Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S9 E1: Heidi Ganahl: Choice and balance in education and media
7 Plays11 months ago
Heidi Ganahl is a politician, author, and entrepreneur who has had success in multiple industries and philanthropic ventures. She served as Regent at large of the University of Colorado from 2017 to 2023, and as the Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2022. She founded Camp Bow-Wow—North America’s largest pet-care franchise—the lifestyle brand SheFactor, the Fight Back Foundation that supports social entrepreneurs working to help kids in Colorado, and, most recently, the media non-profit Rocky Mountain Voice, which aims to provide news and commentary on issues facing Coloradans, while combatting ideological bias in media. We discuss her long-time advocacy for more choice and ideological balance in K-12, higher education, and media, and her ideas for how to reduce political polarization in general.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Free Mind Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome back to the Free Mind podcast, where we explore topics in Western history, politics, philosophy, literature, and current events with a laser focus on seeking the truth and an adventurous disregard for ideological and academic fashions. I'm Matt Burgess, assistant professor of environmental studies and faculty fellow of the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Heidi Ganahl's Background and Ventures
00:00:28
Speaker
My guest today is Heidi Ganahl.
00:00:30
Speaker
Heidi Ganahl is a politician, author, and entrepreneur who has had success in multiple industries and in multiple philanthropic ventures. She served as region at large of the University of Colorado from 2017 to 2023, and as the Republican nominee for governor in 2022. She founded Camp Bow Wow, North America's largest pet care franchise. She founded the lifestyle brand She-Factor,
00:00:57
Speaker
the Fight Back Foundation that supports social entrepreneurs working to help kids in Colorado, and most recently, the media nonprofit Rocky Mountain Voice, which aims to provide news and commentary on issues facing Coloradans while combating ideological bias in media. We discuss her longtime advocacy for more choice and ideological balance in K-12 higher education and media, and her ideas on how to reduce political polarization in general.
00:01:27
Speaker
Heidi Ganahl, welcome to the Free Mind podcast.
Podcast Dynamics and Reducing Political Polarization
00:01:29
Speaker
Well, thank you for having me, Matt. I'm really excited to be here and proud of what you've done with this podcast.
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, well, same to you. Last time we spoke in a podcast, it was your podcast, so it's exciting to get to return the favor. Thank you. I'm interested, as you know, in reducing political polarization. I think one of the things that is key to that is empathy. One thing that can help with empathy is to get to know people better. A lot of people in this state probably know you as a politician.
00:02:02
Speaker
and some maybe agree with you and some maybe don't and some maybe are in the middle. One of the things that I think that anybody from anywhere in the spectrum can appreciate is the incredible amount of interesting things that you've done, which we list in the intro.
Opportunities and Challenges in Education
00:02:17
Speaker
So I want to start by asking you what drives you and how do you decide what to focus on?
00:02:22
Speaker
Well, that's a great question. A while back, I worked with a life coach. This is probably 10 years ago. And I was starting to think about my next chapter after Camp Bow Wow. And I said, gosh, there's so many opportunities. How do I pick which one? And she goes, maybe you don't have to pick. Maybe you just find cool people that have cool projects.
00:02:43
Speaker
you spend time with them and you share your time, your talent, your treasure. And I thought that was a really cool approach and that's what I've done. But after these years of picking and choosing and doing lots of different things, what I found is that I'm very, very passionate about protecting opportunity for young people. And I call it the American dream. I was blessed to live the American dream and have this crazy journey to get here
00:03:08
Speaker
But at the end of the day, what I want is for every child around the world, but I'm going to focus on America to have the same opportunity that I did, to live a life filled with joy and passion and hope. And I think that's really missing for young people right now. So that's my passion right now.
00:03:25
Speaker
Well, that's a great segue into my next question, which is that certainly education and young people is a clear theme in many of the things that you've done. So you've been a CU region, you've done a lot of work with children's charities. When you ran for governor, education and your concerns about it were a big part of your campaign. So I want to ask you, how do you feel about the state of education today? Or maybe to frame it in the way that you just did, what's missing? Where are the problems and opportunities today?
00:03:53
Speaker
You know, I don't want to come off really pessimistic, but I am really pessimistic. It is a bad time in our country for education. Our kids aren't learning how to read or write or do math. They're polarizing parents against teachers. It's just not a healthy environment at all. And we are very divided about what to do next. So what I've found is the path forward is to provide opportunity and choice
00:04:20
Speaker
for parents and families and children about what's best for them. This is a really exciting opportunity in education or time in education right now, too. Education entrepreneurship is taking off. There's lots of different ways to educate your children, whether it's micro schools, home schools, private school, public school, charter school.
00:04:41
Speaker
It's pretty much a wide open variety of things that we can do to educate our kids. And I have four kids and they all learn very differently. And if I had my druthers, they'd probably all four be doing different things education wise. But it's really come to a point, especially after COVID and parents seeing how their kids were being taught.
00:04:59
Speaker
to put the football back in the hands of parents and let them decide what is best for their children. And that's a very controversial view right now because I love public schools also. I'm just an all of the above education person. Now you've heard me say that about energy, but I am an all of the above education reformer now and I truly think it's got to be about choice and giving parents the opportunity to do better for their child.
00:05:26
Speaker
So I want to ask you relatedly about advice for parents, because one of the things that I think is interesting about the education issue, and I can relate to myself as a parent, and I'm sure you can too, is that parents have no patience for BS when it comes to their kids, and they have no patience for partisanship when it comes to their kids. And so that can make education
00:05:49
Speaker
a galvan, it can make education a polarizing issue, but it could also make an education a galvanizing, pragmatic, depolarizing issue. And yet at the same time, a lot of parents I know are overworked and overwhelmed and don't even know where to start in finding the choice that exists, even if it does exist. So how should, how would you advise parents to think about it as someone who's been very involved and thoughtful in this space and as a parent yourself?
00:06:18
Speaker
Well, I think the first thing parents should do is really listen to their children. Are they bored at school? Do they love school? Are there teachers that they really appreciate, like, and are drawn to? Are there ones that they aren't? Is there bullying going on at school? What's the social environment? Are parents and teachers, are the teachers listening to you as a parent? Are they wanting to get better? Are they listening to your concerns? Is the administration doing that?
00:06:44
Speaker
Do everything you can to make the current situation better and improve on that. And if you do that and it doesn't get better, that's when it's time to explore other options. And there are some great people to follow on Twitter and social media that are experts in providing all kinds of different options around school choice. There's also some great conferences. I just went to South by Southwest EDU down in Austin. Huge conference with thousands of people, including parents and teachers,
00:07:12
Speaker
all exploring what the future of education looks like. But think about how your child likes to learn. Do they like to be online? Do they like learning that way? Do they like experiential learning where they're exploring a mountain range or going to a museum? There are so many opportunities, but what really matters is how your child learns best
00:07:31
Speaker
and then do the research to figure out what that might look like and how it fits into your life because a lot of parents are both working they have more than one child it's really difficult to figure out if you can homeschool or micro school or do something different but start with where your child is trying to improve the current situation and if that doesn't happen then it's time to roll up those sleeves and get busy and start doing some research on what's next.
00:07:59
Speaker
And what about teachers? Teachers seem like they're another big education constituency that are really worn out by the last couple of years. You know, most of them in my experience have good intentions.
00:08:12
Speaker
And yet often, you know, they're overworked, they're underpaid, they're getting pressure by the unions or the school or the school board to teach in a certain way. Maybe they're getting pressure from parents to do something else. Maybe they're getting pressure from politicians to do something. Maybe in some states they're worried about people secretly filming them or suing them. How should teachers be thinking about navigating the current moment?
00:08:38
Speaker
Well, I would suggest that the best teachers are the ones that are authentic and true to themselves and what they believe and who truly want to work in partnership with parents and children to give them the best education they can. But if they're not getting what they need out of their current situation in school, my goodness, there's so many opportunities now. I love the micro school model. And what that is, is it's between probably three and a hundred
00:09:05
Speaker
students in a facility or homes together. And what parents do is they join together and they hire teachers to teach those kids. And they may be different subjects, or they may be different ages. But it's really an innovative way to approach it, where you're not having to homeschool every day, but you're working with some teachers that you hire. The teachers are making great money. They have more flexibility to teach how they want to. And they really get to know the kids.
00:09:35
Speaker
And I think that's one of the number one things that's on the scene right now that's really going to take off and make its mark in education is micro schools. And that's good for teachers. It's good for parents. It's good for families. And actually it's good for public schools because they have to compete and provide an education good enough that parents don't want to leave and do their own thing and teachers don't want to leave and do their own thing. Yeah, really interesting.
00:10:01
Speaker
As a parent myself and a parent of one child with special needs, I've been trying to do as much as I can to read the research on what are the best practices in education. Because certainly, like you said, every kid is different. Every kid learns differently. There's going to be some kids that do better in some environments than others. It also seems to me like there are
00:10:20
Speaker
some educational practices that I would say boil down to common sense that work well in a broad range of contexts. So phonics for reading, direct instruction, high, not low behavioral standards, you know, no excuses for kids and in some cases for teachers. What am I missing?
00:10:43
Speaker
Well, it's one reason I was drawn to the classical education model and I helped open some classical education schools here in Colorado.
00:10:52
Speaker
because of the Socratic method, it's very direct, it's very structured, it's studying the great books and art and literature, things that kids love learning about and they can fall in love with learning. And so often today in schools, especially our kids that have special needs, because I have a little one with dyslexia, one with dysgraphia, one has ADD, like we have a smorgasbord out of my four kids. And so they all have different styles of learning and learning needs.
00:11:19
Speaker
And I think the most important thing we can do as parents is recognize that each of our children are different, each of the teachers are different, and part of it is just finding the right match. And so I don't know that it's one thing, it's more of a lot of little things that combine to make a great learning experience for our children.
00:11:38
Speaker
But I do know that studies show that a smaller classroom is the most important thing you can do to help the child's learning experience and a teacher's experience. So that means probably 12 kids is probably the sweet spot for as big as you want to go. And our public schools aren't anywhere near that. They're upwards of 30 kids in a classroom, which is really difficult.
Morals and Family in Education
00:12:00
Speaker
And also in some cities, including Denver, growing by the day related to what's going on at the border, right?
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, and a lot of these kids don't know how to speak English. I mean, these teachers, they have a heart of gold. They want these kids to learn, but they've got 30 kids in a classroom, five who don't speak English, five that may have special needs, and then the kids that get left behind, which I had one of my children that experienced this, are the kids in the middle that are pretty darn good performers, don't need a lot of help and support, but with a little bit more help, they would just take off, and they're being left behind,
00:12:37
Speaker
you know i have heart for all these kids but boy is our system being tested right now and i do think that's why a lot of those kids in the middle are getting pulled out and homeschooled or micro schooled or parents are taking you know the initiative to find a private school that works that has smaller classrooms yeah you mentioned the great books which
00:12:57
Speaker
leads me to another question. One of the things I think is really interesting in the debates around education in politics recently is what I see as sometimes hypocrisy on both sides about teaching morals in education, right? So if a conservative says, we're going to teach the great books, classical education and civics, sometimes people on the left will say,
00:13:18
Speaker
Ah, the government is putting morals into our education. And then the next day they'll turn around and say, we should mandate DEI in education. And then the right will say, ah, you're putting morals in education. And as I'm sitting here, you know, as a moderate, independent Canadian,
00:13:35
Speaker
Thinking both you kind of want morals in education. You just disagree about which morals is that fair to say and if so how how should we decide and who should decide what morals get put in education.
00:13:51
Speaker
Free markets, baby. That's the thing here. We've got to give parents and kids a choice about what the right fit for education is. A private Christian classical school is not going to be right for every family, just like Waldorf is not going to be right for every family.
00:14:08
Speaker
You know, I think a free range parent is not going to necessarily like the Socratic method and the strictness of a classical school. But God bless them all. You know, we all get to choose how to parent our children. And it is not the government's option or responsibility to parent our children. That's my view. And one of the things I hold very dear in my principles and values is that the family unit is so critical to children being successful in life. And you've got to give parents
00:14:37
Speaker
the first right to parent their child. They know them better than anybody. And the thought that the government can withhold secrets from our parents or our kids or it just makes me nauseated. I just don't think that's the right path forward and it's happening more and more. And you know me, Matt, I'm a little government girl. So I just want the government involved in our lives as little as possible. And I see in the education system, they're just taking over
00:15:07
Speaker
taking over our kids and taking over responsibility in quotes for raising our children and we don't want, most parents don't want that.
00:15:15
Speaker
Now, I have to say, I agree strongly with the idea that the responsibility for parenting and values lies with the family, and history shows that almost every fundamentalist dogmatic group of any sort in the history of the world has tried to undermine the family because they understand the subversive power of the family in the face of dogma. And yet, just to steel man the opposing point of view for a second,
00:15:42
Speaker
What about, what would you say to somebody who said, well, if we all just go into our moral bubbles and we raise our kids in our separate moral bubbles where they don't have any kind of shared language or shared values, isn't that going to make the polarization that's tearing this country apart worse?
00:15:59
Speaker
I mean, it's a good question, and I don't know that I have the answer other than the way we're doing it now is not working. And I think deciding who decides what that moral bubble looks like, the school moral bubble. Who decides what morals get to be taught in those schools?
00:16:18
Speaker
I mean, who is the arbitrator? And that's what bothers me. It's like if we had a clear consensus about what that might look like, great, but we don't. And it's ripping us apart right now. So I default back to, it's got to default back to the parents and the families to make those decisions. And hopefully the kids will get enough exposure to other opinions and views
00:16:42
Speaker
through other means, right? I mean, they're getting it on social media. They might get it at the Boys and Girls Club. They might get it at the gym. They might get it on the basketball court. And that's up to us as parents, too, is to expose our kids to lots of different viewpoints and different cultures and different environments in order to provide a well-rounded education and experience for our kids. And I know a lot of parents don't agree with that, and that's their prerogative, but I think that's the path forward.
00:17:09
Speaker
And the one thing you touched on that's so important is the role of civic institutions other than school. You mentioned the basketball court. This really reminds me of my upbringing. So I grew up in Quebec where the main axis of political polarization was language. You know, are you French or are you English? And because language is so fundamental to instruction, the schools were, had to be segregated, right? English kids went to English schools for the most part and French kids went to French schools for the most part.
00:17:39
Speaker
And yet there were still strong civic institutions that sometimes brought us together, like playing hockey. You'd all play hockey together and you'd all speak French, which is like a mix of French and English. So that's really important.
K-12 Education and ACE Scholarships
00:17:52
Speaker
I want to turn to higher ed now. That's where you and I first met. You were a CU region, a CU region at large. Obviously, many of the issues around politicization, around polarization, around values apply to higher ed.
00:18:09
Speaker
and arguably some of the issues around what's being learned. So my first question is, which one are you more concerned about, higher ed or K-12?
00:18:18
Speaker
K-12 for sure. As much as I'm passionate about what's going on in higher education as a region, I realized that a lot of the things we were dealing with were a long time coming. And that if we wanted to nip some of this stuff in the butt, sorry, I can't talk today, and make sure that kids could read early on, that they could do math well, that they could critically think well,
00:18:42
Speaker
waiting until they're in college, it's too late. It's not always too late, but it's most of the time too late. And so that's when my focus shifted to K through 12 and making sure that youngins had the ability to get a good education early on. And I've been helping an organization called ACE Scholarships over the last six months, Build and Grow, and they provide private scholarships for kids who the public system isn't working for that are from low income families
00:19:11
Speaker
to try something different and so that's one of my passions now is to make sure as early as possible kids have the opportunity to get great education regardless of what their income is or their zip code.
00:19:23
Speaker
One of the things that's really interesting that you touched on there is whether you're a conservative worried about indoctrination in higher ed or you're a liberal worried about inequality in higher ed, in both cases, it seems like getting earlier in the pipeline is helpful. If we've got school districts in some cities where over 90% of kids aren't reading or doing math at grade level,
00:19:47
Speaker
And our solution is hire more professors who have the same skin color as people from those neighborhoods. We're not getting those kids. The kids who are suffering in those disadvantaged schools tend to not be the people that we can help if we're only looking at the end of the pipeline. And similarly, if students are coming in, the evidence I'm aware of suggests that
00:20:12
Speaker
professors are not very effective at indoctrinating students, even if we're trying. So students' political views tend to be stable over their four years with a couple of issue exceptions. And so if it seems to conservatives like students are being indoctrinated, maybe that's happening in K-12. Certainly there's a lot of radicalism in many schools of education, as I'm sure you know.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and my experience as a regent for six years in higher education was not that it was the professors or the faculty who were, quote unquote, indoctrinating. It was the other students and the other students were almost bullying kids who had alternate views. And that broke my heart. I mean,
00:20:55
Speaker
The faculty, you can have a conversation and be like, hey, you know, you're an employee. Basically, you have a responsibility. These students are paying for an education, a well-rounded education. But when it's the other students, it's a little harder to deal with. And it's just.
00:21:11
Speaker
It's so concerning that that was the case more often than not that it was the other students that were bullying the other kids around their point of view so i think i'm going back to is that happening more in k-12.
00:21:27
Speaker
I do think the zip code you grow up in, the family unit you grow up in, the friends you have around you, and now more than ever, social media is driving culture.
Influence of Social Media and Gender Polarization
00:21:40
Speaker
And I think TikTok and YouTube and Snapchat are having a far bigger influence on our children than any teacher or even a friend or their environment, unfortunately. And I think that's happened over the last 10 years. I think Jonathan Haidt
00:21:57
Speaker
does a really good job of talking about this. And it's something we've got to, got to, got to pay attention to going forward, especially around mental health of our children. 100% agree. And that, for those listeners who don't know, Jonathan Haidt's new book, The Anxious Generation, is about to come out and goes into a lot of detail into these issues around social media and mental health and polarization. Now, you're right that the study suggests that it's
00:22:25
Speaker
the students bullying each other more than professors bullying the students. Two interesting qualifiers to that though, and one is that certainly at public schools, and I would suspect at many other schools too, the students are more politically diverse than the professors in most fields. The other thing that's really interesting that I've seen recently
00:22:51
Speaker
is students are, not all students, but a subset of students are kind of reacting against what was the dogma of five years ago. And one really interesting way, and I would say an alarming way in terms of happiness of young people that this is manifesting, is unprecedented gender polarization. So there's a survey that found that among grade 12 students, so high school seniors,
00:23:19
Speaker
The largest political identifier is independent, but among those that are not independent, among boys, conservatives outnumber liberals two to one, and among girls, it's an even larger gap in the other direction.
00:23:33
Speaker
And this is happening, this divergence is recent, it's happened in the last five to 10 years. And it's also happening in a whole bunch of other developed countries. Interestingly, the country where it's most pronounced is actually not the US, it's South Korea. And so, you know, so I've shown that to, you know, I gave a guest lecture recently in a class of first year students where I showed them this graph, and he said, look, if you don't want to be lonely, and you're a conservative man or a liberal woman, you got to figure this out.
00:24:04
Speaker
But is this something that you're seeing in your work and education and what can be done about it, especially if some of it's coming from social media, which I suspect it is? Yeah, I see it more in my political involvement than I do the education space, per se, just because I'm so focused on K through 12 right now and usually the younger kids. But I do think the issue around boys is a really interesting one that we need to examine more. And I saw a speaker
00:24:32
Speaker
believe his name was Richard Reeves, at the Excel Annette conference. And he talked in depth about boys and what they're facing in society today, especially white young males. And they're, I think they're acting out, they're pushing back, they're saying, I mean, we're telling in a lot of cases, the message they're hearing is that they don't have any worth or they're at the bottom of the totem pole. And sometimes it's a conservative woman, I feel that way too. But I think
00:24:59
Speaker
I think that I'm really worried about the boys. The girls, I think as they get jobs and they start paying taxes and they want to get married and have children, I think they'll come back around to more traditional viewpoints and more in the middle.
00:25:16
Speaker
But the boys are, they're not in a good place right now, according to his talk and his speech and his book. And I really worry about that, especially as the mom of a 12-year-old little guy. What's that gonna look like? And how can I protect him? And how can I provide an environment where he can be politically whatever he wants to, but I don't want him to be polarized or be exclusive of other people. Your point, he'll be lonely.
00:25:41
Speaker
So a couple of qualifiers to that. One is I've read Richard Rhee's book and in terms of the outcomes, you know, there's, he talks a lot about where, you know, boys are falling behind on, on specific outcomes related to education, for example. And I think in those outcomes, it's actually, especially, uh, black boys that are falling behind. The other thing that's interesting with relation to polarization is that
00:26:05
Speaker
It isn't just white boys that are moving to the right. It's all men. And so Trump, for example, in polls since 2020, has made record gains among non-white voters, driven especially by men and especially by working class folks. So it's a really interesting landscape. And then the other qualifier is,
00:26:31
Speaker
Although it's true that there are many ways in which boys are now doing worse and i want to come back to this in a second.
00:26:39
Speaker
pointed hypothetical in terms of mental health. So the stuff that John Haidt talks about in the anxious generation, I believe it's girls that are doing worse and particularly liberal girls. And so, you know, for example, there was a Pew survey in 2020 that found if you're a females who identified as liberal between 18 and 29 ages had an over 50% mental illness diagnosis rate.
00:27:03
Speaker
And that makes me really sad, honestly, as a college educator, because I'm thinking, you know, not only is this the largest demographic of our students, it's also, in many ways, the demographic that we have, you know, we're spending millions of dollars supposedly promoting the well-being of, and how can we be so catastrophically failing at our own stated ends?
00:27:23
Speaker
Your thoughts? That's a lot to process right there. And I do remember that now. And maybe the things that stood out to me were more from my mom heart, like, Oh my gosh, I have this little guy and I got to protect him. And I have these three girls, which are, I mean, I have an 11 year old world. My twins are almost 12. So I keep saying 12, but Jenna and Jack are almost 12. So I have Jenna and Holly who's 14 and Tori who's 28. And
00:27:48
Speaker
The society that they have to deal with right now, the expectations on social media, the level of perfection they have to have.
00:27:58
Speaker
is just insane, like it's just terrifying to me. Whereas the guys I think are just being separated, like almost like pigeonholed into, you know, are you important enough for us to focus on is like what I feel? And this is a feeling, this isn't based on studies or anything, but that's what I feel. So I worry about that. Why are they all going more conservative, all types of boys? I think it's because they're being so,
00:28:25
Speaker
emasculated by society that they just want somebody to say, it's okay to be a dude. It's okay to have masculine traits. And it's okay to play video games and hit each other in football and do all those things. And so they're probably going farther that way because it makes them feel okay. They're not weird or unhealthy for liking that stuff.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah, Reeves talks about the discourse on toxic masculinity and how it's very, very polarizing in that way. And certainly you see very gender polarized polls around things like, you know, is that a useful term? Has feminism been beneficial? You know, that speak to that narrative.
Conservative Distrust in Higher Education
00:29:10
Speaker
Pivoting a little bit back to higher ed,
00:29:13
Speaker
Well, actually two things. First, this is not going to be new ground for you and me. But one of the things that I find
00:29:21
Speaker
both frustrating and a little bit fascinating in higher ed is how blind some people seem to be to the obvious reasons why conservative trust and independent trust has fallen off a cliff in the last 10 years. I wrote an article called partisan science is bad for science and society a couple of years ago. And one of the things it showed was national data suggesting that 3% of professors, political donations go to Republicans and 40% of conservative
00:29:51
Speaker
professors or right leaning professors state that they've been disciplined or threatened with discipline for their beliefs and 70% report a hostile climate and it's like, oh my God, but I have no idea why they don't trust us. It must be that Fox News is mean. But yet, you know, I had talked to people on campus who are
00:30:12
Speaker
I think earnestly do want to reduce polarization and they'll say things like, you know, well, when I point out these statistics, they'll say, well, you know,
00:30:25
Speaker
the ring up Fox News, it'll say, you know, this makes me sad. It just shows that we're not getting ourselves out there enough to, and we're not showing the community all the things we're doing. And that my response is, okay, so if Ron DeSantis came to a faculty meeting, he'd be like, Oh, I get it. And back off? No.
00:30:45
Speaker
So, you know, you're a conservative who's been on the inside of higher ed, and you talk to lots of conservatives. Why don't conservatives trust higher ed as concisely as you can state it, just so I can send this clip to every person in the future who seems confused about this?
00:31:02
Speaker
because of our experience on campus as a region, as an administrator, as a faculty member, it's so blatant. It happens all the time. And we're almost mocked for bringing it up or we're belittled. We're told it's not happening. So what happens all the time? Give examples, because again, otherwise people are just going to give me the same response as I just summarized.
00:31:25
Speaker
So for six years, I tried to get some information about how we were moving the needle with DEI. So I'm a region, I'm the chair of the finance committee, I was on the audit committee. I'm like, great, we are spending so much money on diversity and equity right now. We've hired 78 administrators. But my business mind, I'm a CEO, says,
00:31:44
Speaker
Are we actually moving the needle? Can we get some information to do that? Heidi, that is racist. You cannot ask for data around this issue. You just have to trust that we're doing good things. I know you want to slash programs. I'm like, no, I just want to make sure we're actually doing what we say we're going to do.
00:32:01
Speaker
you don't understand, you don't understand diversity and equity. And I'm like, okay, I'm a woman. I was a CEO. Like I grew up in that, or grew up in the business world in that environment and franchise world, which had very few women, but they just didn't want to hear it. And it was just, they always poo pooed us or just said, you know, you don't understand, you don't understand. And I'm like, I may not understand, but I want to understand. And I want to understand with data and real statistics and information that will help me understand.
00:32:32
Speaker
And that effort was never followed through on. I was never able to get that audit done. And I had good intentions. I wanted to keep trying to solve the problem, but I was told I didn't have the right to the information to kind of figure out what we should be spending money on. The other example was when I was the chair of the search committee for the president of CU and we hired Mark Kennedy. And it was a 9-0 vote every region.
00:32:57
Speaker
Republican and Democrat voted for him. And we go to do a forum at CU Boulder. I think there were 800 or 900 people there. You might have been there, Matt. I can't remember. And literally people were throwing things on stage. They were spitting. They were like, I had to have police escort out of the building because they knew I was conservative and I had been part of the hiring process or chaired the hiring process for this man.
00:33:21
Speaker
And I just looked around and thought, what is wrong with you guys? Can you at least be thoughtful and sit down and ask him tough questions and let him answer instead of bullying and yelling and spitting and forcing me out of the audience? Is that the way forward?
00:33:36
Speaker
So I remember one student and then I'll wrap up got up and raised her hand and just said, you know president or Mark Kennedy I am a conservative student here and I have a really hard time Getting it like getting my word out like my opinion out in a class I kind of get bullied by the other kids when I have a view She got booed out of the audience and I'm like, well didn't they just prove that point? So yeah, those are a few examples. I
00:34:04
Speaker
So interesting story. This actually relates to how you and I met because I don't know if you remember this, but I can't remember if I was at that forum or not. But not long after that forum, when it looked like the higher might not go through and that the politics would obviously be the reason,
00:34:23
Speaker
CU has a policy saying we don't discriminate on the basis of people's politics. And so I sent a letter to some of the regions, including you, that said, I don't care if you hire him or not, but whatever you do, do it on the basis of his qualifications and not his politics. Because if you do it on the basis of his politics, you are showing that this policy that I depend on for my academic freedom is worthless.
00:34:47
Speaker
when Bush comes to shove. And you wrote me back, appreciating that letter. And that was how we, I believe that was the first time we interacted. The other thing that's interesting is that, and this shows how, you know, bridging, I think bridging divides is possible. The reason I sent that letter privately and not publicly is that at the time, there was a student in my research group who was one of the leaders of the campaign against Kennedy. And I didn't want it to look like I was smacking that student down as their faculty mentor
00:35:15
Speaker
because I wanted to honor their right to voice their opinion in addition to being able to voice mine. Well, I'm so glad you sent that letter, Matt, and that we got to start a friendship and have some really tough conversations over the years, because those years where I was a Regent and you're on flat faculty were really tough, like with COVID and the freestyle issues going on and the DEI conversation.
00:35:44
Speaker
And it was really hard to find a faculty representative on campus that I could have open, honest conversations about what was going on. Because you were always worried you're going to make the headline of the Denver Post with what you were saying, or if you had a question. If you wanted to have a tough conversation, was anyone brave enough to have that? You were, and I appreciate that. And I think that's why your time at CU has been so successful.
00:36:12
Speaker
But I think you just get exhausted. As a conservative, whether you're a student or a regent or an administrator, you just get exhausted for trying to get a little bit of time to be able to talk about how you feel or to just have an opinion on something. And you get squashed and you just say, OK, is it really worth it? Is it worth my energy right now? And eventually something happens that you do say, yes, this is worth my energy and I'm going to stand up and speak out.
00:36:41
Speaker
Six years of that it was a lot. It was hard. It was very um, it was very just heartbreaking to me and mostly for the students the conservative students who I really tried to stand up for and Just sometimes I was successful and sometimes I wasn't especially during COVID Around religious freedom that was really that ticked me off that I couldn't make progress in protecting their rights Yeah, and one of the
00:37:06
Speaker
I think asymmetries and hypocrisies are something that I've also, you know, conservative students that I've talked to are frustrated by, you know, we've got name names, but we have, you know, departments and faculty and speakers that lionize
00:37:23
Speaker
murderous communist dictators that in some cases have killed more people than Hitler. And yet, you know, a tepid comment about religious freedom is somehow dangerous, right? And I mean, to your point about data, you know, why sometimes people ask me why, why speak out? And I have to admit that that I've gotten braver over time. I don't think that I was quite as brave at the very beginning when I first started as you can be giving credit for.
00:37:51
Speaker
But, you know, one of the reasons that I speak out is that, well, a couple reasons. One is that I think the alternative is to humiliating. It's not that I like conflict. I actually really don't like conflict. I'm a good Canadian that way.
00:38:07
Speaker
But supposedly I've dedicated my life to being an intellectual, to solving problems, to believing that rigorous pursuit of facts is important to solving problems. To your point about people not wanting to give you data about the problem they're trying to solve. I mean, do you not want to try to solve the problem? Would you do the same thing? Would you want to not see data
00:38:34
Speaker
about a medical procedure before taking it, probably you would, right? And so why is that not the case here? Is this not a serious issue, like you're claiming it's a serious issue? And then secondly, and this maybe comes back to this trust issue at the national level, when I got to see you, I said to myself, okay, I'm at a school that has a green light fire rating for free speech, partly thanks to the regents.
October 7th Events and Campus Empathy
00:39:00
Speaker
We have political non-discrimination.
00:39:03
Speaker
So the idea that I can be fired for something I say, you know, and not win a lot of money in a lawsuit afterwards is pretty low. But if we become obsolete because we're not providing educational value and we seem to be, you know, morally pandering to what surveys suggest are 8% of the population, you know, in the far left, that is a threat to my job, right? If, if people decide they don't want to attend universities anymore,
00:39:32
Speaker
That is a threat. And so the risks maybe are more hidden to not speaking out, but I think that they're still there in terms of the existential risk of what happens if universities lost trust. And that brings me to my next question, and that is, since October the 7th, and it's tragic that it
00:39:53
Speaker
It's taken something like this, right? The horrible massacre in Israel and then some of the horrible expressions of just vitriolic hatred that came out of college campuses afterwards. So, you know, a couple of examples. There was a professor at Cornell, I believe, who said that he thought the attack was exhilarating.
00:40:11
Speaker
There were student groups at Harvard before Israel had even retaliated who were releasing statements saying, this is all Israel's fault. What's happened on October 7th? There was a UC Davis professor who was saying, basically calling for violence against Jewish journalists. We've all seen the videos of Jewish students hiding in libraries with people banging the door.
00:40:35
Speaker
Et cetera, et cetera. So horrible that it came to that, but it does seem like there has been a national conversation that since then that hasn't gone away, including in the center and even in the center left about, you know, there is a problem on campus and we need to do something about it. Do you, do you see that? Do you see that? Do you think that, that, that, that we're generally having a moment where something might change or do you think that this is a moment that's going to be fleeting? Uh, and when we're going to kind of go back to where we were.
00:41:03
Speaker
I think the institutions are so powerful and so rich that I don't know that it's going to move the needle that much. I do think it's made a significant impact in the Jewish community.
00:41:19
Speaker
This cannot go on like this. This is not okay. And we can't be quiet about it. We have to keep it alive and keep talking about it and keep reminding folks of what happened, the incidents that you talk about and others, and how did they get that way? Like, how did they come to believe that that was okay, that this is okay, what happened? And that it's exhilarating, that it's sick.
00:41:42
Speaker
And so I think the most important thing we can do is keep talking about it with our platforms and keep it alive and keep talking about real life examples of us as conservative people in the administration or faculty or students. Keep talking about it and let people know, like shine the light on what it's really like on a college campus right now.
00:42:06
Speaker
And not just believe what they say in the media, because the media has a slant too. I'm surprised they even covered some of that. And I don't know that the media covered it all that well. But I do think we've got to keep talking about that. We can't let it get hidden or... I mean, the news is so overwhelming every day that it's almost impossible not to just move on and stop talking about it and thinking about it. This is one thing that cannot be... We can't stay quiet about it.
00:42:34
Speaker
And I think it's also a really important moment as powerless as, frankly, we are in higher ed to influence what goes on in the Middle East. I do think that there's a powerful and important moment to help students understand complexity and empathy and nuance, you know, and teach them that
00:42:54
Speaker
you can both be horrified about what happened on October 7th and unrelentingly condemning of Hamas, a group that has an ideology similar to Hitler's and tactics similar to ISIS and horrified at expressions of anti-Semitism and also be horrified at the horrendous depths of suffering going on in Gaza right now, whether or not you blame, to what extent
00:43:19
Speaker
independent of to what extent you blame that suffering on Hamas or on Israel or on both or on the US or whoever it is, that it's not mutually exclusive to feel profound empathy for the people who are suffering on all sides of this or any other conflict.
00:43:37
Speaker
Well, guess what? That goes back to K through 12. And did they learn how to critically think? And did they learn history, like actual factual history about what happened in the past, in the world, in our country? And both of those things are not happening in K through 12 in a lot of cases. And this is the result of it. That's what I think we're seeing. So let me talk about reform. It strikes me that people who want to reform higher ed
00:44:05
Speaker
roughly fall into three camps.
Higher Education Reform and Policy Enforcement
00:44:08
Speaker
In the first camp, there are people who think that reform ought to be done internally and with the help of the market. So if students think that certain disciplines or departments or universities are indoctrinating or providing a low-value education or discriminating or creating hostile climates or whatever else they're doing, we can choose not to go there. We can go somewhere else. We can build new schools.
00:44:32
Speaker
And these things give some leverage to the few faculty administrators left who either haven't drunk the Kool-Aid or have the courage to speak up to push for change. It's more powerful to say this threatens our existence than it is to say I personally, as one faculty member, disagree with it. So I put groups like Heterodox Academy, Academic Freedom Alliance, University of Austin, UATX in this first group.
00:45:00
Speaker
In the second group, I would say there are those who see it as the government's job at a fundamental level to intervene to write the ship in order to protect the academic and civic missions that are supported by enormous sums of tax dollars, both federally and at the state level. So Ron DeSantis and Chris Rufo would be two examples of people in this camp.
00:45:21
Speaker
And then I would say the third camp is kind of in the middle. I would say this is a common group among faculty that I have quiet hallway conversations with, or who are involved in some of these organizations. And they'll basically say things like, well, I agree with the first camp in principle. The government shouldn't be meddling in our affairs. Academic freedom is sacrosanct, shared governance is sacrosanct, the whole academic edifice is built on these things. And yet,
00:45:49
Speaker
They also don't see a practical way to solve the problem quickly given how far it's gone without government intervention. And so it's kind of, and I apologize for the indelicacy of this analogy, but it's a little bit like chemo, right? You, you don't give chemo to a healthy person because it's bad for the human body, but you do if they have cancer. And so there's, I would say that some of these people are kind of to varying degrees, reluctant supporters of things like what Chris Rufo and Ron DeSantis are doing.
00:46:16
Speaker
Where do you fall in this spectrum?
00:46:20
Speaker
I think I'm a little jaded. I've not given up, but I'm closer to giving up on the idea that we can come in and policy our way out of this or figure out how to regulate our way out of this, whether you're Ron DeSantis or whether you're the president of the United States or the governor of Colorado or the head of the university. I do think we've got to vote with our dollar and start making decisions that support
00:46:46
Speaker
Different choices and i think that's gonna happen naturally with the digital revolution and how people are learning differently experiential learning more companies like amazon doing their own education and certificates etc and i think that's a danger to higher education but if somebody wants you know a classical liberal education they're still likely going to go to a four-year university
00:47:10
Speaker
And so they're going to vote with their dollar based on what university is doing the best job of serving that type of customer. So that's the free market part of it. So I think it's complicated. I think you've got layers. You've got what's happening culturally. You've got what's happening in the digital revolution.
00:47:26
Speaker
And you've got what's happening in society as far as careers like AI and everything that's happening to transform the way we work, right? And the expense of higher education, that lays in too. So it's a layered thing, a layered problem. And some things we can fix and some things I don't think we can.
00:47:45
Speaker
Here's another idea that I wish reformers took up more. And that's one way that the government can intervene without infringing on shared governance and academic freedom is to force universities to enforce the policies they already have.
00:48:02
Speaker
So if you're punishing people for their speech, you're basically enforcing a policy that doesn't exist, and you're breaking a policy that does. If you're allowing people to physically harass each other over their political views, you're also not enforcing a policy that exists.
00:48:19
Speaker
If you're allowing departments to racially discriminate when they hire, you are not enforcing a policy that exists. What fraction of our problems could be solved? Do we need more policies? Or what fraction of our problems could be solved if somebody came in without waiting for these things to go to court?
00:48:42
Speaker
to say you have to enforce the policies that exist already, and we're gonna go in and make sure that you are, and if you're not, we're gonna punish you.
00:48:50
Speaker
I think that's a fabulous point, Matt. And I did see that as a regent. We were not honoring our policy in a lot of ways. You saw that, I'm sure, too. And it was so frustrating. But then there's also the interpretation of the policy, right? Like, what does this mean to protect us from political discrimination? What does it mean to enforce this Title IX policy?
00:49:15
Speaker
And that's where the devil is in the detail, right? And who is leading the charge on enforcing that policy? So it's the person who's in charge of enforcing it. It's the interpretation of the policy.
00:49:29
Speaker
And then there's the actual policy. So I think that's a complicated problem, but I do agree with you that if we would honor the original intent of these rules or policies and follow through on holding firm on those, then it would improve a lot of things.
00:49:48
Speaker
And to your point about interpretation, distinguishing when there's genuine disagreements, honest disagreements in interpretation and when there's sort of willful misinterpretation.
00:50:02
Speaker
And I won't go into details, but I will say that I've seen examples of the latter. Okay, before we move on to the next topic, I want to make an edgy prediction. So that way if somebody, if this happens, then somebody can say, you know, Matt Burgess predicted this. Okay, he mentioned Title IX. Yeah, he mentioned Title IX. Earlier we were talking about gender polarization and how some of these political issues may be related to it.
00:50:30
Speaker
In Richard Reeves' book, he talks about how the college attendance gap currently favoring women is larger than the college attendance gap several decades ago, favoring men that motivated the creation of Title IX. So my prediction is in the next 10 years, we are gonna see a lawsuit from a conservative group under Title IX saying the politicization of academia as it's currently being done
00:51:00
Speaker
is a Title IX issue because it is, and I don't think the evidence is 100% clear yet, but, you know, male college attendance falls off a cliff starting in about 2018, right? When a lot of these other things start happening. That basically, you know, we have a college attendance gap that probably is at least in part caused by these political wins, and therefore that's a Title IX issue.
00:51:26
Speaker
That's interesting. I mean, I think that's a big possibility. I also think that I just think that we're headed towards a different type of education model in higher education and there will be specific models built more geared towards men and the trades and like hands on
00:51:46
Speaker
you know, training, jobs, et cetera. And also, isn't it statistically significant that men go towards certain degrees and vocations and women do? So there may be a split there. Like we might be back to girls' college and boys' college, but then you get to the gender discussions around these days, like in the blurring there, and how does that play out? Because that would not be okay with a lot of society right now.
00:52:13
Speaker
Yeah, sex segregation. I mean, there's an interesting debate that we don't have time to go into about whether sex segregation is good or bad for the learning of, you know, straight with boys and girls, but like, but certainly, yeah, the, you know, the growing fraction of young people that identify as, as LGBT sex segregated schools would not be good for them. Okay. I want to talk about Rocky Mountain Voice. So this is this new 501c3 in the media space that you've started.
Rocky Mountain Voice and Conservative Media
00:52:43
Speaker
And media is another area that's gotten scrutiny around some of these balance and politicization issues recently. So tell me about Rocky Mountain Voice and what it is that you hope to accomplish with it and what it is that motivated you to start it. Well, Matt, when I ran for regent and was a regent and then when I ran for governor, it was
00:53:04
Speaker
It was terrible how hard it was to get my authentic self out there, my message out there through the media in Colorado and some national media.
00:53:15
Speaker
I was so frustrated that I would do an hour interview with an outlet like the Denver Post or 9 News, whoever it was, and the headline would be completely different than anything we talked about. And they would clip the pieces or quote me, making my views seem very ridiculous and bombastic and just not at all what my principles were or my opinion or my stance.
00:53:42
Speaker
And it got to the point where I stopped talking to them because I thought, why even talk to them if they're going to twist around what I say? And it was this echo chamber. So the minute I would do one interview, you would see the headlines all over the place, right? It would just echo from one place to the next because everyone takes each other's content.
00:54:00
Speaker
And i just thought it's at one point i was like forget it i'm not gonna talk to the media whether it was the daily camera when i was a region or it was nine news or the diver post when i was running for governor and i would have a few outlets that were friendly or not friendly because they were hard on me but they would at least report what i actually said or thought and they might have been smaller outlets so after the governor's race i looked around the country and said
00:54:23
Speaker
How do we how do we build something that provides a way for conservative or libertarian folks in Colorado to get their message out to have an honest conversation and how do we Get news as a conservative or libertarian without having to wade through all these different articles and news sources to find it so I looked around and found a model down in Texas that I really liked and
00:54:48
Speaker
And it aggregates a lot of news from different outlets that they believe are fair and honest and authentic. And then it adds in original content. And so that's what we've created with Rocky Mountain Voice. It's a media platform, I call it a digital community, where we bring in conservative, libertarian voices. And I'll never use the word unbiased because we're all biased, right?
00:55:10
Speaker
But we just want a little bit of a reprieve on having to dig, dig, dig to find an article that we feel like is honest and truthful and shares our, I don't know, our viewpoint or our worldview. And so that's what we've done with Rocky Mountain Voice. It has podcasts, radio shows, YouTube channels. It has lots of journalists and we're pulling in feeds from lots of different outlets.
00:55:35
Speaker
And it's really fun. People are really enjoying it. They like that there's one place they can go and find all their favorites on one platform. And we're building community around it. And we put out a newsletter a few times a week with breaking news, which is a five minute read. It's called the Mountain Minute. Everything is free. That's why we did it as a C3. I'm so tired of paywalls. I'm so tired of subscriptions. I just wanted to be able to go to a website and find the news and read it or in the newsletter. So that's what we created. It's growing very quickly. We're having a lot of fun.
00:56:05
Speaker
And we're covering some really hard topics that we don't see in the mainstream outlets, which is really, that warms my heart. I love the opportunity to tackle topics that aren't covered in the mainstream news. Do you see, okay, so the two ways to respond to one sort of echo chamber would be either to build something that strives to not be an echo chamber or something that strives to be the echo chamber for the thing that was missing from the other echo chamber.
00:56:34
Speaker
To what extent are you trying to do one of those versus the other, or are you not sure?
00:56:39
Speaker
I think it's a little bit of a mix. In our commentary, it's more, this is what conservatives and libertarians want to talk about. And these are the issues that we want to discuss and debate. Whereas the news we're aggregating and putting out there and the news we're writing, we want to be a bigger tent for everyone. We want to be an honest news source that tries their hardest not to put bias into the stories that we're telling about what's going on out in society.
00:57:07
Speaker
So I think it's a mix and I think that's why it's good to separate out the commentary section from the actual You know news section which is the way it used to be right the the what you're describing Is similar to how I would describe the Wall Street Journal the Wall Street Journal's newsroom For the most part is very unbiased and very matter-of-fact and obviously their opinion does skew a little bit to kind of the center center, right maybe the kind of establishment Republican
00:57:36
Speaker
It's interesting that you're talking about conservatives and libertarians together, because this actually gets to my next question about the future of republicanism, because as I'm sure you know, there's a tension right now within the Republican Party between the conservatives and libertarians.
00:57:52
Speaker
Big display in a big way in Wyoming in the recent budget debate, which is the state that I'm going to be moving to soon. And I think more broadly, Colorado in particular is having an interesting moment within the Republican party.
Colorado GOP Dynamics and Bipartisanship
00:58:07
Speaker
So Ken Buck just retired. Lauren Boebert just changed districts.
00:58:11
Speaker
There's probably going to be a competitive race in her old district, you know, whether she had left or not with, with a pretty moderate Adam Frisch running, the state overall is growing and getting bluer. And yet there are also some issues that have come to the fore in the public consciousness in a big way that are maybe more traditionally Republican strength issues, such as the, the border crisis and this financial strain that the, the migrants are putting on.
00:58:41
Speaker
the budget of the city of Denver, which even the Democratic mayor has raised the alarm about, the New York Times raised the alarm about in a big story a few weeks ago. Crime is also a resurgent issue. Homelessness, education, which historically has been a issue that liberals went on, but recently I've seen polls that suggest that that advantage has disappeared.
00:59:05
Speaker
So with all of these things coming together, and then of course the national fight between the more libertarian and the more kind of authoritarian would be the pejorative word, but the kind of more pro-government enforcing conservative values, pro-Orban maybe type wing, where do you see the Colorado GOP moving forward from here? Yes, there's a lot of food fighting going on right now.
00:59:30
Speaker
I think on both sides. But I think it's healthy in a way because it's really forcing us to examine like, where can we actually agree? Where can we find commonality? And I do think there are some things that conservatives are starting to rally around. And I do think the libertarians are part of that conversation. I consider myself
00:59:50
Speaker
libertarian. And I want the government as little involvement by the government in my life as possible. And so that tags me as a libertarian in one way. In another way, I have conservative principles that I think a lot of us agree on. And I'm not talking about the socialists. I'm talking about small government, a balanced budget, fiscal conservatism,
01:00:19
Speaker
and making sure that parents have the rights over raising their kids, et cetera. And just the wild, wild West, the rugged individualism of Colorado, I believe goes back to libertarian slash conservative roots. And yes, a lot of people are moving to Colorado, but they're moving here for that.
01:00:41
Speaker
That drives me nuts. It's like they're moving here for that and they're voting for more and more government, more and more regulation. There are 700 bills going through the Capitol right now and most of them are taking away our rights.
01:00:53
Speaker
And I hope that the people of Colorado will wake up to that and say, this isn't why I moved here. I moved here because it's the Wild West, it's the new frontier, it's rugged individualism. So if we can all rally around that, the essence of Colorado, and we can talk about our solutions in an effective way, boom, it's magic, then we are going to be back on track. We're going to have a solid, effective movement, and we'll be able to get elected again.
01:01:23
Speaker
Really interesting. OK, so I have a meaty question and then a super quick question and then before we run out of time. So the meaty question is, I want to end the conversation where you and I started, and that's thinking about how to reduce polarization.
01:01:38
Speaker
And one thing that maybe those who both agreed and disagreed with your work on the Regents Board didn't know, but I knew, is that you reached across the aisle a lot. So I got to know you and Leslie Smith, for example, who worked quite productively together on the Regent Board. So what steps can citizens, educators, and public officials take to reduce polarization?
01:02:05
Speaker
get to know each other as human beings and talk and have conversations and don't be afraid to disagree on things.
01:02:11
Speaker
It's okay to have differing opinions, but find the places where you agree, even if they're teeny tiny. I might've told you this story about when I first got elected to the region board, a friend of mine who was also kind of a mentor to me. I said, gosh, how am I gonna go into this and be effective when everyone's so divided? And she said, just find the littlest things that you can agree on and build off of that. If you both like coffee, okay, great, we can agree on that. If you both love Sioux football,
01:02:39
Speaker
Great. Go to a game and just enjoy the environment and get to know each other. And once you do that, it starts to just break things down very, very slowly. But that's how Leslie and I got to be friends. Jack Kroll and I got to be friends that way. We couldn't agree on much of anything. But, you know, we laughed. We had a good time at games and we gave each other a hard time about things.
01:03:02
Speaker
And when we see each other, it's not contentious at all. It's fun. And so it's just start small, take baby steps, and just find little itty bitty places you can agree and then build off of that. But you have to be intentional about it, and you have to be committed to it. And I think something that also helps is, and I certainly have found people resonate with this when I talk about it in the context of climate change.
01:03:28
Speaker
If what's animating your polarization is concern about big problems, then take those problems seriously enough to recognize that you're almost never going to be able to solve them without bipartisan cooperation. And so bipartisanship is a requirement of seriousness. And I think seriousness is a requirement of having the right morally to wrap yourself in some important issue.
01:03:56
Speaker
Right? If you're not willing to take the issue seriously, then you have no right to go around and say that you have the moral high ground because of the weight of that issue. That's a great point, Matt. That's a great point.
01:04:08
Speaker
And I think the things we got done on the region board were where we did that. We said, this is too big of an issue to argue about anymore. We've got to solve this issue. Take CU football. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Has that ever been a success in the last year, even though, except on the field, but we're going to get there.
01:04:26
Speaker
We will get there. It was a mess before that. And nobody could agree. I mean, a couple of regions wanted to get rid of football at CU. And we were like, what are you talking about? And it doesn't have any effect on admissions. Well, that was just blown out of the water by looking at what's going on. And the increase in African-American kids applying to CU is insane right now. So you talk about diversity, there you go.
01:04:52
Speaker
Well, and I want to call out, I really like coach prime and I want to call out, I want to call him specifically out. I mean, everybody knows he's a big personality who's brought tons of excitement to the campus. And that's obvious related in an obvious way to massive increases in sales of various things and admissions and applications and particularly among.
01:05:12
Speaker
african-americans but i also think he's a great even if unintentionally i don't know whether he's intentional or not but he's a great ambassador for reducing political polarization because he's you know very obviously decent and like a little person and yet he's also kind of hard to
01:05:30
Speaker
You know, put in a box politically, right? He doesn't talk about politics. He obviously believes in personal responsibilities super deeply and hard work and no excuses. He's deeply religious. But on the other hand, he's very concerned about racial inequality and social injustice. Right. And so it's like he's just he embodies the fact that
01:05:50
Speaker
You can be a decent earnest unifying person and not put yourself in a box and in fact maybe that. Not putting in yourself in a box helps you be that decent person so i'm i'm just a huge fan of his and and what is the campus and i think that the results in the field are gonna come in the in the sub second years.
01:06:12
Speaker
I agree with you and I think he's a really decent person who cares a lot about seeing these young athletes be successful in life. Totally.
01:06:22
Speaker
And boy, isn't that what education's all about? And isn't that what coaching's all about? And team sports. And I just, I agree with you. I think he's done a lot to break down barriers. I mean, all the regents were super excited about approving that contract. Like it was unanimous and all the arguments went away. It was like, oh no, we're in. We want our picture. I mean, it was fun. Yeah, it was funny story about that. So that contract,
01:06:48
Speaker
became official at the same time that CU was hosting the UN climate summit.
01:06:54
Speaker
And so I was actually at dinner with Chris Barnard, who's a mutual friend of ours. He was a conservative climate activist because I had hosted him on a panel at the climate summit. And we happened to be, we having drinks after, and we happened to be in the booth next to a bunch of the Regents who were toasting to having finalized the prime contract, which was then announced the next morning. So as he got to Regent Sharkey, Regent Gallegos, I remember we're there and President Solomon was there and we got to, you know, very briefly join in the celebration.
01:07:24
Speaker
Which, and yeah, who knew how great that would be. Okay, the last question I want to ask you before we run out of time is, you know, you're such an interesting person who does so many interesting things.
Future Endeavors in Media and Education Reform
01:07:35
Speaker
And so what's next for Heidi Ganahl? Oh, thanks, Matt. You know, after the governor's race, it took so much time away from my family, my kids and my friends. So I've really just been reconnecting with a lot of people and figuring out how I can take what I learned, my experiences, my new friendships, my
01:07:54
Speaker
My gosh, the crazy ride that was and turn it into something beautiful and meaningful that can make a difference. And so I think Rocky Mountain Voice was part of that. I'm also working on another project called the Road to Red, which is helping conservative and libertarian groups around the country be more effective and grow and be better at messaging and really making things happen.
01:08:17
Speaker
And then the last thing is just helping ACE scholarships and the school choice movement and being a leader on that front and making sure that every child that needs a different type of education has the opportunity to get that because I still believe with all my heart that education is the key to the American dream. Well, that's something that I think
01:08:36
Speaker
almost everyone in the country should agree on, that the American dream is special and worth fighting for and that education is at the root of that. So that's a great note to end on. Heidi, you can all thanks so much for being on the Free Mind Podcast. Well, thank you for all you're doing, Matt. Very appreciated. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye. The Free Mind Podcast is produced by the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder.
01:09:02
Speaker
You can email us feedback at freemind at colorado.edu or visit us online at colorado.edu slash center slash Benson. You can also find us on social media. Our Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube accounts are all at Benson Center. Our Instagram is at TheBensonCenter and the Facebook is at Bruce D. Benson Center.