Dana H Born: Well, welcome to another HOW conversation on moral leadership we are so blessed to have with us today. Dr Anne Kirschner, who is a friend and a partner of the Howe Institute for society and has participated in our nextgen program. So Ann, let me just say welcome, and so our listeners can hear your voice and be in this space with us.
Dr. Ann Kirschner: Thank you. Thank you so much for that, Dana, it’s a pleasure to be here today.
Dana H Born: So Dr, Ann Kirschner is actually in New York City, and actually hails from New York City. She serves out of the Big Apple. Her mother was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, and her father’s an American GI veteran. She published a book called salaz gift, which is a wonderful story of her mother’s wartime rescue of hundreds of letters sent to her during the five years that she spent as a Nazi slave in the labor camps, and in her career, part of what she’s done is a lot of firsts in the tech industry. She launched the National Football League’s website, which was the first one online to live stream the Super Bowl. As I mentioned, Ann is the interim president of Hunter College at least until August, and she was the dean of the City University of New York Macaulay Honors College, which is one of the nation’s most successful public honors programs. She also was president and founder of comma communications, which provides a wide range of advisory services for institutions and organizations focused on innovation in media, technology and education. There’s so many more things there. But Ann, we’re so grateful to have you in this conversation on moral leadership and welcome.
Dr. Ann Kirschner: I can’t wait. I can’t wait, although I feel like I’m seeing my life flash before my eyes,
Dana H Born: being from Jackson Heights queens and your mother as a Holocaust survivor, your father as a veteran. Let’s start at the beginning and tell us a little bit more about your upbringing, maybe a particular memory or experience that forged the leadership in you, in particular you know how you’re growing in your service as a moral leader and continuing to grow as a moral leader.
Dr. Ann Kirschner: Thanks, Dana, we just had the fourth anniversary of my mother’s, my mother’s death, and so she was very much on my mind this week, and also with everything that’s happening in the in the world, the subject of of tolerance and and anti semitism and Islamophobia. These are, these are very much on, on my mind. So growing up with a Holocaust survivor is, is, is a pretty, a pretty unusual way to grow up because sometimes parents shared their experiences. But that was not how it was in my house. The way it was in my house was you never talked about our mother’s experiences and she never shared any of it. And years later, when her silence was broken and I would say to her, why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you talk to us? She would say, she would say, I didn’t want you to hate I didn’t want you to be afraid. I didn’t want you to think that my experiences were normal, or that they were something that might happen to you. And I think that when I when I think about my mom during those years when I still didn’t know anything about her experiences. What strikes me is that she came to the United States without speaking more than a word or two of of English, you know, please and thank you. Was probably about about it, and she learned English and learned to live in New York, as her children did. So when I went to school, in a way, she went to school when I learned to read English in a way, that’s when she learned to read English. So there were two sort of threads to pull out of that. One of them is that public education is, is, how is public education changes people’s lives and and for for me, going to New York City public schools, they were not only educating me, they were educating the whole family. The second thread of it is, is the theme of reinvention, that when, when everything is taken from you, your world, your language, your family, your home, you can, with the right set of circumstances, reinvent yourself. And so the I think somehow I have a lack of a fear of. Change, which turns out to be a very good thing in the 21st century, because life is full of change.
Dana H Born: It’s fabulous. And you’ve shared a little bit more detail about the fact that you found these letters and created, you know, and by the way, I didn’t introduce you appropriately as having a PhD in English, I sometimes think you have a PhD in history because you took these beautiful, heartfelt, incredible letters and created salah’s gift for many. And you know, you talk about how that experience has kind of influenced you in your life, but how did going through all these letters and writing this story as an adult, because you didn’t know write this? How did that influence you in terms of you know what you carry with you today?
Dr. Ann Kirschner: Well, it changed my life. My mother was having open heart surgery, and came to see me right before the surgery, and brought me this box, and I figured she was bringing me her jewelry for safekeeping when she went to the hospital, but instead, I opened it up, and there were these hundreds of letters in languages that I couldn’t read, but I could see that they were all addressed to her, and she did well from the surgery, and as she recovered, you know, It was as if a light switch had gone on, and suddenly the prohibition against talking about the past was gone. What that, what that box of letters did for me was, you know, kind of a portal into into her past, a place I don’t think I ever had understood how much I really wanted to know what had happened to my mother in the war and so and I called the book salah’s gift, because it really was her gift to me, to allow me to take that journey back to the past with her. But my life was never the same after that, because I had no thought of writing a book, but I wanted to understand those letters, and so putting them together eventually led me to the idea that these letters were not only of interest to me, but they were historically important. There is no archive anywhere in the world like that. The letters now reside in the New York Public Library, and they’re used by scholars to put together. This the story of the Nazi slave labor camps, and they really are an important part of of history. The book led to a play that led to actually the play has now been produced at over 180 schools and and colleges and repertory theaters in in communities all across the United States. So it she, really, she, she allowed history to to come alive. And none of the the schools or or productions were done by by Jewish organizations. These were done by places that felt that in today’s world, having an understanding of what it would be to be a teenage girl taken from your home away from home for five years in seven different camps. How did she survive? What led to her resilience? You know? How did her life change? It has changed the lives of the students and the professional actors who have performed the play, it’s really been an extraordinarily I’ll use the word generative, which is kind of popular these days, but a real labor of love for me, but I think an important historical journey.
Dana H Born: Actually, I like the word gift in that you put into the title, because it really is a generative gift. You leaned into that without judgment, but with curiosity about what’s in those letters and how and you’ve done that in your lifetime, in terms of curiosity about how can you make things better in this tech company. And so what advice do you have for emerging, evolving, developing moral leaders in terms of leaning into curiosity. I mean, your, that’s your life, and your life as an educator, and your, you know life as a moral leader.
Dr. Ann Kirschner: When I, when I look back on that, this sort of strange, eclectic things that I’ve that I’ve done, there’s always been a reason why it was particularly my role to do that, and when I think about the other choices that I’ve made, I don’t always recognize it at the time, but when I look back at it, there’s always been a particular reason why it made sense for me to be that person. And I guess that’s kind of the advice I would give to people. You know, it’s different from saying, follow your passion. Well, I don’t know what my passion is, you know, but it’s more like know yourself. And is there a particular fitness in you taking this path? And you know, even when I did something peculiar, like working for the NFL, there was a there was a. Sense in which I understood that, that, you know, I don’t want to sound messianic, but there’s, there’s a there was a reason why being an outsider, who had never been to a football game, didn’t care about the game, thought this was all just crazy. How could I do anything with the National Football League? The fact that I was an outsider, I believe, actually, was what helped me take the NFL into its first digital platform. Because sometimes when you’re so close to something, you don’t see how you can transform it. It’s being an outsider that enables you to bring a different perspective. You are the other. You are looking at something that people love, but you have that outsider perspective, that perspective that I think is really essential for innovation.
Dana H Born: You know, I’m kind of compelled by the fact that the word passion actually is the root has suffering in it. So I know that it’s been tough, right, in terms of being an outsider and having the courage and leaning in and, you know, you put into the context of the world today, it’s rapidly reshaping. It’s fast. It’s, you know, fast for us to reshape ourselves, our institutions and leadership. So with this like urgency, that is pressure from so many different directions. You know, what are, particularly in higher education, which is where you are spending a lot of your time creating influence. What are some of the challenges that leaders in higher education are facing in this kind of like world that’s going so fast, the VUCA, you know, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and how do you navigate, how do you navigate these challenges?
Dr. Ann Kirschner: Well, when you think about the world spinning really fast, and then you think about colleges and universities, you hit a wall, because higher education does not move very quickly, and I think that is a real danger to higher education going going forward. You think about the advent of artificial intelligence. You know, I hear there’s something like 1500 scientific papers that are being published every single month on artificial intelligence. And you think about college curricula, and you know, how are we possibly going to keep up with that? And so what it really calls for, to me, is leadership that that is steeped in academic values, but that also has an awareness of the rapid pace of change and the kinds of new partnerships that are essential for the future of higher education. Higher education now, I think, has a moral imperative to partner in a way that I don’t think it has had in previous generations.
Dana H Born: Wow. And I want to build on a quote you made earlier, where you you said, school presidents are never far from relief from these challenges. It comes from encounters with students who will be tomorrow’s leaders. They sparkle and inspire. It comes from faculty who advance the world’s knowledge and dedicate themselves to solving society’s most intractable problems. And it comes from visiting scholars and writers and artists who rock our world with breakthroughs in AI, artificial intelligence or biochemistry or human rights or the future of storytelling. So the question, I guess, building on that wonderful quote, is, how can Leaders Inspire and elevate these problem solvers where they feel trusted, remain passionate and loyal to the mission, and are willing to take the risks, like With that courage that we talked about, inherent in striving towards achievements of significance, not just meaning, which is important, but significance.
Dr. Ann Kirschner: I think that’s the beauty of of mentorship, and it takes so many forums. It’s it’s the role that a great faculty member has in the classroom. It’s the role that we play when somebody drops us an email, as somebody did for me the other day, saying, I’m up for a job, and I’m not sure that I’m really qualified, but it sounds so exciting, and here’s my experience and and what do you think? And so giving somebody the benefit of your experience, and, you know, I keep thinking, there’s a benefit to my gray hair, you know, as we get older, I mean, how much of wisdom is about pattern recognition. And so by definition, the older we get, the more dots in the diagram we have to be able to, you know, sort of to see the big picture. I couldn’t have said what I said to you a few minutes ago about being an outsider. I couldn’t have said that, you know, 15 years ago, I wouldn’t have understood it. It’s only now that I’m really beginning to see the patterns in my own career and say, Oh, now I understand why. Did what I did. So I think the way we inspire is by sharing our experience, tailoring it so that we’re not always talking about ourselves, tailoring it for what the other person is, is deciding and and helping them to find their way to the the next bold step by giving them confidence, giving them support, coaching them if that’s if that’s part of the the recipe for the for the future, but, but really taking advantage of the role that we can play by virtue of the fact that we we do have this experience.
Dana H Born: So trust is such an important issue. And I know I want to give time for us to talk about trust, particularly right now, trust in institutes of higher education. Because, you know, some have said higher education is really under attack. And so how do we really build trust in institutions, and I guess, particularly higher ed, maybe, and what’s at stake if we fail to regain or rebuild trust?
Dr. Ann Kirschner: Oh, so much is at stake. You know, we live in a time where, in general society, the most important institutions are under attack. The truth is under attack. For higher education, I think it’s particularly fraught because many of us thought of colleges and universities as places where you encountered new ideas, sometimes strange ideas, sometimes ideas that were difficult for you to accept or and maybe you even wanted to reject them. How do you deal with ideas that challenge sometimes your your most cherished beliefs? It doesn’t mean that you have to answer every question. It doesn’t mean that you’re responsible for the for the for the history of the of the moment, you know you’re not the ones on the on the decision tree for those things. However, we have a real problem in modeling discourse around difficult subjects. We have a real problem seeing issues from all sides. And so I do think that what’s important for higher education leaders going forward is not that they zip their mouths and not use their bully pulpits, but if they choose to use their bully pulpits, they do it in such a way that is fulsome, informed, rich with history and ideas and fairness and that they model the kinds of of awareness of different points of view that we want students to have, not be dogmatic, not be so sure of ourselves, but to let doubt, which I increasingly think is a really important characteristic curiosity and doubt and and take positions, if you must, but take them with that informed discourse, and that’s really where we want to lead students.
Dana H Born: It’s a beautiful message, and one you know who talks about doubt right as a leadership quality, a moral leadership quality, but what you’re really saying is remain curious and wrestling with the nuance. And as we talk about at the Howe Institute for society, is like also building the moral muscle to be able to take that journey when it’s gray. And so I know there have been many points in your moral leadership journey, of times when you’ve had to kind of stand up, maybe in opposition. Some people call it, speak truth to power, where you know it’s either we should, you know, take this position or we shouldn’t. How do you make that decision, and what did you learn from it?
Dr. Ann Kirschner: I think you just have those moments where you say to yourself, This is bigger than my job. This is bigger than me, and I am not going to feel good about myself if I don’t, if I don’t speak up. I’ve had situations where I was told to fire somebody where I thought the firing was not, was not warranted, but, but somebody was really quite insistent, you know, somebody up the up the line, saying, you know, this person has to, has to go, and you have to decide what you know, what you stand for. There’s, it’s, it’s not any it’s not any more complicated than than that, expressing oneself is fraught with danger because there’s a cell phone on every corner. There’s a there’s a social media platform. You know that that’s just sitting. There waiting to take you down. But what I have found is that the sun still comes up in the morning when somebody says something about you that isn’t that isn’t true. And and separating your your your ego from your values, I guess is, is kind of what my advice would would be, the things that things that are not true, should not hurt in the same in the same way.
Dana H Born: So in the past, you’ve referred to the following Martin Luther King. Quote, the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically Intelligence plus character. That’s the goal of true education. So and how can we develop this moral muscle that we talked about earlier in young leaders to make sure that they’re not just doing the next thing right, but doing the next right thing. And this probably applies not just to young leaders, but all of us as developing moral leaders.
Dr. Ann Kirschner: Absolutely it’s relevant for for all of us. What I what I think helps a lot is to is to encourage young people to think of themselves in the fullness of their multi dimensions. That is, they’re not just a student, they’re not just somebody working at an organization, but they’re they’re a friend, they’re a teacher to somebody else, they may be a parent and and how do you develop those multi dimensional selves? You do it through different kinds of experiences. And so being open to the unusual, the unusual opportunity that comes your way, the job that you didn’t know you were going to you were going to take or working for a nonprofit that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of your career and and and finding leadership positions there that take you outside of your own experience. I actually think that moral muscle equals getting outside of your own experience.
Dana H Born: Yeah, that’s wonderful. I guess I want to ask you, with all of these challenges that you’re taking on in so many different roles and thinking about the future, even in the tech space, you know you’ve leaned into thinking about the future. What gives you hope as you’re looking at the future now, it just seems like it’s for so many it’s just like, Ah, it’s so tough. But what keeps you going and gives you hope for the future,
Dr. Ann Kirschner: as hard as it is to be a college president these days, it also provides you with an abundance of opportunities for Hope Hunter, college is a vertical campus. You know, we have 17 story buildings instead of, you know, 1700 acres of beautiful, leafy campus. But that means that every time I get in the elevator, there’s going to be two or three or five students and maybe a faculty member or two and and, or or one of the public safety people, or, you know, whoever it is who’s who’s with me, finding out a little bit about their experience, about what’s happening, what’s Are You taking a are you taking an exam today? Are you? Are you feeling ready? Are you feeling whatever, whatever it is their sense of possibilities the next day being one that is going to bring them some wonderful new opportunity? That’s what, that’s what just absolutely fills me with hope, as do the the joys of my three grandchildren soon to be four.
Dana H Born: That is fantastic. And I like the word opportunity and thinking about, you know, whatever those challenges are we’re facing. You have a Yeah, the arc is towards that opportunity and what’s next, including the next generation and the next generation after that. It’s great to be on with a friend and to hopefully have some influence today and hopefully for the years. Well, the future and the future is bright. I look forward to serving together with you. Dr Anne Kirchner, thank you for being part of our how conversation podcast, moral leadership series, we salute you and we are grateful for you.
Dr. Ann Kirschner: Thank you. Dr Dana born, you.
