What is it like to study at UC Berkeley's I-House?

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Sean Confer (2:31): One of the challenges that I I have is, you know, I look at the beauty of this community and how well it works. But, you know, keep in mind that people self select to apply to iHouse. We are an independent nonprofit. We're associated with the university. Rockefeller gifted the building to the university, but he also stipulated that the organization needs to be outside of the university.

Sean Confer (2:50): People that wanna be in this environment apply here. In a lot of ways, the university set up these affinity houses or try to get these tribes to settle into, you know, communities. And then they're surprised that these tribes are are are are finding conflict and differences with each other because they they are creating echo chambers. We're the tribe, and we are different. And one of the things we have in common is that we we wanna be here.

Sean Confer (3:13): We wanna be surrounded by people who are different than us. We wanna ask questions and listen and try to understand.

Unknown (3:29): One thing I'm really excited to talk with you today on this anthra life about, you know, higher education is is such an important point of of so many people's lives. And it, you know, shapes future generations and shapes kind of how folks are approaching the the next part of their lives in the world. And, like, even, you know, because I have a three month old now, so he's not thinking about college yet. But as we know, we begin even early on to be planning and thinking about what kind of schooling do we want our kids to have. And then from knows?

Unknown (3:56): From high school, certainly, but even younger, people are thinking about what college they wanna get into and and how they wanna get there. And then when you go to college, right, it's this whole experience of, you know, if you're a freshman moving into a dorm for the first time, what that can be like in terms of new experiences, new friends. If you're an international student, that can also totally change the equation also, right, if you're if you're totally leaving home for something else. And I think that it's it's such an important and magical and challenging and dangerous and and all these things place for for folks. You know?

Unknown (4:22): And, like, we have such interesting conversations happening across The US now and the world around the role of higher ed. We're in this crazy space, as we know, 2024, of political polarization seems to be reaching some kind of fever pitch in the world. Controversy is nothing foreign to college campuses. And oftentimes, they can be the epicenter of these storms sometimes. And I want to put that in bucket one and bucket two, of course, as we're approaching an election cycle here also.

Unknown (4:49): And that also raises questions around both polarization, but also inclusive dialogue and communication with people that have different perspectives. I think there is a really important challenge that higher ed is facing around fostering inclusive and safe environments for different kinds of viewpoints. And it's critical. I'm really excited to talk with Sean Confer, CEO of International House at UC Berkeley, is a really interesting blend of both a kind of independent nonprofit but also connected with a university. And iHouse has been around for nearly a century, which I thought was really cool and kind of looking and getting a sense of what the organization is itself.

Unknown (5:23): And so you've seen a lot of challenges through iHouse of issues that The US has faced. Right? There's been issues around wars and civil rights issues and and, you know, geopolitical upheavals and things like that. And so we're we're excited to get your perspective on how we can think about this, and and how do we build sense of hope and how we demonstrate that we can heal different cultural divides in these kinds of inclusive spaces as part of campuses. And so first, great to have you.

Unknown Speaker (5:47): Welcome to the show.

Sean Confer (5:48): Thank you so much. I really appreciate being here and the opportunity to talk to you and and

Unknown (5:52): your listeners. Right on. So so diving into to these ideas, like, in this world where it seems like we can have these kind of social media echo chambers and political tribalism seems to be an unfortunate norm, you know, I wanna hear about your your work with, like, International House. And how have you kind of begun to set and think about the tone and the space in, like, creating an environment where we can have multiple different kind of viewpoints coming together, not just to coexist, but to actually be productive in dialogue and communication with each other?

Sean Confer (6:20): Yeah. I mean, I think to put that in in kind of the context of the history of iHouse, I mean, this is a a 100 year old institution, and actually, the origin story starts in nineteen o nine. Right? So to give a quick history lesson of iHouse, a man 26 year old man, Harry Edmonds, was working at the YMCA affiliated with Columbia University. So as he's walking down the steps one fall morning of a a Columbia University library, he passes a student, and as you do, you say good morning.

Sean Confer (6:50): So the student stopped, and it kinda sparked a conversation. And the student said, you know, I'm from China. I've been here for three weeks, and you're the first person to talk to me. And so Harry was really touched by that interaction and went home and and told his wife, Florence, about, you know, how isolated, how lonely. You know, they hear scholars and academics coming literally halfway around the world and being, you know, pushed off into housing that is in the not most desirable places in the city, oftentimes far away from the universities.

Sean Confer (7:21): People are not acknowledging them. And this is nineteen o nine, so I always think it's Mhmm. Vision of the Titanic movie comes to mind because that's about the time that this was where this was going where this was happening. And so Florence insisted we need to do something. And what they did was they started inviting international students into their home for what's called Sunday supper.

Sean Confer (7:42): You know? And I sit down, have a meal, have a conversation, go by the fire, have a drink, and talk about, you know, just building relationships. Talk about your history, your culture, your country, your points of view. You know, what are you studying? And and from these just simple Sunday suppers of guests in their apartment, developed this community of of folks that wanted to, one, engage with people from around the world.

Sean Confer (8:07): Again, nineteen o nine, people weren't flying on vacation to to Europe or Asia. Unless they had the money to do a grand tour of Europe, the interaction was only in their peer groups in the cities. And so, you know, this this community of folks that wanted to that saw value in interacting with people who were different than that. And people in in in in New York that that wanted to support this initiative and saw this. Wow.

Sean Confer (8:35): What a great way to to build lifelong friendships, to build better intercultural understanding and more respect. You know, wouldn't the world be a great place if we were all connected in this? And so that's how he started off. John D. Rockefeller as a philanthropist in New York and and the Dodge family got involved, and they built essentially what Harry and Florence vision was, which was this home where they could live together, eat together, support each other, and be a center of all of this intercultural exchanges.

Sean Confer (9:10): And so the first I House opened up in 1924 adjacent Columbia University. It's still there today. It was such a big hit that Rockefeller and and Edmunds decided to open one up in Berkeley, University of Chicago. There was plans for Boston, where you're at Right up. As well as Philadelphia.

Sean Confer (9:29): However, you know, 1929, depression hits, and he was only able to complete Boston and I'm sorry, complete Berkeley and Chicago. And so, you know, that's that's what we do. Since 1930, we've been here at the Berkeley campus, a building built by Rockefeller and Edmonds. We house currently about 620 international and domestic residents. This year, we just have move in week last week, so we have 82 different nationalities in that that cohort of 600.

Sean Confer (10:03): There's no dominant culture. I think domestic students are the biggest population at 18% this year. Interesting. All of my China, which I think is about nine or 10%, India, France, and, you know, then we go to a long list of countries that have a few representatives in this entire community. Good.

Unknown Speaker (10:23): That's cool.

Sean Confer (10:24): Yeah. Our whole purpose is to, you know, to to bring people together that have that that interaction that was happening in nineteen o nine in the apartment of Barre in Florence, where you meet someone new, you listen, you talk, you exchange ideas, You try to understand their perspectives better. Oftentimes, that's in our dining hall. We do room and board here, so they they live here and they eat here. And so that's how we facilitate these exchanges, and it's it's really is incredible.

Sean Confer (10:51): You know, you talked about the, you know, the conflict on on campuses recently, and Berkeley was not immune to that. I mean,

Unknown Speaker (11:00): certainly a lot of these

Sean Confer (11:01): you know, we have an encampment here, and we have protests here, Not to the extent of Columbia or UCLA or Washington, but it didn't come into the house. People saw each other as part of the same community, and it wasn't tribal. Right? The tribe is us, all of us. Yeah.

Sean Confer (11:20): Versus know, the on campus, the conflict is is between tribes, like minded people against other like minded people, and then the friction that happens. When you're in a building with 600 people who all think differently than you, You're vulnerable. Right? You no one wants to stand up on a soapbox and say, this is the way we all should think because no you're not gonna get much of a, you know, group behind you supporting you. But what you do get is people who are vulnerable and will talk about, you know, here's my point of view, but I wanna understand where you're coming from.

Sean Confer (11:51): Why why is that? And that's really healthy. You know? There's civility in this house. There is discussion.

Sean Confer (11:58): There is debate, but there's not violence. There's not, you know, treating people meanly. It's it's it's trying to understand. And how do we find common ground to move forward? That's the whole reason we existed.

Sean Confer (12:11): We've been here since '19, you know, 1930, and this isn't the first, you know, time we've been involved in conflict. Yeah. You know, you can go back through history with IHouse here at Berkeley alone. You know, we were part of the free speech movement. We were part of the civil rights movement.

Sean Confer (12:25): We were here during World War two, during Japanese internment, protecting Japanese citizens. Our our law students were writing cases to get them out. So, you know, we've been very active in in all of these conflicts, but hopefully, in a in a in a productive way.

Unknown Speaker (12:41): Yeah. That that that's fascinating. And and, I mean, as an anthropologist, that this is you know, I really like this because it's you know, on the one hand

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Unknown (14:19): The, I think, incredible value of oftentimes going to college or university for many people, because the first time they leave home in big sense, and then having an intentional place where we know folks of difference are coming together, we're providing that space for them to live and break bread and room and eat and live together. There's a dorm which you can typically think about. But then it sounds like iHouse is taking a bit of a next step there in recognizing the intentional international character of so many universities, especially if we're talking to the top two universities like Berkeley and Columbia and Chicago too. We're getting folks from all over the world that want to come here. And so it's like, how do we provide that space?

Unknown (15:03): But, you know, I also really appreciate the context you shared there in terms of that. And I wanna think about this with you is that, obviously, you know, we can see politics and and political opinions and things, you know, find their way to college campuses as we're we're sitting here too, which we know is quite common. But then also there's this idea of the human that I'm living with or near or next to or my neighbor. Right? And there's always this kind of funny point that whenever we think about polarization, it oftentimes is this kind of straw man of the enemy, which we tend to dehumanize.

Unknown (15:32): We don't think about them as another person. So it sounds like part of the strategy here is to foreground the human, I guess. There's a person that's your neighbor, that's your colleague, that's there having dinner with you. Right?

Sean Confer (15:44): Yeah. I think 100%. And, you know, just to you know, one of the challenges that I I have is, you I look at the beauty of this community, how well it works. But, you know, keep in mind that people self select to apply to iHouse. We are an independent We're associated with the university.

Sean Confer (16:00): Rockefeller gifted the building to the university, but he also stipulated that the organization needs to be outside of the university. There's a great story about why that happened and how we desegregated Berkeley as a result. You know, people people that wanna be in this environment apply here. Whereas you go to a university dorm, people just need a place to live, and they're not necessarily selecting a place to live because they wanna be surrounded by different people. In a lot of ways, the universities set up these affinity houses or try to get these tribes to settle into, you know, communities.

Sean Confer (16:36): And then they're surprised that these tribes are are are finding conflict and differences with each other because they they are creating echo chambers and these and these tribes. Whereas, we're the tribe, and we are different. And one of the things we have in common is that we want to be here. We want to be surrounded by people who are different than us. We want to ask questions and listen and try to understand.

Sean Confer (17:03): Not always the general dorms on campus, that's the environment. And so, you know, this is something unique within the campus communities because people want to get along here. They want to be challenged, right, in the way that they're thinking. I think you're a 100% right. There you when you look, it's easy to call someone a label and hate them.

Sean Confer (17:28): Right? And say, well, this person represents all of these people, or they did this person represents these policies or that are that I'm against, and therefore, I'm against that person. When you make it a person, it's it's it's much more difficult to you know, when you have a conversation over dinner, you say, well, they carry that label, but they're not necessarily supporting the point of view that I blanket across all of that group. They're actually a more reasonable person once you talk to them. And they seem to be more empathetic towards each other.

Sean Confer (18:02): And that's when you personalize these issues. Person to person issues are never as bad as it is government to government or country to country or religion to give religion. You know? Then it's just white you know, whitewashing everything with the same point of view. And even within those communities, there's a lot of diversity in thought and opinion and beliefs.

Sean Confer (18:23): And when you get down to it, you know, a lot of majority of folks are are are reasonable, wanna find common ground, wanna find peaceful solutions, and just want safety, security, and a and a pathway to a better life for themselves and their and their family and their children. So, you know, that's where we get down. I think the special sauce here is that these are personal relationships. Just really quickly, there's in our Hall Of History, there's a a testimonial from one of our students who was a white South African that was living here during the apartheid period. And we also had a black South African in the house at the same time.

Sean Confer (18:58): Mhmm. And they write this beautiful testimonial that, you know, back home, they would not communicate with each other. They would never have an opportunity to interact with each other. They wouldn't wanna interact with each other. They would just stand across the street and, you know, and and not have any interactions.

Sean Confer (19:16): However, in this house, they move in. They meet. They have a coffee. They start having conversations. They end up becoming friends.

Sean Confer (19:23): And, you know, this is beautiful testimonial that once it became a person to person, and you start opening up and sharing and trying to build understanding, a lot of this conflict goes away. As you imagine a hundred years, there's a lot of stories like that where, you know, after World War II, there was Japanese, Germans, and Americans, and British in this house trying to kill each other a couple years before. And now they're here together. Right? And all of that goes away.

Sean Confer (19:52): So I think it all starts with interpersonal connections and communication and listening and trying to understand and not labeling entire groups of people.

Unknown (20:05): Yeah. Even the idea too that when we pause and put the human back in the frame, we also see what we share. It reminds me of the probably too often quoted, but still fun idea during World War II at Christmas when the Axis and the Allies came out of the trenches to sing Christmas songs and play football together. And it's like this really interesting idea that, okay, yeah, we are literally fighting, but then turns out we actually do have shared, in this case, shared traditions, shared religious connections, and shared holidays. Let's actually come together for that.

Unknown (20:40): In that moment, you can see if people can come together, it reminds us then why would we not be able to do this in a home that we're sharing or in a space that we're together too? It's a reminder that we can do it, and we're better when we do it.

Sean Confer (20:54): Right? Well, can do it. We have done it over thousands of years of history. You know? Yeah.

Sean Confer (21:02): People that were against each other for various reasons have found ways to come together and be peaceful. You know, just looking at relative history and and more wars, you know, Ken told me that in 1943, we saw, you know, people thought of Germany as a place that we would be, you know, going on vacation, and and and we we love German people or the the Japanese or, you know, any of the other you know? So it can change. You know? Views can change.

Sean Confer (21:32): Entire countries and cultures can find peaceful ways to move forward. And and that's what we're all about here is try to teach that to to 624 residents every year as we launch them out. It's like, hey. You know, we can there's other ways besides shouting down, canceling, and and threatening other people who disagree with you.

Unknown (21:54): Yeah. And then that's such an important point too because we are, you know, on the one hand seeing at at the current moment that we're talking now, this is, you know, late August in 2024. But just in general, like, we saw the rise around COVID for a few years, this rise from me to move into cancel culture. And now there's been a bit of a pushback in terms of saying, we don't need to cancel everybody. And we need to be careful about how we're deploying, on the one hand, weapons of retribution, but then at the same time, what is justice actually?

Unknown (22:24): How do we actually bring justice forward? And the interesting challenge points that, on the one hand, feel new in terms of how we're reckoning with. And we need to reckon with things like sexual harassment and sexual violence, especially on college campuses. And how it's gone through Hollywood and how the entire process through Me Too and how that's reverberated through society, but then also things around George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter. These notions of how do we reckon with the social needs of today.

Unknown (22:51): But then as we're talking here too, I think this really interesting and important history to remember of how we've seen other conflict working through conflicts in historical moments in The US that we're talking about here too. And even thinking about how iHouse itself, as a place, thinking about that as a character in a story, and the things that iHouse has seen in terms of conflicts and then resolutions and how folks have worked through them together, I think is really interesting. And obviously, one of the interesting pieces about this too is the coming together of so many international students also. So we're having a lot of cultural mixing that takes And place I think that's an interesting thing. I'm curious to think about that idea of strategies or things that you found that are effective for helping create those environments where we can have multiple cultures come together and have space.

Unknown (23:38): Obviously, there'll be some mistakes and some things that people say, oh, you either shouldn't say that or don't call me this. Not in a rude way, but just like, oh, I didn't realize I shouldn't say x thing about somebody. But how have you found strategies to help mitigate and help folks come together around or bring in different cultures together in ways that can work together and figure things out

Sean Confer (23:58): where I they think one thing is because we're such an old and established institution, it it's having principles and and core values that, you know, are consistent. Obviously, in this house, we have to be civil. You know? This is these are close quarters. I can tell you when they designed you know, the architects in 1930 didn't, you know, create these large living spaces for the students.

Sean Confer (24:26): These are very modest, and, you know, all of the undergrads have to double up. They share a room with someone from a different country by design. Yeah. We forced an interaction. And so, you know, if we didn't have an understanding of, you know, you we all have to be civil in this environment, you know, things would fall apart rather quickly.

Sean Confer (24:46): Yep. Yep. And so, you know, that's the first just this object. Like, look. We we understand we're all gonna we can disagree.

Sean Confer (24:53): And I may not agree with you, and that may make me frustrated or angry. However, I'm still gonna be civil about it, and that's where it needs to start. And I you know, it seems civility is lost in a lot of these these the current situation that, you know, you hear even things that come out of people's mouths, you know, in debates. Our leaders, role models. It's just not a civil war.

Sean Confer (25:20): You know? It's not civil anymore. We're not treating people kindly with respect. It's it's a whole another issue. I think it's just, you know, we also have to operate under free speech.

Sean Confer (25:33): You know? We have to allow every of those 82 nationalities and all of those 624 people. But, you know, we talk we we tend to fall back and talk about diversity because they have different passports. But the reality is economic diversity, gender diversity, I mean, the area of interest that they're studying on campus diversity.

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Sean Confer (27:23): You know, they're on all law, business, and engineering students. I've got you know, some of the most obscure majors on campus are found in this house for a reason. Yeah. Because I want those people here. I want them to, you know, what they bring is is so valuable to us to to just make everything so complicated and diverse.

Sean Confer (27:41): Wonderful. But you can't have that if people don't feel comfortable in expressing their opinions. So you have to allow free speech in this house and understand that there's things people are going to say that you may not agree with Well, that you're definitely not gonna agree with. Really? You know, welcome to a diverse world.

Sean Confer (28:01): Like, know, sit down and talk to that person. Try to understand why they have that opinion. Coming up, you know, I feel there's a there's a a certain level of uncomfortableness I have when we start talking about hate speech or safe spaces because there seem to be you know, whenever you come up with policies or rules to create that, it seems like the only way to create those spaces are by excluding the certain points. And Yep. I don't I don't think that's what we're about.

Sean Confer (28:31): Because once you start excluding people, you're never gonna understand them. You're never gonna have an opportunity to like, well, let's engage them in the conversation. I I am baffled by why you feel this way. I really wanna understand how were you raised? What is it about your culture that led you to come to this?

Sean Confer (28:47): I wanna understand. You know? And that may not be a safe space for everybody. Mhmm.

Unknown Speaker (28:53): But also, who defines what a safe space

Unknown Speaker (28:54): is? That's

Unknown Speaker (28:55): good question.

Sean Confer (28:56): You know? You have it is very ethnocentric. Right? Yeah. You do whatever you create it.

Sean Confer (29:02): So, you know, I say blow out the gates and just let everyone have free speech under these rules of civility and listening to understand. And we're not trying to indoctrinate people. We're not trying to convince people. Just trying to understand people. If we understand each other, we have a chance to move forward and find a way to coexist that doesn't include me canceling you, eliminating you, or trying to get that thought erased from history.

Sean Confer (29:30): Yeah. You know? And so I think those are the the tenants, the principles that you have to have to keep this the magic that happens here happen. All of these things you feel I feel like you just we're just lost in society. I mean, I don't think social media or or the media at large has has been helping us to develop diverse perspectives or deeper understanding of people who disagree.

Sean Confer (29:57): Yeah. You're like, can't find a new you know, tell me a news channel that is neutral. It will give me both sides of the story.

Unknown Speaker (30:04): Yeah. I'm not sure those are there.

Sean Confer (30:06): Tell me the algorithm that was feeding me content that I normally wouldn't find, but might help me understand an issue better. Right. All no. They're all focused on taking you down a rabbit hole. And then surrounding you by one point of view keeps your eyes on the screen.

Sean Confer (30:22): Yeah. And I think that's, you know, that's part of the situation we find ourselves is we need to find ways to to allow people to open their mind to difference of opinion. And, again, not with the intent to change anybody's mind. That's with the intent to understand. No.

Sean Confer (30:40): Just to personalize a little bit more. You know? And we come up with all these crazy labels now. You know? And Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (30:47): And then this

Unknown (30:48): And it is it it's interesting because it's like, on on the one hand, you know, it's it's like I'm not there yet. But, like, when you have a, you know, two year old that's asking why after every single question, at some point, you can see these exasperated parents like, well, at some point, say, either just because I said so or because that's the way it is or something. There's always a I don't want call it a cop out answer because I will ask me again in a year and a half. I'm like, Okay, yeah. Now I see why they say that.

Unknown (31:17): But in general, the desire to know why doesn't ever come from a place of malice. It's like this true desire to understand. It And seems in general that the two times that we really allow in contemporary US society, do we really allow that and push for that is when their kids are two or three and then in college, which is weird. We dropped the middle of that in terms of really talking, especially for liberal arts universities, pushing this idea of genuine inquiry of I'm interested in x, y, z, not just learning a bunch of facts. And I don't want to paint too broad of a picture of The US education system.

Unknown (31:55): But I think there's a lot of challenges about, on the one hand, too, in terms of teaching to the test for a lot of things like this and making sure that kids get that content versus how to either think critically or ask questions in a deeper way. I'm glad that we see higher education institutions doing that. But it is interesting that we don't see it getting pushed earlier. If we do see it, it gets pushed into a space of privilege in terms of for AP classes, advanced placement, honors. That's when you take a humanities art history class.

Unknown (32:24): It's this funny point. I agree with you too, in terms of that there's the media side that pushes typically an angle. I think that has a ton of challenge based anything that's premised on advertising for revenue is going to do that. And that's exactly those algorithms. Because they're funneling your attention into a certain space because then they're going to either get you to do something, often buy something, or pay for something in some level.

Unknown (32:48): It's the other side that we have education not pushing too much in terms of actually having more genuine critical thinking skill sets, sometimes until we get into university. And so there's an interesting piece where it's like, I've appreciated seeing So on the media side, I've appreciated finding there's a couple apps. I talked to Alex Fink, who's the CEO of a media company called Otherweb, which it is basically nutrition labels for news media. So you can look at it and see what kind of speech does it have? Would it be inflammatory?

Unknown (33:20): Would it be neutral? So basically understanding, was it fact checked? How has it been fact checked? And so this interesting idea of letting you understand a bit more in terms of when you're consuming content. He's like, the same with food.

Unknown (33:31): You should want know what's in that cereal. I want to know how my articles are getting made also. So it doesn't write its own pieces, at least not right now. But it looks at multiple sides of if you get a piece or a story that you might be written about in Fox News and CNN and BBC or whatever, and seeing how is it talked about in slightly different ways, which is interesting. All Sides is another organization that does this, where they say, how is an issue being covered on right, left, and center?

Unknown (34:00): But even that point, we expect there to be a right, left, and center split. And the thing we're talking about, polarization up top too. And expecting to say, Okay, well, I have to be in one of these buckets, versus all of us are actually pretty much a spectrum of a lot of things. And rarely ever we say, this is the one thing that I am. And so it's interesting to think about how we can help foster that idea, the genuine curiosity and the humanity of someone in a place like iHouse that is recognizing that we're here at Berkeley in the Institute of Higher Education trying to help us think more critically oftentimes, at least if I have to take the anthra 101 class is one of my freshman requirements.

Unknown (34:42): Right? And also then, what does that mean to have it in a space like a higher education institution that often is a place where we see different views come together? For some people, some kids for the first time. Right? They're saying up top as well.

Unknown (34:56): So think it's an interesting space. And I agree. It's like civility is something that we see missing in often places. So I guess how do you think about that in terms of we can help instill both civility and so I guess one question is how long do the folks stay? Are they there for one year, two years?

Unknown (35:11): Like and then because I'm kinda thinking about how do we how do we push them forward and say, keep keep keep keep with that civility. Like, how how do you think about that?

Sean Confer (35:18): Yeah. Well, so residents stay here. They can stay for one semester. They can stay up to four years. And so we have some HD students that have seem to they've been here longer than I've been here.

Sean Confer (35:29): So, you know, they can stay for quite a while. I think on average, they're slightly more than a year and a half in total that they stay here. So they have a good experience, a lengthy experience exposure to this environment. And I can tell you, we have over 100,000 alumni that have come out of just my house, Berkeley, over the years. And this experience stays with them their entire life.

Sean Confer (35:56): We had alumni reunion a few weekends ago, and I was speaking to one of our alumni who was here in the fifties. Cool. And, you know, we're here for one year, 1950. And you think about, you know, how the world has changed in 1950 and Yeah. How an individual's life, you know, come graduating from college, the ups and downs and changes in your career, relationships, children, grandchildren, births and deaths, and all of these things that you've been through in your life.

Sean Confer (36:23): And, you know, they come back for that that one experience they had for one year in 1950, breaking back here, and they're so mostly connected to to what happens within this house. And, you know, part of our mission is, you know, building lifelong friendships, and they have lifelong lifelong friendships. All of these people that, you know, come together in this this special community and disperse are still connected decades later. So there is something really special and positive that comes out of this mixing of people and and, you know, and and talking to people who you disagree with, it ends up, you know, these may be your friends for life. Even though, you know, when you know this place, you may have just pointed your finger and say, I hate that person.

Sean Confer (37:06): Mhmm. Yeah. I live with them, you, you know, go have a drink with them and you, you know, do all the social things that we do or have dinner upstairs with them, and you realize, wow. This is a great person. I there's only one sliver of things that we disagree on, but we can get past that.

Sean Confer (37:20): So it's and so the know? And there's so much to unpack with what you just said too. I know as you were talking about, you know, the whether or not we're trying to, you know, teach to test in education, whether we're trying to teach, you know, critical thinking in education. You know, I think that's that's where we start is we're trying to understand what are we trying to do with education, whether it's Yeah. K through 12 or higher end.

Sean Confer (37:44): What what is the purpose of all of this? Pretty. You know, I spent thirteen years of my life in China in in education, higher education. My wife is Chinese. My kids are 10 and 12.

Sean Confer (37:55): Mhmm. So they're they're still very young.

Unknown Speaker (37:57): Still asking why.

Sean Confer (37:58): Yeah. I'm yeah. I'm that that question about about university and college, you know, you start thinking about it when they're three months old, but you you're continually thinking about it, Bill, for another nine eighteen years. Too many. But it's quite different.

Sean Confer (38:12): You know, it it took me a year to really understand that the, you know, the objectives of a Chinese education system are quite different than what I went through in The United States. And, where we were focused a lot on, at least when I went through school, really a lot about critical thinking and asking questions and challenging the status quo. Where in China, it was more rote learning. It was you know, you have this this this Gaokao test at the end, and it's gonna determine whether you go to a top university, a mid level university, or you're go get a job. And how you do on that test on that one day determines trajectory of your life, not just you, but your family.

Sean Confer (38:52): That's pressure. So, there's a lot of pressure to do well on one test. And so, of course, that system is going to be supporting outcomes of that test at the end. It is a lot of rote learning. It is teaching you to to be very strong in in process and understanding concepts.

Sean Confer (39:14): But where where I found they were where The US students were weak, generally weak in math and sciences, but good at asking questions and challenging people, know, in China, was quite opposite. They were very good about, you know, figuring out how to how to get things done in science and math and how to answer questions. They weren't great on was questioning why or, you know, coming up with another opinion on their own. Oh, you know, you look at the education system, they were they were designed and set up to do different things. And so I think you have to start off, like, what is what are we trying to do in higher education?

Sean Confer (39:48): What are we trying to do in universities? Is it know, if you liberal arts is probably different than if you come Berkeley, you know, the business school, the engineering schools, it's teaching you knowledge that's gonna help you, you know, get into Yeah. Great great positions in in jobs and industry and lead there. So it's it's you know, where do we start? I come from the opinion of what what works here at iHouse is that, you know, we're not trying to teach anyone what to think.

Sean Confer (40:21): You know, we're we're not indoctrinating anybody. Yeah. And, you know, if if that's your goal in kindergarten, you know, k through 12 is to indoctrinate them to all believe in what way, then, yeah, critical thinking goes out the window, and there's gonna be you're teaching people that there's one way to think and everything else is wrong. And I you know, you're an anthropologist, so you know this much better than I would. To Go back in history in the great societies.

Sean Confer (40:45): Like, you know, which great societies were built on narrow point of view, taught to everybody, and everything else was wrong? That's usually when they start to decline. Exactly. When you start eliminating, saying, we don't like what these people are saying. Therefore, we need to eliminate it.

Sean Confer (41:01): That doesn't kill thought. Right? You can kill people, but you can't kill thoughts or ideas. I'm sure I'm sure that been several movies. Certainly not my quote.

Sean Confer (41:10): It's a great line though. Yeah. Yeah. You know? But, you know, as I look back at my memory of of history is the great societies were built on discussion, debate, divinity, understanding, not out of fear that someone has an idea that's different than mine, and they may be right.

Sean Confer (41:31): So I I need to eliminate that. Right. So, yeah, I I think, you know, we're kind of in this path now where we're, you know, we're trying to get k through 12 to be indoctrinating people versus giving them this information and teaching them how to look at things critically and to ask the right questions and and and not be intellectually arrogant. Mhmm. Where they I'm right.

Sean Confer (41:53): Everyone else is wrong. And you're not gonna move me off my position because I know I'm right. Smarter than you. It's like, wait,

Unknown Speaker (41:59): wait, hold on. Yeah.

Sean Confer (42:00): Yeah. I mean, that's you know, that and and there's been there's been research done. There was a report out of IHouse, New York. They just an impact report they just did, and they surveyed a lot of their alumni and looked at looked at some qualities of of our IHouse alumni versus benchmarking them. And, yeah, they're as you would imagine, they're more central in their political views.

Sean Confer (42:25): They're more centrist. They're less intellectually arrogant. They recognize that they know what they know, but they also know they know a lot they don't know everything. And they're willing to listen and learn and try to understand things and continually, you know, grow their ideas and to grow their understanding. They give more in charity.

Sean Confer (42:44): They give more time to to to the community. I mean, just a lot of benefits that come from this environment that I think are, things we wanna encourage.

Unknown (42:55): Yeah. No. Totally. That sounds great. And I agree where it's like when we are able to foster those spaces of intentional bringing together of difference, And we have a ground rule or kind of a first principle of civility.

Unknown (43:09): Right? It's such an important piece, you know? And

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Unknown (44:43): On the one hand, I think, like, there are natural questions that we we would kinda point towards critical thinking of. It's just like, oh, why does the person have that practice? Or that the way they're cooking that food smells weird, and, like, that may lead to series of questions of how do we produce food, you know, and wider ingredients. Like, why then kind of saying, it might smell weird, but then I'm saying, well, why am I saying that's weird? Like, maybe they think what I'm eating smells weird.

Unknown Speaker (45:03): Right? And kind of they can see this kind of reflection

Sean Confer (45:05): Well, overseas, I can tell you a 100%. What you think is weird, someone thinks is delicious. What you think is delicious, someone else thinks is weird. Right. You know?

Sean Confer (45:16): And and that's you know, I you hate to simplify it too much. Ultimately, there's a reason there's 31 flavors at Baskin Robbins. A lot of people with a lot of different tastes. And when you think about you know, you you expand that. Well, why are we just talking about ice cream?

Sean Confer (45:30): You can talk about food. You could talk about political views. You could talk about social views, value systems. Is that there's a whole it isn't polarized. It is a, you know, a whole, you know, continuum of differences across the board.

Sean Confer (45:44): And I don't even think it's linear where it's left, right, or rich, and more. It is this this this beautiful, like, bubble of folks that feel and think different ways. Mhmm. And when you see them that way, it's it's easy to understand that, you know, that there's a lot going on in the world that I are not that are different than me, and I'm comfortable with it. It's okay.

Sean Confer (46:11): Yeah. I'm like everybody else. I got a difference of opinion. You know? Just like everyone else has a different opinion.

Sean Confer (46:17): Doesn't mean someone has to be right. We can all, you know, we can all have different views and and still be right.

Unknown (46:22): Yeah. True. It makes me think that earlier this year, I was talking with Byron Reese. He's a futurist thinker, writer, and he wrote he's done a lot of work on AI and and kind of the changes in technology. But his latest book was this I don't if it was a left or right turn or upside down turn or some weird turn.

Unknown (46:42): But it was on the hypothesis that humanity is actually a super organism. Now I'm not going to ask you to say if you think that is the case or not. But the idea in terms of how we operate at scale now as humans, as a city itself cannot function, and you can't pull it apart and have just a delivery system work by itself, but that we can actually do things at these crazy scales now. And it's interesting to think about this idea that why do we see systems and actually, I'll relate this to the good point you're making too in terms of what we see great civilizations and societies doing by bringing in essentially diversity, by bringing in different perspectives and ways of approaching things. In the same way of evolution, what makes evolution work better and what may make something bigger work better is that it has multiple inputs that are different.

Unknown (47:27): And so it tries a bunch of things out. Evolution tries a bunch of stuff out. And then some things don't stay, and some things do stay. And that's why we have opposable thumbs. And it tastes for sugar.

Unknown (47:37): It's these interesting ideas to think about something like how we create these intentional microcosms with a group of 86 nations in iHouse is one excellent experiment of diversity, but then also this is pointing towards this idea that we can do more. And as a species, we're kind of weird at this. We're able to do more when we scale up by bringing a bunch of difference together. It's not about having just one perspective. And from an evolutionary perspective, that's super dangerous.

Unknown (48:06): It's like if you only grow one kind of crop and you get a bug or the season goes bad, you lose everything. But if you have three or four or five or 85 different kind of crops in biodiversity, you're much more likely to survive something challenging. I did research in agriculture in Peru, this is why I'm bringing up that. But the food stuff, I think, is always very cool too. Because it is this interesting point of recognizing biodiversity works well for mitigating environmental challenges.

Unknown (48:28): But human mental and spiritual and cultural diversity also works really well too for approaching problems. And that we also don't need one solution. We actually need a bunch of different ways of working together to solve, especially some of the bigger problems that we're facing. We talk about polarization, which is a problem. But it's one of those very much we've made it by saying, here's splits and the sides.

Unknown (48:48): But I think you're also right that the idea of the big bubble mess me with the superorganism. It's a lot of coming together that is actually what allows us to change and do better at scale. And we need that kind of diversity. So I don't know. I don't if that resonates.

Unknown (49:06): But I feel like that's it gives us something important to think about, what we do about intentional community, and why we need that. We're seeing a huge rise. I'm curious if you see this as well. We know that there's been a huge rise in especially with Gen Z. Talking about mental health and saying that need that's something that matters to Gen Z folks.

Unknown (49:23): And they want to make sure that they have either support and space for that and be able to talk about that, whether at university school or at the workplace that they're in. And thinking about how we are changing conversations to have these new kinds of spaces, what do you see as the role of higher ed in iHouse in helping shape having that space? That we can change the conversation. We can bring in more types of topics, more types of folks to do that. How does higher ed, in your perspective, work to help us do that?

Sean Confer (49:58): Yeah. Something you just touched on. I was having a conversation this week with being my age and being around as long as I have, you tend to see how patterns repeat themselves or how the pendulum swings one way and then it comes back the other. I was having a conversation with one of my one of my staff who's a few generations behind me, and he was commenting about his generation, this generation, this university age generation, and talking about mental wellness and how, you know, he made the comment that, well, you know, my generation's really trying to undo all the damage that your generation did. I Common laughter.

Sean Confer (50:42): You know what? I was thinking the same thing when I was your age about my parents' generation. And I it's not like it's a hard shift from generation to generation. It's it's a slow it's a slow evolution of of of change.

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Sean Confer (52:26): And, you know, I would have said the same thing at his age about my parents and I you know, how I grew up. So everyone looks back and criticizes previous generations, but those of us in the previous generation are like, we're just doing the best we could with what we have. And, yeah, we didn't focus so much on on mental wellness as a group. We didn't we probably internalized too much. We didn't we're we weren't good at sharing.

Sean Confer (52:53): However, we were different than generation before us, and we felt we moved the needle moved the ball a little. Yeah. And just and that's the perspective we need to take. Not that we're destroying all the damage my generation did, but they're just continuing that evolution. Mhmm.

Sean Confer (53:07): And, yes, you know, evolution needs variety. You need diversity to find those better ways of doing things. And that's, you know, in the organization here, I'm all about continual improvement. We try new things. We measure the impact.

Sean Confer (53:22): And if it was a positive impact, then we we keep doing it. If it's not, we learn something. We try something else. But if you're afraid to try new things because of fear of failure, then then you're kinda stuck and and you're not advancing at all. Mhmm.

Sean Confer (53:37): So I agree. Like, you know, we you have to have all of this diversity of thought. And I I didn't come from an anthropology background. I came from a business and management background,

Unknown Speaker (53:45): which was They they line up.

Sean Confer (53:47): If you're a leader and you're gonna make a decision, you don't wanna be surrounded by people who are telling you what you already know

Unknown Speaker (53:52): Yeah. That's right.

Sean Confer (53:52): Challenging you and asking you the right questions so that you can be sure that your decision is the right one or to be pivoted off of, well, I didn't think about that. Thank you for creating that. I'm gonna make a I'm gonna maybe pivot my decision a little bit because of what you were able to bring to me. And that means you need diversity. And yet they see anyone quote research as those, you know, diverse teams underperform.

Unknown Speaker (54:19): You know? That's fake news.

Sean Confer (54:22): Yeah. You know? So it seems to be you know? Or let's just take that and just, you know, and and just and just feel comfortable that, yeah, surrounding yourself with difference of opinions and civility and with listening and understanding and and empathy is gonna lead everyone to have a better result, and we'll be doing it together. So it's yeah.

Sean Confer (54:43): It's it's it it doesn't feel like the winds are at her back right now with all of this. Society feels, you know, that, you know, you see all these these photos of people like, this is your globalism. You know? This is your multicultural, you know, and and and it's always bad scenes. It's not Yeah.

Sean Confer (55:01): It's not people coming together who are different with their arms around each other saying, you know, know, trying to get something accomplished positive. It's always, you know, we need to isolate. We need to put ourselves in tribes. Otherwise, they're gonna attack us and take us over or ruin our way of lies. Yeah.

Sean Confer (55:18): And I I have a hard time understanding why we're going that way.

Unknown (55:25): I wish we knew too. It is a tricky thing because it's funny too because when you spend more time, either in an international context or with people that are just different from you for an extended period of time, you come to lose that fear. You lose that idea that, oh, someone's going to steal something from me. I'm going to lose my way of life if I learn and listen to somebody else that is different from me. It's this funny point of never does that happen, actually.

Unknown (55:56): And actually, realize you're actually better off because you actually have a whole new perspective. You have new tastes. You have new kinds of friends, you know how to interact in a way that you didn't know before. And so it's this funny point that it is this very flat narrative that's fear based. That if I bring indifference, I'm going to change or it's threatening my way of life and they want to make it different, blah, blah, blah.

Unknown (56:15): But it's like the more time you spend with with as humans with other humans that are that are different from you, that's not ever really the response of like, oh crap, I'm losing my way of doing x. It's more like I might be wrestling with an evolution of how things are changing, how I'm thinking about things. Right? But never is it like, oh, I got screwed because I like was living with people that are different from me. Right?

Unknown (56:36): Yeah. And and so I I it's funny that we let the narrative like that such such a, you know, I think in part media, that we let that narrative be so loud and common that it's kind of like we don't have to be afraid. It's okay. We can actually It's nice. You don't have go run and do something that's totally different, but being near and with folks that have different perspective, different cultures than you is quite helpful.

Unknown (57:00): And I think to your point too, you don't have to have anthropology background. I appreciate your point of a business background. Think it's super important. Right? And you yourself, you've worked in many international contexts also, which I think is really important.

Unknown (57:11): From And folks I've talked to, I've been doing this podcast for ten years. And folks that have international experience always do better, and they always find more of a human angle with the work that they're doing. Especially, I talk with a lot of business leaders too. And one, because I'm really interested well, I work in business also, but I'm interested in these questions of how do we build better businesses for the future. Higher education is also a business.

Unknown (57:35): And thinking about inside of it, see faculty wrestling all the time with how do I either, on the one political side, divest from certain things, but on the other side, I have to do my administrative work and then make sure that I'm getting the right coursework and research. It's all still part of a business machine in its own way, as much as some people might lament that. But that's not a bad thing. It's just getting a sense of how do we run businesses in more human ways. And so I'm curious, your perspective, having worked across a number of different contexts in many different higher ed spaces, but also internationally, how has that shifted the way you think about business and running and leading an organization?

Unknown (58:11): Also, especially this one that's in an institute of higher education for folks.

Sean Confer (58:16): Yeah. I mean, I think it it is that. You know, I I've never been afraid to, you know, jump from rock to rock. So, you know, I finished my MBA and and started teaching and had a one year contract to go to Beijing to teach in China, and I'd never stepped foot in China before that. Good to hear.

Sean Confer (58:36): So, you know, I was in a position in my life where it sounded great. When I did my MBA, China was in every class, and none of the faculty had ever visited China. And so I had this opportunity to go live there and work there and experience the culture for the first time. And, you know, for me, I always had a bit of a risk taker quality to me, so I jumped at it. And that one year turned into thirteen years.

Sean Confer (59:00): And then, when you immerse yourself, you are very much on the defensive and uncomfortable a lot of the time because, yeah, I was not the norm over there. And the language challenges, the culture challenges, you realize that they have a way of organizing and running their lives that is very different than how I do it or how I was raised doing it. And in some ways, it was better. Yeah. And then you sort realize, well, there's a lot of different ways to do things.

Sean Confer (59:32): Not all there's not a right way and a wrong way. There's probably a 100 different ways to do it that are right. Some of them may be better than others, but, you know, it's it's it just gave me the perspective that people around the world think and do things differently, and it works for them. Mhmm. So who am I to go flying around the world, drop in this country, complain that, you know, all they eat here at 11:00 at night, that's ridiculous.

Sean Confer (59:57): Why would you eat 11PM? It works for them. Part of their culture. It's not right or wrong. It's just different.

Sean Confer (1:00:02): Yeah. And, if you're gonna go there, expect to Expect

Unknown Speaker (1:00:06): it to be different.

Sean Confer (1:00:07): Yeah. There's an intro. There's kind of an internal joke here. You know, we have you know, we're based in The US, and my staff wanna be home by 10:00 at night to be with their families. And, of course, part of our community here are, you know, maybe folks from countries where they eat very late at night.

Sean Confer (1:00:24): And so, of course, they want us to extend our eating hours, you know, our dining hall hours. And I'm like, look. I understand where you're coming from, but when I go to Spain, for example, I don't expect the restaurants to change for me. And I can't change for you. My staffs, all Americans that live here.

Sean Confer (1:00:39): You know? This is a regular eating time for us. We shut down at 10:00, and they wanna clean up and go home. And and, you know Yeah. You gotta adapt to that too.

Sean Confer (1:00:49): We can't cater to everybody because they're all different. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think I just was exposed at an early age that because I traveled around a bit. I did spend time in Europe growing up in an Irish school.

Sean Confer (1:01:03): And people do think differently. People have different, you know, views of the world. And I was I never had the idea that there was one way of doing something. And all these experiences just taught me that, wow, they do it differently, and that's kinda better than how I was doing it. Or we you know, how they're doing it doesn't work from doesn't really seem to be very effective, but, you know, how they're doing it somewhere else is.

Sean Confer (1:01:26): And so, yeah, I I just have that perspective of there, you know, there isn't a right and a wrong, that there's there's a lot of different ways to do things. They they can all be very effective depending on the context and culture. And so, yeah, I felt comfortable being in those uncomfortable situations and and and learning and growing from them. Yeah. I tell you, not everyone has an open growth mindset.

Sean Confer (1:01:53): A lot of people have closed mindsets, and, you know, they're very you know, those are the faculty that would come to China to teach, and then within six weeks, they took a runner in the middle of the night and flew home. Oh, man. Couldn't handle it. Yeah.

Unknown (1:02:05): I mean, that that's it's a good point too. It's like, have to you have to, on one hand, also be like, be but you have to have a growth mindset, but then also be open to to that it is gonna be different. Right? And then, like, that's it's it's like that's also the kind of thing I think that that, like, iHouse does a really good job at is helping all these students recognize that we're going to be in a space of difference and diversity because we have 86 different countries represented here. And then there could be multiple cultures within each of those.

Unknown (1:02:31): Expecting difference, but also this idea too of helping folks recognize that if you're in The US too, there's certain norms we have in terms of when we typically would eat in this country. I know it can obviously be very different, but just like, yeah, if folks wanna go home at 10PM, it'd be very tough to be like, you guys need to stay till midnight you know, if that's not a not a common not a common practice. You know? It's like, we're not a bar.

Sean Confer (1:02:54): Yeah. Yeah. It's look. It is just appreciating and recognizing the cultural differences that we all have and being flexible and and and have grace with other people that had to do things differently. Try to understand why they do it that way and and not judge people for doing things differently.

Sean Confer (1:03:13): Yeah. I mean, just giving people space to be who they are and and and not just about, well, you know, I pay a lot of money to stay here. You need to do it my way. I'm the customer. It's like, no.

Sean Confer (1:03:25): You know, this is a community of folks that are different, and we need to try to I'd just be ping ponging from one group to another group if I listen to, you know, keep it later, open up earlier, you know. Right.

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Sean Confer (1:05:09): It's just it's just we have to find a place where we can all be comfortable with the way things are, understanding it may not be my way. Mhmm. That's what works for the community. We put the community ahead of ourselves.

Unknown (1:05:22): I think that's a brilliant point, actually. Because I like the contrast you just made there in terms of that this is not about the customer's always right. That's the wrong attitude in this case. This is about community, right? And how do we actually think more intelligently, rather than calling everything a transactional relationship, because I'm a customer, I'm paying for a thing, it's like there is money exchanged to be here.

Unknown (1:05:44): But me and my landlord, I'm renting or if I'm buying in the bank, don't want to just have this one transactional relationship. You want to both know them. In this case, even more so having a community as part of that, the really important piece for us to remember too, that we're not a bunch of just transactions in other people's lives, even though there be that part of it. Really, three d is actually what we're ultimately looking for and helping keep that at the foreground

Sean Confer (1:06:07): so important. That's a really good point. And yeah. I think that's because we're you know, I'm not a new organization. Like, keep I said, you know, a 100 years old.

Sean Confer (1:06:15): We've been doing this. We know what the way we operate. You know? Well, some things have changed a lot, some things have not changed. And the idea that we have to, you know, try to create a space that all 600 folks can have the same level of experience with all the differences of And and we rely on core principles and values to do that.

Sean Confer (1:06:35): You know, think that's where universities have kind of struggled at the moment is that they, you know, that they they seem to be flexible on their values and their principles. You know? Well, now they're, you know, they wanna talk about free speech on campus, and that's, you know, certainly messages coming out as as the campuses are reopening after the summer break. And I'm like, well, where was that when you were, you know, allowing a group of students to threaten protesting and violence against a speaker coming to campus? Where were you standing up and being strong and saying, no.

Sean Confer (1:07:07): Freedom free speech is is is vital for for us, and we're not gonna let one group decide, you know, whether or not the speaker's gonna be invited or or whether or not people are have an opportunity to listen and try to understand where they're coming from and why they come, you know, from their point of view. And they were very quickly you know, they very quickly canceled people from speaking on campus because a certain group was offended. They may be a very offensive speaker. Did it? But I I'm interested in hearing what they have to say and asking quest hard questions about why they feel that way and how they, you know, how they got to this point in their life where they feel so strongly that it just I wanna understand.

Sean Confer (1:07:56): I wanna ask questions. I wanna challenge people. I wanna understand people better. And canceling them and saying, you know, I'm throwing free speech. Well, it's we do believe in free speech.

Sean Confer (1:08:05): However, not here, not there, not here. And now universities are trying to stand up and say, oh, free speech, we allow people to and that's the challenge, that you have to be strong with your principles and and and unwavering. Yeah. Otherwise, it's you know, I think that's the challenge. Mhmm.

Sean Confer (1:08:20): And we think about how we left the the the spring term after graduation with all this violence and upheaval along the campuses. And, you know, one thing about universities is, you know, there's graduation, everyone goes home, and a lot of this cools down as people disperse. And now we have residents coming back to camp or the students coming back to campus. You've got this political cycle. It's not gonna be just about election day.

Sean Confer (1:08:45): It's gonna be election day to the, you know, beginning of January, and what's gonna happen after January. You know, there's it's and the the the situation in The Middle East has not significantly changed than it was when they left. And so, you know, the cooling off period of the summer for these universities, everyone has had a chance to kind of reflect on how they handled things in the past Mhmm. And how are they gonna handle things differently this year. And it'll be interesting to see how these universities deal with the protests that are going to happen on campuses relatively quickly.

Sean Confer (1:09:21): Yeah. And whether they take the position of some of the other universities, we're bringing the police, we're clearing the camps, we're, you know, we're or we're going to sit down with folks. We're gonna have discussions. We're gonna try to, you know, find solutions and and peaceful solutions and move forward, you know, which is what we essentially have here at Berkeley. Yeah.

Sean Confer (1:09:43): Yeah. You think about, you know, I saw what was flaring up at Columbia University, you know, being here at Berkeley, and, you know, this is, you know, student protest. Were you know, that's that's part of our brand here, student protest. Yeah. You know?

Sean Confer (1:09:58): And and I was expecting it to be as bad as Columbia, and it wasn't. You know? Interesting. Yeah. Administration worked with the with with the protesters.

Sean Confer (1:10:09): They set some ground rules about civility, and you're allowed to protest, but don't block that entry. Don't, you know, don't be violent. And they negotiated with them, and it was a peaceful resolution. The Berkeley weapon on the front of Fox News every night, which, you know

Unknown Speaker (1:10:26): It's helpful.

Sean Confer (1:10:28): Which is, you know, surprising. Right? Yeah. Because it was handled well. Not every university took that approach.

Unknown (1:10:35): That that is very true. I think that it's a a super valuable point too in terms of, you know, both being upfront about what one's values and principles are and then sticking with them. Because these are the moments when that actually matters, right? Because these are the moments when your values are actually tested, right? Where your principles are tested because it's how do you respond in a scenario where if we're for free speech, but then saying only certain people get to speak.

Unknown (1:10:58): And then talking about what that is and why. If we're setting those ground rules, what does that look like? But then also saying, Okay, are we actually sticking to different principles? I think you're right. We see it in higher education, but we also see it, again, within professional organizations, with cultural organizations.

Unknown (1:11:10): So it is an interesting and challenging part in businesses too. They are under fire for different reasons. But still, you see when there's not values being lived out. I think kind of one you know, the there's maybe that a wrap up question, but just like this this idea that, like, I'm kinda thinking about. Obviously, as we I think you've you've touched on this.

Unknown (1:11:27): It's like, we are, of course, heading into the selection season. So it's interesting to think about that universities get that cool off period in the summertime when folks go away. So thinking about as we're heading into that season for folks, what do you see with some of those challenges or opportunities that campuses can do to help foster that constructive dialogue to bring those pieces in? So if folks were saying, Okay, all right, I need to do one or two or three things, know you can't sell to those things, what are some advice you'd have for other higher education leaders or folks that are trying to think about, Okay, we know we're to have either protests. We know we're going to be having conversations at least around elections and around January and beyond?

Unknown (1:12:06): So how do we think about the challenges and opportunities that are coming up? And what would you say to other higher ed admins and leaders to try to how do we navigate this in the smartest way?

Sean Confer (1:12:17): Yeah. I could always speak from the universities I've been a part of. And one of the challenges is that you know, the loss of what what I would consider kind of a a campus community where the the students, the faculty, the administration, everyone sees themselves as part of the same community. Yeah. And or even departments, looking at one department to the other department.

Sean Confer (1:12:40): You know, a lot of times, these things are just so siloed and so tribal, and it's the the administrate the the faculty against the administration. It's the, you know, the students against the faculty. It's, you know, the budget against everybody. Yep. Yep.

Sean Confer (1:12:56): And, you know, and I think the for the first part is these universities have to start healing their communities so that, you know, they are seeing that they put you know, we're part of Berkeley before I'm part of the school or part of what my role is within this community as student, faculty, or or or administrator. But I'm I'm I I put the issue with like, when I look at politics, our problem is we're putting our party ahead of our country. We should always put our country ahead. They look the most important thing is is this is is this country, and and I would never sacrifice, you know, something for my party ahead of my country. Right now, it's kinda she feels very flipped.

Unknown Speaker (1:13:36): Yeah. It does. Yeah. Yeah. And the same thing the same thing with universities instead of, you know, I'm faculty ahead of the university or I'm a student ahead of the university.

Sean Confer (1:13:45): Like, except that we're all part of the same campus community, and

Unknown Speaker (1:13:48): we need to

Sean Confer (1:13:49): come together within that and and talk about these real issues that we're facing in civil ways, you know, and trying to listen and understand everybody's perspective. And depending whether you're a faculty or a student or administrator, you're coming at these issues with a different point of view because there's there's trade offs that are that may be affecting you, but not the other groups or vice versa. And so the more we can sit down and talk and understand each other's point of views, the more likely we are to come together and find a solution. I think what we see is just this breakdown of any kind of commute campus And so, you know, I I would start with mending mending communities on campuses, and then that gives you a place to bring people together and start to to have conversations and how do we deal with these things and and and know, reinforce your principle. Look.

Sean Confer (1:14:41): We're never gonna get anywhere if I try to shut some of you down because I I don't like what you're saying. You know? Because then we're all pointing our fingers at each other. Right? And we're never gonna get anywhere.

Sean Confer (1:14:51): So let's just allow us to come together, talk freely, don't agree. That's fine. We this is a big, diverse world. Most people don't agree. However Yeah.

Sean Confer (1:15:01): We can all still get along. Yeah. And and and find a way that we're competing for resources, sharing resources that benefit all of us. Yeah. That's the economics.

Sean Confer (1:15:12): That's the economic side of me. Coming up.

Unknown Speaker (1:15:14): No. But I think but that's it's it's a great point too, I think that is actually super important.

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Unknown (1:16:49): Because it is like, it it comes at similar to what you're saying before too in terms of the, it's not the customer's right, but it's that the community needs to be put first. And thinking about that too, I love this idea for the campus community too. And when we can sit down with folks and recognize that if we're in this together, that we are not competing for resources. We are the resource also. You know?

Unknown (1:17:10): Yeah. It's an important part of the thing, I think.

Sean Confer (1:17:13): So Well, a lot conflict of on the campuses, and as I looked at the campuses that were on the front page every day because of the protests and how it's happened, A lot of times, it wasn't necessarily the campus community that was causing the conflict. It was outside agitators, people of the community coming to the campuses. And that's a tough one to handle because their priority is not being part of the university community and running you know, it's trying to make this an area where I can get my viewpoint out there to the world. That wasn't helpful. I can say in Berkeley here, we didn't have the amount of outside agitators as some of these other campuses saw.

Sean Confer (1:18:04): And I think that's one of the reasons we didn't see so much protest and violence.

Unknown (1:18:09): Yeah. I think that's a good point too. That's a sequel conversation I think we need to have in terms of how do we think about that? Because we do want to both build communities that are inclusive, but then also recognizing what is the on on the one hand, what are the bounds of the community that we're defining? But then also, are the, again, principles and the kind of foundation that we're building off of?

Unknown (1:18:33): And if you are coming from a different community, you should also respect the fact that we have a foundational principle of civility. Right? And you're not living up to that. And so therefore, can't we're not saying you can't have free speech. But if you are coming here and causing violence or if you're in essence messing with the broader community, like, that's a very different thing in treating people uncivilly or, you know, than than expressing your perspective.

Unknown Speaker (1:18:57): Right? And then, like, you get you get it's like one of those have to you have to both. Right? You can't you can't express yourself and be uncivil. You have to do you have to also be civil, right, as part of that.

Unknown (1:19:05): That's an interesting piece.

Sean Confer (1:19:07): There are there are folks out there. There are groups of folks out there that seem to be driven around breaking down breaking things breaking things down, you know, creating chaos and upheaval and violence. And, you know, we again, acting uncivilly. Right? So we need to somehow figure out yeah.

Sean Confer (1:19:27): It's it's interesting times. You know? I I because I do feel like I'm in a bit of a bubble here at IOS because, you know, we we we just don't have a lot of of of what we're talking about. What happens across the street doesn't seem to carry out when they walk into the door of IOS. And I would hope that, you know, that the lessons that we learn from from this experience in some ways translate into society that we there's some things we can learn from here.

Sean Confer (1:19:55): Diversity does work if you have just some basic ground rules. Mhmm. And and again, you focus on trying to create a diverse community that works, and not trying to convince a diverse community that my way works. Yeah. And so it's a it's an incredible place to be.

Unknown Speaker (1:20:14): I'm I'm very, very fortunate to be where I'm at and doing what I do. Awesome. It's

Unknown (1:20:21): an incredible organization. Yeah. I think it sounds super a very, very cool organization. I agree. I'm excited for folks to check it out.

Unknown (1:20:28): We'll put links in the show notes to check out iHouse and all the work that y'all are doing. I think it's really important. It's it's an an important reflection to know, too. If we're in a space that can be an epicenter of protest on a university campus, that when you enter the door of iHouse, we see stability kick in, or the animosity doesn't seem to enter into that space. That's an important and, I think, valuable lesson for folks to recognize and realize too.

Unknown (1:20:51): We can set these spaces on purpose. So I think you're doing some great work. I'm excited to see that it's been going for so long and that it's gonna keep rocking. I think it's an important reminder that we wanna do this. We wanna build together.

Unknown (1:21:05): Right?

Sean Confer (1:21:05): Well, like I said, we've been doing this for a hundred years. Where we're at right now and being in the role I'm at, it's looking at the next hundred years and seeing yeah, we do have this power to convene, to bring the community together because we don't we're apolitical. We don't have a a point of view. You know? Our point of view is bring people together.

Sean Confer (1:21:23): Mhmm. And so we can bring folks from all sides into iHouse and have conversations. And I think part of my hundred year vision, if you were to ask me what would That was my nice question. I'd want to put in iHouse and every university in the world, a place for these communities to come together, put their differences aside, and try to listen and understand. You know, I I think in some ways, like a zipper.

Sean Confer (1:21:50): You know, the iHouse can be the start of bringing campus communities together. Right. And I hope in some ways that we've been able to do that here with Berkeley and University of Chicago and likewise. You know, I it's a it's a benefit to the campus communities. Awesome.

Unknown (1:22:10): Cool. No. I'm excited. I mean, it sounds like we need to, yeah, build build some iHouses and or, like, build some training programs based off of that that we can we can bring to other universities or something.

Unknown Speaker (1:22:19): Training programs we have. There you go. See? Already already ready to go. And let let's chat in a few years.

Unknown Speaker (1:22:24): Very cool. Awesome. That sounds great. That'd be great. So Sean, Sankarva, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Unknown (1:22:28): It's been great to talk with you. I'm, again, super enthused by the work that that you're doing in iHouse as as a kind of beacon for folks to be able to see what's a place we can actually come together to have conversation and and know, bring civility to it. So, yeah, keep doing the great work. I appreciate you taking the time to converse and dial up today. It's been been a lot of fun.

Unknown Speaker (1:22:45): And, yeah, let's let's keep rock and roll.

Unknown Speaker (1:22:47): Appreciate it. Thank you so

Unknown Speaker (1:22:48): much for the opportunity. Cheers.

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