>> freemen -- freeman hrabowski , i want to get your take on what is going on in the country in colleges. >> that's a great question because it is everyone's mind right now. more we know about situations, the more we realize we need to reflect and think carefully about options and strategies. the less we know the more quickly we want to jump and do

something. so we are going through a period now, similar to others, the vietnam war where people had different points of view, lots of students protests, we have gone through student protests before on issues. we need to educate our students and ourselves more about the issues of the middle east. the one time of brown and carnegie said if there was one course every student should take, it would be comparative religion because we would understand the ways in which we are similar and different so my message to colleagues in talking with them is there is no right side or wrong side, there are issues somewhere in the middle that we so quickly can judge

people by something they say without knowing the full story. for me, the number one goal is saving lives on either side. what do we do to help to save more life and prevent more lives from being taken? that means everything from supporting the hostages, praying for them,, and it means not wanting to see more children killed on the other side so i strongly believe we should support our country and the president as he and the leaders are working to prevent the taking of more lives. to me, that is the most important, and i would ask americans to be more willing to understand that any college president is working to do her best right now. there is a win-win, but right

now it is a very challenging situation. we'll need to calm down, reflect on the situation, learn more about the issues and feel more for people on either side. peter: did you ever face anything like this at you mbc? mr. hrabowski yes. we have students from 100 countries and we have different points of view in the middle east and elsewhere in the most important thing to do is bring people together and have the difficult conversations and see if we can build trust. trust that people want to do the right thing. there was no way to do that if people are not talking to each other and if we do not have a level of calmness, we have to learn how to disagree with civility, to listen to the other point of view. we are so quick to suggest or believe it is my side or no side and it is rarely like that.

my grandmother, who had a sixth grade education, used to say, there is his side, her side, and the real side. common ground is usually in the gray area. when we are talking about the differences in our own country, in international issues, we are going to need to find a way to listen carefully to the other side and find where are the points where we can agree. peter: a recent wall street journal op-ed said, it may be premature to call the anti-israel protests and assault to jewish students across the country a tipping point but it seems that recall lord of the flies, where the university's best and brightest, are behaving like barbarians are prompting employers, parents, and high school students to rethink the value of their degrees.

mr. hrabowski: i think a college degree is more important now than ever. we need people who can think critically as we think about what it means to be a human being and we should all say we are against anything that speaks of anti-semitism, we need to also say we need to save lives of palestinian children and we need to speak out against racism or a group of people, we have to speak out clearly about that but we also have to go beyond speaking out against something. we have to understand the issues. i know many of the students who are protesting about war are not against jewish people. there is a difference between being bothered by the leader of a country and their approach to war versus being against the

people of the country. many people in israel are not pleased with their leader right now. we know this. president biden knows this. we have to make these distinctions and be more clear about what we truly believe. i am not willing to accept the idea that this country will condone anti-semitism. no. there are those who are really wrong in saying that and we have to say it. at the same time, i know that decent people do not want to see children and families on the other side killed. we have to get back to the fundamental human values as we talk about these things. peter: if this happened at umbc when you were president, how would you handle it? mr. hrabowski: a very important distinction, i am president

emeritus. they have a wonderful president. but what i always did and what i see people doing is finding ways to bring people together to have robust and difficult conversations. the challenge is when you are in the midst of a heated protest and negotiations, emotions rise so much and it gets so heated, you do not get to reason and the way to deal with things and that is part of what some campuses are dealing with now, they need the time for things to calm down . some demands will just not be met but at the same time, others can, at least in terms of making sure we keep people safe. there are jewish students who do not feel safe now. people supporting the palestinian cause who say we need to stop the war, we need to

protect humans, i think there is a way to do that. i am a strong believer in the right to protest peacefully. peacefully. we get into problems when it is no longer peaceful. that's the point. we want to support our president and help that country to stop the war, i understand we have to deal with issues about the hostages for sure and dealing with safety for people on both sides but as we protest, we must do so peacefully and for the president's dealing with these issues, first they have to work on the safety of their students. ensure people are safe. one thing not set enough is sometimes when you have these protests on any campus some of the people protesting are not students and they have their own agenda. and that can be worrisome. i heard the dean of journalism at columbia say that and i know the president of columbia is

concerned about the safety of her students. people are angry now but they are angry on both sides. it is easy to criticize the leader. the best the leader can do is remain calm, listen to the different perspectives, work to do the right thing based on listening to these people and to give the situation the time to quiet down so we can have more conversations and once we get that we need to have more challenging conversations. i read something in the last 24 hours saying there is not enough intellectual rigor to the conversations. it is just them or us and we need to understand the issues. that is why college education is more important than ever and one that teaches people to listen to the other side, that is not just one point of view, we have these different points of view that must be taken into account.

peter: speaker mike johnson visited columbia. let's listen and get your reaction. >> we cannot allow this type of hatred to flourish on campuses and it must be stopped in their tracks. those perpetrating violence should be arrested and i am here today joining my colleagues in calling on the president to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos. if this is not contained quickly and these threats and intimidation are not stopped there is an appropriate time for the national guard. we have to bring order to campuses. we cannot allow this to happen around the country. peter: speaker of the house. mr. hrabowski: my first statement, we must take the politics out of education. we must not be driven by political comments. we must be driven by moral principles.

first, combing down. i am always bothered when people quickly call for the resignation of a leader when the leader is working to do the right thing as much as possible. number two, really important, we have to separate the issues and think about them. violence, no, we cannot have violence. make sure people are safe. whatever we need to do to keep people safe. violence is wrong. we cannot have protesters become violent. when we do, there is a problem. it's a safety issue. number three, we must look at the complexity of the issues. it is perfectly legitimate for americans to say, we agree with you president biden, we need to do everything possible to stop this war, stop the killing of children, and we understand the need to protect the hostages and do whatever we can and there has

to be some diplomacy used to do that but right now as these young people are showing and others, people are worried about the thousands being killed through a war that just means a lot of bombs and the fact is, i am a strong believer that we have to support a country leader, like america right now, as president biden and his people are working to work with israel. i am also a strong believer that we need to look at how the israeli people are looking at their leader and the approach they are using so there are distinctions that need to be made. because you are concerned about the killing of children does not in any way suggest that you are against jewish people. when we are in the middle of

arguments, heated protest, things get jumbled and you were on one side or another and that is why higher education is so important, so we can take time to understand the issues with some depth. not the quick answers, the quick speeches that say do this or do that, rather let's figure this out together. peter: let's turn our attention to your ok, “the resilient university” and here's a quote. elected officials have made into a political issues college tuition, student free debt, quality of education, critical race theory, workplace skills, free speech on campus, controversial speech -- speakers. this is a double-edged sword. what do you mean? mr. hrabowski: on one hand we must have freedom of speech. people need to be able to say what they think, it is one of

our rights as americans. on the other hand, when the speech creates violence or becomes antisemitism and all of a sudden we see violence we have to do something about it. we make sweeping generalizations about the cost of college without understanding the specificity. there are many institutions that work very hard to keep cost down. we should talk more about community colleges on the job they do come more about public institutions and private institutions that have discounts, and most important we need to see how much education transforms lives. show me a family that has success with college in terms of their kids but would not want their grandkids going to college. only one third of americans have a four-year college degree and we have millions who started

college and for whatever reason did not graduate and they have a lot of bills so they do not feel good about it. then over 60% who do not have the college experience and do not know what it might do for their kids, it's not just about finding a job. when we look at all the statistics on the lives of graduates and how they participate meaningfully in society we see how college is so important. finding the family who has success and who does not say others deserve to have that right as well. two year for years, the important thing is post secondary education. not just in stem and technology but thinking about the role america plays in the world, it is because they have all these educated people who want their children to be educated.

the challenge we face right now as i talk about, and i have wonderful colleagues who have co-authored this book, from a vice president to senior leader to provost, all three of them, we talked with people throughout the campus and i spoke with people around the country and in terms of the resilient university is this idea that we all get knocked down as a society and universities but we have to meet with the flexibility to get back up and say what must we do to take the institution to the next level and most important put the success of students first, put that at the core of whatever we tried to do. peter: what is the definition of a successful college education? mr. hrabowski: to be educated is to be ready to learn and grow as an adult.

i am over 70 and i have studied french come up when i started several years ago my students laughed and said don't you think you are kind of old? [laughter] we are never too old to learn. beckett, the irish poet spoke and wrote in french and said in one of his books, character is studying the dance of bees. when they dance they communicate. he was fascinated because the more he studied the dancing of the bees, the more he began to understand how they communicated, the more he realized there was so much more to know. the essence of education is developing the wisdom to know i can learn, i have learned some things, but they is so much more to learn and to have the lust for learning, to be grounded in the notion that the humanities

will always matter because it is always about behavior of people, the arts, social sciences, and yes i am a mathematician, but my mother the english teacher always said at the core will be the humanities. so being a broadly educated person means being able to think about the different perspectives, to think about other points of view, looking for not just information but trying to gather from the information what is significant that can make a difference in our understanding of how to solve the problem. quick answers are not the way. we have to take the time to think carefully and critically about these issues, about our country, about international matters. i would say to americans, and the book is the perfect example about getting back up, that we are divided right now but this is where history comes in.

we have been divided before but we cannot lose 40% of americans on either side, we have to pull together to figure out what do we learn as a country that has allowed us to deal with all of the challenges we faced and yet somehow we finally come to the point of a common ground? that is the beauty of america, right now we are in the midst of division but when i was in college, we were in the midst of division. when i graduated, it was, will we ever be better than this? but then we had legislation, the civil rights act, and we became better and we will do it again. the point is resilience. the resilience that we can be better than we are today. peter: you graduated from undergrad in 1970. you graduated early. where did you go to school and were you involved in protest?

mr. hrabowski: i graduate at 19. i went to hampton. my girlfriend, now my wife, we studied in egypt as exchange students and we learned a lot about islam and arab society and have a great deal of respect. then we went to the university of illinois for graduate school and had an amazing experience and have spent quite a bit of time in israel. so we have been talking about the middle east situation for more than 50 years and again, the more we learn and understand both points of view, the more we realize there is a lot more to understand. we see how others do not really appreciate the role of religion in society's in the history of both sides and the ways in which we need to be supportive of bringing people together. peter: university of north carolina has started a democracy initiative. is that important?

mr. hrabowski: very important. i always go back to the last -- the last part of your question, i was involved in protests. i was a child leader in the civil rights movement. i was a kid and went to jail with dr. martin luther king. so i understand the difference between peaceful protest and was involved in protests at hampton and i was close with the president of hampton and yes, i understand how sometimes we have to speak out and speak truth to power, to get people to think about what is important to the people, but the idea of a center of democracy, we have that kind of center at umbc and it is important to get people to look at the whole vote. we have to look at the policies different candidates promote but it is not just about going on

voting, it is about more than that. educating people about the issues all year long so that i the time has come to client -- by the time to vote, they know their opinion that matters and more importantly, i understand the implications or impact of my decision on what happens to human beings. very important. peter: you were president of um before ci media and as it grew. how has it changed teaching, college life? mr. hrabowski: now we expect answers from leaders like that. in the early 1990's, 1992 i had the first cell phone i could put in my pocket on the campus.

people would see it and say, is that the phone? people did not go around with phones. a telephone had accord. -- a phone had a cord. it is very interesting that our mindset now as leaders is we have to get back to them, people are rating for a response. -- waiting for a response. before you would get a typed letter. but now people expect answers as never before. you can get a quick response but then that response -- but does the response reflect the careful listening? one of our challenges in our society right now is to

understand, we have to be more deliberate in thinking through the response we give and that the response often does not reflect the depth it should because people expect a quick response in a few words. we are going through this extreme time where people expect like this, right away, and i think as time goes on we will bounce back from that and think let's be a bit more careful. i spoke with students preparing for commencement at a college and i asked what would you like to talk about and one student said, you read social media, you cannot help but be depressed. we are going to hell as a society. what can you tell us? mr. hrabowski: i said i hope it won't be that bad. we have to know the history of our country. we have been through times before.

social media can present usually the breaking news and usually the breaking is the most negative stuff of all. it is a time where we have challenges, i am not sugarcoating but i am saying if we only focus on the negative side, we keep going down the dark hole. we must look for the hope. we must look at people and believe, even if we disagree, we have some things in common. we believe in our country. most people want people to be safe. we do not want children to be killed. so we have to go to that place of hope and say, what can we do to make it better? we have to make it so. it is not just about the one person. one of the points in my book and as we said this year, it's not just about the leader, it is all about us in a collective way

saying we are part of the solution. peter: one of your previous to book -- one of your previous books, the empowered university, how is that different? mr. hrabowski: “the resilient university” builds on the empowered university. what do we do well, where do we need to improve? success is never final. there is much more work for every university to do and for a country and the people we have to know we can be better than we are. so empowered university focused on how we go about helping people appreciate the fact that [inaudible] and “the resilient university” came out after covid when society was knocked down and we were in the middle of divisions and race issues and the fact was we needed to bounce back and we need to do that now to understand, to make education

more effective, to look at the ways in which we can use technology, look at the gap between those who have and those who don't, to understand more about our role in the global society, and to understand how we can make politics in our country more collaborative. it does not have to be you are my enemy. there has to be ways in which we can pull people together and there were people who were bipartisan who want to do that but we need elected officials who want that also and the resilient university speaks to that issue, the ways in which by having a vision of who we want to be and by moving through that vision to actions that bring up hope and passion and courage to do the right thing, even when it is not popular. so what we talk about in the book, purpose and inclusion is

exactly what we need to be talking about when thinking about society, it is so important that we believe in ourselves and believe we can be better than this. peter: let's go back to “the resilient university” higher education matters. while graduates still report pellet -- positive college experience, the u.s. population in general is reporting declining approval for higher education. mr. hrabowski: right. it's because we look at the broadsides. the fact is most americans have not experienced higher education. they just hear what elected officials sometime say and what the media says that it doesn't matter. but let's look at congress, let's look at who the elected officials are and look at the media people. most have college degrees. they have gotten their jobs as a result of their education. looking at the general

population, most people do not have a college degree. but they hear the leaders sometimes saying these days, it doesn't really matter. of course the education matters. it helps with the financial side and to get a job but there is so much more. i am a strong believer that someone's life is richer when they can read and write and think and communicate effectively, when they can think through issues as a result of having had certain experiences in the educational world, and those involved analyzing problems, learning how to listen critically, learning how to speak carefully and clearly. my mother would always say that good writing reflects good thinking. clear writing reflects clear thinking. you cannot write well if you cannot think well. we need influence on the power of the brain and the heart and that comes with studying arts

and humanities and social sciences. it helps us hone our skills and the ability to see things differently. terribly important. peter: tell us about mom. mr. hrabowski: amazing mother and father. they were educators. all their lives they had to come out of poverty in rural alabama. i grew up in birmingham. when my father left teaching he would to the steel mill but he still worked with men of color, black men, preparing them for the ged, getting them ready and sending them -- education makes the difference. and that is the message of higher education. education makes the difference somehow and higher education really makes the difference. i am not arguing every person needs a liberal arts degree, i am saying post secondary

education, but the leaders in our country are typically with the liberal education and i am challenging universities as i do when i am working with new president of the harvard program, i say we put a size congress but almost all of them our -- are our graduates. there is more we need to do to help people learn and to about values like truth, that should be more important than ever so we at universities have work to do. we have parent leaders and some are wonderful and some others are not. but the question of how do we emphasize truth and integrity in our country, those are words we use all the time but we have to chew on those words with some sort of meat that says these are important to societally be because in the final analysis, the question is who are we as a society, as universities, it

should be an institution, a university, a country people can believe in, where they know that when their leaders speak, they speak the truth. we have that challenge right now. i do think president biden is a man of integrity. i really do. what i would say on campus is you have the right to vote for whomever you want. let's talk about it. i'm not saying we push one side, i'm saying we should have an environment where students can give a different point of view and even disagree with me as a president. peter: a former harvard president, new book, attacking the elites. he has a chapter called our faculties to liberal and he makes arguments that yes they are, the quality of conversation

is limited, there is an impact and effect on students, and potential political intervention by politicians. mr. hrabowski: i have great respect for him. at the same time, i would add this. and this is what i said on my campus. we want students to hear all sides. we want people to be able to express things as they see them. people should not be intimidated and not be able to say what they truly believe because the unexamined life is not worth living. the idea is clearly that you cannot examine what you think or what you have been told if you cannot put it on the table and look at it at different angles and we need more of that. we need more than that on every side. i may love one approach, but i need to hear the other one to understand what they are saying and why, what part do i need to hear.

it's not just one of the other, we have to find ways to have the robust conversations on our campuses and while some do, many do not and as i have said to young faculty sometimes, young wonderful people who are passionate, but if you are so passionate that students who think differently cannot say what they really believe, you are not changing them at all. if we are going to have people looking at what is truth, we have to be able to examine whatever people think. we have to do that. we have to be willing to accept the fact that people will have different perspectives. i grew up in a place in birmingham, middle-class birmingham, where we had everyone from angela davis to condi rice to me and we all had mothers who were teachers. her mother taught me, my mother

taught her. condi rice's father was my high school calendar -- counselor and mentor and we can have different points of view and different things. i have the greatest respect for her as i do for angela davis and we agree on many things and some things we may not because americans should be able to do that. that we can sometimes agree and sometimes not and not become enemies as a result. so going back, the idea is, how do we allow people to be different in their thinking and to understand that the fundamental right of an american is to vote for whomever you think is best qualified. but let's have a robust conversation. let's talk about what are the values that are important and based on that people can make their decisions. peter: is your school part of the university of maryland system? mr. hrabowski: yes. peter: what was the impact a

couple years ago of march madness on your school? mr. hrabowski: we are nerdy. we are proud of that. we have -- when we won the game, i want you to know, i had many of my students who say we are very excited, we talked about it in the papers in france and yet so many students also said, why are people so excited? the one at the bottom, us athletically, beat somebody at the top. that's wonderful. and everybody is laughing at us and it was such a big deal because we were the underdog and we succeeded. people respect to the underdog. they root for the underdog. and when we won, by 20 points, just saying --

[laughter] i am a mega nerd. i know math. but i love my students and they are solid academic students, solid athletes, and most important, out of respect for the other campus, we love saying, and i love the president of uva saying we inspired to be number one the next year and the whole country. that was the 2018 story. [laughter] peter: 14,000 students, 4000 employees, over half $1 billion annual budget. tuition, room, board ranges from $20,000 to $40,000 a year. can you break down the expense? >> $20,000 a year is students coming from out of state who get financial aid. it would be a very small

percentage. we do not have large numbers from out of state, 15%. we are international. 60% of the students who are undergrads have a parent from another country. we have many military families, diplomats, intelligence community. it feels like it is international. and i am very proud of that and i give credit to the new president and all the people who are there now. i have to get out of the habit of saying we and instead say they because they are doing a fine job. there is an emphasis on internships, research experiences, not just in science and engineering, but also humanities and social sciences and people getting involved in annapolis and washington and working for arts and

institutions in connecting disciplines and the maryland system of campuses, people are involved in keeping costs reasonable and getting them involved in internships so people can have jobs. if there was one message i would give to families, the worst thing a student can do from my perspective is to just study, which we all do, but not thinking about the world and getting involved in service and getting involved in community service and jobs because it is involvement in helping students, children, senior citizens, working at any agency, that will lead to great experiences and jobs or grad school after college. and if you have not had any work experience and you graduate, do you think you will be ceo very quickly? people, we need to knock down the walls, not down the

boundaries, get people into workplaces, nonprofit, for-profit, corporate, and bring people to campus so we know how to interact with all kinds of people. peter: break down the cost. $20,000. where does the money go? mr. hrabowski: tuition, fees, room and board. that is made 20 thousands -- mid 20's. that has everything to do with the expensive nature of the education. our students have substitutions research experience -- substantive research experience on that campus. many immediately go to graduate school with fellowships in many cases around the country. we are the leading producer of african-americans who go want to get phd's in math and science and engineering and perhaps 20%

black, the largest minority group on the campus is asian american from parents from all over the world but the cost has everything to do with the quality of education. first-rate faculty, number one. first-rate faculty with many publications and more important for the undergraduates, great teaching but research is part of teaching. they are well-informed because of their research on the care of the students including not just phd students, undergraduates, it first-rate teaching and we often see the top group at campuses, students are getting a superb education and i would say that for the university system in

maryland campus is really focused on that, the quality and the interest in making sure when they graduate they are prepared to go to grad school, med school, law school, or get a good job in this college is amazing for that between baltimore, virginia, new york, a lot of jobs in the area. peter: a three-part question. what is the role of the college president, the board of trustees, and large donors? mr. hrabowski: i gave a talk recently for that governing board and talked about the role of the board. their responsibility has everything to do with setting policies and working with the chancellor of a system or with the campus itself if it is just one campus, to ensure that we get a president who has the

experience necessary to lead with moral and strong academic values. so that board is responsible as is the case in corporate america, for succession. the idea of making sure you have strong leadership that will lead and manage that campus, the board's responsibility at the policy level and to make sure that people are following that policy as the leader of the campus is doing the management and inspiration. part of the role is to inspire, to believe we can be better, to believe in ourselves, to look at the strength of the faculty and commitment of staff, i should say that that the our staff is very committed. professionals who have at the center of their work that

student and most important academic success. we are very academic and that is the part of the message even as we talk about the great role of sports in our society to make sure we are keeping the academics at the forefront, that we want students to think well and learn how to work with others and you asked about large donors. we love them. [laughter] i will mention three. [indiscernible] the sherman scholars, betsy sherman is a very large donor for our campus and that scholarship is designed to prepare teachers for challenging schools. they started with math and science and now [indiscernible]

we are preparing teachers to work with kids who need so much support in inner cities, challenging environments from early childhood particularly through middle school. the shermans really wanted to focus on the early childhood experience because if you get the child early you can build the foundation not just in the reading and math but in getting a sense of self and helping teachers appreciate the role they can play in all of that work. but middle school, very important. one of the big challenges in america is many middle schoolers do not get the foundation they need in reading and math. it is a challenge in our society that has been exacerbated by covid for children and that bottom economic percent. the other donor would mention is

100 years old, bob is a philanthropist, m.i.t. graduate who started this program, the leading program in the country for producing black scientists and in conversation with me that was one where i was introduced to him by bob embree and in the first conversation with bob this is literally more than 35 years ago at a time when i was in my 30's and he was in his 60's and we began the conversation with his asking, what can i do to help more black males succeed in our society? he said, i am already working on issues involving women and they

were finding his wife's alma mater, but he said everything i've read on black males is negative. what can we do? an we were working at the same time to figure out what we could do to help more blacks succeed in science and he has been asking good questions for over 35 years. it's a great story. so i place those up to you as wonderful donors of a young campus, the sherman scholars, the meyerhoff scholars, when you hear the name meyerhoff you think about great science and one of those scholars became the first black woman to create a vaccine. she led a team at nih. >> i often describe myself as a

viral immunologist, which is just a fancy way of saying i study the immune system's responses to viruses. i more specifically use my viral immunology expertise to inform the development of vaccines and therapeutics for coronaviruses and other viruses with pandemic potential. most notable of my 17 years of experience is that in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, my team and i at the national institutes of health codeveloped a leading covid-19 vaccine and therapeutic antibody. mr. hrabowski: [laughter] a young woman who grew up in rural north carolina. we recruited her at 17. now she's on the faculty at harvard. a wonderful story about the power of education to transfer lives. she was a meyerhoff scholar.

peter: can large donors have outsized influence on thinking -- i am thinking bill hackman, claudine gay? mr. hrabowski: they can. the ideal situation is for donors like bob meyerhoff to want to know more about what goes on, to want to be supportive of campuses as they work on the projects they are finding, but to respect the expertise of the educators to make final decisions. it is perfectly ok for any donor to raise questions in a respectful way, but the real question is, who was it that has the real expertise? we would not try to tell a neurosurgeon how to go about the operation. one of my meeting meyerhoff scholars is a full professor in

neuroscience out of montgomery county schools. he's a member of the national academy of medicine and he is in his 40's. it's unbelievable. no one would ever try to tell him about the processes involving the brain. people think they have expertise in education because we all graduated from high school or college but it is not true. there is expertise of education and we need to respect that. it is fine to ask questions and make suggestions but never should people have the kind of influences of you have to do what i tell you to do. peter: in your book you report on graduation rates for six years. hispanic students, 20% success. black students, 28% graduate in six years. white students, 41%. asian students, 61%. on top of that you mentioned

earlier one third of americans go on to get advanced degrees. why are these disparate? mr. hrabowski: as a math person i love you are using statistics. the national academy of sciences studies i chair show only 20% of blacks and hispanics who got a major -- we thought of a major in science and engineering will get one. only one third of whites will graduate and 41% of asians graduate with a major in science and engineering. in the graduation rates on our campus there is no difference in race, they are all 60% or 70%. but many students of all races

-- committee on underrepresentation in stem. it's a major issue not just for minorities, the majority of students who start in science and engineering in college do not succeed in those areas, they change their major. i will often say, how many of you started off wanting to be a doctor but ended up being a lawyer? it happened so often. students do not do well in chemistry, for example. if you are in the social sciences and read fairly well and you work hard, you can get a “the resilient university” -- you can get ab in most cases. if you are a b.

in a math class, i give you a test, five problems. three of the problems you have seen before, you've worked hard and you get them. to the problems i changed around and all of a sudden you say i have not seen this and you do not get them in time and you get a d. that kind of thing happens. the unpredictability of performance in stem and that is why my ted talk focuses on the need for collaboration among students and the idea of the expectations we have not just for students but for our colleagues, ourselves. if i put a math problem on the board and give you a test on the problem and no one in the class is able to solve the problem, did i teach the concept? i would argue that no, i have not taught it, somehow people did not catch the concept, they did not grab it. yet we tend to often think in our society that if you put it

on the board, you have taught it. so most people fail. in many cases, 70% of students failed tests in stem regularly and yet there is not a sense of guilt or responsibility to get the student to work harder or in a group in the big issue i would say and the work i have done with the national academy of sciences and of engineers focuses on how we get more students, americans, to succeed in those disciplines. peter: what is the path to success? mr. hrabowski: higher edges -- having higher expectations for yourselves. we would have many more students succeeding. getting more students to succeed. people tend to think if they did not do well it was not for them.

because in our society we say someone is either a math and science type or in english history and arts type and that is not how it has to be. we are learning that more people can be in technology then we thought. you can have a major in english and still have a great background in technology and do something that combines areas, areas of imaging and digital arts, we have to stop thinking that people are math and science types or english history types and we have to stop thinking you have to be really smart to do the math and science, there are other societies where it is expected that everyone will succeed on the person might not want to be a mathematician or scientist but there is a level of math one can learn, we all need to learn statistics. if you ask most americans if they like math, they laugh. educated groups will laugh and say how do you put the words math and like in the same sentence?

but it is not just about minorities or women, in general we want more people appreciating what math and science can do connected to humanities and social sciences. peter: 30 years that umbc. what do you take pride in? mr. hrabowski: more than anything else, our students and faculty and how the staff has been developed over the years because any university should be a learning institution, a place where students, faculty and staff learn all the time and i take great pride in all of the people there who has been there and left and gone on to other places and who are doing so well. when i tell you i was at duke and i could point to more i saw that day faculty menus -- faculty members, some already tenured, that when i think of a

young man calling me to say, he just became a full professor at engineering in clemson and that president of clemson is a you and bc graduate with three degrees -- umbc graduate with three degrees, or someone working in inner-city baltimore grew -- someone working at j.p. morgan grew up in inner-city baltimore. you cannot help but think that the speaker of the house of maryland is a psychology graduate of ours. first woman to head of debt -- head of the house of delegates, amazingly effective. so the point i am making is for any educator, the legacy has to be the students. my mother always said teachers

touch eternity through their students. peter: freeman hrabowski, 30 years as president of university of maryland baltimore county, the author of this book “the resilient university” we appreciate your time here on c-span. mr. hrabowski: keep hope alive. the last chapter is on hold. we must keep hope alive. >> all q&a programs are available on our website or as a podcast on c-span now. c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including comcast. >>