11.220 we could appear on Joe Rogan. I said, Well, I don't do my research, I can appear on Joe Rogan. But

00:33:15.540 and this is this has become now famous in the lore of Gadsad. I said, But is it not better to

00:33:22.160 be able to excite people about your research in front of 15 or 20 million people, then write publish

00:33:28.440 a paper that will be read by you, your mom, the editor and two reviewers. And of course, that took

00:33:34.720 him aback. But that the reason why I've often mentioned that story, because it perfectly captures

00:33:40.260 to borrow a term from Thomas Sowell, the wonderful economist who's still alive today, who should be

00:33:46.760 receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in my view, he called them the anointed ones, right? 0.88

00:33:53.120 So academics look down upon the plebs, the great unwashed, the rubes, and we only communicate with 1.00

00:33:59.660 each other. We don't communicate with the lowly trucker. We don't communicate with the corrections

00:34:04.420 officers. That's why we became academics so that we could speak with our, you know, progressive

00:34:09.800 affectation. Nothing angers me more than this kind of attitude, because ultimately, my responsibility,

00:34:16.980 at least in the way that I define myself is I create knowledge. But then I wish to disseminate

00:34:22.200 that knowledge as far and wide as possible. And I hate to say this, Carolyn, but very few professors

00:34:29.000 share that reflex. How can we get them out of their obnoxious stupor?

00:34:33.420 Well, I agree 100%. And I think, you know, look, on the one hand, it's understandable, because

00:34:40.120 in order to be promoted, in academia, you have to speak to your colleagues, and you have to impress

00:34:48.660 your colleagues with new discoveries you make in your field, right? So that is one conversation.

00:34:56.200 There is another conversation that you and I are privileged to be able to have, because we have

00:35:01.580 gone through the academic ranks now. And Invent Ed is meant for the trucker, for the, someone who knows

00:35:09.820 nothing about colleges. It's meant for curious reading public, a general public. And so I think

00:35:18.160 that commitment to impact is really crucial in our times, for many reasons. One is, we have a long

00:35:27.600 history in this country of the American public being really interested in ideas. Why we wouldn't

00:35:33.400 share our ideas easily with, you know, broad reading publics is mysterious. You know, the second reason is

00:35:43.420 we need to make more clear what we do inside of these buildings on these campuses. And for a lot of folks,

00:35:51.600 it's a black box, absolutely no understanding of what happens of the research that, you know, creates

00:36:00.140 important medical discoveries that increase the chance of recovering from cancer and dementia. And,

00:36:06.840 you know, like, there's really important work that we're doing. I don't think the average person

00:36:12.680 really understands that too much. And so that lack of understanding makes us vulnerable as an industry

00:36:19.980 to the kind of disruptions that we are seeing today, when in fact, the work we do generates,

00:36:28.000 you know, new industries, drives our economy and our national wealth, create safety and stability in

00:36:34.220 our communities. We're not telling that story. And we need to be telling that story.

00:36:39.760 So do you think so that I think there are potentially two impediments as to why there isn't more of that from

00:36:45.580 professors? Number one, to your first point about, you know, you need to impress your colleagues and so

00:36:50.700 on, there needs to be institutional mechanisms by which that globe that that outreach to the general

00:36:59.860 public is rewarded, right? I mean, I'd like to think that I'm a purist and that I would have done it no

00:37:06.200 matter what. But if you also were to tell me that it goes into my academic dossier as part of, you know,

00:37:15.440 you have one person who's published five papers that have been cited 500 times, but nobody's ever

00:37:20.360 heard of them outside of that. You have another person that might have slightly lesser academic

00:37:24.580 metrics, but has managed to, you know, motivate millions of people to take English literature and

00:37:32.400 go back to school. How do we measure that? So one, one would be to incorporate public outreach as a

00:37:41.860 fundamental feature of your academic dossier that you submit, number one. Number two, I think the

00:37:48.340 second reason why most academics are hesitant is because frankly, they don't have the skills necessary

00:37:54.680 to succeed in the global arena, right? So I'm, I'm a geeky guy who knows organic chemistry. And if you

00:38:02.760 ask me to move one millimeter outside of my stay in your lane, organic chemistry, God forbid, I should 0.98

00:38:09.320 do that because I'm very comfortable with the familiar. I have mastered that area and I am the king of that

00:38:15.960 fiefdom. But you asked me to go out and have 17 million people judge whether I am charismatic and

00:38:22.960 intelligent and I could, now that's out of, and that's why the Stanford professor had to engage in a

00:38:28.440 ego defensive strategy because he can't do well in front of Joe Rogan. Then I need to denigrate others

00:38:34.980 who could do well on Joe Rogan. What do you think of those two points? So I, you know, I think that there

00:38:41.740 are very few, what I would call all rounders who enter the academic ranks. And, and that's, I think, 0.99

00:38:51.000 really evident, you know, in your career, my career, I think we've seen a lot of evidence of

00:38:56.900 that. And I don't think our institutions are unusual in that way. So you attract a lot of

00:39:01.720 super specialists and look, the work that super specialists are doing is really important. We need

00:39:06.700 them to be doing that work. So not everyone is going to be able to breach the chasm to the, to the

00:39:12.420 public. For those of us who can, who want to, who have, you know, moved up the ranks so that we don't

00:39:20.320 worry anymore about, you know, the next book for promotion. We have a real responsibility,

00:39:27.020 I think, to speak for those who, you know, just aren't going to be able to do the work we do.

00:39:32.880 I also think it's very important for universities, and I'm starting to see this at my university,

00:39:37.860 to, you know, provide translation help. So, you know, at my university, now we've got these people,

00:39:48.840 these, you know, communication folks, and it's their job, literally, think about it, you're speaking

00:39:53.740 one language, and the public is speaking another language, you need someone who can actually translate

00:40:00.840 complicated ideas into simple, digestible, memorable narrative. And that's the responsibility

00:40:11.160 of the university. I don't think it's fair to expect every faculty to have that skill, because I don't

00:40:15.980 think we're going to get there. Fair enough. Boy, you are a model of diplomacy. That's why you're a

00:40:22.260 senior administrator, and I'm not. How is that diplomatic? Well, you know, you always give the

00:40:27.620 positive of those people that I'm criticizing. It's, no, it's a beautiful, it's a wonderful skill.

00:40:33.080 It's not their fault. I mean, that's the thing. Like, I think we spend so much time criticizing

00:40:37.160 people, and actually, it's just, maybe even at the time of my life, where it's, look, it is what it is.

00:40:42.400 And, and, you know, certain kinds of people are attracted to certain kinds of industries,

00:40:48.040 and we're not going to change that. Right? Right.

00:40:52.260 So why fight it? Why fight it? That makes sense. What, of all of the different hats that you wear,

00:40:59.820 I mean, I'm sure you find pleasure in all of them, and there are elements that you don't like

00:41:04.480 in all of them. But is there one unique one at the current stage that you're at in your career,

00:41:10.040 where you say, that's the one that makes me sort of rub my hands the most in the morning?

00:41:13.940 You know, I love to write. I absolutely love to write. And it's such a deep pleasure. And what I,

00:41:21.560 in particular, the Invent Ed book, some with Hotel Life, but even more with Invent Ed,

00:41:26.940 because I was writing to everyone listening right now to us, and people beyond, I had a real sense

00:41:37.080 of purpose and responsibility in crafting those, those chapters. And I think it's that same

00:41:44.620 excitement I get when I'm making change at, you know, at my university that impacts thousands of

00:41:51.780 people. So whether I, you know, stay at this university or leave tomorrow, I now have established

00:41:58.080 an international environment for all of our faculty and students to use, and that'll be a legacy that

00:42:05.060 I leave. I think that's really important, right? That'll change people's lives. When I,

00:42:09.800 I mean, the reason I'm doing what I'm doing is, I went outside the United States when I was in college,

00:42:14.880 and it changed my world. Absolutely changed my world.

00:42:19.080 Where had you gone?

00:42:20.500 You know, I didn't go all that far away. But for me, it was huge. I went to England. And,

00:42:25.340 and, you know, so I did it for a year. And I did it because I thought, well, I really want to be an

00:42:31.660 English major. I might want to be a professor. But I don't know if I really do. And so I went and

00:42:37.420 in the British system, you just you take your discipline all year. That's all you take.

00:42:42.880 And so it's much more like graduate school. And I loved it. But then I got the travel bug. And so

00:42:49.540 right after I graduated, I worked in Japan for a couple of years. And, and, and it was seeing the

00:42:57.180 US from the outside, you know, and from a radically culturally different vantage point that I think

00:43:03.020 really structured my, my research interests. So I think that those experiences, particularly early

00:43:09.260 in life, really can have a lasting impact. And so for me, that's, I get a lot of meaning out of

00:43:16.280 thinking that I'm creating that environment for people I've never met and will never meet.

00:43:21.040 Wonderful. Could you remind our folks? So the book comes out next Tuesday, tell us anything more

00:43:28.180 that you want about it. Tell us about any other projects you're working on before we wrap this.

00:43:32.340 So we've spent, thank you, we spent a lot of time talking about, you know, building creativity,

00:43:37.940 how universities can do it. This book is also a guidebook for anyone thinking of sending any family

00:43:45.920 member to university. And so in particular, the last section is kind of a how to manual.

00:43:53.840 Because it's not only our responsibility as faculty members, or our university leaders, every student

00:44:00.400 who comes into university needs to be responsible for their own outcomes, right? I mean, it's a huge

00:44:06.720 investment of time and money. And it's remarkable to me, how emotional people are in making the decision

00:44:15.120 about where to go to college, how they don't even read the owner's manual, they go on a campus tour,

00:44:19.600 and think they know the place. I mean, it's, it's terrifying to me, the kind of blissful ignorance

00:44:25.240 in which people launch into four years or more of, you know, a hugely important thing for their life.

00:44:32.720 And so, you know, it's up to every, every parent, if you're, if you have the kind of traditional

00:44:38.800 family where, you know, 18 year olds go on to college, but anytime you enter college,

00:44:43.280 you need to know what you don't know. And what I see is that probably 99.9% of all students,

00:44:51.400 I don't care what kind of school they're going to, community college, fancy school, doesn't matter. 0.87

00:44:56.960 They come in ignorant, they come in passive, and they think the only thing that matters 0.95

00:45:03.120 are the grades on their transcript. And that is, I mean, there you are, you have just gained entrance 0.97

00:45:11.700 to an all you can eat buffet, a beautiful food you have never dreamed was even out there. And all

00:45:18.780 you're worried about is eating the stuff, you know, already, because you know, you like it. And, you know,

00:45:25.000 kind of getting through without a stomachache. And that's just not a setup for success in life.

00:45:30.060 It's just not. So I would say, please pick up, if you're not going to read anything else in event

00:45:36.460 ed, read that last section. If, if, if you're even thinking you might want to go to college.

00:45:42.320 Best of luck with the book. What a great send off. Such a pleasure to meet you. Stay on the line

00:45:46.480 so we could say goodbye offline. And come back anytime. Cheers. Take care.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 10, 2025

Dr. Caroline Levander - How to Reform Our Universities (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_934)

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