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Teresa Valerio Parrot
Hello and welcome to the Trusted Voices Podcast. I’m Teresa Valerio Parrot, alongside Erin Hennessy, and in each episode, we discuss the latest news and biggest issues facing higher education leaders through a communications lens. For these conversations, we’ll be joined by a guest who will share their own experiences and perspectives.
Erin Hennessy
Hi, Teresa.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Hi, Erin. Happy Fat Tuesday!
Erin Hennessy
And to you, my friend.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Well, I am super excited about today’s episode, because we have a friend of mine on.
Erin Hennessy
I’m super excited about it as well.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Today is Holden Thorp day.
Erin Hennessy
Okay. Fat Tuesday, Holden Thorp day…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yes. What do you want to talk about?
Erin Hennessy
Today is the first day of Secretary Linda McMahon’s tenure at the Department of Education, which, by the time we are done recording, since it’s taken us a couple passes, may or may not exist anymore.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Hahahahaha
Erin Hennessy
Who can tell? Who can tell? I want to talk about a couple things today.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yes.
Erin Hennessy
One of them is a little bit of a preview of something we’re going to talk with Holden Thorp about.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yes.
Erin Hennessy
He has one of those names where you just have to say first and last name, Holden Thorp.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yes, yes.
Erin Hennessy
We are going to talk about the different ways in which current college and university presidents are approaching speaking out about attacks on higher education coming from the current administration. There are some presidents who are really swinging for the fences, and there are some presidents who, interestingly, are saying, don’t discount those of us who aren’t speaking out publicly. So they’re speaking out publicly about not speaking out publicly. But there are a couple of pieces that we will link to. One is from Michael Roth, who, I think we can say with all due respect, is one of the usual suspects among presidents who are willing to be very vocal and very public. He had a piece recently in Slate which was titled Say Something, in which he really exhorts his colleagues to be very public about what this administration’s policies and proposed policies will mean to higher education and the ways in which we serve our students and our larger mission. And then there’s a piece…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Oh, I’m gonna say something really quickly though.
Erin Hennessy
What?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And he is able to do so because he has his board’s support to do so. So I think that’s very, very important for us to note that for those presidents who say something, and we talk to our presidents about this, if you are going to say something, make sure you have your board’s approval and support to do so. So he has also mentioned in different places that he has his board’s support to do so.
Erin Hennessy
Yes, thank you for jumping a little bit ahead of my sentence structure to make that point.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Sorry, just noting that.
Erin Hennessy
Thanks, okay. Yes. And the second piece is from Mary Dana Hinton, who is the president of Hollins University in Virginia, who again, we’ll link to this piece, wrote in Inside Higher Ed just today about the ways that presidents are advocating and working on behalf of their institution and the sector, which doesn’t always necessarily involve the big, splashy op ed. So yes, there are as many different ways of approaching these very challenging times for higher education as there are institutions. And you’re absolutely right. It is tied to the board and the relationship the board and the President have, it is tied to mission and the kinds of students that these presidents are serving through their institution. It’s in some ways tied to resources as well. It’s a lot easier to be outspoken when you have a really good balance sheet and a sizable endowment behind you, rather than when you are on a bit of a financial precipice. So recommend folks just keep an eye out for these pieces as they’re published, because it’s a really useful conversation I think, to be having when we’re talking within our own campuses about how we’re going to respond to this moment. That there are a lot of different ways to do it. One is not necessarily better than the other, but one is probably more appropriate for your institution than another.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I heard an interesting conversation, or I was part of an interesting conversation last week, and that is that President Trump apparently has said that he will go after 130 institutions. Those are 130 institutions with the largest endowments.
Erin Hennessy
Yup.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And those 130 institutions are the least likely to say something. So if you look at those who will say something, they’ll probably be just outside of that list. I saw that the AAU institutions collectively said something. So those 70. And then if you look to see who are vocalizing, they’re just below that threshold of 130. So if you are looking to see who is saying something, just kind of comparing to that list might also be an interesting academic experience, too.
Erin Hennessy
And I’m glad you point out the AAU angle that, keeping in mind as you think about options, there’s the big, splashy op-ed, and there’s, you know, the quiet behind the scenes advocacy on Capitol Hill and in your state legislature. But there’s also a means to advocate through your national associations, and it is always easier and, I think, less fraught when you are in a group of 70 or a group of 700 to stand up on issues, when you have the backing of colleague institutions and colleague presidents as well. So don’t forget that you pay those national dues for a reason. Ask about sign-on letters, ask about shared statements, all of those kinds of things.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Okay, what else is on your mind, ma’am?
Erin Hennessy
The other thing that’s on my mind is the two parts (Closing Cabrini College – Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) of a three part series that have been published in Inside Higher Ed, written by the former leadership team at Cabrini College. Cabrini was a small, religiously affiliated institution just on the other side of the Delaware River from me, outside of Philadelphia. And this team has decided to write these three, the next piece will have published by the time you all are listening to this, three pieces about one of our favorite topics, which is the dignified closure of an institution that has reached a point where staying open is no longer an option. And I just highly recommend these pieces to anyone who is thinking about where their institution might end up, what their financial future might be, these fine folks who oversaw the acquisition of Cabrini by Villanova University just thought about all the right questions, were so deliberate and so careful and really did exactly what we would want to see, which was prioritize giving students and faculty and staff the most runway to make the best choices for them prior to the acquisition and then closure of the college. They’re really great pieces. If you go to Inside Higher Ed and just search Cabrini, you will find them. And I am very, very excited to see the third piece tomorrow.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I love this series, and I think it’s interesting. I was at an AALI event, and was having conversations with some leaders about, how do you close an institution with dignity. And it was interesting to talk about what that looks like, because there aren’t very many who have been able to do that, and I think it is so important to have examples of what that looks like, right? And to sit around and talk with those who have done it, and to hear their stories, I think is so important. Their experiences, I think are really inspiring. To hear those who have had the opportunity to do it, to talk about what that looks like, and to hear the emotion behind what they faced from alumni, from their campus leaders, from faculty and even some death threats, and to still do what they knew they needed to do. It’s tough. And also, it’s necessary.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, and I think they talk really compellingly about putting aside ego for the president and focusing on what’s important for the students. The one stat that they cited as sort of their North Star, there’s a study that indicates that fewer than half of students who experienced a closure re-enrolled in post-secondary education, 47.1% of students. Following the year that they gave students to make decisions, be counselled, and figure out what they were going to do, 79.4% of Cabrini students identified clear destination to complete their undergraduate degree in Fall 2024 which is, you know, almost double what the average figure was. Don’t look at that, 79.4% and feel unbelievable pride in the work that went into making sure those students had choices and that they were supported as they figured out how to complete their degree. Cabrini is not serving the elite of the elite students. These are students for whom they may be the first in their family, and this is going to be a family changing accomplishment to earn this degree and to see that almost 80% of these students, when faced with this kind of transition, successfully moved on to another institution, that’s just got to be an enormous point of pride.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I absolutely, absolutely agree. So kudos to them. I am so thrilled that they wrote this. I am so thrilled that I know that they’ve been processing for a long time, and I know that this is tough, right? And I think that there is grieving that goes on when you decide to do this, and you need to process, and you need to think through if you did the right thing, that you did the right thing, and then to be able to celebrate the successes of those students graduating, and to be able to own that you did the right thing. So kudos to them.
Erin Hennessy
Sort of a theme of our conversation today.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Absolutely. And with that, does it make sense for us to go ahead and introduce our guest?
Erin Hennessy
Absolutely.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Holden Thorp became editor-in-chief of the Science family journals in October 2019. He came to science from Washington University in Saint Louis, where he was Provost from 2013 to 2019. Thorp joined Washington University after spending three decades at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he served as the 10th Chancellor from 2008 through 2013. Thorp earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from UNC in 1986 and a Doctorate in chemistry in 1989 at the California Institute of Technology. He holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from North Carolina Wesleyan College, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Holden, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the podcast, and especially for being the defender of higher education at this time. A few years ago, I was struck by how open you were to say publicly what you thought. Help us understand why you say yes to the media when nobody else is willing to do so and why being vocal is so important right now.
Holden Thorp
I think the and first of all, thanks for having me on, and I’ve enjoyed all the times I’ve gotten to talk to you, and it’s great to meet Erin and be with both of you on the podcast. So I think that a lot of times when people are evaluating the risks of saying something, they’re not evaluating the risks of not saying anything.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yes.
Holden Thorp
And I think that that changes the calculation by a lot. And especially now, when the political zeitgeist is occupied by people who can’t stop talking. You know, we have three hour podcasts where people go on and just ramble and ramble. And Donald Trump, you got to give him credit for it, he figured out people wanted him to have two hour rallies where he just riffs about stuff. And so if our sector is instead crafting individual statements that are very carefully written and saying no comment, then we’re allowing people who are attacking us to flood the zone with whatever they want. Our voice isn’t out there. Now that’s not how I got this way. I got this way because I went through experiences at the University of North Carolina, which anybody can read about, when we had our athletic scandal that ultimately led to me leaving. I didn’t contribute to the scandal. It started when I was in middle school. Was investigated every way it can be investigated. I never did anything to assist in it, but I did a bad job of managing the response, and the main thing that I did badly was not get information out as quickly as we could have, and not be direct with people about the things that we had done wrong. All of that ended up coming out in the long run eventually. So when I was lucky enough to survive that and go to two great jobs since then, I learned my lesson that it’s better to say things the way you want to say them, and be forthcoming about things that didn’t go well, because if you don’t, somebody else is just going to write that for you.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Can we talk about that just for a second? Do you mind if we dig into that for a second? You talked about these statements that don’t say anything, and we’re seeing a whole bunch of those now. And I like to say we have some of these statements where people put them into Google Docs and everybody jumps in the cabinet, and we have the Anonymous Koala and the Anonymous Capybara and the Anonymous all of these people who jump into the statement, and they take the life out of it, right? Because everybody wants it to be so safe that, to your point, it ends up not saying anything. And they take the humanity out of it. They take the leadership out of it, and instead, we end up with something that isn’t leadership worthy. Isn’t statement worthy, isn’t anything that would help an audience understand what we’re trying to do, what we’re trying to lead through, how we’re trying to help them make sense of a moment and we lose the ability to do anything. What would be your advice for what we’re actually asking our leaders to help us move forward through, and how you would encourage them to use that moment for what it should be.
Holden Thorp
Yeah, so the moment we’re in right now is the toughest that higher education has faced, certainly in my lifetime.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Right.
Holden Thorp
I think that trying to craft your way out of it probably isn’t going to work. And as I’ve said in a number of pieces, there are leaders in higher education who are starting to say things, they will say more as time goes on, and many of them are going to end up like me when I left North Carolina, thinking that they should have done that sooner. But I understand why they’re reluctant.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Right.
Holden Thorp
I’ve also tried to plead with people to give them a little break as they work through this and they’re carrying along this big team of lawyers and comms people and federal relations folks who are all trying to keep from getting into trouble. But I think at this point, the best thing would be for most college presidents to just do interviews and take tough questions on the record and speak in their own voice. That’s what people want to hear. That’s what instills trust, and that’s what they’re going to end up doing eventually. And it’d be good to do it before they have to do it at a congressional hearing. I mean, there are some tough reporters out there who may be intimidating, but as somebody who’s testified before Congress myself, that’s an intimidating experience too, and it might not be the worst thing to warm up before you have to go do that.
Erin Hennessy
It’s so interesting you raised that one because the conversation that Teresa and I have at the top of this episode, we reference your Inside Higher Ed piece, and then look at a piece from Michael Roth, but then also a piece from the president of Hollins. Both of them have very different approaches to when to speak up. Should we speak up? What are we doing when we don’t speak up? But I also want to tie that to a conversation that you had on another podcast, surely not as widely listened to as this one.
Holden Thorp
Not as widely listened to, for sure.
Erin Hennessy
No, I couldn’t get that out with a straight face. But anyway, this podcast called Ground Truths, and you talked about the moment when we had three presidents, three women presidents, before committee of Congress. And everybody knows how, how that went. And you talked about that appearance before Congress, but I want to read one of your quotes. You said “it’s kind of my mantra on the all of these things, whether it’s student affairs or research integrity or anything else, the universities have made massive commitments to do probably more things than they can, and rather than just fessing up to that, they just bury the whole thing in legalistic bureaucracy, and it’s time for us to cut through a lot of that stuff.” I’m making a leap here and connecting what you’ve just said about being willing to communicate early, communicate often, be transparent and authentic and humane in those conversations. Am I making the right leap there, or were you talking about something different that really focuses more on the operational side of an institution?
Holden Thorp
No, that is what I was talking about. I think that people are looking for leaders who are sincere and are accessible and are able to take tough questions and tell the truth. And part of that involves saying that there is a trade off, and universities have a very hard time doing that, mainly because they need money and they need {inaudible}. They don’t want to alienate anybody because they want their tuition dollars, or they want their philanthropic support, or they want their political support, and the problem with that is eventually you just end up making all these promises that conflict with each other, and there’s no way to get yourself out of it. And that’s when these sort of calamities occur, because suddenly you have to tell people we are going to make a choice. When they’re told that, that creates more bad will than if you told them that at the beginning. And again, if you want the psychology of this for me at UNC, we told everybody that we did things the right way, we never got in trouble, we’d gone 50 years without a NCAA investigation, we had this mythical Carolina way thing, which people thought was some kind of magic spell. And then I had to go tell everybody actually we cheated for 30 years. And if we hadn’t been telling everybody that we were somehow magically immune from the hypocrisy and corruption of college sports and said, you know, actually, we’re just like these schools that you all have been making fun of, like LSU and Alabama and SMU and whatever. We’re the same as they are. Then when we’d gone to them and said, we got a problem, it wouldn’t have been nearly as calamitous as it ended up being.
Erin Hennessy
Right. I mean, I know we see institutions all the time trying to make those choices about programs and majors and we’re seeing those choices being made on the academic side of the house. But do you think it’s possible for an institution to credibly and successfully say, we just have to stop trying to be all things to all people and contract a little bit. Is there a pathway, a successful pathway, for an institution to make some of those choices, beyond just academic programs?
Holden Thorp
Well, they don’t mean choice, because the situation is mandating that.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah.
Holden Thorp
And you know, the way I like to think about it when I’m talking to folks is that there are three things the public thinks higher education does: undergraduate education, patient care, and athletics. Those are the three things that the public expects. So the right way to think of it is, if you do those three things, well, then you get the opportunity to do all the other things that we love to do, like research and things in the community and all the other things that are important to us. Because they have a hard time saying we’re not doing something, they end up with a message that goes out to the public that doesn’t highlight the things that the public is expecting. So now that there’s this massive attack going on, they’re going to have to double it down on the things that the public expects, and that’s going to require them to explain to people something that they have had a hard time doing, which is that some of these other things are things that we like to do. But the truth is, the public doesn’t pay that much attention to it. I mean, if you look at what’s going on right now, our hair is on fire because of all the changes with the NIH and threats to research funding and things that are going on to the Department of Education, but the public is focused on Ukraine and the tariffs, and they don’t even know if you don’t live in DC or you don’t work at a university, you don’t even know all this stuff is going on, and that’s a tough thing to face up to, but I think it’s undeniable.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
You know, I think it’s interesting. We talked about this on our last podcast, when most institutions have talked about what’s going on with funding, they’re talking about, we, we, we. We lost this much. It’s this many billions. This is what it means for us. The public doesn’t care. And what most institutions need to talk about is, this is what it means for you. This is not…not this is what it means to us, and this is how we’re bleeding. But instead, this is how it’s going to impact you. We employ this many people. This is what this means in your life. This is how we serve the community. This is how we impact, we create impact for you. We serve you. We help you. This is how we benefit society. We don’t talk that way because we are so inward focused, and that is what we really need to be thinking about. But it’s such a shift from how we always think about ourselves, we don’t realize that people have interactions with us, right? We serve them, and they come to us when they need us. And this is a shift for us, and how we start to shift to being service providers, because that’s how they think of us, is going to need to be a fundamental new way to communicate.
Holden Thorp
Yeah. And I think that’s certainly the lesson of the last few months, for sure. And there’s a name for it. It’s called the Scholastic Fallacy, which is something in sociology which says that most academics think that everybody thinks about their problem the same way they do. That is what we’re suffering from now. I mean, I’m coming to you from the upstairs spare bedroom at my home in Orlando, Florida, where I spent most of the pandemic. Most of the information about everything that happened, the news that was reported, the scientific papers about the structure of all the proteins, the early progress on the drugs and the vaccines all flowed through the table that I’m coming to you from right now, all right, and my neighbors here in Orlando had no clue what I was doing up here. They were just trying to figure out how to get their kids to school and get their jobs done. And occasionally, you know, I’d be walking around the neighborhood, they’d say, yeah, what’s that website of yours? Something science? Yeah, Science.org, but they don’t know what I’m doing up here, and they weren’t nearly as hooked to all of it as we all were. I think that has been true for a long time, and we’ve taken it on faith that everybody cared about these things as much as we do. But you know what I’ve been saying about, for example, the NIH cuts is pretty similar to what you just said Teresa, which is it’s the job losses in the major urban centers that have big academic medical centers, especially the ones that are in red states, Birmingham, Raleigh, Durham, Pittsburgh, St Louis, Nashville. They’re going to lose lots of employment there, and it’s going to be a big shot to their economy. And then it’s the access to the medical care that is enabled by the research funding, because it’s weird, but a lot of people want to go to see a doctor who is also very knowledgeable and a specialist and an expert on the disease that they have. And so that is what is endangered, and especially endangered for children with rare diseases, that’s a good story to tell. So talking about the young children, or the babies who have Wilson’s disease or Pompe Disease, who go to their academic medical center to get their very specialized care, those are the kinds of stories we should be telling, and the fact that we have to deal with internal matters of accounting that most people don’t even understand or care about is not a winning political talking point.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
How we balance our budgets, that’s how we do our work. That’s not what they care about.
Erin Hennessy
Well, and I think Teresa, to your earlier point, you said we need to talk about the benefit to society, and I think you meant something different, but I think we talk too much about our, scare quotes here, benefit to society, and we need to start talking about our benefit to people. And stop talking about, if you go to college, you’re going to earn a million more dollars over your lifetime, because that doesn’t resonate. Because right now, I’m shelling out what feels like a million dollars to attend your institution. You and I were talking about an institution yesterday when we looked at the all-in tuition, fees, room and board, both of us almost fell out of our chairs, and so those kinds of things don’t resonate right now in a time of economic insecurity and a time when the very value of what we’re doing is up for debate with huge swaths of this of this country, and I imagine that feeling will continue to creep around the world as well.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
You and I were talking recently about, I need to make an appointment with a geneticist that hits me differently, and that’s what other people will be facing, right? And to have an 18 month wait that hits people personally. If someone else needs Alzheimer’s care for their father, that hits them differently. But when we say something that feels out of touch for them, like who gets into an Ivy League institution, that isn’t the same. What is the indirect cost recovery for an R1 or an AAU. Nobody knows what the heck an AAU is, except for those of us who care, right? That’s not how we need to talk about this. But what matters is, what does this mean for me and what does this mean for you in our own personal lives?
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, not to go too hard of a pivot here, but I’m gonna pivot a little bit and trust that our fabulous producers will make this sound cogent and indeed relevant. But as we’re talking about the value question, Holden, again, I came back to and you’re gonna see I quote you to you a lot during this conversation. You wrote a piece recently in Science that I think was really well received, I’m sure, by your colleagues in the scientific fields, but I also just – it felt so resonant to me thinking about higher education. And I’ll quote this little bit of you to you “the weeks ahead may be the greatest test that the US scientific community has ever faced. It is vital to remember that it is the words and actions of all members of the scientific community, universities, journals, societies, associations, activists and scientists that form the collective voice of science, not any one statement.” And I feel like you could just drop higher education in there, swap it in for science and one of the things that I keep wrestling with, and that we’ve talked a lot about in the past is how we have this value conversation, and how we talk about the work that we do as institutions and the benefits that that brings to individuals and communities and societies. And it feels like everybody knows this conversation needs to be had. We need to do real work around value. And then we see Vandy and WashU run a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal. And we see these two associations over here doing a campaign with some pro bono advertising. And we see this group over here doing something else. And it feels to me like this sort of let 1,000 flowers bloom, approach that isn’t going to get the kind of traction that we need to really change the conversation to move the needle. Do you feel like higher ed could come together as one voice and really push on this? Or am I just sharing my secret inside pollyanna that lives underneath my very cynical outer layer?
Holden Thorp
I think is going to be tough. It would be wonderful to see that happen. The point I was making in that piece was, instead of complaining about your individual leader saying or not saying something if you’re at an institution or you’re a member of a society, remember that it’s a tapestry of all of us, and I think in this moment right now, you have a lot of leaders of both the associations and the big institutions who are pretty timid, but there are people talking. You’ve mentioned some of them on this call. Michael, as I sometimes I say, when people are talking to Michael Roth and me together on an email, I’ll say, look, Michael and I don’t have to be the only people that write this stuff. Some other people could, but he and I, for different reasons, have the ability and opportunity to do that. Me, because I work for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and I’m not the CEO, and I run a journal that is hopefully still protected by the First Amendment, and him, because he runs a university that has a special set of circumstances that allow him to do that, and more and more people will come out over time. And so rather than obsessing about what this president said, or this president said or didn’t say, we need to be thinking about the fact that we’re a whole scientific community that has a voice. You mentioned Eric Topol, I was on his podcast. He does have an administrative role at Scripps, although that’s a very different kind of institution, but he’s somebody who is also doing a lot of communicating, and that will continue to grow. You know, what we can hope is that it’ll converge in a pretty good place. That’s probably the best we can hope for. The thing I don’t like to see is when I see people saying, I wanted to say this, but my institution told me not to. I don’t think that’s getting anybody anywhere. Because first of all, Americans believe that we have the right to speak our mind. That’s something that America was founded on, and even though it may be under threat at the moment, it’s still something that most people believe is important. And when it comes out that the university is trying to squelch people which inevitably will, then that’s not a good look for them. What I said in the Inside Higher Ed piece is okay, give your president a break. She’s got a lot of people pulling on her and telling her what to do, and she’s probably not going to go all resistance on you anytime soon, but at the same time, she shouldn’t be trying to squelch or steer what everybody else is saying, because some of it may not be all that useful, but the act of squelching and steering it is definitely worse than whatever it is that is coming out.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, it’s going to bring more attention to it. It’s the, what is it? The Streisand effect, which is a very scientific term, of course.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And I just think it’s so hard right now to be a university president, right? It just is. And I give this advice to all of my presidents right now, you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. So choose your damning wisely. I don’t know that anybody is doing it perfectly. That’s just the truth.
Holden Thorp
No one’s going to do it perfectly. There’s no way they can. And if you look at the people who are succeeding at this, who are mostly the people who are attacking higher education, they’re not doing it perfectly either. It’s just that they’re talking and people like that authenticity and so a lot of people are paying attention to it, and when we’re not saying anything, then you know, as I keep saying, you can’t flood the zone with nothing. You have to flood the zone with something, and that is probably the best. But of course, I agree with you, and that’s why, when people say, Oh, you’re so courageous for saying this or that, I remind them that I’m not the president of an institution anymore, that I did that, and I have a very different status, both in terms of what my job is and where I am in my career. If I’m not going to be the one to say some of these things, who will, and I try to say what the presidents would say if they felt that they were completely encumbered. But the ones I talked to, I give them the advice of, okay, imagine it’s five years from now. You’re not at your institution anymore because of whatever. What do you wish you would have said? Because I think there are very few people who leave a job after not saying things that they believed and are happy about the fact that they didn’t say something when they had the chance.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Well, most of these books back here are from presidents after they leave their jobs? There’s a real reason for that.
Holden Thorp
Right. Yeah, it has been good for the academic presses to create a whole genre.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Former president books.
Holden Thorp
Former presidents saying what they wish they had said, yeah,
Teresa Valerio Parrot
100%
Holden Thorp
I wrote two books about higher education while I was a president.
Erin Hennessy
See, that’s how you do it.
Holden Thorp
So far, I haven’t written any since I retired. Yeah, I do give a lot of talks about it, though now, but I try to say the same things I said when I was when I was actually doing the job.
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Teresa Valerio Parrot
So I’m going to change the subject pretty significantly to something personal. Almost a year ago, you wrote a piece for Science about your autism diagnosis and how your form of autism allowed you to thrive in science. You noted that there is greater neurodiversity in science compared to other fields, because scientists are pattern seekers, and that is a common trait of autism. I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and have often considered taking an AuDHD assessment. Can you tell us about your decision to disclose your autism and the reception you received from your disclosure from the science community and the Academy?
Holden Thorp
Yes, well, as anybody who’s watching this can see my facial expressions and my head and my vocal tone don’t move around nearly as much as the two of you do, and that is because I have autism. I have what would have been called Asperger’s before we changed the name of it, and I’m supportive of changing the name of it, and I’m comfortable saying I’m autistic. And when I was at UNC, I had the state of North Carolina paid the best media consultants in DC to try to teach me how to modulate my vocal tone and move my hands around. And as my wife said, after I started doing that, she said, you look ridiculous doing that.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Erin is forever trying to get me to stop moving so much, which is why I have definitely ADHD.
Holden Thorp
Yeah, so that didn’t work very well. I found the crowd at cocktail parties to be very difficult to focus on what people were saying. I’d never really noticed any difficulties that I had until I got in these very crowded social situations that college presidents have to get into. But I didn’t really think about that as having a diagnosis. I just thought I was a goofball. But when I went later on, when I went to WashU, I had a 360 done by somebody who was a psychologist, and she got a lot of feedback from people I worked with that they thought maybe I was on the spectrum. And I said, do you think I am? And she said, do you want to know because if I tell you that you’re crossing into a different life? And I said, Yeah, and she said, yes. And I’ve since had a lot of other assessments that all produced the same thing, and it was several years before I disclosed that to anyone, which happened last year, but I met a lot of researchers who, God, I hope they’ll be able to continue doing their work somehow, who work on disabilities in science, especially somebody named Bonnie Swener, who was really one of the pioneers on this, she’s at Hopkins. And when I started meeting all those folks, including the autistic folks that are in that community, I realized that it would be good for me and maybe for some other people for me to disclose this, and the reception to it has been nothing but gratifying and remarkable and life changing. I hear from people all over the place about how it has helped them think about their own situation. I try not to give a lot of advice, because I’ve masked for 59 years, and so I’m mostly good at just apologizing for missing things in conversations or saying things that are really blunt, that make people upset. I try to direct them to people who are better experts than I am. And one of the things I hear the most is my kid was diagnosed as being on the spectrum, and I think maybe I am too, and I hear that mostly from mothers, because autism is so much less frequently diagnosed in girls and women than it is in men. You know, we fit the stereotype of, you know, Bill Gates is out with his diagnosis now also, so people think about nerdy guys like me and Bill Gates before they think about women and girls who have autism. So I get a lot of moms writing to me. But it’s been, other than the fact that I have even more speaking engagements and podcasts and things to write than I had before, It’s been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
You just described what happened in my life. My daughter called. She was in college, and she called and she said, Mom and Dad, I think you guys need to sit down. And we sat down, and she said, I just got diagnosed with ADHD. And she said, I think that you both need to go get tested. And she said, but especially mom, because what I just learned today is, what is our normal is not normal. And mom, I think you have ADHD, dad, probably you too, but definitely you, mom. And what we live is really masking. Yeah, I think that we have a life that is really not what everybody else lives. So, you’re right. I think that if there is a reality here, and I have been since I was diagnosed, Erin can attest to this, very open about it, and it’s surprising to me how many people have mentioned to me that my openness about it has been really interesting to them, because I didn’t realize how much stigma was around it. And so by saying I got diagnosed with ADHD, and I really should get an assessment for AuDHD, people were surprised how open I’ve been about it, and I think that a lot of people thought I probably should have been less open about it, but this is my reality. And to your point, I think also it explains a lot of my bluntness. So, sorry everybody.
Holden Thorp
Right. Well, you all were asking me why I always speak directly about things. Part of it is I don’t have any choice. I don’t know how to do anything differently. And when I was equivocating, when I was going through everything in Chapel Hill, it made me sick. I was physically ill not saying the thoughts that I knew were true and that are in my head. I think the other thing too, is that it has really helped me realize how fortunate I’ve been because I was in an environment where my quirky skills were useful to my mother, who ran the theater. I went to a small grade school with a group of friends who completely embraced all of my odd mannerisms and so I didn’t get any kind of bullying from my parents or from anybody that I grew up with. There are plenty of people you know, many of whom inherited needs for more support than I need, but there are plenty of people who have a very similar profile to mine, who, because of their circumstances growing up, have had worse outcomes than I’ve had, and that has made me really admire the parents and children who have to deal with this, and to the extent that I can say things that help them or speak out for them, it’s an honor to do it.
Erin Hennessy
Do you think knowing that you have you have been diagnosed relatively recently? Do you think beyond just hating cocktail parties, which I love the cocktail part. The party is really where I struggle as an introvert, but are there things that you look back now and say I was good at this part of the presidency or the leadership role because of my autism, can you see those superpowers now looking back?
Holden Thorp
Yes, definitely. I was not good at going to crowded football games and getting into conversations, and especially getting out of them. Autistic people have a hard time ending conversations. So if we’re standing in a little group at a cocktail party and there’s a bunch of other people that want to talk to us, you’re in physical pain. Yeah, but I think the thing that the feedback that I’ve gotten over the years at WashU and UNC, and especially at UNC when we’re going through the 2008 financial crisis, because when something big happens, I don’t have to interpret subtle cues.
Erin Hennessy
Right.
Holden Thorp
So, if people are losing their job or have been diagnosed with a bad illness, or if they win a Rhodes scholarship, or they get into medical, like I know how to react to those things, and because I don’t come off as slick in the way that I present things, it comes off as being very sincere, which I think most people appreciate. So in the internal politics, I think it’s mostly been helpful to me. There are times when people tried to tell me things and I didn’t pick up on it, and I screwed up and did something, but in the big times when things happened, think I was able to get people to trust me. Now, recently, I testified before Congress about whether something that didn’t happen occurred, which is whether Francis Collins and Tony Fauci convinced me to publish a paper that one of the members of the committee didn’t like. He went through all my emails, and there was no evidence that that happened, but I went to the hearing, and the team that prepped me, at first, they were saying things like, here’s how you hold your hands, and here’s how you make eye contact and all this stuff. And I said, look, y’all, we are not going in there with the goal of me dazzling the committee. The goal is for me to be the most sincere witness they’ve ever seen. And your viewers can watch the video if they want to decide if we achieved that. But it did go well. There wasn’t any fallout from it. In fact, the chair of the committee and I ended up communicating with each other afterwards, even though we don’t agree about politics and that’s because I knew my shtick is not to go in there and be Michael Douglas in the American president.
Erin Hennessy
You’re not aiming for YouTube stardom. You’re aiming to get in and get out.
Holden Thorp
My goal was to get in there and answer their questions as forthrightly as I could and make sure that they believed that I was telling them everything I knew, which I was.
Erin Hennessy
That’s fascinating.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Holden, thank you so much for your time with us. Circling to the beginning of our conversation, our first call was after the book Discredited was released. I told you at the time that when I read the book, your honesty and integrity spoke to me, and that your public scholarship writings helped me to become a better leader. On this podcast, UMBC President Valerie Sheares Ashby named you as her mentor, and Erin and I have mentioned a number of your pieces in our conversations, and our sister podcast, Higher Voltage, has featured you too. You’ve been the voice of reason and an advocate that we’ve all needed. Thank you. To close us out, I’d love to have you think back on your career and share with us what you think your legacy will be in higher education and what you still have left to accomplish?
Holden Thorp
Wow, that’s a big question. First of all, you mentioned some people that I really care about a lot. First is the person who wrote Discredited is Andy Thomason, who is now a big shot at the Chronicle of Higher Education. But I first knew him when he was a reporter at The Daily Tar Heel, and he was about 20 years old, or maybe even 19. I was really happy that he wrote a book about everything that happened. And I was really happy he did it after I had come to the realization that the right thing to do was to talk to him. People say to me, Wow, that I thought that book was really gonna give you a hard time. I try to explain to ‘em, well, the reason it doesn’t is because I talked to Andy for hours about what happened, and I told him everything that I knew. And so…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I thought you came out really well in that book. I thought it was very empathetic.
Holden Thorp
I gave a copy of it to my mom.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Wow!
Holden Thorp
Not too many people are the star of a scandal book that they give to their mother.
Erin Hennessy
But did she read it?
Holden Thorp
Well, who knows? I don’t know. One thing that I would point to is that I went on the hero’s journey to find out how the right way to live into these leadership roles, and thing I’ve found was that it was better to explain things to people as clearly and transparently and sincerely as you possibly can. And then, of course, Valerie Sheares Ashby is also somebody I’ve known since she was 19. She was a graduate at UNC in chemistry, and I’m very, very proud that she is a college president. I never doubted it for one second. In fact, I remember she spoke at graduation, December graduation for me one year, and she and her mom came to my house for dinner beforehand, and it was the first time I ever met her mom. And we’re at the president’s residence, and she’s looking around. She goes, this is a nice place. I said, yeah, Valerie is going to be living in one of these one day too.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
That’s awesome.
Holden Thorp
Really proud that she’s there. And yeah, I guess, like most educators, I think my legacy is the people that I’ve helped and the people that I’ve taught and the people like Valerie that are out around doing things. But I sure hope that another part of it is setting out a way for people to be honest and forthright about the real values of education, which to me should be about the students. And when we’re talking about all these things that we’re dealing with and all these things that happen, the thing that really should shine through is that the whole thing is about the students. It’s not about whether we’re in the AAU or not, or whether we won this prize or that prize, or even if the faculty got papers in the journal that I’m in charge of. Even though I’m very, very passionate about what a great thing that is. It’s not about collecting merit badges, it’s about the lives that can be transformed. You know, I’m somebody who has always kept my teaching going despite all the different jobs that I’ve had, and I still have a class at GW that I teach every fall, and I’m already counting down the days to when I get to do it again in August. And so I guess the thing that I have left to do is one day I won’t be the editor of Science anymore, it’ll be time for somebody else to have the chance to do this, and I’m going to get to be a professor again. I just can’t wait to teach as many classes as they want to give me.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I love that.
Holden Thorp
Because those are the people, even now who I look at pictures like selfies of me with my class and those are my peeps. UW undergrads are just really wonderful people. And the thing I hate is when people say ugly things about college students. They don’t read as much as we used to, or they don’t do this, or that. Every generation says that about the younger ones, and we need to shout that down whenever it comes around, because the people who are going to college today, they are capable, interesting people who deserve our support and who deserve to be recognized.
Erin Hennessy
That is such a perfect spot to end, and this has just been such a wonderful conversation. Thanks for filling both of our cups in very, very challenging times. And I know that the folks who listen to this episode when it drops shortly, will feel the same way.
Holden Thorp
Well thanks you both for what you’re doing, both with your public work and the work that you do for your clients who really, really need your help in this moment that we’re all trying to live through.
Erin Hennessy
Thank you.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us today.
Holden Thorp
It was fun.
Erin Hennessy
Well, that was great.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
He is so fantastic.
Erin Hennessy
That conversation is probably the most frank, open conversation we’ve ever had with a guest. And I think you know a lot of it, you can always point to it’s so much easier to have opinions and say things when you’re a former president. But I get the sense that that’s a guy who has internalized a lesson that he learned the hardest way. I think he’s out there, you know, preaching the gospel of communicating transparently, and God love him for it well.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And if anybody has not read Discredited, I highly encourage you to do it. And it’s very obvious that he participated in the book, and that he has processed what happened, he learned from both his mistakes and also what he did well. And I think that it is just such a good book. And the reason I reached out to him is because I was just so impressed, and you can see it in the book, that he understood, if he could do it over again, that he wouldn’t. He reflected on it. And Andy did such a fantastic job of allowing him, as he said, to express his hero’s journey, right? And I went back and I read my email that I wrote to him in 2022, and I said that his integrity spoke to me in how he participated in the book. And I was very honest in my reflection that so many presidents write these books after they leave office, and it’s a whole bunch of often hubris, of, here’s what I did. And his honesty of, here’s what I would do differently, in Discredited, was genuine. It’s real.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah. And I, you know, obviously, have a long list of questions. We could have kept him all afternoon and talked about a whole range of topics. But one of the things I would love to hear him talk about or reflect on is one of our favorite topics, which is, what do we do about the pipeline of people coming to the presidency to help them learn from these experiences that other people have had and have been willing to be vulnerable about? How do we make that part of the leadership development curriculum?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I think that’s why he’s so honest now. He’s telling us in real time, how to do that. I respect the heck out of him because he’s telling us, he’s showing us, he’s living it. We need to pay attention.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, and I just would love to find a way to help people see that this isn’t something he’s just doing because he’s out of higher ed.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yeah, out of the presidency.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, that this is indeed, if he stepped into a presidency tomorrow, the ways in which this would change and inform his approach to that job. And I just, trying to figure out how to make it something that isn’t a lesson learned in the rear view, you know?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
It’s a lesson for today.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I just, I so respect him, you know that. I just think he is the bee’s knees, and all of his authenticity is just so refreshing. And I love that you quoted him to him. I quote him to everybody. I just think we need more Holden Thorps in the world. And I am so honored that he said yes to my email, that he said yes to being on our podcast, and I just hope people listen to this episode, because he is the real deal, and we need more people to have his courage, to call it for what it is, and to be willing to put themselves out there, because that is what this moment needs.
Erin Hennessy
Yep. Yep, agreed. I would like to spend more time with that guy.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yes.
Erin Hennessy
Rather than less.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
That is my goal for 2025 whether it’s through his writings, whether it is if I’m lucky enough in life, or however that comes about, maybe this is my goal for 2025. Amen.
Erin Hennessy
And on that little note right there…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Sorry, Holden!
Erin Hennessy
If I were you, Holden, I would make sure that your home address is not publicly available in any database, because this woman’s crazy enough to show up with Mickey Mouse ears on.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
No, this is what I would say. Just keep blogging, keep being out there, and keep being bold enough to show us how to be a leader with conviction, because there are many of us who are learning from you and are honored to have the ability to learn from you. Thank you.
Erin Hennessy
And on the upside, she didn’t ask you to adopt her, which she has asked other people to do in the past,
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Yes, yes.
Erin Hennessy
We won’t get into the details.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
They thus far, have not said yes. Although they thought I was endearing. She did tell me I was endearing, Erin.
Erin Hennessy
Do you think, did she say it with fear in her eyes?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
No, she laughed, and she told me I was endearing.
Erin Hennessy
And then she said, I’m really glad I had this button installed under my desk.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
That did not happen. She said I was endearing.
Erin Hennessy
I mean, you don’t know it didn’t happen.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
She offered me some scones. There you go.
Erin Hennessy
Anyway, before this goes further off the rails, thanks everyone for listening, and my God, apparently we’re gonna do this again.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Thank you for listening.
Erin Hennessy
Oh, goodbye.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Buh bye.
Erin Hennessy
Thank you for joining us for this episode. You can find links in the show notes to some of the topics and articles referenced, and remember that you can always contact us with feedback questions or guest suggestions at trustedvoices@tvpcommunications.com. Be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and we invite you to check out Higher Voltage, another podcast on the Volt network that is hosted by Kevin Tyler. Kevin explores the evolution of higher education that is happening right before our eyes. Until next time, thanks to Teresa Valerio Parrot, DJ Hauschild, Aaron Stern, Nicole Reed and the Volt team for a great episode. And thank you for listening.
