Dr. Luis Fraga: Education, Dedicated.

Audrey Scott:

Welcome to this modern education podcast that explores learning—from the everyday exchange of thoughts and ideas to the theories and practices behind entire systems. 

THINK education is cool? So do we. So, we…

PAIR two conversations. Learn about our guests then learn from our guests. 

SHARE your takeaways and come back for more.

You’re listening to Think. Pair. Share. with me, Audrey Scott.

My guest today is Dr. Luis Fraga. He is a professor of Transformative Latino Leadership and Political Science, a Fellow at the Institute for Educational Initiatives and the Director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.  

Luis is an expert in Latino politics, politics of race and ethnicity, urban politics and voting rights policy. He’s passionate about the transformative nature of

Catholic education and reflective about the potential lasting legacy of building communities of understanding and tolerance in the present.

He spoke to me from Bond Hall on campus and I’m honored to welcome him to Think. Pair. Share.

Luis, thank you so much for joining us.

Luis Fraga: I’m very happy to be here with you.

AS: I just want to say first of all - I love Bond Hall - it’s just such a pretty building.

LF: Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful, and we are extremely lucky - and blessed - to have been moved here when McKenna Hall was redone.

AS: I worked in the audio-visual department, when I was here on campus. And so, that was out of the basement of McKenna, so...

LF: I miss that underground basement.

AS: me too.

LF: Especially in the wintertime.

AS: I'm with you on that for sure. Okay, well, as is our modus operandi, I ask a few lighter, get-to-know you questions and that leads us into the rest of the conversation, so without further ado, I’ll start with—and you might be both of these—but I wonder if you had to choose, would you rather be a poet or a painter?

LF: That's a very good question. That would be a very difficult choice for me because I'm not particularly skilled at either, but if I were skilled at one or the other, I think my preference would be to be a painter. Because I think painting is, can be, long lasting, have a long lasting impact and allows people to interpret what it is that they see in ways that they want. If one thinks of leaving a legacy, I think that, leaving a legacy of a painting that moves people, can be very, very significant. It's hard for me to say this, but I will. As I've been a social scientist now for about 37 years, I think it is in the humanities, where scholars leave their lasting impact and art and poetry would be two of those places.

AS: Wonderful. I love that thought, but we couldn't do it without the other half so, thank God...

LF: That's what I think, but I have to be honest and say you know there's just something special about poetry and art that affects the heart as much as it affects the head.

AS: Agreed 100%. Since we are sort of in the season of family vacations do you have a favorite family vacation memory?

LF: Oh, that's a very good question. Yes, I was raised in Corpus Christi, and after my father died - I was working in California at the time - and my mother came to visit us, and she had never been out of the state and we decided to take a drive from Palo Alto down to San Diego. And my two older children who at that time were about 10 and 12 joined us. It was magnificent to all be together and to see her talk about this once in a lifetime event, and so we went on a boat in Santa Barbara, we saw the mountains, we saw the water, we went down highway one on one in California and I've always hoped that that was a very special trip for her. It certainly was very, very special for the rest of us. Especially for my children, I think they just got to know her as a person, in addition to as a grandmother, and my mother had a wicked sense of humor. And was a bit irreverent, although a dogmatic Catholic well i'll say a cat and my father was a dogmatic Catholic my mother was a very religious Catholic but she didn't always follow dogma, in the same way or feel bound by dogma and the way that that my father did. And it was wonderful for them to learn about her and how she thought and how she worshiped and what her thoughts were now that she was in her, at that time in her 80s, I think it was. So it was beautiful. That's my favorite memory of a vacation.

AS: I'm certain it was an enormous treat for her as well to spend that time with your family.

LF: I think, so I hope so. She did throw up after we were on the boat in Santa Barbara but that passed so.

AS: That's neither here nor there.

LF: We found out that she didn't like being on moving objects, other than a car. We found that out the hard way - for her the hard way. But it was beautiful. Everything she saw was new to her, and it was just magnificent.

AS: Well, thank you for sharing that. It sounds lovely. This one might be a little bit hard, but tell me about the last time you learned something new.

LF: Oh very, very, very good question. I'd say every time I'm in class I learn something new, every time I pick up an academic journal or book I learn something new. I give a lecture in our Warrior Scholar Project. This is a project that brings recent veterans or about to be veterans to our campus in the summer, for a one week sometimes two week academic bootcamp. These are veterans who have not or service members who have not had the chance, yet to go to college, and this is to try to help them understand how all the skills that they have acquired in the military may be very useful in being a top student wherever it is they choose to go to college. Because they're a little older, have a different background, they're always very interesting and asking questions and I often - what I'm learning is - their perspective. On things and the topic that I address is the civil war and Reconstruction. It's actually American Democracy in Crisis: The Civil War and Reconstruction. And since one of the areas I do work in is voting rights it's a wonderful way for me to have broadened my understanding, but also to share that with a class and I love learning from the questions that they ask. And if it's okay for me to say, seeing light bulbs go off, saying oftentimes, “I never knew this. This is a fascinating interpretation.” And what I'm learning from that is what they perhaps don't know, but what it is that they find important to consider as they continue to grow in their own knowledge about the specific material, but more importantly, about how they can think critically and how important it is to think critically if you're going to do well in college.

AS: I like that: things that they think are now important to consider. I think that's a critical first step.

LF: Yes, absolutely. I tell them - in my lecture I'm not going to - it's a kind of a semi-Socratic lecture I would say. And I say i'm not going to tell you what to think but I'm going to give you an interpretation and I want you to use that as a way of either helping justify your current views or challenge your current views, but what I have as my goal is to convince you that when you go to college you no longer have opinions - you make evidence based arguments.

And of course you can choose to have an opinion, but it's better to have an evidence based argument.

AS: I like that. Can I come to your class?

LF: Absolutely. It's open. The discussions are always very interesting, and in this case because they're veterans and we're talking about the civil war and reconstruction, the relevance of them as citizens, the relevance of them as making a choice to work on behalf of the nation through the military service gives them a magnificent reference point for understanding this very critical stage in our nation's political development. Sad at one level - empowering at another level. And so, I think it, it allows them to better understand how significant this period is. One might call it a critical juncture in the evolution of United States democracy.

AS: It sounds like it's a wonderful chance for people to learn and to broaden their thought process, so… I know you are very proud of your family and rightfully so. A little birdie did tell me that you are a grandpa a couple times over. Tell me about that. How's that been? One of them is relatively new, right?

LF: Yes, he's five months old. Patrick Luis Fraga: he’s my namesake. Pat after Patricia my son's mother-in-law, and then the older one a year and a half is George Carlos Fraga George after one of my sons' grandmothers and Carlos after grandpa Charlie of my daughter-in-law. They are incredible. They now live in Atlanta so it's easier to see them than when they lived in Bloomington because the flight is an hour and 20 minutes, rather than a three and a half to four hour drive. But they are amazing. We saw them about a month ago. In a number of my talks and some of my writing I've talked about the importance of thinking about legacy and thinking about the way in which the decisions that we make now as a polity as a citizenry as an individual citizen leave a legacy for those we cherish most: our children and our grandchildren. And I see that and feel that in a different way now because I know who those grandsons are - maybe I'll have more in the future - but I see standing in front of me and hugging me and kissing me and laughing with me and you know - all the things the good things that happened with grandchildren - not that everything that happens with grandchildren is is that easy, but in those in those beautiful times I I feel differently using those words. Because they mean something - not they didn't mean anything real - but they they're even more real now… happy and full of love their mom and dad are magnificent parents wonderful.

AS: Excellent. Well, I have no doubt. I would love to hear… you grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas...

LF: Born and raised.

AS: Okay, wonderful, what was that like for you?

LF: Corpus Christi at that time, it still is, it was an extremely segregated town. You have the African American parts of town, the Mexican Mexican American parts of town and the white parts of town. There are very few when I grew up there, very few integrated areas and the schools were very, very segregated as well. So I grew up in a community where racial lines were very clear. They very often intersected with class lines as well. And those lines were rarely crossed, but within our - it was the West side - within our West side, we saw ourselves and people have written about this with regards to African American communities there was a thriving sense of respect and identity in the institutions that were located on the West side, so one was very proud of the football team and the and the basketball team and the baseball team, but also very proud of those who did well academically and I was blessed to be one of those who did well academically. It was a place where, despite all the separation, one could feel a sense of possibility, however limited that possibility was. I graduated in a class of 477 and maybe 10 of us went to college. Maybe. Public school, maybe 10 of us went to college and probably 10 of US graduated eventually over the course of time. And I knew from at least the time I was a sophomore that this wasn't right. That there was something not working the way it should to limit opportunities and the way that they were limited. I had some magnificent teachers, no question, just like everybody else. I had teachers who pushed me and supported me and mentored me. Some were Latino Latina somewhere white some were African American so that was very nice to get that sense of support across the racial lines that existed in the community generally. We went to an all Mexican Mexican American Catholic Church worshiped in Spanish largely didn't start worshiping in English until I got older and went to what was called a teenage mass. My dad taught catechism. I knew that, that there must be a systemic reason - I wouldn't have phrased it that way then -  but that there must have been some reason behind beyond individual choice for why more students weren't taking advantage of higher education. My parents both had the opportunity to graduate from high school, they were both bilingual and biliterate. My dad served in World War II, my mom was a kind of a “Rosie the Riveter” as a telephone operator during World War II. That's where they met. I think they had a vision of opportunity that comes from that greatest generation, as has been written and talked about. Even though they may not have realized it themselves because of the limitations in their own individual opportunities and the structural limits and their own opportunities they gave each of their children: myself, my older brother, older sister, and younger sister, a sense that if you studied hard and worked hard, you could achieve great things and you could go beyond what you might immediately know - so tremendous value on education. They valued education in ways that many other parents and the neighborhood I grew up in didn't have the chance to do because they hadn't had the chance to get the schooling that my parents had and so that upbringing, I think, drove me to not just continue to try to understand things but drove me to try to study issues, problems, questions that helped enlighten our understanding of why this was the case. Today, we would say I was studying systemic racism or studying systemic limits to the exercise of power in the case of political scientists. But I think it all goes back to where I was raised, and what I thought I might be able to do if I gave myself the chance to get greater training, greater understanding of social relations, political relations, economic relations and in a sense, try to help America live up to its highest ideals.

AS: You didn't just go to college you ended up going to Harvard, so do you attribute that to something that's like that's not like…

LF: Yeah, yeah. It was that summer I spent in Bar Harbor, Maine at the Jackson laboratory studying mammalian genetics the summer after my junior year of high school, and that was a mind blowing experience and something that really changed my life for the better. And all of the students there, except for me and one other student, were from the Northeast. And I was the only person of color. There were no African Americans in the program and no other Latinos in the program or Asians in the program at that time, and all these students said, well where are you going to go to college? And I said, well, I think I'll go to the university that my brother was attending, which is the University of Texas at Austin. And they said, we ought to think about coming to college out here, come to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, whatever. And I think that was a circumstance that changed my life and in this way - one, not just knowing about different opportunities, but it was clear to me that I had just as much ability to learn as these students did, but I hadn't had as much opportunity to learn as they had.  And so I knew that I would have to apply myself a great deal if I went to Harvard but it made Harvard seem within reach. That happened to coincide with an effort by highly selective institutions at that time, this is in the fall of 1973, so beginning to accept limited, very limited, numbers of students from non-traditional high school backgrounds. And I was one of a group of fifteen Mexican American students. That opportunity to be there during that time, with challenges, challenges of adjustment, challenges of being in an environment where so many people seem to just fit in immediately, challenges of social class and revenue and so forth. All of that, because ultimately, I was able to graduate, changed my life and gave me a perspective that said that maybe because I had been given this opportunity to gain this - which I have to agree was an incredible education - I had an obligation to give back. And so, when I decided to pursue my PhD it was, one, to try to diversify the Academy, but more importantly, to try to diversify thinking in the Academy, and in that way support students who might have a similar background or a similar set of interests to the ones that I had. So that was my inspiration.

AS: To have that sort of, maybe selfless, thought about it, you, you were looking to help make things better for other people...

LF: Hmm. Absolutely true. I haven't been to therapy, so I can't tell you for sure we would do this, but I have to think that that came from Catholic social teaching, as I understood it, and the teaching of catechism and just you know going to mass every Sunday and confession every Saturday, and I, I think it it raised a social consciousness in me. But it's also important to remember that there was a general growth in the social consciousness of many people in the United States during the period of the late 60s and early 70s. A sense of you know, do you want to do good? Can you help others? Is this the only way that things have to be? Not that everyone had that view, but a lot of people have that view, whether it was with regards to African Americans and civil rights or Latinos and civil rights or women in civil rights or Asians and civil rights, you know many different areas and to a degree that fit beautifully with what I seemed to be called to which was to bring a different vision and bring a different voice and take the chance that I could do that. I know that I have been blessed. I have been lucky to be able to have that opportunity, and so I I I remember that every time I'm in the classroom I remember that every time I write, something I remember that every time I have the opportunity to share my insights.

AS: You are the director of the Institute for Latino studies at Notre Dame. Can you share your vision for the Institute, where you see that in the University, what excites you about the Institute looking forward? 

LF: The Institute was established in 1999. And it was established in part because there was some student effort to try to get the University to provide more faculty, more curriculum, richer curriculum, I should say and more Latino students on campus. The University, I think,  ultimately decided to do this and I, I wrote an article on the history of the Institute that's going to come out in the Journal Latino studies and in a few months, where I talked about this and some detail. The leadership of the University decided at that time that if Notre Dame was going to remain the preeminent Catholic University in the country, it needed to better understand this growing population that was such a critical part of the future of the Catholic Church. What has brought Notre Dame its greatness? Well, it's it's alumni and their generosity to the university. Historically, the communities that Notre Dame served were predominantly Catholic, predominantly working class, predominantly immigrants and immigrant origin communities: Irish, Italians, Poles, Czechs, Germans pick your group. And all across generations as the University has educated students across generations it knows in its heart that it was the investment in individuals, families and communities with very few resources now, we can do that because there were priests, who are offering classes and costs of education at that time or much less, but it was the investment in the future. That was the right thing to do, and the right ministry to pursue. It wasn't just right in an absolute ethics sense, it was the Catholic thing to do. Well, which is the community today that can make a similar contribution? Well it's Latinos - it's African Americans and Asians and others of course all first Generation Students right, because no one is as grateful to an institution that gives them opportunities as someone who is raised in a community with very limited opportunity. What the Institute for Latino Studies does is to allow Notre Dame to recommit itself to its original mission once again—the missions are aligned.

AS: I know we’ve been talking about how valuable you believe education is in general. So, building on that, I’d like to talk about the educational model called two-way immersion, if we could – where students are taught literacy and content in two languages, right? I know you were instrumental in bringing that program to Holy Cross School here in South Bend. Can you tell me a little bit about the genesis of that?

LF: Sure. I've been very fortunate. I think in that education and education policy and education politics has always been one of the areas that I've studied. When I was in Seattle, was an administrator and professor there at the University of Seattle, I had a visit from a gentleman named Joe Womack, he was the Executive Director of the Fulcrum Foundation. And he said, we have a Catholic school in Tacoma, Washington that has declining enrollment and we're probably or the bishops probably archbishop's probably going to have to close it, and he said what what ideas might you have for doing this and I said, well, I have a grand idea. I'm not sure it's appropriate for the school not appropriate for this area, but hear me out, and I said i've always thought that an ideal place for two way immersion to appear that simultaneously increases the possibility of Latino enrollment and encourages enrollment across racial ethnic groups and social classes, because of offering a superior educational product, that is learning two languages, but also learning two cultures and especially learning two ways to pray. Growing spiritually within two cultures, in other words, was most appropriate for Catholic schools. And I said, the reason it's appropriate for Catholic schools is because of the growth of Latinos in the Catholic Church and the way in which this could help build the types of intercultural communities that were called for by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. And so we put together a plan and he said, we have $300,000 to do it with because we were giving schools in the archdiocese $10,000 to try to recruit more students from historically marginalized communities: African Americans and Latinos largely some Asian American communities, Vietnamese and others, and what we found out is that in spending that money they immediately put it into scholarships, which makes perfect sense. But when the money stopped coming, then the scholarships dried up and there was nothing left. And I said you're very smart, this is about institutional change, not just about providing scholarships. Scholarships help - scholarships are good. No question there needs to be scholarships, but we have to do something that is more sustainable. And think of this as putting Catholic schools at the forefront of educational innovation. And he said let's give it a go, and so we set up the Juan Diego Academy, at that time it was called Holy Rosary Regional school, and we found incredible support for it. Especially, I'm always blown away by this, especially from senior citizen alums of the school, who are all white who didn't want to see the school close and had resources to contribute, financial resources. to the school. So you see these these coalitions that cross traditional lines you know, without you thinking that they would cross traditional lines. And he went very well. I was very proud of what we did there and the recommendations that we made and how they were accepted, and you know the challenges of doing that in a community that didn't have that history, tradition and the school is still very active today. When I moved here, I got to know Katy Lichon from ACE and the English as a New Language program just talking about mutual interest and so forth, and then we had a meeting with Michael Griffin, who was the Chair at that time, if I’m remembering correctly, of the School Commission at Holy Cross school, and a Chair of the theology department at Holy Cross College across the street and was a Notre Dame undergrad MAM PhD. And he said, our school is having a terrible challenge with enrollment and I understand that you might know something about a two-way immersion. And I said, well, I have this experience and you know i've done some research on it, and so forth, and he said, do you think this is appropriate for our school? And so Katy and I then got together and through Katy's initiative we put together a needs assessment and I said we can't move any further unless we have the buy-in of the pastoral Council and the pastor - that's the key - now there are other keys but that's a real key and by doing this needs assessment will provide them with evidence that they can use to decide if this is something they should do. As soon as we presented it to the principal - Angie who had been principal for 20 years over 20 years - to her to the school commission to the pastoral Council to the pastor, they all said, this is a great idea let's do it. And I said look, this is, this is a risk. I don't know if this is going to work but it's a risk worth taking and it's a risk fully consistent with the Gospel and fully consistent with the best traditions of our Catholic faith. And they said, we support you: go for it, go for it, go for it. I talked about what this was after masses. Katy did the same thing. And I had this conversation with a Polish grandmother, who was clearly white who came up to me afterwards, and she said, with their two grandchildren, I assume they were two grandchildren, she said I'm not sure this makes sense, I think people should learn English once they come here. And I said that's the whole idea of this, the whole idea of this is that students learn English better than they ever could. And that students who don't know Spanish will learn Spanish and everybody will be able to communicate with everybody else. And so, she takes a step back, stops and gets tears in her eyes and says you mean if there was a program like this, when I was in school, I would have been able to speak to my Polish grandmother. Because I was never able to speak with my Polish grandmother, and I said that's absolutely right, what one of the benefits of this program. And she said I'm for you, I understand what you're doing, this makes sense. So, with support from ACE, support from our Institute for Latino Studies here, support from the school, absolutely critical support from the school, support from the teachers currently at the school, support from the school administration and support from the pastoral community because Holy Cross it always valued diversity as part of one of its goals. They said let's try it and it has been magnificent. We have been blessed with how many students wanted to come to the program, how parents have reacted to the program and how students have reacted to the program. I think we're now up to the second grade, because you scaffold it each year, but students have to stay in the program for it to work. Clare Roach has been a critical, critical player in all of this, offering Spanish classes at all grade levels, while she's there as helping get the administration off to a wonderful start. Our first teacher, bilingual teacher, who is from South Bend, who went to St. Mary's, who has a master's degree in education from Boston College, who is fully bilingual and bicultural because she taught at a school in Honduras, married an Honduran man and has children who are Honduran and American, so to speak, she's now the principal. So this is a track within the school. So you have parallel tracks: English only track, so to speak, and then this two-way immersion track and it's worked out beautifully. Things have grown and the community has grown. In fact, my wife and I became parishioners at Holy Cross, we're starting a bilingual mass in September, once a month. To try to build more presence of the Latino community and the white community for the idea of bilingualism um I'll try to see if I might be able to use that as a way to think about offering Spanish classes to some of our parishioners who would like to learn a little more Spanish so that they can feel that they are part of this growing community and it fits Catholic schools so well. Now Latinos are now estimated at 35 to 40% of all Catholics in the United States. So this is not about today, this is about today and the future all at the same time, and so this is - and I hope to use this as a way to show how it can work financially, as well as pedagogically - to get other schools who have the demographics, where this may be appropriate to consider doing this.

AS: It's not bilingual education, right? It's two-way immersion. Can you help us understand the difference there?

LF: Sure, sure. So the goal is to have by the fifth grade students who are equally fluent - at the fifth grade level - in English and Spanish: writing, reading, speaking in both languages without an accent and to continue that up through six or seventh grade, ideally it goes up through 12th grade, there are very few school systems that have that opportunity, but you take a class, ideally, that is half and half - 50% English dominant 50% Spanish dominant or bilingual - and your curriculum is 90% in Spanish in pre-kindergarten /kindergarten or kindergarten/first grade depending on when you start the program. 90% in Spanish for all students, so do the Spanish speaking students have an initial advantage absolutely, in terms of listening, but, as you may know, many Latino children and Latino parents, although they may speak Spanish they don't know how to write it or haven't had the chance to learn how to write it and how to read it and how to study it and use it as a tool, other than in speaking. Then, in the next grade level - let's say kindergarten it's also a 90/10 and then you switch to 80/20, 70/30, 60/40 and then 50/50 and that's at that fifth grade, roughly fifth grade level, and if you invest in your child you give them a gift for life language, culture and spiritual versatility if not spiritual tolerance, if not spiritual growth. There's nothing more beautiful than being at the school at an event and having a rainbow of children, blond hair blue eyes, African American, Asian American, Latino up there, holding hands singing songs in English and Spanish who are kindergarteners. I mean it just melts your heart, but it shows you what the possibility might be of our future and how the church could be at the forefront of breaking down the barriers that, as we know our country still struggles with so, so very, very much all under an umbrella of Catholic values. Where's the downside? Overcome your risk aversion to move forward and I see this as a wonderful way for our Catholic schools to do that. Partnering with the University to do that is also very important, I think, and was part of my commitment and why I'm so glad that we're able to partner with ACE and the English as a New Language program because that's how you build communities of interest to help support this work.

AS: What changes for the child and the family and the community in that two-way immersion program? It's really wide ranging, is it not?

LF: Yes, it is. There's some studies that suggest that it promotes tolerance among the children and it promotes more communication among the parents, if they are willing to try to talk with each other and work with each other on each other's events, so to speak. Now this takes time, it's not automatic. It's not necessarily within our tradition. You know the tradition of the Catholic Church in the United States at a time when we had a tremendous amount of ethnic diversity, was to have - it's called the national churches policy - you have your Irish church and your Italian church and your Polish church and your German church. I don't think that's possible anymore.  You certainly have churches that are dominated by one group or another, but as a part of policy, it's about building understanding across lines of division at least across lines of difference and if parents are open to that and I think many parents are because they see their children doing it. They see the children growing and gaining from this, then I think we're beginning to - that's the reason for the bilingual mass - I think that's when you begin to see long term benefits through the children for many other sectors of a parish, if not the Catholic Church generally.

AS: Thank you very much. Excellent. Is there a spiritual growth that's enriched by the multiple cultures - these children are seeing the value in each other and traditions and...

LF: Absolutely. Whether it's learning prayers in English and Spanish and understanding that it's the same meaning but different words. It's an equal valuing of different cultural traditions that I think is most important, and that I think is most long lasting. And if one believes that children don't see differences of the sort that we see but are rather taught to see differences, then this should work to help them understand how some of those differences shouldn't be differences that separate, but should be differences that enrich: that help everyone be better off and understand and love... and love and the best spiritual sense.

AS: Beautifully said, thank you. How did you become aware of the ACE program? 

LF: Well I knew about it before because of Fr. Scully, but when my daughter went through the program - she also went through the Remick Leadership program - I became very aware of what a magnificent impact the ACE program can have and how it can be transformative for students, not just in putting them in communities they may not otherwise have been familiar with, but and helping them value education for the rest of their lives in a way that’s different than if they might not have had that opportunity. For our Notre Dame students many of - not all, of course - but many of our Notre Dame students come from very privileged backgrounds and haven't had a chance to spend a lot of time with a low resource community. Well, ACE is designed to give them that opportunity to make a contribution to those communities, but, but also to help our - I believe the term is ACEr's - help our ACEr's grow in their own understanding of communities, but also of themselves. And it's not that all people who go through ACE commit themselves to education. But I saw my daughter do that and I saw my daughter come to understand herself as having a skill to help young children. That's not for everybody, you know pay is low, you get all the same challenges of bureaucratic politics that you get in a larger school system, but in Catholic education and there's a question of scale,smaller scale that, I think, allows you to be in a better position to strategize as to how you can maximize your impact and it's not guaranteed, but there are ways in which you can strategize to be able to contribute the most you can in the system and that's a beautiful, a beautiful life choice, I think that it can have. But for those who otherwise choose to go work on Wall Street right, it might help them think differently about where they may devote portions of their philanthropy or how they might view education issues, more broadly, or what they might do in their own parish communities about adopting a low resource parish to share some resources with and that's a long term benefit that… that is priceless.

AS: I like that very much, yes, thank you. Those are excellent points and actually at you have a sort of a unique perspective. You were able to watch your daughter go through this. Was she changing in ways that were unexpected maybe to you or maybe that you hoped that this program might help her grow in?

LF: What I do now, was that I was changing because she would tell me about you know some of the the financial challenges that schools have, especially low resource schools, the challenges of enrollment, the challenges of pastoral leadership and I became much more aware in that I was able to talk with her and talk through with her a lot of these issues, as I was trying to think them through at the same time.

AS: I know you're not a stranger to this, but most people never testified before a House subcommittee.

LF: Yes, I was invited to draft a report for the House Judiciary Committee - Subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties - on the history of voting rights suppression and voter disenfranchisement and voter suppression. I teach a freshman seminar first year seminar on the evolution of voting rights in the United States, so I've been doing that for many years. And so, this was a nice chance for me to put together some on paper, some thoughts in a way that might influence how members of the House would understand this, or what evidence they might use - I talked about evidence based arguments earlier - what evidence, they might be able to bring in the course of legislative debates. These types of reports rarely change minds, but they do provide evidence that can be put into the record and that can be referred to both in court decisions and, perhaps, and now, in descents of supreme court justices and as a political scientist to have that opportunity is a dream come true, as well, for me to use my expertise to help educate the House, but also to educate the nation and perhaps educate the Supreme Court as much as any one of those entities let's itself be educated.

AS: As you mentioned earlier, maybe at least give them something to consider?

LF: Yes, exactly right. One of the things I wrote in my report was we always have to understand that anytime there's progress there is residual resentment that tries to reassert itself as soon as it has the opportunity.

AS: Is that out of fear?

LF: I would say, there are at least two dimensions. One is racism. Basic racism. Whether one sees it that way or not it that's what it is. As a Social scientist, I can see that right, you know whether one wants to call it a resurgence of white identity or whatever, but it's it's basically, basically, racism and the other is fear of change and the change is the demographic change that I started talking about early on in our interview. And the article that I referred to in the Washington Post this morning is talking exactly about how that demographic racial ethnic Demographic change is maybe even occurring at a faster rate than we thought. And Latinos are part of that Asians are a part of that mixed race, people are part of that, but we may see according to this report, I haven't seen the data, yet that the number of whites in the United States, the absolute number of whites living in the United States today has gone down for the first time in the post World War II era. And for some people that's really scary. And at another level, it says to me, we have to be more creative and thinking about how we can work together.

AS: It sounds like you're well positioned to try to help people with the perspective… Is there an element that you think that we might all keep in mind about community and about respect and about caring for all that might help?

LF: In a normative sense, I hope that people will again reflect on that legacy that I talked about earlier and say I'm in a position of power now - every individual - and I don't want to leave my children and grandchildren a legacy of conflict. I want to leave them a legacy of hard decision making hard choices, but that is focused on conflict reconciliation and focused on mutual self interest. We need communities that are immigrant or immigrant origin right just to grow for our economy to continue to grow. You know, think about the future and you say, okay, this is about how we build mutual interest so the country can thrive - focusing on what it is that we think America can be. And having in focus not just what we are, not just what we've overcome, but what we could be.

AS: Well, I know I am very grateful for all the work that you're doing.

LF: Sure.

AS: … and so much for joining me. 

LF: Of course, Audrey.

AS: Thank you so so much - really been a pleasure speaking with you today, so thank you so much.

LF: Pleasure speaking with you.

AS: Okay, you take care.

LF: Take care.

AS: Okay, thank you.