Aaron Miller

Aaron Miller

Provo, UT
How to Be a Person Online • Prof. Andrew Brodsky, author of PING • s03e07
Podcast

How to Be a Person Online • Prof. Andrew Brodsky, author of PING • s03e07

Summary

We live in an age of unprecedented communication tools, yet misunderstandings and conflicts online seem more common than ever. In this episode, we learn from Professor Andrew Brodsky, a management professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of "PING: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication." Drawing from his personal experience with isolation due to illness and his extensive research, Professor Brodsky shares the science behind effective virtual communication. You'll discover his PING framework for better online interactions, learn why we consistently overestimate our ability to convey emotion through text, and get practical advice for avoiding the most common digital communication pitfalls. This episode will help you become not just a better communicator online, but a more thoughtful and gracious person in all your virtual interactions.

About Our Guest

Dr. Andrew Brodsky is a management professor at The University of Texas at Austin in the McCombs School of Business.

By implementing his own research-driven methods, he has won multiple research and teaching awards, including Poets & Quants Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors in the world. Andrew’s expertise on virtual interactions and organization communication led him to publish the book Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication and form the Ping Group. His goal is to help organizations leverage research-based approaches that will enable their employees to improve all types of interactions and communication.

Andrew has consulted, conducted training, and given keynote talks around the world. His research on workplace interactions has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, and he has been regularly quoted for his expertise in major media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and Reuters.

Useful Links

Andrew Brodsky - Personal & Book Website: https://abrodsky.com

Ping Group Consulting: https://pinggroup.org/

Expert Tips for Better Virtual Communication: https://www.pcma.org/expert-tips-for-better-virtual-communication/

Pleasant Pictures Music

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Andrew Brodsky: I had a advisor in my research career early on who loved to use ellipses at the end of emails. So that, dot, dot, dot. And it was like, "Hey Andrew, thanks for this dot, dot, dot." And as a low powered student, I was like, he hates what I did. Like this dot dot dot. He is like, really? But eventually I like talked to this professor who was like, "Oh no, I always do that, because I mean, to be continued, you know, it's not that like dot, dot, dot really?" And I was like, oh yeah, now it makes sense.

[00:00:35] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller and this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode seven: How to Be a Person Online.

Speaking of being online, I hope you'll take a moment to do two online things that best help this podcast to grow. First of all, will you share an episode with a friend? And then secondly, will you leave us a review? Those two things take only a few minutes of your time, but it makes a huge difference for us. Thank you for supporting the show.

In a previous episode, the interview I did with Judge Griffith, I shared some of George Washington's farewell address to the country after his time as president. I hope you'll indulge me as I share another Washington story in the winter of 1776. The spark of American rebellion was on the verge of being extinguished. After a shocking military success in Boston that drove out British forces, general Washington faced a string of humiliating defeats in and around New York.

The only real successes that his forces could claim then were the surprisingly effective retreats that kept the rebellion from experiencing total collapse. Although widely revered, Washington had to watch his reputation as a military leader slide into serious doubt even among his closest advisors.

One of those was Joseph Reed, a lieutenant colonel who had been an aid to Washington through multiple battles.

In a letter to General Charles Lee, who is second in command of the Continental Army. Colonel Reed praised Lee for his military accomplishments and simultaneously criticized the devastating losses that had happened under Washington's command. Reed specifically criticized Washington's indecisiveness saying to General Lee, "Oh, General, an indecisive mind is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall an army. How often I've lamented it for this campaign."

Lee wrote back to Reed a few days later in full agreement about General Washington's flaws and even compared them to "stupidity or want of personal courage." Lee wasn't calling Washington a dunce or a coward, but he was saying his indecisiveness made him just as bad as one

Lee's letter though was delivered to Washington himself by mistake,

who opened it believing that it was war correspondence and not a personal communication. It's not hard to imagine how devastating it was for General Washington to see what his commanders really thought of him.

Perhaps you can relate to this story. Has there ever been a time when you sent a delicate text to the wrong person? Have you ever had an email misunderstood? Have you ever been on a Zoom call when someone forgot to mute themselves in an embarrassing way? We have at our disposal today the fastest, cheapest, easiest modes of communication ever before put into human hands, and it's no wonder that we're prone to make mistakes with them.

Those mistakes sometimes might just end in a small mishap, but they might also lead to bitter conflict. Look at the rancor that spreads online, even just from a poorly drafted tweet, I thought it would be worthwhile to learn how to communicate better online, and so I've called on the wisdom of an expert to help us do that.

[00:04:09] Andrew Brodsky: So my name is Andrew Brodsky. I am a management professor at the McComb School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. I research virtual communication, the way we interact at work, as well as a few ancillary topics like how we spend our time at work.

[00:04:24] Aaron - Interview: Tell me what drew you into studying virtual communication in particular as a field of study and a, and a professional passion for you.

[00:04:32] Andrew Brodsky: When I was 16 years old, I was very suddenly and surprisingly diagnosed with a bad case of leukemia. Blood cancer. I ended up needing bone marrow transplant. So basically the isolation everyone did during COVID, I experienced that a couple decades ago. For the month after bone marrow transplant, you're in one of these isolation rooms

where people can only come in if they wear gowns, gloves, and masks pretty much from head to toe. So I got this experience pretty early on of often having to communicate with people at a distance. Luckily came through in one piece, but I was left with a long-term immune deficiency where I'm not able to produce my own antibodies.

As a function of that, I've had to be much more careful than many. So when they say, oh, unless you're immune compromised, it's not a big issue. Unfortunately, I fall into that bucket. So yet again, it's a topic that's really important. As I was began studying it during my PhD, I realized it wasn't just important to me, it was important to everyone. Regardless of where you work from, whether it's a home or the office, we're all using these tools, email, instant messaging, video calls, as now a core way of communicating. So being able to put together a book where I can relay this information for me seemed like a really meaningful thing to do.

[00:05:42] Aaron - Narration: Professor Brodsky is the author of the book PING, the Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication.

I read his book earlier this year and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and so we're going to spend some time learning from the science of how to be a better communicator and really just a better person online. Let's start with what I think is the most common pitfall. We've all heard of nonverbal communication that comes from things like body language or facial expressions.

You've probably cited the widely used statistic that only 7% of communication comes from the actual words that we say. Now, this research is often taken out of context, but the principle is true that we communicate volumes through things other than our words. Perhaps the best evidence of this is how strong nonverbal cues are for virtual communication.

You don't even need to be there in person to be misunderstood.

[00:06:38] Aaron - Interview: What are some examples or what some advice you have for how to manage the virtual nonverbal cues in a way that helps avoid conflict? BEcause I feel like we constantly misunderstand each other online, and I think a lot of it has to do with nonverbal cues.

Not even what's written, but sort of how it appeared.

[00:06:56] Andrew Brodsky: Nonverbal behavior in virtual communications is one of the things that people often miss and they don't realize because they think it's not face-to-face, so it's really just what the words I'm typing. But research has shown that there's a lot of nonverbal behavior that we're not realizing we're sending even in the least rich modes like email and instant message text messaging.

[00:07:15] Aaron - Narration: Richness as used by Brodsky here means communication that uses multiple methods and senses all at once. An in-person conversation is rich, where a text message is less so.

[00:07:29] Andrew Brodsky: There's lots of knowledge that can be gained to understand how does their nonverbal behavior come off, whether it's typos, emojis, punctuation, what time of day you respond. There are all these different cues that are important in our communication. But secondarily, one of the tips I like to give is related to our focus when we tend to interact virtually. When we are interacting virtually, we're generally just looking at the text of email, at best, maybe we're looking at a square of the person's video feed on your screen. So it's really easy to be more self-focused.

Whereas when you're in person, there's someone standing right in front of you it's hard to forget they're there. You're thinking about how they're going to react immediately. But when you're just communicating from behind a screen, we're kind of in our own world a little bit. As a result, we often don't take that extra step to think about how might the other person interpret this language.

[00:08:24] Aaron - Narration: People aren't computers. We send and receive communication emotionally, not only rationally. It might be a mild feeling attending or message like confidence, fatigue, or encouragement, but emotion is hard to convey through text alone.

Our mild intentions might get misread as stronger ones like arrogance, exasperation, or condescension. This is a common source of unintended conflict.

[00:08:49] Andrew Brodsky: So for instance, some research shows that when we write emails with emotion, so whether it's sarcasm or anything else, it seems really clear to us. And participants in these studies rate the odds that someone else will correctly predict the emotion they intended is very high.

In reality, people are really bad at interpreting those messages and are generally wrong. So people are really overconfident about their ability to relay emotion in these messages. The reason being is that when you're typing the message, you hear the emotion in your head as you're typing it, so it seems really clear.

But on the recipient side, they're not hearing the same emotion you are. They're coming in with a different set of information, assumptions, that makes them hear something different. So one of the pieces of advice that comes outta this research is when you have a message like this, they found that when they had participants read the message out loud in the completely opposite tone that they intended--so for instance, if, if it's sarcastic, read is serious, if it's serious read is sarcastic-- those participants suddenly realized that their message might not have been as clear as they thought. So taking that little extra step to engage in this kind of perspective taking can be incredibly useful, especially when the person's not standing in front of you.

[00:09:59] Aaron - Narration: Professor Brodsky just mentioned perspective taking, and that's part of the core framework in his book. "Ping" isn't just a reference to the sound your phone makes when a text arrives. In this case, it's an acronym for how we can improve our virtual communication.

[00:10:13] Andrew Brodsky: So the P is for perspective taking. The I is for initiative. The N is for nonverbal. The G is for goals.

So perspective taking, just as an example of what this means is that when we're interacting virtually, we're often tend to be much more self-focused because we're just looking at a screen. Even if the other person's face is there, it's a pretty small portion of your screen as opposed to them standing up right in front of you.

So for instance, as a supervisor, if you send a message with a joke to a subordinate about a work project. The subordinate, who's really anxious in that situation, may feel that it's condescending or may feel like they messed up somehow. Where the supervisor is trying to lighten the mood. So actually putting yourself in the other person's shoes can be incredibly useful.

[00:10:55] Aaron - Narration: A weakness that I have in perspective taking is when I'm grading homework. When I'm in that mode, I'm looking for ways that the assignment could be better, and so my brain is focused on flaws. The result is that my initial feedback could be especially harsh for students to read. To me, it just feels like I'm writing down what needs improvement. But to my students, it would end up coming across as hypercritical or unfeeling.

It's taken practice from me to make sure that I compliment what they did well and I couch my criticisms in a way that I'd want to receive them. And so it's something that I'm still working on. This extra effort in grading is where we see Brodsky's second element, initiative.

[00:11:34] Andrew Brodsky: The I, for initiative. It's, it's valuable to think about what's missing in a given mode of communication and how can we add it back.

So there were some interesting studies in negotiation that found that negotiators who negotiated over instant messaging, as opposed to in person, tend to build less rapport, trust, and do as well in negotiating. But those negotiators who took the initiative to have a short five minute phone call where they just kind of socialized, the authors called it schmoozing, uh, right before the negotiation, and then after the phone call, they did negotiate over instant message. Those people who took that extra initiative ended up building more rapport and trust and improving their own negotiation outcomes compared to those who just went straight to instant messaging and didn't take that initiative.

[00:12:21] Aaron - Narration: What I love about initiative is that it can make us stand out at a time when most people communicate in the default, easy ways. If you've ever just called someone, rather than hashing out a conversation via text, that was a moment of initiative. Also, initiative can work the other way too. Instead of a rambling conversation, you can take the time to craft an email so it has the complete thought. Keep it compact, but use headings and other things that make the email easy to read and follow. That kind of effort reflects initiative too. Initiative is part of how we deal with the nonverbal traps that we'd otherwise miss.

[00:12:57] Andrew Brodsky: The N is nonverbal. And this is valuable because we send so much information over virtual communication, we don't realize. So with text-based communication, there's emoji, there's typos, there's exclamation marks.

But even with video communication, it's not the same as in person. There's a number of studies that show the importance of eye contact during video interviews, but that's a little bit awkward over video because often our web camera is not in the same location as the person's face we're looking at. So, you know, we're looking at their face so it's, we think we're keeping eye contact, but to them it looks like we're just looking off screen. They don't know if we're reading from a script or checking email or just playing games on our phone. So it's important to understand how things might be interpreted or happen differently in virtual as opposed to in person.

[00:13:43] Aaron - Narration: These three insights lose their value if we don't pay attention to the final piece of Brodsky's PING framework goals.

[00:13:52] Andrew Brodsky: And lastly, G's for goals. It would be much easier if I could just say there's one best mode of communication. You know, you should do everything in person, or you should do everything over email. It would make for a very short book though, and unfortunately it's not the case.

[00:14:05] Aaron - Interview: Yeah.

[00:14:06] Andrew Brodsky: So for instance, in this area of research, let's talk about video calls. Cameras on or cameras off: this is like a nice debate that lots of organizations are having. Should we have cameras on or cameras off meetings? And the answer is, it depends on your goals.

So if it's an early stage relationship, you don't really know the person. And your goal is to build trust and to make a good impression, having cameras on can be really useful because we tend to trust people who we feel familiar with. Alternatively, there's research on Zoom fatigue or video conferencing fatigue that shows that being on video can be really exhausting. Staring at yourself, seeing you mess up nonverbal behavior, it's just draining and it can cause burnout. So if your goal is to enable the people in your meeting to have more focus, to be more productive and not be fatigued, then cameras off can be better.

[00:14:52] Aaron - Narration: Here's an example of where goals matter. Less rich modes like email can help us to communicate if there's a likelihood of our emotions getting the best of us.

Emails, texts, and instant messages are a way for us to temper the way we communicate.

[00:15:06] Andrew Brodsky: So there's some good research, uh, that shows that in situations where there's likely to be some degree of competition, but not necessarily extreme competition, less rich modes can be a little bit better because it masks everyone's nonverbal behaviors that show they don't necessarily like each other as much.

[00:15:24] Aaron - Interview: Oh yeah.

[00:15:24] Andrew Brodsky: And the idea is it kind of keeps everyone professional. They don't see them like frowning at each other as much and it hides some of that stuff.

[00:15:32] Aaron - Interview: Is, is there advice about how dialing the richness up or down just helps people treat others with more fairness or more kindness?

[00:15:41] Andrew Brodsky: So when it comes to stereotypes and biases and communication, they impact most everyone. You don't necessarily have to be an underrepresented minority. There's research that shows that men who are shorter earn less money than men who are taller, that people are more attractive, earn more money than people who are less attractive. And we all kind of have different assumptions about people based on how they look. Some might be helpful to them, some less so.

So there's this question about which mode do we use to reduce these kind of biases and stereotypes when they might work against us or others. So the research basically kind of leads to a sort of framework.

The first question that you have is. Are the differences known or not? If the differences are not known. So you don't know if someone's a man or woman or black or white or whatever else, and your goal is to reduce stereotypes and bias, then obviously using less rich modes is best because you can mask the fact that anyone's even different from each other. That said, that's a fairly limited set of circumstances, usually potentially related to job interviews, because after that, everyone knows each other's name, knows each other. It's hard to hide the fact that people are different. You can usually tell from people's names and you've usually seen them at least once.

[00:16:53] Aaron - Narration: Richer communication has the power to reduce our biases because we get to know the people beyond their categories. It's harder to judge someone unfairly if you know them as a person instead of just as a gender, a faith, a race, or an orientation. Less rich modes though might help some people feel more confident in being themselves and act contrary to the stereotypes that are applied to them. A blessing and a curse of virtual communication is that we're more comfortable with being ourselves when we have a screen between us.

[00:17:25] Andrew Brodsky: There's another thing about biases and stereotypes is it not just impacts our views of others. It impacts if we fall into one of those categories, how we behave. So there's a certain way that society often expects men to behave about how women to behave, et cetera. So for instance, negotiation is a topic that often comes up and a negotiation in many types of negotiation, albeit not all of them, being competitive and being aggressive can be beneficial. But that's a type of behavior that's generally seen as better fitting for men than women, who are supposed to be more communal. And what research shows is that if you're trying to have women feel more comfortable being aggressive and competitive in negotiations where it would benefit themselves, it's better to do that over less rich modes.

The reason being is that when other people don't see us, when we don't have our nonverbal behaviors on display, when our differences feel a little bit more masked and anonymous in some ways, we feel more comfortable being free. We feel more comfortable not feeling the need to stick by society's expectations of us. We're less focused on how other people might punish us for varying from those expectations.

[00:18:32] Aaron - Narration: A common social expectation is small talk, and it's one of those things that we all do, but we all also complain about. The research shows that small talk has a lot more value than we give it credit for, though, value that can be lost in virtual communications.

[00:18:49] Andrew Brodsky: Small talk is one of the topics that there's always a lot of debate about, and many people hate small talk because it feels unproductive. And they're not wrong. It takes up time from your reading. It takes up text in your email. It might feel irrelevant.

But on the other side of that, there's an important use to small talk. It's helps us build trust. It helps us to get to know each other. It helps us to take down the barriers between work and life, so we feel like we're actually having a relationship with that person. So by taking a little bit of extra step and adding in a couple sentences about, you know, your weekend, asking a personal question to the other person, can be a really great way to help build trust.

I'm not saying you want to go the too much information route, the TMI route, and have like a 10 paragraph long diatribe about your recent vacation in the email, because you know that's going to bother everyone. But just trying to sneak a little bit extra back in, if your goal is to build trust, can be a really useful thing to do because it helps remind them that there's a human on the other side of this communication as well.

[00:19:53] Aaron - Narration: You remember my episode with Debby Tucker? Part of the reason she's been so persuasive in her work to end domestic violence is that she's excellent at this kind of trust building communication. I kid you not, the emails that she sent to arrange our interview were frankly as delightful as she is in person. She signed off on one of them to tell me she had to go fold some laundry. It's a gift to be as disarming as she is, even when just online. I think the same things that keep us from doing virtual small talk also keep us from more genuine gestures, like giving unsolicited compliments. It's easy to worry that will be seen as insincere.

[00:20:30] Aaron - Interview: What advice do you have for overcoming that worry and concern that our, our good gesture will be read opposite to our intentions?

[00:20:39] Andrew Brodsky: When it comes to how human brains work, we're generally much more concerned about losses than the gains. So we tend to focus on how awkward it might be to reach out to someone we haven't connected with in a while, or how awkward it might be to say something nice to someone, or a kind word or kind gesture, as opposed to how they might feel about it and the warmth they might get by experiencing that.

What I generally recommend to people who are feeling this hesitation to remember the, the last time someone did something nice for them that they completely unexpected, that was unexpected for them. You know, the last time someone from earlier in their life tried to reconnect with them just to hear how they were doing and remember, how did you feel then?

And I'm guessing you felt pretty good and focusing on that as opposed to that first awkward step of like, should I reach out to them or not, can help get you past that hurdle.

[00:21:27] Aaron - Narration: Virtual conversations aren't just about complimenting people or building trust. Sometimes we have to use online tools to deliver bad news or give tough criticism. Brodsky has great advice for those moments.

[00:21:40] Andrew Brodsky: So when it comes to frank feedback, the first step that I generally recommend is to think about, well, how would I want to receive this? There were some stories that went viral during the last couple years of layoffs of these things going really badly. One of the ones that stands out to me was an organization that I won't name, supposedly was doing layoffs, and the manager was laying someone off and the person being laid off didn't want to turn on their camera, but the manager insisted the person turn on their camera in order to be laid off.

And like, here's a good example of a lack of empathy, really backfiring. Like do you really need their camera to be on to fire them? And you can't blame the person being laid off. Like if you're, you want to maintain some dignity. You don't want to necessarily be seen crying in front of your manager.

[00:22:24] Aaron - Narration: In the age of AI, the temptation is incredibly strong to hand over the hard work of difficult or even mundane communication to tools, like ChatGPT.

There are already ridiculous stories about the mistakes people have made, trusting AI to speak for them, like attorneys who submitted court filings that cited fake legal cases. That didn't work out for them. The best advice right now on AI assisted communication is to do it very carefully.

[00:22:53] Andrew Brodsky: We're all talking about in the news and everything about AI, is it good? Is it going to take over for humans? What does this mean for a virtual communication? And my forecast, although I'm occasionally wrong, but we'll see with time, is that for jobs and roles that require a human, making sure that your communication is in your words as opposed to just copy and pasted from ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, whatever else, will always be valuable.

If someone's communicating with you, they want to communicate with you. And there are ways they might tell that you're not communicating yourself and you're just copying and pasting. The other thing is these tools, these AI tools don't know every single thing in your head, and unless we make it to the distant future where there's brain chips that can read our mind, they're never going to. And so there is a use for AI, it's great for editing, brainstorming, for simple repeated interactions, sure, that's fine to use. But for complex and important interactions, showing you care is much more important than making sure that it's perfect in my view.

[00:23:56] Aaron - Narration: Across all of Brodsky's advice is just recognizing that there's a person on the other end, someone who has their own preferences, interests, and experiences. Even just the simple step of asking how they want to communicate can prevent a lot of misunderstanding.

[00:24:12] Andrew Brodsky: And one of the things that I often also recommend, if possible, is early on in the relationship just asking the other person how they prefer to communicate. There's different ways that different people feel

they like more or less. Some people prefer cameras on, some prefer cameras off. Some people have reasons for communicating a certain way. So for those whose English is not their first language, they might actually prefer email or instant message, because it gives them time to proof and make sure their language is what they want it to be. The words match what they want. Or maybe someone has hearing difficulties and they prefer text, or they have difficulty seeing, so they prefer hearing audio.

So there's all these different things that can matter. And one of the best things you can just do is ask the other person. And being able to understand what they like, not only will help you become more effective communicator, but they'll probably want to interact with you more because you're giving them what they want.

[00:25:02] Aaron - Narration: Even following all of this advice, we're all going to make mistakes. It's hard to see all that's going on, even just when sending something as simple as a text. It's easy to have terrible timing, for example, when we're not with a person who's getting our message. And so we ought to be willing to forgive more when others make mistakes too.

[00:25:21] Aaron - Interview: How do we engage with more grace in the way people are communicating, recognizing that nobody's going to be doing it perfectly?

[00:25:28] Andrew Brodsky: One of the best things people can do is not only realizing, hey, I make these mistakes. I failed to engage in perspective taking. But then the step that goes with that is realize, hey, everyone else might not understand this. We're all just getting used to this. By many estimates, humans have been interacting for, you know, over a hundred thousand years. In the scale of human history, technology as an interaction mode is only a very thin sliver. We've had a lot of experience as a species getting to know how to best communicate in person. Email, instant message, video calls, we're all just figuring this out in many ways as we're going along. So just understanding that we're all novices in some regard on this can be really useful for increasing your empathy and realizing that "Maybe this message, they didn't mean that."

And the simple step that so many people miss that often leads to really problematic conflicts, is just to ask a clarifying question, saying, "Hey, just to confirm what did you mean here?" Because so many people think that someone wrote something mean to them, for instance, and then they just stew on it and they don't say anything back, and it turns out the person didn't mean that at all. So just taking that extra step to just ask people what they mean can often stop a whole lot of conflicts in their tracks because it's very possible they don't mean what you think they meant.

[00:26:47] Aaron - Interview: If you could change how people communicate virtually that would make the world a better place, like it'd be a world that we'd enjoy living in more, what are the things that you would change?

[00:26:57] Andrew Brodsky: I would have to say that the first one would be for people to take a moment out of their day just to consider how they're approaching their communication. It's so easy when we're overloaded by emails and meetings just to barely get through the day, and we don't have time to engage in this kind of meta thinking about is there ways that I could have worded things differently? And when you actually take that moment to be mindful, if you do it the right way and actually do it, you'll find you end up saving time because you find more time efficient ways to communicate.

So just taking a moment, thinking, being mindful is one of the best things you could do.

The second is perspective take. It's the first thing in my framework because we get just so in our own world when we're communicating, especially from behind a screen. And if you begin to think about how someone else might interpret something, you realize, "Oh, they would really like to get this congratulatory email. It won't be awkward. Oh, maybe I should say it this way, so I don't accidentally offend them." And so getting out from behind your screen and trying to think about the person on the other side of their screen can be just incredibly useful. And if we all show we care about each other a little bit more, I think the world would be a much better place

[00:28:09] Aaron - Narration: When General Washington read the letter that he wasn't meant to see, to his credit, he didn't seek to punish Charles Lee or Joseph Reed for insubordination. Instead, he responded with grace.

He resealed the letter and made sure that it was passed on to Colonel Reed, but he included a note in which he said this.

"The enclosed letter was put into my hands by an express rider. Having no idea of it being a private letter, I opened it. This, as it is, the truth must be my excuse for saying a letter which neither inclination or intention would have prompted me to. I thank you for the trouble and fatigue you have undergone in your journey to Burlington, and sincerely wish that your labors may be crowned with a desired success.

"My best respects to Mrs. Reed. I am dear sir, your most obedient servant, G. Washington."

It wasn't until the following June, six months later that Reed and Washington were on good terms again.

I am incredibly grateful to Professor Andrew Brodsky for taking the time to do this interview with me, and I'm so glad that we could get such great advice on pitfalls that we all encounter all the time.

How to Help is hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller, and producing collaboration with BYU Radio. My thanks to Erica Price, Kenny Mears, and Blake Morris for their help with this episode. Scoring and Mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes. And if you haven't subscribed yet to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

A World without Hunger • Rebecca Middleton, Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer, World Food Program USA • s03e06
Podcast

A World without Hunger • Rebecca Middleton, Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer, World Food Program USA • s03e06

Summary

Globally, hundreds of millions of people experience hunger, and the majority of those are found in armed conflict zones like Sudan, Yemen, and Gaza. A problem this size can make us feel powerless, but there are many reasons to engage and feel hope. In this episode, we talk with Rebecca Middleton, Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer of World Food Program USA. She tells us about the UN World Food Programme, which delivers aid to places no one else can reach. She explains how U.S. food assistance serves as powerful diplomacy and discusses practical ways to combat hunger through advocacy and support. We also learn about her career going from a Congressional staffer, to lobbying, and on to a vocation in hunger advocacy that was providentially guided. We also address how to help fight hunger while managing empathy fatigue in our suffering-saturated world.

About Our Guest

Rebecca Middleton is the Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer for World Food Program USA, where she and her team work to educate Members of Congress and their staff on the importance of U.S. government support for the U.N. World Food Program. She brings more than 25 years of experience in policy, advocacy, and strategy to the role.

Rebecca began her career in Washington, DC, in 1997 as a Senior Legislative Assistant for Congressman Frank Wolf. Five years later she joined the public affairs firm Cassidy & Associates and quickly became Vice President, managing federal lobbying strategy and tactics for a variety of clients including Fortune 500 companies and organizations in the technology, health care, and defense industries.

Rebecca combined her advocacy and management expertise with her longstanding passion for eradicating hunger in 2013 when she joined the Alliance to End Hunger as its COO; she became its Executive Director in 2016. Rebecca joined World Food Program USA in July of 2020.

Rebecca holds a BA in political science and English from Mary Washington College. She serves on several boards including as treasurer of the Alliance to End Hunger.

Useful Links

About Rebecca Middleton: https://www.wfpusa.org/people/rebecca-middleton/

World Food Program USA: https://www.wfpusa.org

UN World Food Programme: https://www.wfp.org

Alliance to End Hunger: http://www.alliancetoendhunger.org

Write to Congress about Global Food Aid: https://wfpusa.quorum.us/campaign/2505_RES_ERT_Advocacy_Web/

2024 Global Report on Food Crises: https://www.wfp.org/publications/global-report-food-crises-grfc

Pleasant Pictures Music

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Rebecca Middleton: It seems like it's apocryphal, but it actually is true. My parents will validate this. So you're watching the news one night and seeing the stories out of Ethiopia and seeing the work that the United Nations World Food Program was doing. I was in third or fourth grade and it literally brought my piggy bank down and asked my parents to send it to help the kids in Africa.

And little did I know that that would continue into what I feel like it's my vocation now.

[00:00:25] Aaron - Narration: Yeah. What was their reaction, by the way? Did they sort of pat you on that and say, that's sweet? Or did they take the money and send it in? What'd they do with it?

[00:00:33] Rebecca Middleton: I don't remember. I have to ask them the next time I see them.

I'd like to think that they sent it in. I'm fairly confident the funds went out of the piggy bank, so they went somewhere. So I'm sure, hopefully they got where they were intended. Yeah.

[00:00:45] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller and this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode :ix, A World Without Hunger.

If you've been enjoying How to Help, then I hope you'll take a moment to share a favorite episode with others or leave us a positive review. Those are the two things that most help a podcast to grow. It only takes a few minutes of your time, but it makes a huge difference for us, so thank you for supporting the show.

I think my favorite character in just about any book I've ever read is a character in Victor Hugo's book, Les Miserables, which I frequently recommend to anyone who loves a musical. I will say it is a long book, but you can take your time. For me, reading it as a college student while on a random bit of grass in Paris is one of my all time favorite, if cliche, memories.

The bishop at the beginning, Bishop Myriel, is the very reason that Jean Valjean's story could even be told. Now I, I know this is just fiction, but without the generosity of Bishop Myriel Valjean wouldn't have become a new man, and the rest of the story wouldn't have happened. Instead. I don't know, would he have gone back to prison? It seems likely. Perhaps he would've eventually starved. I guess only Victor Hugo would ever know.

The Bishop's generosity at the start of the story is so pivotal that it explains why he appears again at the end of the book when Valjean passes away. The musical has the spirit of the bishop there singing in a beautiful duet. But in the book, Hugo describes the moment this way: at death's door, Valjean is asked if he wants a priest. He replies, "I have had one," pointing to a person no one else in the room could see.

The night that's told early in the story when Bishop Myriel rescues this hungry man is an iconic act. Think about it. Feeding the hungry is an injunction for believers of every world religion. Among the ways that people help people, it's hard to think of any need more urgent than saving someone from hunger.

In all the history of humanity, we today are living in the rare and recent span of time in which we have the means to end hunger.

So why does it still exist, and can we truly end it?

[00:03:21] Rebecca Middleton: The big drivers of hunger globally are conflict, climate, shocks, and cost. There's more than enough supply in the world, but it's how does it get to people who need it in a timely manner and ideally. In a nutrition sensitive way.

[00:03:34] Aaron - Narration: My guest in this episode is Rebecca Middleton. She's the Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer of World Food Program, USA. Her job simply is to persuade the American public and American lawmakers that we can and should end hunger around the world. You've noticed that this season of How to Help has been focusing on how we can help in conflict, and so that's where we're going to begin the conversation with Rebecca.

[00:04:01] Aaron - Interview: Let's talk about why hunger still persists. And so if you had the top reasons that you were explaining to somebody who just didn't understand this, what would you explain to them?

[00:04:09] Rebecca Middleton: I can't emphasize enough the role that manmade conflict has on hunger. If you, if you look at the biggest driver by far, and you could just name the places, right? Sudan, Gaza, Afghanistan, Yemen, Haiti. I mean, all of the top hot spots for hunger around the world are due to man-made conflict. Hunger can also be an exacerbating factor in a fragile state that makes it ripe for conflict, but, but more of what we see is that conflict breaks out and then it drives individuals to hunger due to internal and external migration.

So that, that's the biggest one by far. If we could get conflict under control, we could come pretty darn close to ending hunger.

[00:04:50] Aaron - Narration: The scale of hunger caused by conflict is hard to visualize. The most recent Global Report on Food Crises estimated that last year, 140 million people experienced hunger due to conflict. That's equivalent to over 40% of the entire population of the United States. Like I said, it's too many people to really imagine. And if that's the amount of hunger caused by conflict, is it even really possible to end it?

[00:05:18] Aaron - Interview: The, the idea that we have to end conflict to end hunger feels totally overwhelming, because conflict is for as long as, as people have existed on the earth, there's been conflict between them. If, if that's the barrier, how do we ever get to the place of truly eliminating hunger?

[00:05:34] Rebecca Middleton: I think one of the big challenges with hunger in a conflict zone is access, right? And so I think, making sure that no matter what is going on, having safe, unfettered humanitarian access is, is really, really vital. I, I think making sure that we can get food to those who need it is paramount, no matter the circumstance.

I remember the first time I went to see the World Food Program's work in the field, this is probably eight years ago now, it was in Northern Uganda at a camp called Palorinya, and there are a number of refugee camps in Northern Uganda and they mostly have refugees from Sudan. And at the time, these were mostly women and children who had fled conflict and some of the most horrifying stories that you could imagine, but the, the benefit that they received in the form of food, in the form of basic shelter, in the form of healthcare was so vital and so heartening. And the support from the community, the government, the, the un, the US and other donor support for that really just showed the humanity that exists around the world.

So I don't think we're going to ever ultimately end conflict. I think that's, that's a, an ideal that we can aspire to, but realize that we probably will not attain. But I think thinking of systems and solutions to be able to get assistance to those in need in times of conflict is, is really where we need to focus our efforts.

[00:07:02] Aaron - Narration: Systems and solutions are in many ways the harder part than just acquiring the food. Indeed, moving enough food for many thousands of people into conflict zones takes extraordinary logistics and coordination. This is where the World Food Program stands out. Their unique ability to deliver aid into the world's most challenging environments is not just impressive. It's actually essential.

[00:07:27] Rebecca Middleton: The World Food Program does an amazing job with the supply chain and logistics. They can get places where nobody else can, both on their own and in partnership with some local organizations on the ground.

But a lot of people don't know that the World Food Program is this sort of logistics backbone for the entire humanitarian system. They have airplanes, helicopters, trucks, boats that carry people, goods, and, and supplies all over the world. I've had the privilege of going on an UNHAS flight a couple of times--the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service--and it's, it's incredible where these pilots go and, and the experiences that they have.

And so I think, again, realizing we can't stop conflict, but also making sure that we have access to be able to get food where it's most needed.

[00:08:12] Aaron - Narration: Rebecca's role as Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer is with World Food Program, USA. This organization's mission is to engage US citizens and policymakers in the fight against hunger.

The United States actually has a long tradition of fighting hunger around the world. In 1812, the American government sent five ships with flour to earthquake survivors in Venezuela. In 1845, we provided ships to deliver food from Catholic Charities to the potato famine in Ireland. The US led massive relief efforts after both of the World Wars. This long tradition was embodied officially when the UN World Food Program was created in 1961, and delivered on its first mission just months later, following an earthquake in Iran.

[00:08:59] Rebecca Middleton: The United States has a long history of supporting global food needs around the world, really going back well over a hundred years. It's, I, I joke that, you know, U.S. support for, for global hunger is almost like mom and apple pie. And I think it really started after World War II and then took, took more structure in the early sixties with the formation of USAID and the World Food Program. Those two things started in, in the early sixties with, with leadership from President Kennedy at the time.

But really have continued to position the U.S. As a leader in addressing global hunger issues through Republican and Democratic administrations really consistently over the intervening decades. It's one of the reasons I'm really drawn to the issue is that it's a unifying issue. There are, there are interests, whether they're moral, tied to agriculture, industry, tied to an understanding of US food assistance as a form of soft power, as a stabilizing force, that really bring members of Congress together who may not agree on anything else.

And just to let you know some of what it looks like when this food assistance goes into the field, a lot of the food assistance that is provided by taxpayer funding is in the form of in-kind assistance. So these are products that are grown in the United States by U.S. Farmers that are then purchased, shipped, and packaged and distributed in countries that don't have functioning markets. So think about Sudan right now, for instance. There is a huge gap. People cannot go to a market or a store and buy what they need to feed themselves and their families. And so this is a way to address that type of a need.

And there are amazing images of packages of food that have the American flag and say gift of the American people on them. And, and very often it'll say where the product is grown, whether it's, you know, corn, soy blend, or wheat, or rice. There is no better diplomacy for the United States than that food rolling in on trucks and, and focusing the flag to feed them and their families.

[00:11:03] Aaron - Narration: Despite its importance, the issue of foreign aid, especially food aid, is often misunderstood by citizens. Many Americans mistakenly believe that a huge chunk of the federal budget goes to international assistance. The highest it's ever been was actually in 1963 when our food aid programs first started. And at that time, it was only 4.3% of the federal budget. For the last couple decades, it's hovered around 1%. For such a relatively small investment, the return in terms of global goodwill, stability, and even economic growth is enormous. Unfortunately, persistent myths and misinformation, amplified by some of the media, can distort the public's understanding and make it harder to maintain political support for these life-saving programs.

[00:11:53] Rebecca Middleton: I think it's such an important issue that sometimes, sometimes gets distorted. You know, in polls. Some people think that we spend up to 25% of our, our expenses as a country on international assistance. It's actually less than 1%, and food is just a fraction of that as well. And so for such a small investment, relatively speaking, the benefit that we get as far as goodwill around the world is really amazing.

[00:12:18] Aaron - Narration: Getting people to donate is one thing, but getting the Federal Government to act is something else entirely. How did Rebecca find her way into this role to convince America that it should help eliminate global hunger? She double majored in English and Political Science at Mary Washington University in Virginia, but didn't really know what she wanted to do with those degrees. An interest in policy and lawmaking led her to a job as an intern on Capitol Hill in D.C. With her local member of Congress.

Although she started as a lowly staff assistant, it was her foot in the door to learn firsthand how law and policy are made.

[00:12:55] Aaron - Interview: Can we reflect a bit on, on policy? There are two ways that people see policy. One is they see sort of the elegance, this is the way it ought to be. I think those are mostly academics, right? But also just sort of casual observers of why don't things work this way? And then there're the people who work in trying to actually establish policy and it's so complicated and often quite messy and imperfect in so many ways.

[00:13:19] Rebecca Middleton: Yeah. Well I, I, you know, it's always funny because you take, you know, a government class and you see those beautiful flow charts on how a bill becomes a law or the Schoolhouse Rock, "I'm just a bill, a lonely old bill, sitting here on Capitol Hill." That's not how it works. It is a very messy process. I think what drew me to it was the ability to have impact at scale to make people safer, make lives better, you know, open up paths for opportunity for, for individuals.

I think what makes it messy is also what makes it work, and that's the human aspect of it. You know, folks are coming at it with different philosophies, viewpoints, theories of change, but I think once people align and say, we've got this same goal that we're trying to accomplish, and let's have a conversation and build relationships and put some things aside and move toward a goal. I think relationships are absolutely the most important part of policymaking if you ask me, because that's where you can find ways to the solution that, that may not be what you set out to accomplish in the first place, but really is the best way to get there.

[00:14:23] Aaron - Narration: Rebecca worked her way up from being a staff assistant to being a legislative assistant. In the House of Representatives, a legislative assistant actually has a pretty big portfolio. She had giant areas like defense, agriculture, healthcare, and technology, and they all came under her purview. She then spent some years after that, as a private lobbyist helping organizations forward their policy goals through Congress.

It was during this time that Rebecca felt pulled to shift her career to something closer to her heart.

She thought back on her formative years when global hunger was a cause that inspired her way back in forth grade. And over the years as an adult, she had been active in supporting local food banks. But the fight against hunger called to her.

[00:15:08] Rebecca Middleton: I just happened upon a job listing. For an organization I had never heard of called the Alliance to End Hunger, and they were looking for chief operating officer. I read the job description. I said, I, I meet about half of these criteria. You know, most women will not apply for a job unless they feel like they meet 90% or more of the criteria, whereas typically most men will apply if they feel like they meet 50% or more. And I said, well, let, let's just go for this.

[00:15:31] Aaron - Narration: It just so happened that the executive director of the Alliance to End Hunger was a former congressman named Tony Hall, and Hall was a close friend of her former congressional boss, Frank Wolf.

[00:15:43] Rebecca Middleton: So I was getting ready to, to put my application in, and I called the chief of staff before Frank Wolf, who's a friend of mine. I said, "Dan, can I come in? I've got something to chat with you about." It didn't say what it was. It could have been a client issue. It could have been my parents who are constituents, you know, weren't getting their Federal retirement check or something like that. I walk in the office and before I can even open my mouth, Dan said, "Hey, Tony Hall's looking for somebody. Are you interested?" I, I said, "Dan, that's what I'm here to talk to you about."

And it was, it was one of those moments in life. And you know, I, I am, I'm a spiritual person. I'm a Catholic. I, you know, I believe very much in God, but I think usually as, sort as God's role in our lives, we, we look backwards and we see where it's happened in the past. This, this experience of transitioning to work for the Alliance was one of those where in real time it was almost like there were bright flashing, neon signs saying, go in this direction. I, I, Dan, Dan passed my resume along. I also formally applied for the job, had an interview, and I met with Tony Hall on a rainy Friday at a Starbucks and he offered me the job.

And you know, I'm not gonna lie, it was a significant pay cut over what I was making as a lobbyist. But he said, "You know, think about this. Talk to your husband about it, pray about it, and let me know on Monday."

And that Sunday at church, it was, it was during Lent. It was Transfiguration Sunday and the homily was all about, "Is God calling you to use your time, talent skills for more of a vocation in your life?" And I was sitting there going, I'd already decided I was gonna take this job, but just to put, you know, a little more emphasis on it tha thanks. Thanks for that, Father. And it was the best move I could have made it. It was transformational for me. I think it had a really positive impact on the organization. And it's, I guess it's been almost 12 years now, which is hard to believe. This space is not easy work. It is challenging work. I'm certainly not bored, but it truly feels more like a vocation than a job.

[00:17:42] Aaron - Narration: I love that story because it shows how those providential moments really come sometimes out of nowhere, and they just have so much power when they arrive. After some time with the Alliance to End Hunger, Rebecca had the opportunity to join World Food Program USA, where she manages a large portfolio centered on persuasion.

A big part of her job is lobbying Congress to support international food relief. How do you fit hunger into the many priorities of people in Congress?

[00:18:13] Rebecca Middleton: There are 535 members of Congress. They're 100 members of Senate, 435 members of the House of Representatives, and each one has issues that they're interested in. Some are really interested in national security, some are really interested in agriculture, some are really interested in healthcare. And so what the team here does and also our partners in the NGO community as a whole, we look at each individual office and say, where is their focus? Where are they interested? And we enter through that lens.

So if somebody, if it's a member from Kansas, we go in talking about the tie to U.S. Agriculture. If it's somebody who's on the armed services or foreign relations or foreign affairs committee, we go in talking about how this makes the United States safer, stronger, and more prosperous. If it's somebody who's interested in children's issues, we talk about school feeding or the tie to childhood nutrition and the benefit that that brings throughout the, their lives. And when you meet them where they already are focused, that's a, a way to, to get that shared value and alignment.

But having that starting point in a conversation where somebody's focused makes it much more successful than having a standard playbook that you run for every office. That would be the worst thing you could do.

[00:19:23] Aaron - Interview: How do you respond to the objection that we shouldn't be helping internationally until we help our own people.

[00:19:31] Rebecca Middleton: I love to approach it as an "and". I think that we need to be doing both. We work closely, my family does with our local food pantry in spite of living in a very rich county in Arlington, Virginia. There, there's tremendous need there because housing costs takes such a high percentage of people's income that sometimes food goes by the wayside.

But then we also have a responsibility globally. And it is in our interest. There's a reason why members of Congress and individuals interested in national security and global stability are interested in global hunger issues. There's, there's definitely a tie there. And it's much more affordable to provide foreign assistance in the form of food than it is to provide military support.

[00:20:14] Aaron - Interview: How do average everyday people help in a way that is meaningful when it comes to food insecurity around the world?

[00:20:21] Rebecca Middleton: I think because the issue of hunger has been around as long as time, that sometimes it can feel overwhelming. And no one individual is going to end hunger, but one individual can help address hunger and help meet the needs of a person, a family, a community, and, and there are lots of ways to do that.

At the hyperlocal level, of course, supporting local food bank and making a donation, volunteering, but also at a sort of systems level using your voice for advocacy. And I, I'd say that using that term fairly broadly. So I think one piece of it is educating yourself. On issues around hunger. What does hunger look like in your community? What does hunger look like around the country? And what does hunger look like around the world? And then educating those around you saying, "Hey, you know, did you know that there's a famine in Sudan right now?"

And I go back and I think about the experience that I had as a child. And I think whether you were in Provo or you were in Washington DC or if you were in Manhattan, Kansas, if you stop 10 people on the street and ask them if they knew if there was a famine in Ethiopia, at least eight or nine of them would say yes because everybody was getting access to the same news channels. In those same cities, if you stop 10 people on the street right now and ask them if they knew there was a famine in Sudan, I'd be surprised if more than two or three knew that.

And so I think we all have a responsibility, those of us that are paying attention to these issues, just to let our friends and family know what's going on in the world. And then also to let your policy makers know that you care. You know, the U.S. Is, is an incredibly generous donor, both of the in-kind assistance and also cash assistance for where markets are working. And letting your members of Congress know that this is something you care about, that you think it's a, a really valuable and important contribution from the U.S. Going back decades, some could even make the case centuries, and we want them to continue to, to uphold that for whatever reason ties to you personally. That's really important.

The other thing you can do is also contribute. I think some folks say, well, you know, it's such a big issue. I only have so much to give. It doesn't take much to make a difference in a person's life. And I know that can sound a little bit trite, but it really is true. Whether it's $5 or $50 or $5,000, that means that there are people that will get food that wouldn't have otherwise. The need far exceeds the resources available to address it, and so anything that you can do as an individual from a a financial perspective really does make a difference.

The more of those things you do in tandem, the better. But if you can pick just one, whichever you have time for, you have space for, you, have capacity for, do it, because it really will make a difference.

[00:22:59] Aaron - Interview: We live in a time when human suffering is just constantly paraded before our eyeballs. Even more than just donor fatigue, it's just empathy fatigue that people experience when it relates to human suffering. How do you deal with that in your work? You're more acutely attuned to the scale of human suffering around the world, just related to hunger alone, which I think can be overwhelming. How do you cope with the potential overwhelm that can come in doing this kind of work?

[00:23:25] Rebecca Middleton: I, I really appreciate the question. That's such a, such a human question that I, I think we need to talk about more just generally because it is a lot. If you look just at global hunger issues, you had the Ukraine crisis, you had Afghanistan crisis, Sudan, Yemen, gaza, Haiti, and it just feels like it's just piling up and more and more.

And, and you're right. In this line of work, we do have to pay attention to what's going on and read these reports and know that there are human beings, children of God that are attached to these numbers. I think I just remember the story of the starfish. I, I think many folks are familiar with this. Two people were walking down a beach together, and there are all of these starfish that have been stranded as the tide has gone out thousands and thousands of starfish. And one of the people says, "Well, how on earth can I make a difference? There's so many, there's no way that we can get them all back in the water. And the other person picks up one, tosses it back in the ocean and said, "It made a difference to that one."

And I, I think that's part of it, is realizing no one of us is going to solve all of this. But if all of us can do a little part in whatever matches up with our job, our skills, our resources, our networks, that it can all add up to a really significant impact.

[00:24:43] Aaron - Narration: Like we talked about before, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of global hunger, but there are real reasons for hope. In the past few decades, the world has made remarkable progress. Most people don't even know that in their lifetimes, extreme poverty across the world has been cut in half.

The direst predictions of global starvation from the fifties and sixties were averted thanks to incredible feats of science and political will. If we want to have more hope, we ought to look at what we've already accomplished.

[00:25:17] Rebecca Middleton: When I switched into the anti-hunger space, this is about 12 years ago now, my daughter was seven going on eight at the time.

And the switch in jobs was going to require a bit of a shift in our family's schedule. And we talked to the kids about it at dinner. And I was tucking her in that night and she said, "So mom, your job's going to be to try to end hunger." And I said, "Yes, that's, that's what I'm working on."

And she paused for a minute. She said, "Well, mom, if you do your job then if you end hunger, your job won't exist." And all I could think about was, wow, you know, we all need to have the optimism of an 8-year-old.

And she's almost 20 now, and, and she know, I tell this story and I think she rolls her eyes a little bit, but I asked her, I said, "Sarah, you know, do you still, do you still feel that way? That this is possible? That if all of us bring whatever we can, you know, big or small to this problem, that we could end hunger?"

And she said, "Yeah, mom." She said, "Why not? We've done a lot of amazing things as, as human beings, and if we put our mind to something, it's absolutely something you can accomplish."

[00:26:23] Aaron - Narration: As we wrap up this episode, you might be wondering how to translate concern into action, how to find your own path to meaningful work and contribution. Rebecca's story offers some valuable lessons for anyone hoping to make a difference, whether in hunger relief or any cause that matters to you. Here's what she's learned about building a life and career of impact.

[00:26:46] Rebecca Middleton: I think the thing that I always mention when I'm talking to college students, or or, or just young adults, young professionals, is think about what matters to you. Think about what's meaningful to you, and take opportunities to move in that direction, whether it's in your personal life, your professional life, or ideally both.

This job that I'm in is Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer at the World Food Program USA didn't exist when I was in college. I'm not even sure the World Food Program USA existed when I was graduating college. So there's no way that I could have set out at age 22 and said, "Okay, I'm gonna chart my path to get to this job."

But what I did at each stage of my career was say, what opportunities does this open up? What opportunities does this close? How does this opportunity move me closer to something that's really meaningful work? A lot of times when you start at something feels like a job and, and sometimes you need to do that job so that you build the skills or the relationships or the experience that you need. But at some point, you will probably have the opportunity to meld that with something that you really care about. Those are the moments, those are the moments of enlightenment, grace, joy that I encourage folks to embrace.

[00:27:56] Aaron - Narration: At the beginning of Les Miserables, the hardened convict Jean Valjean had an experience with Bishop Myriel that showed him more generosity than he believed could exist in the entire world. Former prisoners like him were outcasts of society, so he responded with amazement.

Let me quote this passage from the book: said Valjean, "Monsieur, you are good. You do not despise me. You received me into your house. You light your candles for me. Yet I have not concealed from you whence I come and that I am an unfortunate man."

The bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house. It is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer. You are hungry and thirsty. You are welcome."

I'm very grateful to Rebecca Middleton for spending time in this interview with me. I hope you've come away with ideas for what you can do next to aid the fight against hunger around the world. We have links in the show notes for where you can get involved.

How to Help is hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller, and produced in collaboration with BYU Radio. My thanks to Erica Price, Kenny Mears, and Blake Morris for their help with this episode. Scoring and mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes and if you haven't subscribed yet to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

Disagreement and the Common Good • Judge Thomas Griffith, DC Circuit Court of Appeals• s03e05
Podcast

Disagreement and the Common Good • Judge Thomas Griffith, DC Circuit Court of Appeals• s03e05

Summary

What if disagreement could actually unite us? Judge Thomas Griffith, retired DC Circuit Court judge, joins us to explore the Constitution’s genius: its embrace of disagreement as a path to the common good. Judge Griffith shares personal stories from his judicial career, including his bipartisan support for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and dispels the myth of “partisans in robes.” He challenges listeners to defend the Constitution through humility, compromise, and local action, and offers hope for those discouraged by political division.

About Our Guest

Judge Thomas B. Griffith was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by President George W. Bush in 2005, and served until his retirement in 2020. He is currently a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute, and Special Counsel at Hunton Andrews Kurth. He is also engaged in rule of law initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe. 

Earlier in his career, Judge Griffith served as General Counsel of Brigham Young University and as Senate Legal Counsel, the nonpartisan chief legal officer of the U.S. Senate. In 2021, President Biden appointed him to the President’s Commission on the Supreme Court. He is also a co-author of Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Biden Won and Trump Lost the 2020 Presidential Election. 

He holds a BA from Brigham Young University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Useful Links

Judge Griffith's Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_B._Griffith

Braver Angels – Bridging Political Divides Through Civil Discourse:

https://braverangels.org

Judge Griffith's Letter in Support of Justice Jackson:

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2.26.22%20-%20Judge%20Thomas%20Griffith%20Support%20for%20Jackson.pdf

Judge Griffith's 2012 Speech at BYU, "The Hard Work of Understanding the Constitution":

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/thomas-b-griffith/the-hard-work-of-understanding-the-constitution/

Pleasant Pictures Music

Join the Pleasant Pictures Music Club to get unlimited access to high-quality, royalty-free music for all of your projects. Use the discount code HOWTOHELP15 for 15% off your first year.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Thomas Griffith: I was doing a, a program for judges and academics at Oxford, and we're going out to dinner one night, and I dislike it when people bring their cell phones to dinner, but I had mine on the table. And all of a sudden it started to buzz, buzz, buzz and I asked "Andrew, do you mind if I look at this? This is unusual."

So I, I, I picked it up and looked at it and um, and I was getting all these text messages, that President Biden had just announced that he was nominating Katanji Brown Jackson, to the Supreme Court, and that in his statement that he was quoting me, he was reading from my, from my letter and that was, that was bizarre.

[00:00:43] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller. And this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode five, Disagreement and the Common Good. Before we begin, let me just say that your kind words and positive reviews mean the world to us. To those who have either taken a few minutes to rate the show or to share how to help with friends, you've done the thing that helps the podcast more than anything else.

And if you haven't done that yet, well now you know what to do. Thank you for the generous support and encouragement.

These days, it's easy and reasonable to feel like the US is a nation that's barely holding itself together. Our disagreements seem more bitter and difficult than they've been in any of our lifetimes. I know I 've felt that during the last few years especially. And if you've felt it too can I tell you about a remarkable tradition that's more than a hundred years old now?

Every year since 1893 on George Washington's birthday, a chosen US senator has stood to read aloud Washington's farewell address to the nation. And it's not a short address to deliver, often taking nearly an hour of uninterrupted speaking. After the reading, the senator who had the honor inscribes their name into a leather-bound book that now holds over a century of signatures, a tangible testament to the continued urgency of Washington's message.

His farewell address wasn't a speech. It was published in newspapers in 1796. This was a deliberate choice so he could reach as many Americans as possible. Also, Alexander Hamilton helped him write it. At the time, Washington was nearing the end of his second term as president, and his decision not to seek a third term was made in spite of being so widely loved by his fellow citizens.

Back then, a president could serve more than twice, but the demands of the presidency were simply exhausting. In fact, he revealed in the same address that he had considered stepping down after his first term, but stayed on out of his sense of duty to a nation that was still finding its footing.

The address offered more than a farewell. It was a roadmap for the nation's future. He talks about avoiding foreign entanglements and government debt, but central to his message was the importance of unity. Washington emphasized, quote, "It is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness."

Washington urged Americans to see above regional, political and personal divisions to preserve the union, warning that internal conflicts could undermine the nation's strength.

This tradition might feel meaningless or even hopeless to make any real difference in today's political pain. But consider that the first time the Senate did this reading was in 1862. It was then an appeal to unity during a time of civil war. My guest for this episode is Judge Thomas Griffith, retired judge from the DC Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, widely regarded as the second most important court in America. The DC Circuit Court is where most cases come if the US government is itself a party. The decisions of this court commonly impact the entire nation.

In this episode, Judge Griffith is going to teach us how to disagree while being united. Disagreement is essential to our legal system, of course, but Griffith will persuade you that it's essential to the Constitution itself. In fact, the duality of disagreement and unity are its most essential features

[00:04:30] Thomas Griffith: And the Constitution was designed to encourage, disagreement. It, we want disagreement. I, I don't trust a decision, any decision from anybody, that isn't the product of disagreement. Disagreement is vital.

[00:04:50] Aaron - Narration: Prior to being a Judge, Griffith was a lawyer, a university general counsel, and also the chief legal officer for the US Senate. Let's start the episode though, with the beginning of his judicial career. Like with every federal judge of required a confirmation process, in the same Senate body that has read Washington's farewell address for over a century.

Despite the unifying spirit recommended by our first president, judicial confirmations have a reputation for being especially grueling and political. That in Judge Griffith's nomination turned out not to be the case.

[00:05:23] Aaron - Interview: What was the experience like going through? A Senate confirmation. Yeah. To the federal bench.

[00:05:29] Thomas Griffith: So mine was, uh, a little unusual and little, uh, easier than most for one reason. For four years, I had been the chief lawyer for the United States Senate, a nonpartisan position, and so I had gotten to know the Senate leadership pretty well. We had been in the trenches together, senate leadership on both sides of the aisle. And so I got the benefit of being like family to, to them.

So that's not to say there wasn't some controversy surrounding it because I, the Democrats were in a mode of filibustering, president George W. Bush's nominees to the DC Circuit. A very distinguished pate lawyer in Washington, DC, named Miguel Estrada, who was a first generation immigrant from Central America, just a great American success story, decided to withdraw from the process. President Bush had to decide, okay, who do I nominate to replace Miguel Estrada? And, and I, I ended up being the replacement to the chagrin of some and the pleasure of others.

And they all the, the primary reason for that was that I had these relationships with the Democratic leadership of the Senate. What I had to go through was nothing in comparison to what others had to go through. So I'm not certain that my confirmation process is the, the, the norm because of the, because of those personal relationships.

[00:06:56] Aaron - Narration: Reports from longstanding members of Congress all have a common and very sad theme. The collegiality that Griffith saw as the Senate's lawyer has been dissolving steadily over time. Friends across the aisle are rarer than ever, but personal relationships are essential to compromise. It's much harder to persuade people that you don't know.

Griffith's career has been one of building these relationships, sometimes against the trend as when he endorsed Supreme Court Justice Keji Brown Jackson's nomination. Nominees to the Supreme Court faced stiff political opposition to be confirmed, but it wasn't always that way.

[00:07:33] Aaron - Interview: This history of building relationships, uh, across the political divide seems to have also played out when you introduced Justice Jackson. You made news for this because you were appointed by a Republican president and now you were doing the introduction for a democratically nominated Supreme Court Justice.

[00:07:52] Thomas Griffith: There was a time when that was, that sort of move was completely non-controversial, right? That used to be the norm. I can't remember the exact numbers, but what Justice Scalia was confirmed was it 98 to nothing, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 96 to 3.

And so that was what I would call the good old days. So there was a time when that was not controversial, but as you pointed out, no, it was controversial in, uh, this time.

So let me tell you the story. So I, I know Justice Jackson, she, um, was a trial court judge, a district court judge in the DC circuit when I was a court of appeals judge. And, and I got to know her and anyone who meets her discovers she's a very pleasant person. She's just delightful. She's the type of person you want to have lunch with. She's kind and thoughtful, all these wonderful virtues.

I disagreed with her on some legal matters. I thought her approach was mistaken, but I had no question that this was a person was trying to apply the law impartially. We just had a difference of opinion on a couple of occasions about what the law required. That seems to me completely unremarkable. That happens all the time.

[00:09:08] Aaron - Narration: Shortly after Judge Griffith retired from the DC circuit, Katanji Brown Jackson was nominated to that same court by President Biden.

When that happened, Jackson asked Griffith to write a letter of support, which he did gladly, and she was confirmed. The year following Griffith was at dinner with friends at Oxford when his phone started buzzing with a flood of text messages. President Biden had just announced the nomination of Jackson to the US Supreme Court, and in his announcement, Biden quoted the previous letter of praise written by Judge Griffith.

[00:09:41] Thomas Griffith: She then asked shortly before her confirmation hearing if I would be willing to introduce her. "I'd be honored to." She said, "Okay. You'll be hearing from the White House Council in a day or so about the logistics of that, what happens."

[00:09:55] Aaron - Narration: Judge Griffith eventually found himself in the hearing room for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here's a clip from his introduction for Justice Jackson.

[00:10:05] Thomas Griffith - Senate Testimony: Chairman Durbin, ranking Member Grassley and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I come here today as a retired federal appeals court judge with 15 years of experience on the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. I come here as a jurist appointed by Republican President George W. Bush. And I come here as someone who understands that there are few greater responsibilities under the constitution than serving as a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. It takes a jurist of high character, keen intellect, deep legal knowledge, and broad experience to ensure that the judiciary plays its unique role under the Constitution, to uphold the rule of law impartially and not to be in the words of Justice Steven Breyer "partisans in robes." Today I have the high honor to introduce Judge Katanji Brown Jackson, a jurist who has all of those qualities.

[00:11:08] Aaron - Narration: Judge Griffith noted in his introduction that this moment used to be what he called "regular order," where a judge appointed by a Republican president would support a judge chosen by a Democratic one.

[00:11:20] Thomas Griffith - Senate Testimony: Now some think it noteworthy that a former judge appointed by a Republican president would enthusiastically endorse a nomination to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president. That reaction is a measure of the dangerous hyper-partisanship that has seeped into every nook and cranny of our nation's life, and against which the framers of the Constitution warned us.

There should be nothing unusual about my support for a highly qualified nominee who has demonstrated through her life's work her commitment to the rule of law, and an impartial judiciary.

[00:11:57] Thomas Griffith: Yeah, and it, it was news. It made news. I will tell you, after the hearing, I was approached by several senators on the committee, on both sides of the aisle, to express dissatisfaction with what has become of the confirmation process. Because it's become so partisan and, and so political, and they cheered me in my comments and encouraged me to keep, to keep pushing for this sort of, of approach.

[00:12:32] Aaron - Interview: It's a fantastic story. Yeah. I love that.

[00:12:35] Thomas Griffith: And, and some of Justice Jackson's approaches and opinions she's written, I, they wouldn't be the ones that I wrote. But again, I think the Supreme Court's a better place. I think the United States is a better place for having her voice and, and her approach there.

[00:12:49] Aaron - Narration: The overwhelming perspective of everyday Americans is that federal judges are simply party politicians in robes. I asked Judge Griffith what he would say to those who believe this.

[00:12:59] Thomas Griffith: I think, uh, they'd be surprised and pleasantly surprised to find out that judges are not partisans in robes.

The, the, the phrase that, and I'll state it this way. So my experience was on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit for 15 years. And in 15 years on the DC Circuit, working with 11 other judges in hundreds of cases, I never once saw any of my colleagues make a decision that I thought was in any way painted by their political bias.

Now we're all appointed by different presidents. All of us are products of the political system. Never once did I see any of my colleagues, and hopefully I didn't do it either, cast a decision based on what, what we thought the best result was, political result was. Judges just don't think that way. Sure, you still have your political views and we would talk about those over lunch and stuff. But you just do your level best to keep those views out of your decisions as, as a judge.

And I, it's really inspiring to see people from different political backgrounds put that to one side and try and decide, not what the best outcome is, but what the law requires. And you, and there are times when I disagreed with what the law requires, but you follow the law. You take an oath to do that. You take an oath to be impartial. In my experience, 15 years on the DC circuit, I never once saw anyone who violated that oath.

[00:14:51] Aaron - Narration: This might lead you to misunderstand how disagreement works among judges. Important cases when appealed are often decided by split votes, two to one at the Circuit level, five to four at the Supreme Court level. We often see judges divided up as conservative and liberal, but there are cases where appellate judges side with each other despite political boundaries. What's at stake and where the disagreements lie is over what the law requires.

[00:15:18] Thomas Griffith: Now there's plenty of room for disagreement about all sorts of things. About how do you read a statute, what's the best way to read an act of Congress? Do you read it just according to the words that are there, or do you try and understand what the purpose was? Is there a purpose for the, those, so there's lots of room for disagreement on that. But the disagreements were over how to read a statute, how to interpret the Constitution. They weren't over, "Is this going to help the Rs, or is this going to help the Ds?" And I, I wish American people could see that. Now...

[00:15:52] Aaron - Narration: Why then do Americans see the courts so differently, as just extensions of hyper-partisan politics? It has mostly to do with the hyper-partisans who complain about the courts.

[00:16:04] Thomas Griffith: The problem, of course, is the pundits and politicians characterize our work differently. President Trump famously criticized the decision that went against his administration. And he said "That was an Obama judge." And, uh, in response to that, chief Justice Roberts issued a statement, which was really extraordinary. I, I don't think I've ever seen this in my lifetime, where Chief Justice responds to a criticism of President of the United States where he rebuked that. He said, "We don't have Obama judges or Clinton judges or Bush judges. We have federal judges who are all doing their best to, to apply the law."

[00:16:42] Aaron - Narration: Of course, judges aren't perfect. We have a national history that bears the shame of judicial decisions like Plessy v Ferguson, which upheld segregation as constitutional, or Korematsu v US, which made it legal to put Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II.

But we also have Brown v Board of Education where Plessy was repudiated despite the politics of the moment. Judge Griffith notes that people would be encouraged if they saw how the courts actually worked day-to-day.

[00:17:14] Thomas Griffith: Now, do judges always live up to that standard? No. I'm sure they don't. They fall short. But that's the standard, that's the goal, that's the aspiration. And at least in my experience, uh, that's the reality of it on the DC circuit. I, I wish people could see that because if they did see that, they, I think they would be really inspired. They would say, man, this system is unique, is pretty unique in the world. And it works and people get a fair shot and are treated well and are heard. I think they'd be very encouraged by that.

[00:17:51] Aaron - Narration: Judges ultimately have an obligation to be something that many people have come to see as a weakness in our leaders, the trait of being persuadable you.

[00:18:00] Thomas Griffith: I love the quote it, it's attributed to Oliver Cromwell, I've never done the research to find out if he really said this or not, but the Puritan revolutionary Oliver Cromwell was reported to have said, "I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye might be mistaken." And the cardinal virtue that judges should strive for is humility and to be open to persuasion, as you said.

[00:18:29] Aaron - Narration: The American judicial system is pretty unique in the world, as Judge Griffith said. And its novelty comes down to the genius of the Constitution, where the judicial branch was established as coequal with Congress and the Presidency. But for that position of importance, courts would always be operating under the whims and machinations of people in power.

This is one of the many reasons why defending the Constitution is so critical today, just as it was back when George Washington pled for us to do the same more than 200 years ago. But the Constitution isn't merely an ideal or symbol of patriotism. It's a set of particular ideas and principles that we need to understand and hold onto with all the dedication we can muster.

I asked Judge Griffith what he thinks we need to be doing today to preserve Constitutional government.

[00:19:20] Thomas Griffith: Sure. That's a big question. And first of all, I, I applaud and cheer anyone who wants to defend the Constitution. Because I think the Constitution, it's, it's unique. It defines who we are as a people. We need to be vigilant about, about protecting the Constitution.

I'll use the words of George Washington. George Washington said in, in the transmittal letter, sending the draft Constitution to the Continental Congress. Uh, he said, "This Constitution is the product of that spirit of amity and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political circumstance rendered indispensable."

So the Constitution was created in that sort of spirit, and I believe that it can only continue if we bring those virtues back into the discussion. Sometimes you get your way with a couple of compromises thrown in, and sometimes you don't get your way at all because you lose. The best explanation I heard of this that summarizes this came from a former Utah Supreme Court Justice and current leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints, Dallin Oaks, who said, "On contested issues we should see to moderate and to unify."

That's a pretty good, that's a pretty good approach.

[00:20:59] Aaron - Narration: During our conversation, Judge Griffith highly recommended the new book, American Covenant: How The Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again by Yuval Levin. In his book, Levin makes the case that the Constitution was intended to create a new kind of citizen, one who works by negotiation, bargaining, and compromise.

Levin's argument is that this kind of citizen is made necessary by the limitations placed on majority rule. In many things, even the people in power should have to compromise. Disagreement and compromise make sense if both sides have good reasons for their position, but surely we're not expected to compromise with everyone who disagrees with us.

What about those whose beliefs and ambitions are wrong at a much deeper level?

[00:21:46] Aaron - Interview: How do you recommend the average American think about where is, where, where is truly evil that's worth resisting versus what is open to reconciliation and compromise.

[00:21:56] Thomas Griffith: Yeah. Big question. Big question. So we, it's also pointed out to us that America is unique among nations of the world and that it's, it's founded on some ideas, instead of founded on blood and soil sort of thing. And those ideas are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, right? That's our secular scripture. And the two most fundamental principles are to be an American, means that you're committed to liberty and equality.

Those are abstract concepts. Those are high aspirations. But if you're an American, you gotta be committed to that, right? If you're not, I'm not going to hate you. But I'm sorry, you don't get to sit at the table and help, uh, determine the course of this nation. So therefore, there are some conversations that I'm just not going to have. I, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm not going to invite a Nazi to the table. Uh, no. I, I'm sorry. I'm not going to hate you. Uh, I'm not going to show contempt for you. I will battle your ideas to the day I die, but I'm not going to hate you. But no, you're not going to be part of the, the conversation. You know, there, there is evil out there, but boy, to categorize an idea or a person as evil. Boy, be careful about that.

Right? Be humble about that. And even when we're dealing with evil, I think it's incumbent upon us to do the best we can to understand where is this coming from? Why does this person have these views? And even in studying evil, you may find out that, that there are reasons for why this person has taken these extreme and evil views. And to the extent that we can understand that, then the better we'll be able to combat those truly destructive ideas.

[00:23:50] Aaron - Narration: Social media today is sadly a breeding ground for the wrong kind of citizen, not just for evil, but also for conflict. Social media platforms feed on fear and anger because those emotions keep your attention.

What might help there?

[00:24:07] Thomas Griffith: Stop being on social media, people!

We, we know what's going on! We know what's going on on social media. We know what's going on on cable. We know what's going on on talk radio. This is sounds like the old man saying, stop driving a car, or don't use the internet. But seriously, if you're, if you're consuming information from social media, from cable, and from talk radio, you, we know we're being played, right?

[00:24:37] Aaron - Interview: Yeah.

[00:24:37] Thomas Griffith: We're being played by algorithms. We're being played by revenue dollars, ad dollars. That's what's going on with political views on social media, cable and talk radio. And so, you know, I'm not so naive as to say don't do it at all. I, I, I wish people wouldn't actually, but I'm not that crazy. But realize when you're there, you're being played.

[00:25:00] Aaron - Narration: Because I teach them every day, I like to ask my guest for advice to the rising generation. There is truly a force of good people coming to age in a rough place right now. What should they do with this country that they're inheriting?

[00:25:15] Aaron - Interview: So what advice do you have for them in that regard? Like what, where do you think they should be pointing themselves to have the impact they're looking for?

[00:25:23] Thomas Griffith: First of all, their instincts are right. Their desire to serve is audible. There's so much more to life than economics, right? And, and so any young person who's motivated by a desire to improve the common good the first thing I say to them is, "Bless you! Don't lose that. Don't lose that." Then the question becomes, how do you do it?

In, in our current circumstances, I'm not certain the solution is politics. Politics is a tough world right now. Unfortunately, you're not going to have a lot of role models in the political world, uh, today. But look, look for those. Who are treating their political opponents, not as enemies, but as, as co-laborers in this great democratic enterprise?

For others, I think the real, the real good that's going to be done is locally. I think real change, real meaningful change happens slowly over time, but it typically happens at the local level. At the level of your family, the level of your congregation. If you're a, a person, say in, in the schools that your children attend, the school board, city, county, that's where I think real meaningful change takes place. I'm afraid it's not going to come at the national level. I don't think somebody's going to come riding on a horse, white knight, to, to, to save us from this. It's going to, it's going to come from the local level. And so my encouragement is don't give up on your idealism, but focus on what you can do in your own community, because that's where real, uh, meaningful change over time will, will occur.

[00:27:09] Aaron - Interview: Any parting thoughts for those who are especially discouraged by the political rancor that we're all swimming in?

[00:27:16] Thomas Griffith: Yeah. You have reason to be discouraged. I am too. I am too. So what do you do with that discouragement? We can, uh, retreat to our own shell and watch cable news and just get mad. Or post some sort of invective about our discouragement on social media.

You can do that. That's not helpful. If you're discouraged, the best thing to do is is to work for change at, at, at, at in your life, in the lives of those around you, by modeling the type of, uh, political discourse you'd like to see us have. It turns out social science research shows us that in those very few instances where people do change their mind, that it's typically, um, because of a conversation with a friend.

No, no one changes their mind when they're being yelled at. My, my parting shot, be that type of person and, and hope and pray that, that the model catches on. Try and understand what your fellow citizens are thinking about and what they care about.

[00:28:25] Aaron - Narration: We like to think of our founding fathers as superheroes, philosopher-warriors who somehow had the power to mold an entire nation. But Washington noted in his farewell that he was guilty of many errors in his time as President. Speaking of these failings, he said, "Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend."

Washington also hoped that his faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion In his final address, in his final paragraphs, what Washington asked from his fellow Americans was grace and forgiveness for not doing a better job. If the great George Washington needed grace and forgiveness, surely we do too.

I'm incredibly grateful to my friend, Judge Thomas Griffith for spending time with us. How to Help is a production of BYU Radio and hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller. This episode is produced by Erica Price with help from Blake Morris and Kenny Mears. Scoring and mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club.

For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes. And if you haven't subscribed to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player. As always, thank you so much for listening.

Deborah Tucker Headshot
Podcast

Ending Domestic Violence • Deborah Tucker, co-founder of the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence • s03e04

Summary

Domestic violence affects millions, yet most people don’t know how to help when someone they care about is being abused. Deborah Tucker has spent over five decades fighting to end violence against women, from co-founding one of the first shelters in the US to spearheading the Violence Against Women Act. In this episode, you’ll learn the five essential things to say to someone experiencing abuse, why we must work with people who use violence (not just victims), and how individual action connects to ending domestic violence altogether. Deborah’s mix of disarming charm and deep expertise shows why she’s been so effective in this fight—and how you can be too.

About Our Guest

Deborah D. Tucker is a pioneering advocate who has dedicated over five decades to ending violence against women and children. Her journey began in 1974 as a volunteer with Texas’s first rape crisis center, launching a career that would transform domestic violence response nationwide.

Tucker co-founded and led the Austin Center for Battered Women from 1977-1982, then became the first Executive Director of the Texas Council on Family Violence, where she served until 1996. Under her leadership, the Texas Council grew into one of the country’s largest coalitions with over 50 staff members, and launched the National Domestic Violence Hotline, providing 24/7 crisis support nationwide.

Tucker’s national influence includes serving as founding Chair of the National Network to End Domestic Violence during the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 and working on subsequent reauthorizations. In 1998, Tucker co-founded the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence with Sarah M. Buel, creating an organization that provides training and consultation across the country. Tucker also co-chaired the U.S. Department of Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence from 2000-2003.

Her numerous honors include induction into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in 2014, the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration’s Alfred M. Zuck Public Courage Award in 2012, and the Sunshine Lady Award in 2008. Currently serving as President of NCDSV’s Board of Directors, Tucker continues her lifelong mission to create safer communities for all.

Useful Links

National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence:


https://www.ncdsv.org/

National Domestic Violence Hotline:


https://www.thehotline.org/

Five Things to Say to Victims of Domestic Violence: https://www.ncdsv.org/uploads/1/4/2/2/142238266/2023-10-01-thefivethingstosay-adultvictim-puv-child.pdf

CDC Information on Domestic Violence:

https://www.cdc.gov/intimate-partner-violence/about/index.html

The Violence Against Women Act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Against_Women_Act

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Debby Tucker: My dad had gone to college for while, but my mother never went to college, and both of them were determined to make sure that I went. But, I didn't know why I was going necessarily. I just knew that for them it was an important next step. And I had such a limited view that I thought that women could only be a nurse or a teacher.

So I was like, I don't wanna be a nurse. You know, some of them have to be there at like seven o'clock in the morning. That sounds horrible. School starts at 8:30, I guess I'll go the teacher route. That's how sophisticated my choice was.

[00:00:45] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller, and this is How to Help: a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode four: Ending Domestic Violence.

If you've been enjoying How to Help, then let me tell you the best way that you can help this podcast to grow. More than any number of followers or money spent on advertising or marketing, what works the best is to give it a rating in your podcast app of choice. And when there's an episode that you love, share it with a friend. There's really no substitute for those two things. So thank you for supporting the show.

As you've been listening to How to Help, you've likely noticed that I typically open each episode by setting the context with a story or some interesting piece of history related to the topic. This episode is different precisely because of the topic. Although I won't share any detailed stories of abuse, if this is a topic that's personally difficult for you, then you may want to look over the transcript for this episode to see if listening to it will be helpful.

If you haven't personally experienced domestic abuse, then this episode will definitely be helpful to you. Because even if you haven't experienced it personally, the odds are extremely high that someone you know has been abused, and I hope by listening to this you can be more helpful to victims of abuse and even to the people who use violence. If you don't think you know someone in either of these categories, you are almost certainly wrong.

[00:02:20] Debby Tucker: Oh, absolutely. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's not something that's confined to any one population or strata or whatever. One of my ways of saying is it goes from house coats to fur coats.

[00:02:36] Aaron - Narration: My guest today is Deborah Tucker. She's the co-founder and board president of the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence. She was also its executive director for 17 years.

You won't find anyone with more expertise on what people individually and society together can do to end domestic violence. She helped start one of the first ever victim shelters in the US. She even spearheaded the campaign to make the Violence Against Women Act into federal law.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Throughout this episode, you're going to learn things you never knew. You'll also quickly see why Debby's mix of disarming charm and deep expertise have made her so effective in fighting domestic abuse. Her start in this fight came when she was just a young college student.

[00:03:21] Debby Tucker: I fell into it in the way that a lot of people do, as a volunteer. I read an article in the Daily Texan about a group coming together to discuss sexual assault and the problems that were occurring on campus where people were being assaulted, and if you had any interest or willingness to participate, come on down kind of a thing. And I'm not sure why I latched onto it, but I absolutely did. I had like roommates at the dorm who talked about being attacked on a date or somebody in one of my classes who had obviously been harmed and asking her if I could do anything to help, and she just burst into tears and said, "I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go."

[00:04:18] Aaron - Narration: Debby began as a volunteer, working on a 24-hour phone hotline for victims to report abuse and get help. She quickly became a key volunteer and then an employee. This is something she did while she was still quite young, but too many people in positions to help were just doing a bad job.

[00:04:36] Debby Tucker: We were way in over our head. I think I was 21, and trying to understand the complexities of what people were going through. All the players, the emergency room staff, the law enforcement people.

You know, ministers were a source of great support many times, and people wanted to talk to their minister, but that didn't always turn out. Sometimes they would say the same-old, same-old things that people were saying that were very hurtful. "What did you do to make him mad? He beat you up because you did what now?" And not understanding. So anywhere you look, people can play a role and it can be helpful or it can because somebody to retreat.

And maybe it takes them another year before they reach out and ask for any kind of help.

[00:05:35] Aaron - Narration: As the hotline grew, they quickly realized that they needed to respond urgently to the needs of some of the women who called in. And this gave rise to what might have been the first ever domestic violence shelter in the United States.

[00:05:48] Debby Tucker: I can't say that it was all by ourselves that we figured that out. We had located the

Austin Rape Crisis Center in the Episcopal Seminary. They had offered us, uh, two rooms where we could operate the Austin Rape Crisis Center. And we just accidentally started taking people in to what's called Rather House, this beautiful building that visiting priest used when they were coming to the seminary for a, a visit or a program or whatever.

And one of those priests came downstairs to the kitchen and found us sitting there with a family around the table and he said, "I'm glad that you're doing this, but I'm embarrassed that it never occurred to me that we would have company at seven o'clock in the morning if this is going to be happening.

Maybe we need a, a house or a place that we designate. Uh, for folks to stay."

Of course, what were we thinking? So to his credit, we sat back and said, yeah, we're getting people who need to get away from someone who's actively harming them and their children, and we need a place for them to be safe.

[00:07:10] Aaron - Narration: Today there are over 2000 domestic violence shelters in the US.

This is still too few though, as many of them operate at capacity and have to turn away women and families in need. One study in 2015 found that in a single day, 12,197 people had to be turned away from shelters due to a lack of resources. For the Austin Rape Crisis Center, the increased support also came with increased demand, more than the rather house could fit.

[00:07:42] Debby Tucker: And I think about those early days of opening the shelter itself. We didn't know how we were going to accomplish that. And I got a call from our city manager who said, "Deborah, I want you to be in my office at eight o'clock on Monday morning. I have somebody I want you to meet." And I'm sitting there thinking the city manager wants me to come meet somebody.

What did we do wrong?

[00:08:09] Aaron - Narration: Yeah.

[00:08:11] Debby Tucker: Who did we step up with in a bad way? And so I stewed all weekend long. And I go into his office and there's this gentleman with him and I sit down and they explain to me that he is the program chair for the Home Builders Association, and that he saw a segment on the news about us wanting to establish a shelter and that we were working with the city and trying to get a building and blah, blah, blah.

And he said. "We'd like to build you a building."

[00:08:49] Aaron - Narration: John McFall, who led the Home Builders Association, organized it masterfully. Debby said it was like a barn raising, and the final construction cost was just $50,000 for a building that was actually worth $300,000. Because this was a new thing there was a lot to learn, like how to keep the residents safe.

[00:09:09] Debby Tucker: I had the experience one day of somebody pulling up, putting a rifle on his door frame and pointing it to us. And so everybody in the house was saying, "Okay, Deborah, you're the director. You get the big bucks." I think I was making 13,000 a year. "You need to go out there and talk to this guy.

[00:09:34] Aaron - Interview: Oh my gosh.

[00:09:35] Debby Tucker: "And see what he wants."

And so I went out and said to him, "We've got this really nice bench over here under this tree, and you and I can sit down together for a minute and kind of figure out why you're here, what you need, how we can make this situation better." And so he did. He put down the rifle, he got out of the car, he came over, he sat next to me on the bench.

And we just began to talk. And he was basically there because he knew that his wife and children were in the shelter and he wanted them back. And so I had a conversation with him about what did he think would make them feel safe about coming back. Would driving up with a rifle encourage them to feel safe enough to come home?

Meanwhile, everybody else had called the police, and the police showed up and confiscated the rifle and had a conversation with him about trespassing and. All that kinda stuff. And you know, we're like, okay, so anything and everything is probably going to happen.

[00:10:49] Aaron - Narration: Over the years, as more and more groups started offering victim services, there was an increased need for national collaboration. By this point, Debby was a leader in Texas in the fight against domestic abuse, and she was invited to participate in collaboration meetings in Washington DC. Groups from all over the country were invited. As you might expect, there were strong regional and cultural disagreements in how everyone saw the problem.

Even the little differences came to the surface,

[00:11:17] Debby Tucker: And one of the things that somebody said after I had spoken a little bit was, "What are you doing wearing makeup?" And I said, "I come from the south. You're not dressed. If you don't have on makeup, I'm not going to come to a meeting with anybody without some lipstick."

"Y'all may not have to worry about that, but we do." And it was like, this is going to be hard. And over time though, we began to, like any group of people that are committed to an end, we started to find ways to, to work together and to talk to each other, and to hear each other. I loved it.

[00:12:06] Aaron - Narration: One critical moment of learning and consensus came when they all agreed that victims were not to blame.

This is a perspective that's now more widely shared, but it wasn't that way until the leading advocates laid it down as an essential truth.

[00:12:20] Debby Tucker: And I think that when we all began to adopt the attitude that it's not the child or the adult has done something where they deserve to be disciplined. But in fact the person who is causing the harm believes that they are entitled to react in any way they choose up to and including physical violence or emotional abuse that is devastating, in some ways more harmful than a bruise or a hit can be. We began to come to consensus around critical positions and acknowledge that the real experts were the survivors, the victims who had lived through it. So that we weren't like the professionals telling everybody else

what to do, we were partners with them in learning.

[00:13:23] Aaron - Narration: What are the first things you wish everybody knew about domestic and sexual violence that would maybe help position them to be better helpers?

[00:13:33] Debby Tucker: I think that you can best be a helper if you're willing to listen and to recognize that you don't have to give advice or

direct somebody what to do. But you can offer resources and you can say simple things like, "I'm here when you need me or when you need to talk." Offering things, but not being pushy. You cannot tell people what to do. It never works.

And we made assumptions in the beginning that everybody wanted to get away,

and wanted to end the relationship with the, the person using violence. But in reality, when we asked and we were saying, what can we do? They would say, "Talk to him. Somebody needs to tell him to quit hurting us. And somebody needs to recognize that he was a good father at one point. He was a good husband at one point, and there are things about him that are still good. And what can we do to get rid of these awful things that he's doing now?"

And so they're the ones who made us recognize the reality that we cannot end this kind of violence without working with the people who are using it. What you have to do is listen, if there is still any kind of relationship, and if you have children together, then what do we do to make that safer and better?

[00:15:12] Aaron - Narration: You know, as you're talking about that, I, I think one of the most common responses I see, and that I've also felt, is just cynicism that a person using violence is ever really going to change. What do you have to say to the people who are cynical about any opportunity or possibility of rehabilitation?

[00:15:31] Debby Tucker: What I say is these people are not from another planet. They don't have acid dripping off of their teeth, and we can't communicate at all. They are, in fact, sons and fathers and people who were raised in our society and in our families. So do we offer to them an opportunity to live differently? I remember this one guy who told me, you know, that he was coming home from work and he was walking up to the door and he could hear everybody in his family laughing and joking, and obviously they were having a good time together, and he opened the door and walked, stepped in, and everybody froze, and turned to look at him. And the fear in their faces, and all the laughter and all the enjoyment they were having disappeared. And it was so stark for him that he was able to recognize he had created a situation where they weren't glad that he was home. They were terrified that he was home.

[00:16:50] Aaron - Narration: Blaming victims or demanding that they change their behavior doesn't actually stop abusers. And instead, it just gives room for domestic violence to grow. Sometimes we need to help others understand that too.

[00:17:03] Debby Tucker: I remember early on, one of the groups that we went to, the Lions Club, a guy stood up and, and somebody had made some disparaging remark about women bringing this on themselves by not listening to their husbands and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And one of his fellow Lion members stood up and said, "Sir, I was raised by somebody who beat my mother constantly, who beat all of us. I can tell you that there was nothing about her that caused this. She did everything she could to protect us and to stop it." And those are the kinds of conversations that we wanna see

men have with one another to really learn from each other that it doesn't matter if she is the nastiest, most inappropriate woman in the world. It doesn't mean that you get to beat her up.

[00:18:02] Aaron - Narration: Instead of telling the victim to act differently, the National Center developed this list of the five things to say to victims of abuse.

Here they are: Number one, I'm afraid for your safety. Number two, I'm afraid for the safety of your children. Number three, it will only get worse. Number four, I'm here for you when you're ready to leave. Number five, you don't deserve to be abused. These are the things that they need to hear.

[00:18:35] Debby Tucker: Oh, it's very powerful and very helpful, and that's why we have continued to use it because it works. It gives people the tools to begin a conversation because it's uncomfortable. You don't want to ask somebody point blank. You wanna say gently, I'm concerned for your safety. And to be able to say to the person who you think is causing the harm, I'm concerned for the safety of your family members. Trying to get them to think differently is so powerful.

[00:19:10] Aaron - Narration: Debby also noted that we need to believe that abusers can change. In fact, this is why Debby and others prefer the term "people who use violence," pointing to the possibility that they can become people who don't use violence. And if you feel cynicism about that, you should know that Debby, with her years of experience, has seen that change is possible.

[00:19:33] Debby Tucker: If you don't believe that people can change for the better, then you might as well give up. BEcause the human race is like amazing and people can surprise us. They can appear to be hardheaded and impossible and stuck in a prior century. And if you gently keep applying the tools, they sometimes wake up and listen.

There are some that we can't reach, obviously. And that's why from time to time, I do support somebody going to prison and being away from everyone until possibly there's a chance that they can be safe. But most of the people that we work with will change and will stop causing harm.

One of the things we've asked judges to do in Texas is encourage the person to get a mentor, to identify someone in their life that they trust and respect. It could be a, a minister. It could be their boss. It could be a, a colleague that they interact with. It could be a baseball partner, somebody you play with. Ask them to help you.

[00:20:57] Aaron - Narration: Just expecting change at the individual level isn't going to bring an end to domestic violence. For decades, we've needed systemic improvements to make it easier for victims to come forward, for them to get support if they need to leave home, and for people of influence to have policies and training in place. All of these reasons and more are what gave rise to the Violence Against Women Act, a landmark law first passed in 1994. Debby Tucker spearheaded the lobbying of Congress and started out by working with then Senator Joe Biden.

[00:21:30] Debby Tucker: So one of the things that he said to me was, "You have an assignment, and that is to get representative Jack Brooks, who is the chair of the Judiciary Committee. We can get it through the Senate. I know that I have enough votes to get it out of the Senate, but we are never going to pass it if we don't get the House Judiciary Committee to support it."

[00:21:56] Aaron - Narration: At that time, Brooks was the longest serving member of Congress, representing a district in South Texas. Debby had never met Brooks and had never tried to lobby a congressman like this before.

She connected with everyone she knew, politicians, business leaders, and really just anybody she could think of that might know him. Of course, she also went the formal route of calling his staff, introducing herself, and even going to his office in dc, meeting everybody who worked there asking for an appointment.

Finally, after about 10 months of work, Debby got a call out of the blue from a staff member on the Judiciary Committee saying that Mr. Brooks had set the Violence Against Women Act for a hearing. She was told to be ready to present and to help in whatever other ways the committee needed. On the day of the hearing, she was stunned to find the room was packed full of people.

[00:22:48] Debby Tucker: I got there, opened the door, and the room was full. And I'm like, who are these people? Why is the room full? And there were like cameras on those giant dolly things that they roll around like CBS, ABC. I'm like, what is this all about?

[00:23:07] Aaron - Narration: It turned out that the bill had become national news. And so to calm her nerves, Debby went to talk to the representatives on the committee that she already knew, including Chuck Schumer.

Everyone in the room was waiting to start and all they needed was the committee's chair, Jack Brooks.

[00:23:23] Debby Tucker: And I had my back to the door, and all of a sudden, it's got quiet. I turned around and this bandyrooster of a man is coming in the door and everyone is racing for their seats and sitting down and behaving. And on all four walls where these no smoking signs. And out of his mouth was this giant cigar.

And I'm like, okay, Deborah, this is a big moment. And I just march myself down the center aisle. Stick out my hand and say, "Mr. Brooks, thank you so much for setting the Violence Against Women Act for Hearing today. My name is Deborah Tucker. I'm chair of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. We are excited to be here. We appreciate a chance to talk this through with you and the committee."

And his response was "Debby Tucker! I've had everybody but my first grade teacher call me and ask me to set this bill for a hearing. And I just wanna know one thing." The whole room leaned in and was like, what does Mr. Brooks wanna know? And he said, "Why the ****? Don't the prosecutors help these women? Why don't they put these men in jail so that women can be safe in their own homes and not have to come to your little shelters?"

And I was just like, "Oh my goodness, sir. I don't ****ing know."

And he loved it. And he started laughing and he leaned forward with that giant cigar in his mouth and he caught the front of my hair on fire.

And he is patting the top of my head to put the fire out, and saying "We going to get your little bill out. Don't worry."

[00:25:25] Aaron - Narration: With the smell of burning hair still lingering, Debby went to her assigned seat. Soon after the hearing began, the discussion immediately went to all the complexities of the problem and concerns like those you'd expect for major federal legislation.

But Representative Brooks threw his full weight behind the bill and it passed both the House and Senate in record time. President Clinton signed it soon after.

[00:25:50] Debby Tucker: I'm really proud of the fact that in spite of our regional differences and our cultural challenges, we got to agreement that we were going to help educate folks to the fact that there is nothing that a victim can do, adult or child, by themselves to stop the person who's decided that they're going to use violence. We have to step in, family, friends, neighbors. We've gotta draw a line and say "Up with this, we will not put."

[00:26:27] Aaron - Narration: What keeps you going with hope? This is as monumental a problem as anybody could take on, and you've been at it for a long time. What, what has kept you going and what keeps going now?

[00:26:37] Debby Tucker: I think it is the fact that we've made such significant progress. Even though it's been fits and starts and a couple of steps back, and it's not been linear at all, um, there has been change and there are more and more people who get it, so to speak, and who realize that if you don't end the use of violence then other problems that you see in the world are going to continue. Where do you think that rapists and murderers come from? What families are they raised in who teaches them what to do and what not to do? We're going to never end all forms of violence if we don't end the violence that starts when somebody's a child. And to me it's one big mass of things that are all important.

Dignity, respect, safety, those are fundamental to, to progress. It's gotta operate at all levels. And we gotta get over the differences. Whatever, whoever God is has a strange sense of humor to create so many different languages and belief systems and cultures and ways of doing things. It's not ever been easy for us to understand one another. All of it takes patience and deliberate efforts to reach out and to hear people and to share what you know in a way that might help.

[00:28:30] Aaron - Narration: When I was emailing with Debby about this interview, I'd mentioned that I wanted to discuss how to help people out of domestic violence. In reply, she said we should broaden our view and talk about how we can end domestic violence. I'm confident that as promised, you learned something new about what you can do to help a loved one in this situation.

But I hope you can also see how your help plays a part in a much bigger effort: bringing an end to domestic violence altogether. If you want to get more involved in this effort, we've linked to resources in the show notes. Debby and countless others will be glad to have your help.

How To Help is hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller, and produced in collaboration with BYU Radio.

My thanks to Erica Price, Kenny Mears and Blake Morris for their help with this episode. Scoring and mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes. And if you haven't subscribed yet to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player and find us on all the different social media platforms.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

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