Could the traditional "Ivory Tower" be crumbling before our eyes? Join Peter Lake and myself as we celebrate the first anniversary of our show by examining the seismic shifts in higher education; a period we've likened to a renaissance. Together, we navigate through the political and judicial currents that are redefining the value of a college degree and the anticipated changes to the campus landscape. The uncertainty of regulatory power and compliance in the educational sphere and the State-by-state patchwork of approaches on emerging national issues, means institutions are in for another roller-coaster ride.
Higher education's reputation and role in society have been fiercely contested in recent Capitol Hill hearings. As Peter and I reflect on the identity crisis faced by these institutions, we scrutinize the pointed criticisms from political figures and the strategic missteps of college leadership. Through the lens of landmark cases like Oberlin, we discuss how higher education is getting entangled with multifaceted social and geopolitical issues, revealing the stakes involved for colleges trying to assert their relevance in a rapidly evolving world.
Finally, we turn our attention to the essence of authenticity in higher education and its alignment with American values. How do we reconcile the lofty ideals of academia with the gritty realities many Americans face? Amidst a political climate yearning for clear-headed leadership, we explore the quest for a rebirth of higher education that resonates with truth and offers a vision that people can believe in. So join us on this journey of discovery and debate as we unravel the complexities of a sector at the crossroads of history and innovation.
Could the traditional "Ivory Tower" be crumbling before our eyes? Join Peter Lake and myself as we celebrate the first anniversary of our show by examining the seismic shifts in higher education; a period we've likened to a renaissance. Together, we navigate through the political and judicial currents that are redefining the value of a college degree and the anticipated changes to the campus landscape. The uncertainty of regulatory power and compliance in the educational sphere and the State-by-state patchwork of approaches on emerging national issues, means institutions are in for another roller-coaster ride.
Higher education's reputation and role in society have been fiercely contested in recent Capitol Hill hearings. As Peter and I reflect on the identity crisis faced by these institutions, we scrutinize the pointed criticisms from political figures and the strategic missteps of college leadership. Through the lens of landmark cases like Oberlin, we discuss how higher education is getting entangled with multifaceted social and geopolitical issues, revealing the stakes involved for colleges trying to assert their relevance in a rapidly evolving world.
Finally, we turn our attention to the essence of authenticity in higher education and its alignment with American values. How do we reconcile the lofty ideals of academia with the gritty realities many Americans face? Amidst a political climate yearning for clear-headed leadership, we explore the quest for a rebirth of higher education that resonates with truth and offers a vision that people can believe in. So join us on this journey of discovery and debate as we unravel the complexities of a sector at the crossroads of history and innovation.
This podcast was launched a year ago with the intention of bringing to you a discussion surrounding the topics faced by higher education as it crawled out of the rubble left behind by a global pandemic. Destroyed in the process was a concept that the nation's colleges and universities had an unspoken protection from public scrutiny, a protection known as the Ivory Tower and with this breach of the educational castle, the value of a college degree was being brought in the question. Therefore, when Peter suggested we use the word renaissance in our program title, it seemed like a perfect descriptor for our upcoming discussions. There's no doubt that higher education is facing a rebirth and, regardless of how you feel about the value it brings to society as a whole, the institutions of higher learning in this country are transforming into something new. Peter and I thank you for being a part of our initial year of podcast and we hope you continue to listen as we dissect the issues and confront the challenges in 2024, during this transformative era in higher education.
Speaker 2:This is a Tarantino movie that's about to happen.
Speaker 3:From MC1R Studios. This is Higher Education Renaissance with Peter Lake.
Speaker 1:Well, hey there, Professor Lake.
Speaker 2:Hey Genji. How are you? I'm okay, just okay, huh, still a little sleep deprived actually.
Speaker 1:You know it used to be a year after year in higher education. It always seemed somewhat predictable, or at least there was never much on the horizon. But I guess the pandemic and what it left in its wake changed all that. So, from your legal viewpoint, what is in store for 2024?
Speaker 2:You know, hard legal prediction for 2024 is whack, Like anybody that thinks they can predict how all of this is going to happen. You're just looking at a multivariable equation that has a thousand permutations to it. In any kind of sequence, I believe the first topic we talked about last year was Title IX.
Speaker 1:What happened with that?
Speaker 2:You know, here's the mix of Title IX with some pieces of edge apocalypse. It's an election year. We're now deep into a federal election cycle. It's my instinct that the timing of the drop will be timed out primarily for political impact. Now, somewhere between spring and summer, the Supreme Court will decide. Lopr bright. You may remember, that's the administrative law case that deals with the fishermen. That seems to have nothing to do with Title IX, but it actually has everything to do with it.
Speaker 1:For those of you who missed out, on our podcast last June called Navigating the Legal Jungle of Compliance U, we discussed recent Supreme Court cases involving various federal agencies like the EPA, and how those decisions could have an impact on higher education. One such case was Lopr Bright Enterprises versus Gina Romondo. It's centered around a 1976 case which was designed to have observers on all fishing boats to ensure that they basically didn't violate any EPA laws, and when the agency could no longer afford to pick up the $700 a day tab, they require the fishermen to do it. Naturally, this had a disastrous impact on the industry, especially the smaller boats.
Speaker 2:I know for a fact that when the regulations drop, they won't be out an hour before a loss and so be filed to try to stay them. Fire and others have basically indicated that they're going to attack certain features of the new regs, so they'll be tested in court. The Supreme Court could strike down regulatory power and even great regulations of this type. Meanwhile, the current administration seems very focused on reproductive rights and freedoms, which puts them directly at odds with certain states like Texas. The future of Title IX may be devolving towards state law. Is that right? Yeah, and one way or another, I think state law is going to become much more prominent in what we think of as Title IX.
Speaker 4:It already has.
Speaker 2:But since we talked last, we spent some time in Virginia and we talked with the good people of Virginia and they're, I think, preparing for the fact that their system, which was very tied into Obama era standards, they might need to introduce legislative or other packages there in the state that would create a state system if the federal system evolves. Texas is going one way, California is going. It's. California basically has its own Title IX system. They've more or less gone that direction. So I think, coming into 2025, after whatever is going to happen on the national political landscape, there's a very good chance that the pressure is going to be on the states to figure out how they want to approach issues like transgender, athlete participation, bathrooms, reproductive freedoms, sexual violence, reporting of sexual violence.
Speaker 2:More than ever, I think what they're doing will matter and, may I add to the fun is our Supreme Court, which is sometimes we talked about this in one of the episodes which is at times been referred to as an imperial court, has bitten off so much.
Speaker 2:They kind of to me look like one of those people at the buffet who want to get their money's worth and they pile the plate with so much food they can't eat it, and so what that's going to lead to is that the circuits federal circuits are going to have enormous power to direct higher education. So where you are in a federal circuit is going to matter more than probably any time since the civil rights period in the 60s. You might remember busing in Boston and other areas, and it didn't happen in areas, but it did there. Yeah, I think we're into that same world where it's going to matter if you're in Maryland or Kansas or Oregon. You're going to get different takes and there's no way the Supreme Court can manage all of the variances. So more and more people are going to be craving state specific, region specific training for all sorts of purposes, and where there used to be sort of the one size fits all event, it just doesn't. I still see that it being as durable.
Speaker 1:What about the Capitol Hill hearings and the impact that's having on higher education with that circus?
Speaker 2:I think higher ed institutions still struggle with the transition from the loss of status to what we talked about before, to claiming an identity, and you could see that again on Capitol Hill. It was in the Harvard decision, it was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court says you come and argue, we're higher ed, we deserve deference. Nope, the argument baits a negative reaction now and it absolutely 1,000% did during the hearings, as all of the college presidents played the classic mid 20th century cavalry role officer. They charged headlong like the life brigade into a massacre. Because it just doesn't play. And what's been remarkable to me is that, as Citizens United sits there and wants to be grabbed, especially by private institutions.
Speaker 1:For reference Citizens United is a nonprofit think tank founded in 1988. Its goals are to promote free enterprise, socially conservative causes and political faces who advance their mission.
Speaker 2:You don't hear the industry seizing on that at all. They keep wanting to go back to cavalry charges getting wiped out. So 2024, there has to be a revolution in thinking about how do you approach the speech and association issues of the day. And on the periphery and I say periphery but it really isn't are more connected issues. For example, what about registered student organizations and Greek letter groups? What's the long-term implication of the Oberlin decision that the institution is essentially a media defendant? I just don't see the industry really coping with this at a strategic level. I mean, to put it bluntly, we got whooped. 23 will be a year that people will look back on and say higher ed charged up Mayor's Heights for the great victory and got wiped out.
Speaker 2:Some of the battlegrounds are very easy to see. The larger battle is over. Is there any kind of path forward for higher education to reclaim its social status? With red, blue and purple, what does that look like? I mean, you heard Virginia hot fox at the hearing. She said I won't even refer to you as higher education because I'm paraphrasing, but what you're doing isn't higher learning. That goes right to the core. That's like telling McDonald's you don't serve hamburgers. It's a shot.
Speaker 2:And of course, she's been a vocal critic for a long time. So this is the real challenge is what comes out of the ashes of this? And can we admit that we've kind of hit bottom with social standing and will be in the middle of every pitch battle? So what I have noticed on a macro level is that in the macro political world, social issues that have been intransigent have been transmuted into college issues to some extent to deflect attention away from decision makers, who have the most power to actually manage these things. You know, I found one of the things I found fascinating about the hearing is okay, let's pick on colleges for what they're doing or not doing about the issues in the Middle East, but the massive geopolitical issues in the Middle East are a lift well beyond the gymnasium of higher ed. I mean.
Speaker 1:So what you're saying is that Capitol Hill, or Congress, is trying to pin many of the social issues of today on higher education, or, at the very least, they're trying to make higher education responsible or accountable for resolving these issues.
Speaker 2:These are much bigger issues that have to be dealt with at a macro level and, frankly, so was sexual violence. I mean, when you go back to 2011,. You know, pinning the Nobody's doing enough about sexual violence on colleges and perhaps the entertainment industry was a start, but these are much bigger social issues that can't be resolved simply by colleges or the entertainment industry. So one of the things that's been happening to higher ed because we're not asserting our identity is we're allowing ourselves to be associated with being the problem associated with the big geopolitical issues.
Speaker 2:Historically, it'll be fascinating that people look back and say, oh, at a time when the United States had many choices about how to manage whatever issues in the Middle East there are, they call the hearing of college presidents and beat them up. That is not the issue in the Middle East, but that's what's drawing it in, and I think it's really interesting that we have been transformed into oh, look at what the colleges are not doing, when I could ask the same question as why aren't prosecutors prosecuting right more effectively, and why are we even in this situation in the Middle East right now, and what can we do to extricate ourselves? And these are at much bigger political levels. Those leaders can't agree on anything Right now. It's not clear that the American people are lining up to prefer any candidate. This could be the ultimate. I don't want any of this.
Speaker 1:So what is the main challenge?
Speaker 2:What I think higher education is struggling with is realizing that the national political landscape and regional and local has shifted to new models that are gosh, a little more similar to European parliamentarian approaches, the idea that there are two parties. What you see is something very similar to what you see in Germany and France as sort of a far left, mid left, mid right coalitions, and Americans aren't used to parliamentarianism of this type, not since the 20th century. There really isn't living memory of what that looks like. What that does is it shifts interest to other branches of government and as this has been evolving, what happened and I think the Supreme Court sees this is that the regulatory state stepped in to manage. It's almost like the entire country was in conservative leadership. They had guardians at Lightham and because the big kahunas were struggling to find footing, the managers I think they used to call them apparatchiks or something I think in Europe started to take up.
Speaker 2:The managerial class took over, and that concerns the Supreme Court, because the managerial class wasn't clearly written into the US Constitution the way the other branches and the Fourth Estate were. So what we're seeing is the judiciary. Judiciaries are dominating political discourse. So here we have a national election and you and I are talking about. What did the Colorado Supreme Court do? What will the main Supreme Court do? What will the judges say? What will the referees do? The idea that, all for one, e-pluribus unum, these things seem a little quaint, say the least.
Speaker 1:So it puts higher education in the middle.
Speaker 2:We've been branded as the all purpose for all people hospitality one stop on your way to social success. That product doesn't sell, and what the problem is is that if everybody shows up to the same store with absolutely opposite expectations, they're just going to tear each other apart.
Speaker 1:Sounds to me like what you're saying is higher education has perceived itself in the wrong way and it is now coming back to bite them.
Speaker 2:So we're the marketplace of ideas. Well, ok, if that's what we want to be, then you have to be prepared for a pretty bizarre. Bizarre when people are pushing and shoving Because what you're seeing is impossible to reconcile expectations. There's no vendiagrammatic overlap with some of this stuff. Like I want this, you want that. It can be carbon dated. You can almost see it. That revolutionary moment signaled that the crown will never be the same in North America after this. It may take a while, there'll be other battles, but we haven't hit Yorktown yet, although we may be close, but we're certainly well along with Ticonderoga and Monmouth and some of the other moments in the revolutionary. We're kind of looking for our George Washington.
Speaker 1:So what does today's leader, president, chancellor, look like for higher education?
Speaker 2:To do the job, you have to be willing to lose the job.
Speaker 1:Well, I doubt that you'll see any of today's type of leader acting that way.
Speaker 2:Did you ever see the series the Pacific? There's a famous scene where they're fighting over an airfield, a very dynamic, charismatic, beloved leader who organizes the men on what will be, for many of them, the last moments of their life, and he ends up becoming a casualty. And I remember when they carried him off the field and the stretcher, all the turbs were heartbroken. But in order to win that battle, you have to be prepared to die in it, and so as long as you attract people who are risk averse and are careerists, you're going to get the kind of general ship that Lincoln struggled with in the Civil War is people that wanted to win seats in the Senate or the presidency but not necessarily win the battle in the field, and you need people who are willing to die with the troops if necessary, to make it work.
Speaker 2:George Washington he was a champion of national higher education and was rebuked with that idea.
Speaker 2:But the ghost of Washington resurrects is now, as Washington probably foresaw, higher education would become a national priority, and the idea of decentralizing to the states has not been as popular as it was at the time that the Constitution was formed. And we've got a federal government that's strong arms colleges. We've got political leaders who believe they can go right down to the micro level and manage higher ed in a way that would have been unthinkable. We need someone to inspire us, and I think that's what was missing on Capitol Hill. When will higher ed hear? The message that I've been trying to send for 30 years Is that law plays one way in court and for lawyers, but lawyers and courts do not own the law, and when law comes to campus, it has to be inspiring, it has to motivate people. In other words, we have to be able to say to someone the reason that this is the law and we're following is because there's core value in it that we resonate with, and that's what I noticed wasn't ringing on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 1:So where did the presidents go wrong?
Speaker 2:You know, look, I'm not the president at Harvard or Penn. I never will be. But let me say this in human, layman terms the message that needs to come across is how am I supposed to run a college campus when people are walking around telling other people that they wish everybody liked them were dead? I can't do that. And okay, supreme Court, yabba-dabba-doo. Fred Flintstone, good for you.
Speaker 2:You in, your rules are written in ways that only lawyers can understand them, and I am smart enough to be able to pick all those pieces apart. The thing is, I have to go back and teach people and they have to have enough respect for the human beings that are around them that everybody can learn, or I can't do anything here. So I don't believe, and I'm just. I go to Congress. I would have thrown it right back at Virginia Fox and the gang and said look, this First Amendment stuff is not working for college. You've got to give us the power to teach, and it's been in some ways. What you're doing is exactly the opposite. You're pulling that authority away from us and you're telling us referee a fight. I'm not running a UFC fight night. I'm trying to teach people math and algebra and English literature, and you know. And so if someone comes to my campus and their major motivation is to destroy everybody else, I can't work with that. Now you tell me it might be illegal if I punish those people. Okay, we'll deal with that. But our core value is to protect learners and to protect the learning environment, whatever that means.
Speaker 2:And I'll go to jail like Dr King did. I'll lose my job, but gosh, dang it. I'm crossing that airfield. I'm not gonna sit here and cower while you artillery blast my men. We're going to attack that position and we're gonna claim it for freedom, democracy and learning. And if you expect to have a country in 100 years, that's anything like the one we've ever had before. It is. This is a sacred and American responsibility, is what my uncles took up in World War II Landing craft down, charge forward and you know what I could be a white cross on a beach. That's the sacrifice that needs to be made.
Speaker 2:And this is what I'm not seeing right now in higher ed is we're trying to please everybody, we're trying to talk the talk of the managers. The managers say well, you can only punish a true threat if there's a subjective state of mind. Blah, blah, blah, lawyer. That's not what happens in a classroom On campus, and I realized that we can't snub the law, but the law has to reform to fit our environment, and we are entitled to that. The United States owes it if we wanna have it, and so that would be me, and I would have gone to George Washington on this and said, look, you know okay.
Speaker 1:Right and behind every great leader is somebody who's prepping them. So how can those presidents who were on Capitol Hill not be prepared for questions that they were asked?
Speaker 2:You're doing it exactly right, jen. You gotta step back and realize that sometimes in life the correct answer is the wrong answer. And for wicked smart people, where it paid thousands of dollars an hour and hundreds of millions of bucks, you can be put on display if you're too smart for your own good, you know, and it's not. I'm not talking, you know, sort of common sense. I'm saying sometimes the correct answer is not the right answer. Anybody that's been to Vegas knows you don't double down on your losses, chase a loss, you're gonna just keep losing.
Speaker 2:But the thing is what? And again, people aren't catching the spirit of the law. Point that in the education world, yes, caesar tells us to follow the letter of the law. And so you know, as my particular faith says, give Caesar Caesar's dope. So, yeah, I'll go to Congress and I can recite the law chapter and verse, break down to the last dissent in any case, and I'll get it exactly right.
Speaker 2:But lawyers don't own the law, they don't own the spirit of it. That's what we have to live with With Title IX. I have to be able to go out to a campus and say why are we doing this? What we hope to accomplish, why is this meaningful? Why is the conflict meaningful? And when I step back and this is the George Washington and me is that the entire country is begging higher ed to step up and say here we are, this is what we do. You need us, you've always needed us. You're disappointed in us, but we're going this way. This is what we're doing, and if we have to fight the law to win the war, we will do that. I mean, this could be a moment of civil disobedience for this field and you might have to say that we'll have to choose a path.
Speaker 1:I would imagine the reason why we are at the crossroads with decision making is because there is no precedent to this. It just seems like what folks in higher ed are dealing with today and in the past few years. There is nothing to compare to.
Speaker 2:No one has living experience with this. How does that one song go? It's times like these we learn to live again. The beauty of an edge of apocalypse is it absolutely forces your identity forward. You really see who you are.
Speaker 2:And warts and all I think it's what frankly, made America's greatest generation the greatest ever is forged in fire and depression. The people who made it through knew exactly who they were. They had suffered so many different ways and had deprivation and loss that the ones that were left they knew who they were and what it was about and forged the great American moment of the late 20th century. And the thing is this they believed in education. My uncles neither of my uncles went to college. When they came back, they both said to me you're going to college because what we learned out there was you need to know stuff and you need to rise above this and find the solutions.
Speaker 2:And I realized people are disappointed with us. I do Kind of a mess right now. Yeah, I apologize for it. That's the other thing we tend to do is this toxic positivity. Stuff has to go Like you got to know when you're losing. You got to know when you're winning. It's just that simple and I don't think we always have a good sense of either of those things. As Neville Longbottom put it so eloquently, we will rise again. We will how it's supposed to survive and reform and learn from the mistakes that had been made and what needs to be done.
Speaker 1:We'll be right back.
Speaker 4:This is a pivotal year in higher education law and policy. This year's Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Conference will be March 6 through the 11th at the Wyndham in Clearwater Beach, florida. This is a great opportunity to gather with trusted higher education colleagues and learn from the nation's thought leaders and practitioners in these challenging times. The conference offers guidance, training and practical pathways forward during this dynamic period in higher learning. More than simply a conference, this is a working break in a challenging spring that offers perspectives and hope from beyond the trenches of operational work in the field. So don't miss out and be sure to join us at the 45th Annual National Conference on Higher Education Law and Policy on March 6 through the 11th in Clearwater Beach, florida. To register, go to wwwstetsonedu. Backslash law, backslash conferences. Hope to see you there.
Speaker 2:I'll take you back to something I said in one of our earlier episodes, but it was my tour through Texas a couple of years back that really resonated with me.
Speaker 2:The Texas system takes the top 10% of high school students throughout the entire vast country of Texas, almost to be.
Speaker 2:It's that big and I can't tell you how many people said to me well, my kids did well in school and they went off to the big city and they got big degrees. They're making a lot of money but they don't come home, they stay there and their talents are taken elsewhere and our town is drained of the best people that we had and when they come home they're not who we remember. And it's sort of like what you've done is you've taken my kids and they go someplace else and they've become a bit alienated from the spaces that they're in. And meanwhile we need doctors and lawyers and accountants and a lot of those folks gravitate towards Houston and Dallas and Antonio and Austin, texas and all those great places and they're wonderful places. But you have to prove to every American that every college degree comes to their advantage and if they think all they're doing is training a bunch of people who learn how to manipulate money and take from people and then what do, they don't like us.
Speaker 2:I mean, I wouldn't like me either if my whole life was some sleazy floor manager at a car dealership trying to rip people off. I mean, if that's what you see, then you're not going to like it. And if you tell someone you're selling them a Cadillac and it comes out the door when the wheels roll off and the stereo doesn't work, they're going to be mad about that too. And so, look, we're selling something, we're selling experiences and we're playing into the deepest aspirations of a political democracy the hope of better days ahead, stronger communities, a powerful status on the world community, holding our head high. And we can't talk one. Talk selling the product, but then, when we're called to account for it, start reading the fine print and the warranty, and that's the whole point is that the laws fall into the hands of Brahmans who speak a language that most Americans don't speak.
Speaker 2:I drive down the street and I see people wearing t-shirts with a declaration of independence on it the Constitution. They're trying to. They have read these things and they interpret them as they can. But the people who speak on these things are in the high temples. And look, and I do this for a living and I get it, but when the law falls into the hands of a brahminical class, history teaches a stern lesson and that's, and I do think, because we teach the people who then do these things. That's part of what the backfires. I think some of the backlash against higher ed actually is backlash against law and lawyers.
Speaker 1:Well, I absolutely agree with that and I know you have, like me, plenty of examples to look back on and support that.
Speaker 2:This. I may have talked about this before if I didn't. I'm with a board, no names, and they find out that they have to have more comfort in service animals and I'm not sure what to do about that, because more animals means more excrement. So the board had to figure out where to find an animal poop zone. And I can tell you what there wasn't anybody on that board that was happy about that, because this is what they signed up for is like, where will the dogs go, toileting, and the miniature horses Right, and you get through the meeting. They picked a zone. So now what happens is is where people go, poop is where they'll gather, which is basically the Bucky's story, if you like. What was the sign that said, when one stall closes, another opens. I just I loved it. So I mean, I'm being very like down to earth about this, but I want to make sure we understand.
Speaker 2:So people were now gathering near the excrement zone to socialize, which is not a good thing, because you have to make sure that the toilets are not the same place that the roast beef is All right. So the board had to meet again and at this time the grumpy level was off the charts because, like what are we going to do? So you know, I finally stepped in. I said look, let's step back on the spirit of this stuff. You're caught up in ADA compliance and the law and what's a service animal? Blah, blah, blah, and how many dogs, he skunks and cats. And I said step back from this for a minute. Human beings for millennia have learned and thrived alongside animals, and Somewhere in the middle of the 20th century we kicked out older people and animals. And it was a historic mistake, because people learn well across generations and they especially learn well in the presence of animals, and any of you's had dogs or cats knows this instinctively. Yeah, they're very likely. So I said look, the spirit of the law is To return the animal energy to learning, because it's needed, and there's a certain group of people who need it Even more than others. And so, instead of getting all upset about poop zones and play zones, why are we here? Okay, you can either think I'm doing it, because if I don't do it I'm gonna get a lot of trouble with OCR.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not inspiring to anybody. You know, nobody gets. You know, what did you? What's your epitaph? I complied with the law, whoop-de-doo. Nobody cares. They want to know that. You get that you. You know, like, the reason I'm doing this is because a couple of dogs and cats, you make a huge difference in a couple people's lives and that's important everybody. That's the spirit of the law and it's the same thing on.
Speaker 2:This is what was missing on Capitol Hill. You know, everybody sounded like they were in court and a lot of judges are real cynics about the spirit of the law. They think the law is a dead thing. They think it's a letter, it's, it's finally up. They possess the right to do that. I don't necessarily agree with it, but that's where they are.
Speaker 2:But what? Soon as you step out of the court, you're in the court of public opinion and you're telling me that you know like. It's like Genocide is on the table and you've got this answer that reads like the guarantee on Break pads. You kind of have heart man. You kind of show off like the law is in here. You know where the law emanates from. That's why we need a George Washington. I mean, look, 2023 was a dumpster fire for a lot of people. I don't know that 24 is gonna be a lot easier, but I think the difference this time is the green fields are more visible now, like how things are gonna shake out, and we'll have a much better sense of where we stand and I'm, and I'm sure we won't see the likes of a George Washington in this political election.
Speaker 1:We sure will have volatility going forward, which I have a feeling that we're becoming a little bit complacent Because there's so much happening that it almost becomes normal. But we'll see. We'll see how things roll out, if we have any progress and if it simply is being pushed into the new administration in 2025. Either way, will be there to cover the hot topics and, as always, peter, it's a pleasure. I wish you well and be safe, and to our listeners the same, and We'll see you next time and I hope everything's great in your world too.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you giving me an option for this, but I've been saying it since the day I got in this business, as you can't walk into court and say one thing and go back on Campus and say something else. The core of higher education is authenticity, and when people put their families and children in your care, it's got to be about love. Let's Caesar and the lawyers do their thing. That's my campus, those are my families, and we've got to set certain boundaries so that we can do what we're mission to do. Anyway, it's good to see you. Take care, okay, you too.
Speaker 1:Thanks, peter.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 3:Higher education Renaissance is produced by Eric Seaborg. Technical production by NC1R Studios. Artwork by Jin G productions. We welcome your comments or program recommendations for future episodes at Ericseaborggmailcom and thank you for listening you.