>> charlie: welcome to our program. tonight, the president of n.y.u., john sexton, reflects on the challenge of building a great international university. >> if i were able to do this, i would create a broad-based group across the political spectrum that would take as its mandate an insistence on nuanced conversation and would begin to speak out not about the content but about the process of conversation, as engaged in by people with ambition. i think universities have a special role to play in this and i think we can start modeling that using our campus, because there is a lot of pressure on politicians and leaders of all

kinds because of the public's demand for short-term solutions -- there is pressure away from long-term solutions and thinking over the long-term, probably the most obvious example is health care, medicare, social security and so forth and now -- -- climate change, the whole set of ings. now, what universities are good at doing is thinking long-term. of the 85 institutions in the world that exist where they did years ago were universities. >> charlie: of what? >> of the 85 institutions in the world that exist the way they did 500 years ago like vatican or parliament, seven of the 85 are universities. >> charlie: john sexton for the hour. coming up. funding for "charlie rose" was provided by the following.

>> charlie: additional funding provided by these funders. >> and by bloomberg. a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. ♪ ♪ >> from our captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> charlie: john sexton is here. he is the president of new york university. under his leadership, n.y.u. has become one of the top research universities in the country. it is now global. this fall, the school will open a satellite campus in abu dhabi making it the first major american university to open a campus abroad. i am pleased to have john sexton at this table to talk about his

university, and other ideas. he has had a remarkable life, growing up in brooklyn and finally making it to harvard law school and then getting the deanship at n.y.u. and then becoming its president, so i'm pleased to have him at this table. welcome. >> it's great to be here. >> charlie: first of all, since i have known you a while but you haven't been here much, you have lost a fair amount of weight. >> thank you. >> charlie: and i'm told by sources that you basically said, "this is a belt-tightening economic period, and so i'm going to exercise personal restraint to show you we have to take it seriously." >> you have very good sources. it was june 2nd -- a year ago june 2nd that i said to the deans that we're going to ask everybody to make sacrifices, and that i pledged that by the time they came back on september 2nd, i would have lost 45 pounds, and i managed to do it by august 2nd of last year.

>> charlie: how did you do it? >> one of the keys was eating but eating differently, as we all know just a lot of vegetables and thingwith few calories. >> charlie: so not a lot of carbohydrates? not a lot of -- >> bread, had to give up pasta, had to give up meat, age vegetables and shrimp. >> charlie: shrimp did it for you? >> shrimp does it, and i'm told it's good cholesterol. >> charlie: here is the only biographical thing i'll do. you grew up in brooklyn, your dad died early in your life and then you fell in love with teaching debate. a girls debate team while you were a student at fordhampt >> that's right, a freshman at fordham. i was a cocky kid. i was a year ahead of grade, so to speak -- as i entered fordham, i was 16 turning 17, fell under the spell of this wonderful man, timothy healey that i'm sure -- >> charlie: know him well. >> georgetown, came back here to the new york public library, and

tim healey had recruited a few of us -- we were supposed to be rhodes scholars, 1959 going on 1960. >> charlie: he selected people he thought had the potential to be rhodes scholars? >> right. i went up there, my dad died my freshman year, i had been the national high school debate champion and for reasons i can't understand, i decided after my dad's death to get on the subway in brooklyn and go to my sister's school. i had no idea the social -- i went to brooklyn and i rang the door to the convent and i said to the nun "i would like to start a high school debate team here and if you let me do it i promise you the girls will win the national championship and they'll see the 48 lower states before they graduate." i had this great high school teacher that said you had to travel but we could only travel where we could drive because we were poor, "and they'll get

scholarships to college and they'll all be better people for it," and for some reason in 1960 that nun said to a 17-year-old boy, "if you can get people to do it, we'll let you do it," and for 15 years it occupied my life 100 hours a week. it's the most important professional period of my life. it's the most formative period of my life. it captured me for teaching and it taught me that the single most important thing in education is the expectation set by the teacher. and i set the expectation. out of obliviousness. because i had done these things. so they couldn't be special if i had done them and i said to these young women -- usually, there were four or five in each of the three upper years -- there would be maybe a dozen freshmen but then when i told them they had to come and work with me over the summer, and read books and listen to classical music -- because very quickly i made it more than a debate team. monday night was the history of art -- >> charlie: this is a movie.

watch out. >> maybe we're doing it here. because i told them they would do it, they didn't know they couldn't. and they did. and probably the proudest professional moment of my life was, i think it was 2004, emory university called me back to their tournament -- it was the 50th anniversary of their college debate tournament and they named those girls, the top high school debating team in the last 50 years and the girls won the national championship five times during those 15 years and every girl went to college on a scholarship, never had try-outs for the team. if you were willing to do the work and you did the extra work on art and music and the great books and so on, you were on the team. every girl went to college on a scholarship, and they've gone on -- they're like my daughters. i have wonderful -- >> charlie: how many years did you do that? >> 15 years. 1960 to 1975. this caused tim healey no end of consternation because i stopped going to class at fordham -- i

was out in brolyn, and the jesuits took attendance in class seriously. i essentially didn't go to college. the students at n.y.u. love the fact that i have a 2.1 college grade point average, barely graduated and tim stopped me in 1963 on the fordham campus and his first words to me, in 1963, were, "you have been a great disappointment to us." and he said, "but the vatican council is happening. it's going to be important for catholics to understand other religions, and we're starting a ph.d. program in religion and we'll give you a fellowship and a second chance." and i wanted to go to law school. i knew that was what i wanted to do. but i also, most of all, wanted to keep working with my kids and i knew if i went to law school i would do it poorly, the way i had done college poorly so i took this fellowship and i got my doctorate, and that's what appears on my resume, then went out to st. francis college in brooklyn and very quickly became -- you look at my resume, it

looks like it skyrocketed because it was i, the only layman, and seven nuns and priests and brothers in the department and you have got to remember, charlie, this was not only the vatican council, it was the civil rights movement, it was the vietnam war, there was turbulence and with people with social consciences like people getting doctorates in religion or nuns or priests this was a very turbulent period, so -- you know, the nuns were taking off the habit, and dating, and priests were dating, and so the brother who was running the school said "is the anyone in that religion department who won't embarrass us?" so i was tenured within two years, they made me chairman of the department, it looks like i was a real producer but the fact is it was all exogennous stuff. >> charlie: there is a strth -- it was all exogenous stuff. >> charlie: there is another story that you had applied to law schools and been turned down but had gathered friends and

mentors like larry tribe, the great constitutional law professor at harvard and they went to the admissions committee of the law school and said you have to give brother sexton a second chance. >> i'll tell you something. >> charlie: "he has potential." >> i am very impressed with your investigative work here that you have dug this up so there is -- i remember mary louise oates who is bob shrum's wife said to bob when he was running the kerry campaign, said "he knows he runs the band of brothers, there is a group of larry tribe and bob shrum and larry and hebner, i'm the godfather of larry's children and they did an intervention in 1972 -- i turned 30, my so was three, i'm a single parent, and they said you've got to go to law school, you have been 12 years with the girls, you've got to go to law

school, i applied to five schools including n.y.u. and harvard. larry tribe was recently tenured. all five turned me down. including n.y.u. law school. then they went in and intervened and a woman named molly garrity, dean of admissions called me and she said, "you have been accepted on reconsideration" and i said "i have to be honest with you, i'm going to tell you the truth, i thought one of the new york schools would accept me and i could phase out my debating team and go to law school at the same time. but i can't do law school right commuting from boston and i'm not going to desert these kids. would you defer my admission for three years?" and she said "i now believe what you wrote about those girls and she accepted me for 1974, i got there in 1975, met lisa ellen goldberg, we were married and

grew more in love every day for 31 years until she died suddenly. >> charlie: she had a cerebral aneurysm. >> yeah. >> charlie: my mother had a cerebral aneurysm. didn't die. it's the most scary thing in the world. >> i was writing a speech on immortality, st. john's university was going to give me an honorary degree and they said "we don't want to hear from you as the dean of n.y.u. law school, we want you to go back to your previous life, write about a spiritual topic" i was writing a speech, a response to dawkins. >> charlie: richard dawkins? >> right, sam harris's book was out and -- and she was helping. it was a great sunday, i went in at 6:45 and i said "do you want me to get dinner yet?" she said, "i'm reading this piece by this fellow, max teglon, an m.i.t. astrophysicist i had seen on c-span and i want to talk to you about it at dinner." i came back and e was dead.

>>harlie: but you have come on to make her proud. >> i hope so. >> charlie: what is it you want to do with this university that you are presently involved? -- that you are president of? how do you see the future? >> it's interesting you put that question. i resisted the idea of becoming president of nment y. u. in part because the jesuits inculcated in me the notion that you've got a useful life, if you want a fulfilling life you have to be able to answer that question somehow and as dean of the law school i could explain to people why, if we could create a law school which animated young people and the faculty with the notions of the jeffersonian lawyer that that made a difference, that was a useful life, at first i didn't see how i could answer that question for n.y.u. -- i was very pleased at the law school, lisa said it's

john's parish and i was the parish priest, i knew every student's name and the faculty -- finally, my partner, since 1988, this great man who was my chair at the law school and then chair now at the university, larry -- succeeded larry tisch, marty lipton -- >> charlie: great lawyer and -- >> probably the world's greatest lawyer, some would say, but marty said to me, "it's time for you to do this" and i had resisted it earlier but -- he convinced me it was time to do it, so may 2001, i took over this place -- which had been built by john brademusand jay lever into this sizzling, hot place, and i looked at it and my first instinct was that it had a special role to play because of its connection to new york city. i had worked with dan doctor and

jay kriegle on the olympics and i said more important than getting the olympics is telling a great story of new york with that punch line for the olympics, "come to new york, the world's second home" new york is e first city in the world that can say, in our public schools, every country in the world is represented by kids born in those countries. and i began to look at this through the lens, frankly, of where tim healey had brought me in 1963 -- the ecumenical movement and -- but not ecumennism as a theological doctrine but a doctrine of social order and i said we're moving into the 21st century and maybe the big question in the 21st cenry ithe wod is miniaturizing. gaining strategies don't work anymore. you can't gate out other people's financial aspirations, we know that now, in 2001 it wasn't as obvious but it was pretty clear, you can't gate

people's ideas out, you can't gate people out socially, it's not going to work, the real question for humanity at the fundamental level is how do we respond to that? is it a clash of civilizations or is it a great ecumenical moment and i said my lord, new york is the first experiment in the ecumenic ntury in trying to create a community of communities, then because n.y.u. was in new york city i said, my lord, this university is ecosystematic, we don't have a single gate on campus, we don't have a place you can retreat, we don't have a blade of grass, most buildings aren't next to other n.y.u. buildings, we're in and of the city and i said maybe there is a special mission for the city and the university to get -- and then we began tong of extrapolating that out into the world and that's where ultimately this notion the world network university came together and if you will just indulge me for a second -- the premise of

that is that the world of 2050 is going to be a world which on a global scale looks like it will be looked -- like italy looked like during the renaissance where the creative and the intelligent and the talented class moves among not -- not milan, and venice, and florence, and rome, but shanghai and abu dhabi and london and new york -- what richard florida, who i have now read -- this came to me kind of instinctively -- >> charlie: writes about the city. >> writes about the idea capitals and i said, really, there will be a disproportionately high share of the most talented faculty. and students, and staff who want to live in a university which isn't location-bound although it's -- it is deeply bound into the world's most cosmopolitan city, the world in miniature but it also takes that and allows them to extrapolate that out and

be part of an organic circulatory system, so from that came the idea of first, study away sites and we're building toward 16 study-away sites on six continents, we have 12 already building toward 16 so an n.y.u. student can register for a continent as easy as you can register for a course, if you're in the undergraduate school of business with our professors, our courses, in our classrooms, in our buildings, you can do five semesters in new york, one in london, one in shanghai, one in abu dhabi. different kind of education. and the faculty can move through that circulatory systemment and then the big idea came. when we discovered abu dhabi and our spectacular counterparts in abu dhabi. >> charlie: how did you do that? >> it -- we were beginning to talk about this university we upon creating as an ecumenical

university, i said the first ecumenical university and because we were using that metaphor, the absence of the arab and muslim world became obvious to us. it's a quarter of the world's population, one of the great cultures of the world -- and then we asked ourselves would it be possible -- and we began to think in terms of a study-away site. and would it be possible to do it? there are obvious windshield issues. you look out the windshield, you see a set of issues and i said will it ever be better? will there ever be a better time? then the question became could you find the right partner? and we looked at about six places, frankly -- >> charlie: six places in the middle east? >> in the gulf. principally, because of the kind of crossroads element of it and then everybody i spoke to spoke about how special in that set abu dhabi was.

>> charlie: because? >> everything from the fact that it -- it shared -- the more i got to know it, i realized it shared a kind of spirit with new york -- it is -- it is in a way -- it's not intic but i has the same kind of cosmopolitan quality. they can't quite say what i said about the new york public schools but they come very close to being able to say it. although it's in a very different mix, roughly the same number of languages spoken in both places although a different mix, if you look at n.y.u.'s founding in 1831, ok -- it's a city in -- the country at that point being 40 years old, to where the emirates is 40 years old, it's a city about the -- that was at that time tiny by comparison to the new york of today but about to grow

exponentially the same way abu dhabi is and a welcoming society -- the bedouin culture of welcoming, the dutch culture of openness, everything from that kind of gestalt to extraordinary leadership and ambition and -- -- snow went to them and said "we have a plan." >> >> charlie: you went to them and said, "we have a plan. >> we went to them and said "what a second portal into the global network university?" we hadn't thought about that. they said, "what about giving students the option just as they come from around the world to new york, of coming from around the world to abu dhabi as it becomes one of these idea capitals?" >>harl: what's i isfor abu dhabi? >> i think there is a lot in this for abu dhabi. daniel patrick moynihan was once

asked in india "how do we create a great world city?" he said "create a great university and wait 200 years." now things happen much more quickly. so you say what's in it for abu dhabi. >> charlie: they get an association with a university that's becoming great. >> they -- the -- the organism called n.y.u., which is this global network university, will have two -- maybe a third portal -- >> charlie: is this -- what's interesting about this and interesting about this conversation is that we are -- globalization is here to stay. we live in a global world. we live in an interdependent world and these are powerful ideas that are making things happen. not just in education, but also in education, in other ways. >> right. >> charlie: yale has a big program in china, as you know -- it's not the same thing, but they have a big program over there. sandy weill and the

cornell-weill medical institute is in qatar. the guggenheim museum will be your neighbor. >> as will the louvre. >> they'll be in beijing or shanghai. >> we may be in beijing or shanghai. >> charlie: we may be? >> yeah. >> charlie: i'll bet you in your mind that is a done deal -- in your mind, that is a done deal, not "we may be." >> it being a done deal in my mind is different from my being able to announce it on "the charlie rose show." >> charlie: well said. but there is also -- i'm interested in this because first all, ople the crudest would say, "he went over there in search of the richest partner he could find." and "he made a deal." and without casting aspersions on any particular person and the leadership of the united arab emirates, especially abu dhabi has a reputation for a lot of very positive things, but he went over there to get the money, make the deal, and it

became a kind of codependence on each other. you had a reputation. they had moneyment that's the crudest way to look at it. >> it is a very crude way of looking at it and it's not -- it's not unfair that that would occur to people as an initial matter. any investigation about the nature of n.y.u. or its history, my history, would reveal that as being untrue. this is a university. i am a dean who has turned down 10's of millions of dollars for a single seat in a class, for god's sake. i'm not saying it's not a nice thing to get financial support and it's a wonderful thing that we're able to do what we're able to do in delivering in abu dhabi -- let me tell you a little bit about what's being delivered in abu dhabi -- it is arguably the finest education in the world. you've got a faculty-student ratio of one to three.

>> charlie: yeah. >> it will never be more than one to eight -- it's a tutorial form of education that completely integrates a first-class research enterprise with -- >> charlie: you're able to do some high-class experimentation -- >> we're able to do what we dream of doing. >> charlie: and because you're able to do what you dream of doing, that's a good deal. >> that is. and the motive of it isn't the monetary motive, the motive is the motive that pulled me out to brooklyn for a hundred hours a week when i wasn't being paid a nickel because it was worthy to do this, right -- and you let me -- you give me a mandate of creating for young people and faculty the finest learning and research environment in the world and that's what my life is about. that's a useful life. >> charlie: the other thing people ask about this because this has gotten a lot of attention, and every question that can be raised has probably been raised. you have had to answer every

response. including everything about that -- united arab emirates and abu dhabi in terms of the way they treat gays, or how they allow israeli passports to people bearing israeli passports to come, are not necessarily what you would prefer. >> listen. if you're going to be the university i have described, put abu dhabi aside, if you're going to be in shanghai, in singapore, you cannot -- >> charlie: from turkey to china. >> yeah, you can't expect that the cultures with which you're going to be interacting are going to be carbon copies of new york city let alone greenwich village. >> charlie: nobody said new york was perfect. >> unless your going to create a university that has a study-away site in philadelphia and toronto but no place else, you're going to have to get people out of their comfort zone.

getting people out of their comfort zone doesn't mean core values -- >> charlie: who is out of their comfort zone? >> the whole purpose of the global network university is to get our students -- >> charlie: you're saying having to accept certain things -- having to accept certain things about people and nations and institutions that are outside your own comfort zone as to where you would like to be. is that the idea? >> yes. and you engage -- look, this -- the whole notion of this university is you don't look through the window, you're looking at the facets of a diamond. that means looking at other people's viewpoints and trying to engage with them. now, there are core values about which we feel very strongly, ok, and they have to do with things like academic freedom, and access, and discrimination, and so forth. you encounter those issues the moment you move out of the cocoon of greenwich village -- and by the way, you encounter them in greenwich village as

well. the question then becomes do you cover yourself and say "i'm not going anywhere else" -- >> charlie: if you're not pure, i'ming not going to have a conversation with you. >> in china, many great universities are, and we are, you wouldn't be in qatar. >> charlie: let me talk about another aspect of this too. so when you went to talk to the nun, you said to the nun, "i guarantee you" and to those kids, "this is the level of expectation. i guarantee you a national championship. if you will follow me." >>eah. >> charlie: and listen to my experience. so what did you say to abu dhabi? "i promise you, together we" -- finish the sentence. >> we will create a university which will be acknowledged as being excellent and among the finest universities in the world. it will be a new form of

university. it will be the first university that is a genuine university in the sense of an organtic circulatory system that spans the idea capitals of the world with these two anchors -- new york and abu dhabi intimately connected to each other but with students that enter through those portals from around the world -- enter through those portals able to circulate among the idea capitals. go back for a minute to the question you asked earlier. view that through the lens of abu dhabi as they build themselves as one of the world's great idea capitals. and they've done that not only by bringing us in bew the louvre and the guggenheim, as yo said earlier and other elements as well, so the first evidence of proof of concept was the first group of students that we succeeded -- we wanted an entering class for this coming september of 100 students, we

set as the admission standard clearly admissible in our judgment to any college or university in the world. it was a higher admission standard than the admission standard we set for n.y.u. new york. >> charlie: you gotome vy bright kids coming in. i'll just bet you, though, knowing you, that the compact was more -- that the compact was "we will build here in the next number of years one of the top five universities in the world." would you say that? >> i think that's our goal, is one of the top five or 10 universities in the world and a new kind of university that others would emulate. >> charlie: top five or 10 universities in the next 10 years. >> yeah. >> charlie: to do that, this is what's really interesting, you've got an architecture that's different, it's compelling, i grant you that. what else do you have to do with that kind of velocity?

>> the human capital, and then giving the human capital the wherewithal that everybody dreams of having and setting the right values in place, integrative values that -- so here are the elements. you take these young people that are coming in. now, on all of the objective indicators we ended up having to take 150 because we -- >> charlie: you couldn't choose? >> no. no. we made offers and the best response -- harvard gets 73% on every offer it makes. we got 79%. >> charlie: so the choice was between oxford and cambridge and yale and columbia and stanford and -- >> i think that the kids turned down, i'm not using these as rankings but kids turned down

eight of 10 top colleges in this country -- >> charlie: suppose i would poll them. >> yeah. >> charlie: have a q&a with them. >> i've done that. >> charlie: why did they do it? why did they choose this new thing over the old thing? >> bethenny: and why did they forego ivy-laden campuses or universities with hundreds and hundreds of years of excellent -- >> charlie: and which have been a guaranteed -- or as much as it can be -- >> ticket to the club. >> charlie: ticket to the club. >> ticket to the ub, and they did that and we brought the finalists -- before we admitted kids, we had 9,000 applications. we chose about 300 finalists. they weren't admitted yet. we brought them in five groups of 60, roughly, to abu dhabi for three days because we wanted them to see the campus that is ultimately going to be built for us won't be built until the end of their senior year. essentially, we're in a glorious set of two buildings that are

very high-techin downtown abu dhabi but it is not acres. and i wanted them to see that. now, what happened? the first day, they came in in the morning, they were there three days debating against each other, interviews, writing and taking classes, all as part of the admissions process but the first thing they did was the 60 kids in a circle introduced each himself or herself in his or her own language. then translated into english because they're all completely fluent in english. >> charlie: a requirement? >> yes. by the time they had gone around in the circle, these kids saw incarnated the idea of this kind of cosmopolitan, ecumenical school, and when you read the kids, as they talk to each other on their facebook pages about this, what they say attracted them was, first of all, each other.

then they saw that the faculty were there, and about 40% of the faculty would be from new york, and we're including people like pulitzer prize winners, nobel winners, they were in the classroom to teach them, we saw the standing faculty for abu dhabi who come from the best -- people see it, if it's right for them, charlie, they react to it. so we've had people leave the best yshs chairmanships of departments, former -- the best universities -- chairmanships of departments, this is the future, i want to be part of it, the kids see that, then they see the research enterprise -- we've just made a major investment at new york university, new york in plant genommics. a young plant genomicist who is one of our superstars, we built a big lab in new york to have people to work with him has decided to of moto n.y.u. abu

dhabi and be part of the faculty there and colead the lab. and every researcher who goes to abu dhabi commits to teaching undergraduates. the dichotomy that characterizes so many of our research -- gone. they're committed to teaching undergraduates. having undergraduates in their labs and mentoring those undergraduates. the kids looked at that and they said, "wait a minute. this is an education like no other education." for the person that has the appetite for it. that really wants to be a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the global community. >> charlie: is the president of the university going to go over and teach? >> we decided two years ago we wanted to be a presence there even before we opened. >> crlie: right. >> so we came up with the ia ofunning a competition in the country -- they have three national universities, and those national universities each nominated 20 like a rhodes scholarship, and those 60 people were interviewed by n.y.u. faculty and we chose 16 scholars

and we said we're going to teach them leadership. we're going to involve nem in the conferences we've run, we've run 65 conferences there in the last two years and we're going to offer them a course, and they will be taught by an n.y.u. professor and they'll get credit in their universities for that and i decided i would teach that course. >> charlie: you went over every week? >> i've gone every other ek to teach, i've done it two years, i'm doing it again this third year. >> charlie: are you taking arabic as well? >> i wish i were better at languages than i am. they have to understand my brooklyn english. >> charlie: all right. let me talk about. i read the tragic stories of these kids -- really bright kids, it looks like to me. committing suicide. >> yeah. what is that about? >> let me tell you something. >> charlie: it may be -- >> and i'm sad that five, six years ago if you were reading those stories you would have

read about headlines associated with n.y.u., this year it's been another university, a great university, my colleague, the president of cornell where it's happened this year, david scortin is a great man, i know him personally, he and i now speak out widely on this. this is a national problem. every day, 365 days a year in this country, four undergraduates commit suicide. >> charlie: every day? >> every day. >> charlie: four undergraduates commit suicide. >> and it's not talked about enough and you know people talk -- it's very frustrating to try to explain in a society that has lost its appetite for complexity and nuance, people talk about why is it that the cost of a higher education is going up more rapidly than headline inflation? and i will tell you something. the single biggest growth

element in our budget since i have become president has been student wellness -- and thank god we started it before the suicides in 2003. >> charlie: this especially means counseling. >> it means -- it means building robust student life and community in our place in a very cacophonous, complex communities, there is the part about complexity, it involves the whole gamutt of counseling as part of that but it -- the whole gamut of counseling as part of that but it means the co-curricular in the dorms -- the best indicator of student wellness is building communities, and small communities. >> charlie: the best indicator of -- >> of -- of student wellness. >> charlie: wellness. having a community that they're part of. >> that's right. that's right. be it an athletic program or -- >> charlie: ok, but does that mean that the university, today -- especially urban universities, i'm not sure it's limited to urban universities or

not -- but does it mean that there is an absence of some sense of community, or this is something that universities have to look at and say we have to make sure that people don't feel that they're alone? that they're not part of something? >> the reasons behind that number of four a day are very, very complex. one of the reasons is the very positive fact that we have an enormous number of people coming to our colleges that wouldn't earlier have gotten to them, so we now do -- the students don't have to answer but we're very happy that 90% of the 5,000 entering freshmen at n.y.u. answer a survey we give them which is a very detailed survey including a half-hour base interview. every student gets this. in the entering class this past september, we had dozens of clinical schizophrenics. >> charlie: clinical schizophrenics. >> clinical schizophrenics. >> charlie: which is a very serious brain disorder. >> we had something like -- i

don't want to misstate a number but i'll say around 150 students who had attempted, not contemplated but attempted suicide while in high school. we can't ask that, and it would be wrong for us to ask that as part of the admissions process -- by the way, if you asked it and they answered it and the told the story the admissions committee would say "they've overcome hardship, it's a plus factor," right? the fact is we've had hundreds of kids arriving on medicines. they're away from home for the first -- so that's one whole issue and the -- the issues we face, the fact that we have what we call the wellness exchange. punch four numbers into any phone on campus, you get a live psychiatric social worker 24 hours a day, seven days a week. we get over 100 calls a day to that. >> charlie: basically saying what? >> "i just broke up with my boyfriend" or it can be "i'm thinking about suicide." at any given time during a week when school is in session, we

may have 10's of kids on watch. that's at the largest private university in the world, ok, but it shows you the magnitude of this problem and we're very proud and we've gotten all kinds of awards for what we do in student wellness generally and about suicide in particular but it is a vexing problem. >> charlie: does it have anything to do with the society we live in in terms of all of the fastness and the expectations and the absence of everybody knows everything and therefore you know how everybody is doing and you feel -- left out -- >> where is meaning? >> charlie: there you go. >> where is meaning? and so there is -- there is the attraction to materialism -- it's a very complex issue for a person that looks at it through the lens of spirituality, so it is enormously complex, and it is something that universal -- i actually think that just as we

have a lead standard for the environment, we should start in all sectors of society but certainly in universities having a kind of wellness standard where there are best practices and -- and we begin to raise consciousness. i think it's very important. >> charlie: not only that, i have always thought it was interesting, also, and important to talk about emotional intelligence as well as intellectual intelligence. >> howard gardner's work on this is right on. >> charlie: here is something you have written about the information age. "viewed superficially we could celebrate the time as a halcyon era, the internet a revolutionary tool, however it works not only for but also and less obviously against the ideal of an informed and intellectually curious public. it does enable the passive and powerless to become actors and interactors in politics but even as it empowers and informs a vast number of citizens, it also is a tool for misinformation and false attacks polluting the

dialogue with an apparent knowledge base, undisciplined by traditional standards of accuracy in public communication. bloggers are their own editors and may make little effort to verify while they post." >> so look, i -- there is a guest book outside they ask us to sign and i wrote in it, "to charlie, who brings thought to television. thank you for what you do." you're a brand. and people understand that when a conversation occurs and you are in it it's going to be a nuanced and a conveatio that's not afraid of getting into complexity and digging down. the fact of the matter is that we don't have that kind of bragging any more. we don't have a lead standard that applies to the blog and it's compounded by the fact that we have -- in america, especially, a society that wants simple answers. americans love rankings. they love lists.

they love slogans. and this is having a horrible effect on the quality of discourse in this country and a horrible effect on our political sphere, i think, and we've almost disabled our politicians from speaking in complex and a nuanced way. i remember in the 2004 campaign -- it was a "new york times" article about john kerry. and it's -- it stated his position on terrorism and about 2/3 of the way through the article, and i remember bracketing the quote from him and bringing it in to lisa and saying, "look at this, honey, somebody is finally talking about this in a nuanced way." a week later, that very quote was in a george bush ad making fun of him because his answer wasn't simple enough. >> charlie: is this the answer where he said, "i voted against it before i voted for it"?

>> no, no, this was about terrorism in particular and how we had to begin to treat it less as a dominating, zero-tolerance issue and more -- we couldn't let everything in society drive it. another example is right before the presidential debates in 2008, first page of "the new york times" there was an article that said that one of the two candidates, barack obama was at a disadvantage because he was a good debater. you can imagine how that struck me. i mean, that he thought too much -- he was -- we're getting ready for the presidential debates and the paper of record on a front-page story actually said that. >> charlie: seems like he overcame it, didn't he? >> i guess he did, but maybe not because of his -- his tolerance for complexity. >> charlie: this is continuing along the same line, and you also have sort of enlarged on a response to my previous reading. the distinction between using it has blurred journalism and the media generally led by the way television reports andevaluates news have become increasingly

bipolar, viewpoints that offer much argument and little analysis. we've created a collision culture that reduces discourse to a gladitorial combat. viewpoints at their form give little or no voice -- catchy, easily labeled phrases. this polarization have been exacerbated by the decline in the news audience show captured by the three networks which are tested against some standards of accuracy and completeness of the information received in which provided a template shared by americans even of divergent shoe views. today americans have been drawn to niche channels precisely because they echoed their preconceptions. that's where we are. >> we're living in an echo chamber. >> charlie: the question is what's the responsibility of you, people who have access to

minds and the ability to bring together the best and smartest among us? and to create the kind of debate we need to have about where we are and how we meet the change and the challenge of an increasingly complex but connected world. >> so first, just an admission, i have to say that there are times when i feelike -- not even like don quixote but like graham greene's character who thought he was descended from don quixote, i feel like jeremiah because i'm worried about what this is doing to american society, what can we do? we have to do something. that's paschal's wager. >> charlie: first can you put the horse back in the barn? >> i think the first thing we

have to do is people like you and me, university presidents and thought leaders have to begin to use the basic techniques of shaming and honoring. and i think we have to begin to get -- to grope our way towards the kind of -- i use the lead's analogy in talking about student wellness, i think we have to begin to get a kind of "good housekeeping" seal. praise the people that are engaging in thoughtful conversation with the public and condemn those -- and try to do it -- at best, if i were able to do this, i would create a broad-based group across the political spectrum that would take as its mandate an insistence on -- on nuanced conversation and would begin to speak out not about the content but about the process of conversation as engaged in by people with ambition. i think universities have a

special role to play in this and i think we can start modeling that -- using our campus -- because there is a lot o pressure on politicians and leaders of all kinds because of the public's demand for short-term solutions. there is pressure away from long-term solutions. and i thinking over the long-term -- the most obvious examples being health care, medicare, social security and so forth -- >> charlie: the deficit. >> climate change, the whole set of things -- what universities are good at doing is thinking long-term, ok -- of the 85 institutions in the world that exist the way they did 500 years ago, 70 of them are universities and we do that -- we think long-term. we're liberated by tenure and all those good things -- >> charlie: say that again? >> of the 85 institutions in the world that exist like they did 500 years ago, like the vatican, parliament, 70 of them are universities. there is a reason for that because we're kind of atemporal

-- it's very interesting in a hyper-changing environment the way we are today when we talked about the development of globalization -- >> charlie: what's also interesting to remember is that -- i think if you look at, for example, what has been the great change agent in terms of the internet over the last five years, it's been google, right? google was born in the university by two graduate students. >> right. >> charlie: you know. we have to have that element of making sure that we're doing everything we can to unleash those people who have the capacity to change. but change also other than just technological change but change in understanding what it means to be human and what it means to be able to appreciate and sustain the best of the civilization. >> you've hit upon something very important because a lot of the thought about higher education in the united states has been in and around a

utilitarian argument about higher education. >> charlie: right. >> and we -- i heard first from drew faust -- i've traced it now back to earliest stages in i.b.m. -- a great metaphor. she said, "we have to pay more attention," speaking of universities, "at developing t-shaped pple. what did she mean? i would put it this way. we're more and more demanding i-shaped people, people deep in a very narrow area. what we've got to do is have that depth but we've got to have the breadth, and what's happening is a very aggressive utilitarian argument to justify every investment, for example, in higher education or either it will come through k-through-12 education and it's about what job ll be created tomorwr to got -- go to thexamp you just used what's going to be the particular outcome of this research in which we are now

investing money? the big ideas have come out of pure research. what people didn't know as they entered what was going to come out of it. and those are the huge changes -- the great theolodge -- theologian and dean of yale wrote to celebrate the university, "a reexamination," he wrote this, i've never forgotten this, he said, "i stilhave the leather-bound volume of the encyclopedia britannica my father gave me as a boy. i am now on," this is 1991, "the editorial board for the 14th edition of the encyclopedia britannica. when i pick up my volume i see two paragraphs on uranium which dismiss it as useless and meaningless for further

investigation." so much for the utilitarian argument if you were in that ninth volume you never would have moved down that road but for the pure research and universities are critically important but as they do it, it can't simply be directed, obvious outcome, utilitarian and it can't even simply be simply stem -- science, technology, engineering, math -- it's got to be -- once we get these great discoveries, what do we do with them? why? how do they enhance human life? what is a happiness? where do we gain real -- what's the soul of it all? >> charlie: where does the spiritual element of your conversation come from? >> i think it comes from -- aristotle said the great truths we learn experientially." i used to say to my flock at the law school they were too concerned with facts and not enough with truth because the

real truths don't come to us cognitively. c.p. snowe wrote about this -- i'm -- there is a side of me that's very much on the side of the poets and the myth-makers in the powerful sense of that word. i knew that lisa loved me not because she reasoned me to it in a sillo jism but because i experienced her love -- to it in a syllogism but because i experienced her love, i know there is meaning to life that touches another domain not because i won an argument with richard dawkins but because i can confirm it in faith out of a -- it is an experienced truth and you know i teach a course called "baseball as a road to god" and part of it is an oxymoronic title, deliberately so, the students come to understand as one student put it "it's neither about baseball nor about god. if you want to know what it's

about, you just have to come because it's about ineffability" and it's a really contact with the ineffable magnificence that comes from being in the grand canyon 20 times in my life. understanding the quest. it probably comes from growing up at the ocean in brooklyn and going down to the beach wall and looking out at the stars in the ocean and the sand in its infinitude, so it probably goes deep back into the breaking of the waves. when i was brought home from the hospital, from peck memorial hospital as a boy. >> charlie: thank you for coming. >> thank you, charlie. thank you for all you do. ♪

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