Catholic schools are closing their doors all across America, leaving future generations with nowhere to turn for the high-quality academics and values-based education so many families are seeking. The number of students attending Catholic schools in the US fell from about 5.2 million in 1965 to around two million in 2008.
Pioneer Institute believes these schools are worth preserving. For over a decade, we have raised our voice in support of these excellent academic options, and tools such as tax credit scholarships that would enable more families to attend.
Pioneer has held public forums, published research on the benefits of Catholic education, on successful models such as Cristo Rey, and on policy changes that would stop the Massachusetts education department from depriving religious school students of special needs services and school nurses. The Institute has also convened key stakeholders, appeared in local and national press, filed amicus briefs, produced a feature a documentary film, and much more.
This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Ilya Shapiro, constitutional scholar, author, and senior fellow of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute, about the changing makeup of the court, and how this term’s most high-profile decisions reveal the judicial philosophies that comprise the current bench.
Guest:
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute, director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Shapiro is the author of Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/?adviser to the Multi-?National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. It has been said that each new justice is a new court as the 2022 Supreme court term winds to close the first term to include all three former president Trump’s nominees court Watchers, policy makers, and concerned citizens have new information about how each of the nine justices apply the 230 year old US constitution to modern legal disputes. Indeed, each court decision exposes the tension that arises between a constitutional democracy’s power to enact laws and the constraints imposed when those same laws must comport with constitutional principles to observers. It can be a relief when the court’s majority limits legislative prerogatives that they do not favor, but unsettling. When the court strikes down, laws seen as necessary for our modern polity. Nevertheless, each case reveals the complexity and nuance of each Justice’s view of their role in the process.
Joe Selvaggi:
What has this term told us about the philosophical makeup of this court? How do the most recent high profile decisions reveal each Justice’s views? And what does the court’s makeup suggest about how it may rule in the future? My guest today is legal scholar, author, and senior fellow of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, Ilia Shapiro, his new book, Supreme disorder, judicial nominations, and the politics of the nation’s highest court just released in paperback this week looks at the controversies of past courts and their decisions. Mr. Shapiro will share with us the way in which individual philosophies influence Justice’s decisions, how the cases in this current term reveal the views of the nine justices and what those views will likely pretend for the court’s future decisions. When I return, I’ll be joined by constitutional scholar, Ilya Shapiro. Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk I’m Joe Selvaggi and now pleased to be joined by author and senior fellow on constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Ilya Shapiro welcome back to Hubwonk, Ilya.
Ilya Shapiro:
Good to be with you, Joe. A lot’s happened since we last talked.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed it has. I don’t wanna dwell on the past. We we’re always looking forward but there’s two big pieces of news. Just this week, one of course, is that you are now a brand new member of the Manhattan Institute. Congratulations on that. The other big piece of news that I’m sure our listeners are interested in is that your wonderful book that we discussed in an earlier episode, Supreme disorder, judicial nominations, and the politics of America’s highest court just came out on soft cover. So paperbacks, very soft plugging the show looks good, looks bigger for our listeners who already bought the hard copy. Is there any difference with the new a paperback?
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah, so I caught some typos that’s always good to do. And I added an epilogue about 3000 words on well, what’s happened since the hard cover came out in the fall of 2020, which is two more justices Amy Coney Barrett and, and Ketanji Brown Jackson,
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed a lot has happened perhaps not a whole new book’s worth, but a lot certainly to talk about. So let’s jump into, we wanna do a around the world sort of a review of what’s happened in this past term. Everything everything’s been decided now we closed the book on this, this term, so let’s do a little recap and and start at the beginning. I want to talk about judicial philosophy specifically as it be pertains to the nine justices that we now have including Breyer. We’re not gonna talk about Ketanji Brown Jackson just yet. But before we jump into the cases themselves that were decided, let’s define some terms for our listeners who were not constitutional scholars, ones that have been thrown around in the wake of the decisions specifically, what is, what people will call an originalist what is what people call a textualist? We also have heard the word institutionalist and finally what I would call broadly consequentialist. So let’s start at the beginning with let’s say originalist. What, what does that mean?
Ilya Shapiro:
Originalism is a, a method of constitutional interpretation that looks at the original public meaning of a constitutional provision. That is the original constitution, the, the powers that are granted to Congress that was ratified in 1789. So what does the power to regulate interstate commerce mean? When it was ratified in 1789, we look at the Federalist papers. We look at contemporaneous dictionaries. We try to figure out what those words mean, or the 14th amendment, obviously much in play this term, the meaning of due process of law, the meaning of equal protection. What did those words mean? When the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868. So it’s, it’s, it’s not getting, trying to get into the head of James Madison or Thomas Jefferson. And what would they have thought of violent video games or something like that? It’s, it’s looking at the words on the page, trying to understand their original public meaning and look originalists can disagree just like historians can disagree about how to interpret certain events in our, in our history.
Ilya Shapiro:
That’s, that’s okay. Both, both judges and academics can have a lively discussion, but that’s what originalists try to get at textualist is, is a related interpretive method that’s applied to statutes. So we, we focus on the text of the clean air act, say that was an issue in one of the big cases this term. And so when, when that was passed in the seventies, when it was amended in the nineties what do those words on the page mean again, not what Congress or the sponsors of the legislation intend not what someone might have understood it to mean, and they could have been wrong, but what do the words on the page actually mean? What does the text mean? And then you get to institutionalist, which isn’t a method of interpretation so much as an approach.
Ilya Shapiro:
And so John Roberts, the chief justice is often called an institutionalist because he operates not primarily at trying to get at what the text means necessarily, or the original public meaning of a provision is, but he wants to preserve the institutional reputation of of the court. And so might wanna move not as quickly as some of his other colleagues that say I’m just gonna interpret as I see fit and let the, the chips fall where they may Roberts tries to be a little KR, maybe narrower in, in what kind of opinions he writes. And so an institutionalist cares about the institution for that matter. It doesn’t have to be just the court could care about the institutions in general Congress, the presidency you know, maintaining those big things rather than a focus on the words on the page and finally consequentialist or sometimes a related might be a, a pragmatist you know, looking at the consequences, the result of a particular holding of a particular ruling might be and, you know, either with a view to not rocking the boat too much, either with a view of, I don’t know, not costing the government too much money, not disrupting society in some ways, or in any of that, weighing those practical concerns in some measure, not, not exclusive to everything else, but, but that’s a significant part of, of, of what that kind of jus cares about
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. So you you’ve laid that out very clearly. Before we get into, you know, how each justice ruled on every case, is there a single continuum on which you could map each of the justices? Well, we’re often talking about liberal or conservative or Republican and Democrat. Is, is there a continuum or is it more a scatter shot? There’s so many dimensions of, of the way a justice can look at a case that it doesn’t really map to what we would consider political preferences.
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah, I think, I think it’s too simplistic to call talk about a spectrum or even a three dimensional spectrum, cuz there’s more than kind of three AEs on which one can, can look at the justices or can any, any, any judges methodology in terms of, you know, the, the practical outcomes of their votes, you know, we can talk in shorthand and we do talk in shorthand about, you know, liberals and conservatives. That’s unfortunate because I don’t think any of them make decisions based on trying to implement liberal or conservative policy preferences. You know, that tends to, you know, end up as the case for the, the, the most politically salient controversies. But it’s, it’s, it’s shorthand that, you know, can be useful in talking shortly, but it, you know, I, I, I would certainly not want the public to generally think of them as, as junior varsity politicians ideologically let alone in terms of partisanship.
Ilya Shapiro:
I hate it even more when people talk about the Republican justices or the democratic ones, I sometimes talk about the Republican appointed justices or the democratic appointed justices, which is, is again, somewhat useful shorthand because that’s often relevant and increasingly relevant in modern times because the, the parties seem to have adopted divergent theories of interpretation. But still you know, you, the reason why you’re interviewing someone like me is to, to drill down beyond the, the shorthand that you can in like a tweet or a, a short associated press story about the news of a particular case.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed, you’re you are, are careful when you, in your writing, in your books, in your articles to, to to discourage lazy thinking and reducing everybody to political through the political lens. So let’s again on, on, by way of background, let’s start with some history of how we get rights. We like to think of ourselves as a rights based society those rights foundationally, if we’re talking about the Supreme court, they’re looking to the instantiation of those rights, I, I hope you’ll agree that that starts with the constitution. So let’s talk about, we, we often refer to the first 10 amendments as the bill of rights which by my reading, our, our so-called negative rights or, or natural rights those are the rights we can’t have taken from us. Describe for our listeners, what are we talking about when we talk about fundamental rights or those rights in the bill of rights,
Ilya Shapiro:
Those are separate questions in a sense the legal scholars talk about enumerated rights, which just means listed rights, the first eight amendments say, you know, the first amendment, speech, religion right to petition, right, to assemble second amendment, right. To keep and bear arms et cetera. But the founders were careful to add a ninth amendment that says that the enumeration of these rights is not to deny or disparage others that are retained by the people. And so to the extent that modern jurisprudence, and we’ll get into this a little bit, because that matters in how Dobbs the abortion case and Bruen the second amendment case were decided to the extent that we, you know think that enumerated rights, those that aren’t listed in the first ten amendments are somehow secondary to the ones that are listed.
Ilya Shapiro:
That’s clearly not what the, the original public meaning nor the original intent of the framers. Would’ve, would’ve been, we’ve talked about fundamental rights in a legal sense, not in kind of delay conception of what is fundamental, what’s basic what’s most important, but in the legal sense because of the way that the jurisprudence has evolved over decades, specifically for UN-enumerated rights, those that aren’t courts often ask is it given rights claims that based on something that’s fundamental or is it ancillary? Is it not a core right that we have under the constitution? I don’t think that’s quite the right way to look at it because the there’s no indication that when the framers were instituting the constitutional provisions or especially when the framers of the 14th amendment, the post-Civil War amendments were looking to protect rights you know, they could have, they had the English language, they had the terminology, they could have said, these are the fundamental rights.
Ilya Shapiro:
They didn’t do that. You know, they, the 14th amendment speaks of due process privileges or immunities equal protection. They could have just said, the first eight amendments are now applied to the states, but they didn’t, they spoke in these, these other terms. So the modern jurisprudence has gotten away, I think, from the original public meaning of rights protections. But nevertheless going back to the thirties in a case called caroling products, the famous or infamous footnote four does bifurcate rights effectively into fundamental and non fundamental ones. And that’s why, especially with UN-enumerated rights, claims rights that aren’t explicitly listed in the first eight amendments. That’s what jus tend to think about is, is a particular claim involving a core or fundamental, right?
Joe Selvaggi:
So the, the constitution establishes enumerated rights list them, and then says in the ninth, there are other rights that are not here, but nevertheless our rights as well. You mentioned the 14th. I wanted to go a little bit deeper on that because it does speak it does have influence on some of the decisions that came down this term. I’ll read it. My favorite part of the 14th amendment is from section one, a quote, no state shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall only state deprive a person of life, Liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny any person without a, within his jurisdiction, the equal protection of the law. So effectively, as you’ve mentioned, it says that these liberties or these rights that start or that are protected by the constitution at the federal level also apply to the states say more about the fact that reading more deeply. I, I, for myself, I discovered both. It means that states can’t infringe on rights, but also it has a affirmative obligation to protect rights, as well, say, say more about this, of course the 14th in the wake of the, the civil war and the, and the stain of slavery. But, you know, that’s the context, but say more about what that means.
Ilya Shapiro:
The original constitution only protected us against the federal government. The bill of rights only protected us against violations by the federal government. That’s why the post civil war amendments, the 13th, that outlawed that outlawed slavery, the 14th, which you just read in the 15th, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting that’s known as the second founding because it fundamentally reoriented restructured our constitutional order, such that an individual could go to federal court to enforce his or her own individual rights against state violation. That that was an innovation. So the 14th amendment says that states can’t violate your due process of law or equal protection of the laws or privileges or immunities of citizenship. Again, that’s that, that was a revolutionary type of thing. It, it restructured fundamentally our constitutional order. And so you know, when we’re talking about most of the so-called cultural war issues or rights claims, whether it’s abortion or guns, or same-sex marriage, the things that tend to come up, generally, those are challenges to state laws. And so even in the Bruin case, which we’ll talk about regarding the right to their arms sure. It’s a second amendment case, but it’s really a 14th amendment case because that’s how that right. Applies to the states.
Joe Selvaggi:
And one more, bit of a housekeeping before jump into the cases, the concept of stare decisis, or I think literally means
Ilya Shapiro:
Let the decision
Joe Selvaggi:
Stand by. Yeah. Let, stand by things decided how does that weigh in on the court effectively says, you know, we, we need to look to the past a lot has been alleged that in, in confirmation hearings those who have said that they believe in stare decisis and then changed their mind, your book, I think was very useful in saying while it’s a principle, it’s one that everybody seems to have violated. I don’t know if that’s the right word say more about stare decisis.
Ilya Shapiro:
I think the only two justices on the current court who are consistent with regard to stare decisis are Clarence Thomas and Atlanta Kagan. Thomas I’m answering the question backward because I haven’t defined it yet. I’ll, I’ll get to that. But Thomas basically always prefers to get the law, right. You know, forget, you know, how disruptive overturning the precedent might be and Kagan, I don’t think ever votes to overturn precedent probably because she’s always had an eye on Roe V. Wade. That’s how this concept is often kind of viewed has been viewed through that lens, but it’s the idea that sometimes disrupting the legal architecture or the stability, social stability that kind of disruption is greater and, and, and would be a bigger, wrong than writing the wrong of an erroneous previous decision. And so there, this is a Prudential doctrine it’s not listed in the constitution or anything like that, but it’s the idea that sometimes it’s better to let erroneous precedents stand than to correct it.
Ilya Shapiro:
Just because for example, businesses have been built on those kinds of reliance interests, if you rule a certain way. And all of a sudden, you know, all of fortune 500 companies have to dissolve that’s quite disruptive courts would wanna someone who has a, a, you know, thinking about stare decisis would, would want to avoid that kind of result. And so again, Thomas doesn’t care so much about that. He’s the most consistent in saying I wanna get the law, right. I don’t care if it’s a hundred year old president that lots of people have relied on. I don’t care if it’s last term I’m, I’m gonna vote for what the right law is. Kagan says, no, we, we shouldn’t disrupt. We should build on, on the previous and, and, and things like that. And everyone else is in between and, and is very much fair weather. That is the, the, the, if one of the considerations in stare decisis is how wrong was the previous precedent. Well everyone essentially, other than Thomas and Kegan said, you know, finds precedent that they really like to be not very wrong at all. And, and precedent, they don’t like to be egregiously wrong as the, as the as the standard has evolved.
Joe Selvaggi:
So, okay. Now we’ve set the table, let’s get into the, some of the cases let’s start with the most let’s say controversial, the perhaps I, I don’t know for our listeners, so we’re talk, gonna talk about Dobs versus Jackson women’s health organization, which did indeed explicitly overturn the finding in row which has lasted for nearly 50 years, 1973. Explain the argument and then let’s talk about the way in which Dobs refuted the argument. The argument for Roe. I mean, again, I know these are deep topics, so we’re, you know, these are sort of the quick explanations, but give us a quick,
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah, the rulings themselves are not that complicated. And, and should I wrote a piece in the in the Washington examiner last week saying that they’re, they really shouldn’t be, you can disagree with the various rulings in, in these big, controversial cases, school choice and guns and religion and abortion. But they shouldn’t be seen as, as radical or, or extreme or, or complicated in some way. So the ruling in dos is is simply that there is no deeply rooted right to abortion as justice Alito found in his majority opinion in looking at American history and therefore it’s subject to state regulation rather than some federal baseline. I wouldn’t have decided it quite that way. I think I, I, I do think that Roe versus Wade is without constitutional basis. You know, I would’ve looked at things a, a different way in terms of, as you said, natural rights through the privileges or immunities clause rather than this deeply rooted test that was put in, in a case 30 years ago called Luxford.
Ilya Shapiro:
But, but in any event this even before overturning Roe and Casey, because importantly planned parenthood versus Casey for the last 30 years has been the governing standard for looking at abortion restrictions and regulations. What, you know, Roe put in a, a trimester system and kind of a sliding scale based on viability of the fetus of when states can regulate Casey threw that out and it preserved the right to abortion, of course, but it, it put in an undue burden standard. And, you know, for the longest time, the joke that was that what what’s an undue burden while it’s whatever gave justice Kennedy a headache cause he’s the only one, he was the deciding vote and nobody else knew what, you know, what that actually meant. But this case came along from Mississippi, which had a a law restricting abortion past 15 weeks, I think with exceptions for, for the mother’s health curiously that law is actually more liberal than those laws in place.
Ilya Shapiro:
In most Western European countries, Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, you know, the, the, the list goes on and on. I think only the UK and, and, and the Netherlands have more liberal, less restrictive rules than that. And nevertheless that’s Mississippi’s law. The conventional wisdom before oral argument was that the court would sort of muddle through that this court might eventually overturn Roe, but this would be an incremental step. They’d find a way to uphold the missis, the Mississippi law without overturning Roe. Well, it turns out based on oral argument which changed everybody’s minds about how the case was gonna go. And this was confirmed by the eventual decision. Only John Roberts took that compromise position as it were everyone else, including the advocates for both sides said that the court had to go fully up or fully down meaning uphold or overturn Roe fully.
Ilya Shapiro:
Which was, which was interesting a bit of a gamble I probably for, for both sides advocates. But that’s that, that’s what they said. And, and ultimately that’s what the decision was, was based on first that the right was not deeply rooted in American history such as the modern jurisprudence regarding UN enumerated rights required that kind of analysis. And second principles of stare decisis do not militate for, for maintaining Roe and Casey, despite their lack of constitutional foundation, the dissenting justices, the three more liberal ones to use that shorthand argued mostly on consequentialist and stare decisis grounds, basically saying it would be too much of a disruption after 50 years to, to, to to, to overturn these precedent
Joe Selvaggi:
A as a, a constitutional matter. There is a lot of people who are concerned about this in the most extreme decision, if it, if it is indeed entirely left to the decisions of the states the, the health or the, the life of the mother, I I’m careful it’s not actually the health, or it is the indeed the life of the mother is that constitution protected. In other words, is the constitution recognized an absolute right for mothers to save their own lives in a life threatening pregnancy.
Ilya Shapiro:
We’ll see, I’m sure there’s going to be litigation over this because we’ve, we’ve already you know, less than two weeks after the decision came down, or I guess now it’s, it is exactly two weeks since the decision came down, as we’re recording this the the states have done all sorts of things. And I don’t know if there’s any law that’s been passed that does not have an exception for the life of the mother. But that would be, you know, it’s not that there won’t ever be litigation. Now that Roe is overturned if states acted arbitrarily or applied their restrictions unequally in some way, whether, you know, based on, on race or based on some other arbitrary consideration, then that would be subject to to litigation, or what about fetal abnormalities, or what about you know, there there’s definitions that legislative drafters in the various states could make errors or not foresee fully certain things.
Ilya Shapiro:
There was a hub of a few months ago. I think it was Missouri, or somebody was the way that their draft legislation worked didn’t even allow abortion for ectopic pregnancies that is implantation in the fallopian tubes, which are non-viable and, and by definition, life threatening. And that was a mistake that wasn’t some, I don’t think it was some moral judgment that, that some, you know, extremist lawmaker was putting in, they just didn’t draft it correctly. So you know, we’ll see litigation based on the way that different restrictions work.
Joe Selvaggi:
And I don’t wanna dwell in this case, but just one more issue. The, the Thomas concurrence went a step further in, in saying the, this right didn’t exist. And it was predicated on a I don’t know if you would call it an imaginary or a, a conjured right. Of, of, of, of privacy in this case that those other so-called privacy related rights in more modern cases, those that relate to interracial marriage, gay marriage right to contraception, those things that have been found to be constitutionally protected, it, it, it may undermine the, the foundation of those rulings and perhaps jeopardize those as, as recognized by the constitution. Do you see that, you know, is that a outlier, is Thomas, or is that sort of a, a true, let’s say originalist view of, of these kinds of privacy oriented rights?
Ilya Shapiro:
I, I think it’s, it’s not an outlier to criticize substantive due process because of the way the jurisprudence has evolved. It’s, it’s much more constitutionally sound to protect most substantive rights through the privileges or immunities clause than the due process clause. The due process clause isn’t wholly isn’t entirely procedural. So you know, a well functioning, transparent kangaroo court still violates the due process of law clause. But the way that the jurisprudence has evolved, you know, Thomas is quite right to say that, you know, for example, Roe itself, which was based on an earlier case Griswold regarding the right to contraception found that right to privacy not in the ninth amendment or the privileges or immunities clause there was a concurrence by justice Goldberg about the ninth amendment, but it was about how certain parts of the bill of rights have emanations that overlap making penumbras this very kind of physics, heavy like light beam analysis.
Ilya Shapiro:
And these rights are hidden in those, in those penumbras that that’s the legal term for that analysis is hogwash. So I, you know, I, to the extent that’s what Thomas is saying, I fully agree with that now, the consequences for the application of the right to privacy or some of these other things, that’s, you know, that’s not clear. Thomas himself, I’m sure would uphold some of these rights on an equal protection basis. He himself is in an interracial marriage. I’m sure he’s not trying to invalidate his own his own marriage, but the things like that, or same sex marriage for that matter, I think are more faithfully argued and protected under equal protection than a substantive rights protections, other things like contraceptives or private sexual behaviors say you know, you know, I, my, my own view is that privacy is certainly protected in various ways but substantive process, I think he was correct to identify the weakness there, but for practical purposes you have to note that the majority written by justice Alito and signed by joined by Justice Thomas joined by five members, not Roberts, he only concurred in the judgment, but Alito’s opinion did say that for various reasons, distinguished abortion from everything else, because with abortion at a certain point, there’s a second life in being, there’s a second human who has rights, what that point is.
Ilya Shapiro:
He says you know, courts, judges, lawyers aren’t equipped to point out, which is why he sent it back to the states. But unlike with all these other activities with consenting adults here, there’s a second, right. A second life in being, and finally, I don’t think there’s, the most recent polling about contraceptive shows a desire to ban contraceptives to be in the low single digits in America.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. I don’t wanna dwell on that. So let’s move on another important case Bruen. We actually had an episode entirely entire episode of hub wonk on Bruin. We talked with your former colleague, Trevor burs about the issue. I just wanna ask you in your view, did the ruling I think it was a sixth grade decision, did it follow along the originalist versus consequentialist? In my reading of the dissent, it just said, look if we don’t do something about guns a lot of people die. It didn’t really appeal to some sort of weakness in, in the Bruin case, but rather just sort of you know, an emotional appeal to the consequences of, of holding Bruin.
Ilya Shapiro:
That’s exactly right, Joe, unlike Heller the, the previous second amendment case in 2008 involving the right to keep go guns at home for, for self defense where both justice Scalia’s majority opinion, justice Stevens’ dissent were dueling originalist opinions here. Thomas’s for the majority and this, by the way, we can, we can talk about this. I think this is the, really the term where after 30 years on the bench finally Clarence Thomas is at the, a Apigee of his powers because he’s the senior associate justice. And so in cases like Bruin and Dobs for that matter where the chief justice isn’t fully on board, it’s Thomas who’s either writing the opinion as he did in Bruin or assigning it as, as he did in, but Thomas’s opinion is, is very originalist and Briar’s in dissent is not it, it is consequentialist as you say it. So it’s, it’s different than what Stevens is was in, in Heller 14 years ago.
Joe Selvaggi:
So again, I wanna move on then to the West Virginia versus EPA, I found this very interesting it didn’t get a lot of press, but it’s something we talked about in our, in our earlier episode talking about at what point when Congress delegates power to con to an executive agency, at what point is it obligated to define you know, the limits of its, of its delegation of power? I’m, you know, I, I’m gonna use layman term and, and sort of paraphrase. I think the essence of what you said is the more important the issue or the larger, the mandate, the more the need, the obligation to define that in, in, in the delegation, meaning you can’t just give away huge powers in, in, in, in small ways, you have to be clear. And I think the, the the Supreme court decided against the EPA when regulating power plans say more about what your view of, of that decision was.
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah. This opinion did get some press. It was decided on the last day of the term, an opinion by, by chief justice, John Roberts, and he paired it with another opinion in an immigration case where he ruled for the administration. So he’s trying to be cagey, you know, one for the, the administration one against and the opinion said as you were discussing that for major order called major questions, Congress has to be explicit if it’s giving that kind of awesome power to an agency, what the, what the government here argued starting with the Obama administration, and now with the Biden administration is that if you look at several provisions in the clean air act and you kind of almost like that pin numbers and emanations in the abortion context or the privacy context, if you put these various provisions together, that gives the EPA the power to regulate in this novel way, even though it’s you know, hugely economically significant.
Ilya Shapiro:
And the court rejected that because for regulations that of major questions, whether in terms of economics, in terms of social impact or what have you Congress really does have to speak clearly, we can’t just assume or defer to an agency’s interpretation of its own operative statute in that way. And it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. The court did not as many expected apply or discuss what’s known as Chevron deference, which is deference that judges give to agency interpretations. It simply said we don’t even have to get into that because the statute is, is, is silent. And we’re not gonna implicitly read in these major powers in major questions. Justice Gorsuch wrote a concurrent joined by justice Alito that expound more about giving guidance to lower courts about what a major question is.
Ilya Shapiro:
And that’s an important concurrence because those two Gorsuch and Alito were on opposite sides in a case called Gundy a few years ago, which used yet again, a different doctrine called non delegation. They were on, on opposite sides of applying the idea that Congress can’t delegate legislative power, but here on major questions, which is kind of the flip side of non delegation, they were together. So clearly the court is without having to get into some of these other doctrines using this major question doctrine to limit administrative reach. And so throwing the ball back into Congress’s court and saying, if you really want to have this, you know, awesome major, significant, controversial, clean power plan in place, you’re gonna have to legislate it and take the political hits yourself.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed again, going back to some of the themes in your book, it’s really Congress ought to be doing its job and, and legislating and, and and the executive branch ought to be executing those leg, those laws. I read the Kagan dissent and it was really chilling in that it’s essential argument for supporting the EPA was EPAs full of experts and Congress doesn’t know very much, so experts should be running the show, not elected officials. I, I, you know,
Ilya Shapiro:
As, as well as the kind of Obama pen and phone argument that when Congress won’t act I will, this is too important, an issue, you know, not to have this, this this law making on
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. Oh goodness. I heard my Kennedy school professors applauding Kagan’s point of view. But it’s not one I share. So we’re running outta time. I wanna jump into the, the final. These are sort of the tension of religion in one case is in a school and the other, well, it they’re both school related. One where the a football coach wanted to pray after our game Kennedy versus Bremerton school district, and the, also the school voucher in Maine that could be applied to religious schools. I think let’s just dilate a little bit and, and sort of talk about this idea of we, in the first amendment, we don’t wanna establish a religion, but we also wanna respect the practice of religion. So to share with our listeners, where is that tension resolved? How, how does the state protect your right to exercise your religion without being seen to be establishing that as a, as a religion,
Ilya Shapiro:
Basically where the court is going is that religion does not have to depart the public’s sphere as long as the government isn’t coercing people to, towards a particular religion or religion in general, as long as it’s not discriminating against people, whether that’s in terms of students in public schools or, or other contexts who, who don’t adopt a particular tenant then, you know, if you’re, if people are acting in their private capacity, then the, the government isn’t gonna stop that. And at the same time, when it has institutes programs, it can’t treat religious institutions differently than secular ones which is different than this was discussed in the Kennedy versus Bremerton case. The, the praying coach, the, the lemon test from a case called lemon versus Kurtzman 50 years ago, that talked about an entanglement of religion an entanglement of government with, with religion that effectively had been read to you know, negate any, any, any religiosity, any exercise in the public square justice Gorsuch in the Kennedy case said that that, that lemon had long ago been abandoned.
Ilya Shapiro:
And indeed it hadn’t been used by the court as a governing doctrine in a long, long time. All the juice had been squeezed outta the lemon. So now they were discarding Therin if you will. And conversely with the school choice case. So when Maine created this program of tuition assistance and said, parents could use it to send their kids to, to any, any school of their choice except religious ones. And the court said, look, you don’t have to have this kind of program, but if you do, you can’t treat religious schools differently than, than, than, than secular ones. So that’s, that’s where we are on the state of, of, of religion. And I think it’s tremendously overwrought to say as a lot of media commentators did, or as justice Sotomayor did in her dissent in, in Carson that this eviscerates, the division between the separation of church and state and the separation of church and state itself comes from a case in the early eighties called Everton and, or, sorry, an interpretation of a, of, of, of, of Everson’s line from, I think the, the forties or fifties, and is, it’s more complicated than simply saying, you know religion can’t enter the public sphere and the public sphere can’t enter religion.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’re getting to the end of the show. We we would be Remis. We didn’t mention that we’re getting a a a change of just justices in the new term. We’re losing Breyer who is retiring and we’re getting the newly appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson as his replacement. I think they’re both regarded as again, we shorthand as liberal justices. How do you think her joining the court will change if at all how the courts will decide cases?
Ilya Shapiro:
I don’t know if I can, off the top of my head identify cases where she would vote differently than the justice she’s replacing, her former boss Steven Breyer for whom she clerked. So in terms of vote count, I don’t think things will be very different. You have different specializations, Breyer was famously an administrative law specialist. I’m not sure whether justice Jackson really carved out a niche for herself in terms of substantive areas of law and as Justice White used to say, every justice makes for a new court in terms of their internal dynamics. You know, how convincing will she be? How you know in terms of the social dynamics behind the scenes, which don’t necessarily affect Justices’ votes on major issues, but they can affect the way they interreact. And you know, the dynamic of the court more broadly, will, you know, turn off Chief Justice Roberts, and in effect marginally have him closer to his more conservative colleagues. I don’t know. I think in the short term, we’re not gonna see that much of a difference other than in oral argument, the absence of Justice Breyer’s kind of long meandering, multipart, hypotheticals, and those kinds of opinions that he was known for with kind of a pragmatic multifactor balancing tests.
Joe Selvaggi:
So it would be less about her judicial capabilities or her or her wisdom, but rather her salesmanship how she can influence others either to her position or not alienate others away from her position. That would be more influential than perhaps the how she decides a particular case.
Ilya Shapiro:
I think that’s probably right.
Joe Selvaggi:
All right. We’ve run outta time. I appreciate you being with us now, one last chance to plug your book before we go. I think it’s a must read for those who want to pretend to be constitutional scholars at cocktail parties. Where can our listeners get your brand new paperback book?
Ilya Shapiro:
Sure. I mean, you can go to Amazon of, of course, but you can also type in Supreme disorder.com and that’ll give you lots of options of where you can get it beyond Amazon independent book sellers and whatnot. And also there, you can download for free a 20 page statistical historical appendix of all Supreme court confirmation battles, as well as some lower court ones in the modern era. And in addition to my book, I have my new subs stack to plug. This is a digital platform, did bill newsletter it’s called Shapiro’s gavel, and there you can subscribe for free. I, I, I, I’ve committed to at least one post a week and I’ll have other stuff for paid subscribers. There’s gonna be additional goodies it’s you know, it’s reader supported as they say and you know, we’ll see where we’ll see where that takes us. It’s an interesting thing for thoughts and musings and analysis that I wouldn’t necessarily write up in the pages, the wall street journal or Newsweek, or, or the examiner.
Joe Selvaggi:
Perfect, perfect stuff for those of us who are Ilya, Shapiro groupies. So thanks for that plug. So we’re at the end of our time together, thank you for again, for joining me Ilya. It was great. I really do wish you luck at your new home at the Manhattan Institute.
Ilya Shapiro:
Thanks very much. I I’m you know, come back from vacation, tan, rested, and ready to be in the arena.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of hub won a podcast of pioneer Institute. If you enjoy today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show and pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to hub wonk on your iTunes podcaster, you can now find hub won on YouTube at the pioneer Institute channel. If you wanna make it easier for others to find hub won, it would be great. If you offer us a five star rating or a favorable review, we’re always grateful. If you want to share hub won with friends. If you have ideas for me, or suggestions or comments about future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me. Hub won pioneer institute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of hub.
Recent Episodes
This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Pedro Zamora, executive director of the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation of Greater Kansas City. Pedro and his organization work on initiatives that are crucial to the economic vitality of the area, and they’ve helped more than 4,700 businesses. Immigrants there are having an outsized economic and cultural impact, and so Kansas City is yet another example of how localities can bounce back and benefit from immigrants and refugees, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers podcast.
Guest:
Pedro Zamora is the Executive Director of the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation of Greater Kansas City. He brings over 34 years of leadership experience, in both the corporate for-profit and not-for-profit worlds. Pedro previously held leadership positions in research and development in the telecom industry. In 2007, he founded and served as CEO of Kyland USA, an industrial Ethernet communication manufacturer. Pedro has experience in R&D, product development, traditional manufacturing organizations and has international sales and marketing experience. Selling the company in 2014 allowed Pedro to enter his second leadership chapter as a nonprofit executive. Pedro has dedicated his leadership energies to improve business relationships, and economic impacts of the Latino community and business in the Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Area.
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed and welcome to Jobmakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
I have some really special memories of Kansas city, Missouri there. I had the warmest sweetest churros, the most incredible barbecue, of course, and even gourmet handmade chocolates from a Swiss confectionary topped off by watching a beautiful Chinese dragon boat festival. In 2000, immigrants made about four and a half percent of the Kansas city Metro area population. By 2019 that had grown to 7%. And importantly, the area’s immigrants had $3.5 Billion dollars in spending power – more than 80% of them were in their prime working age. And there were more than 11,000 immigrant business owners. For Pedro Zamora, executive director of the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation of Greater Kansas City, these immigrant entrepreneurs are increasingly crucial to the economic vitality of the area. Not only are they powerful economic drivers and job creators, the wealth of cuisines, cultures and art make the area vibrant, exciting, and flourishing. Pedro and his organization work to develop and implement economic development initiatives that contribute to the quality of life for Latinos in the greater Kansas City area. And to date they’ve helped more than 4,700 businesses and immigrants. They are having an outsized economic and cultural impact. And so Kansas City is yet another example of how localities can bounce back and benefit from immigrants and refugees. As you learn in this week’s Jobmakers podcast,
Denzil Mohammed:
Pedro Zamora, executive director of the Hispanic economic development corporation at Kansas city, Missouri. Welcome to the Jobmakers podcast. How are you?
Pedro Zamora:
I’m doing well this morning, Denzil, thank you for the invitation.
Denzil Mohammed:
So tell us a little bit about the Hispanic economic development corporation and the kind of work that you do and the people that you serve.
Pedro Zamora:
H E D C, the Hispanic economic development corporation, was founded in 1993 for the sole purpose as a pass through entity to receive $30 million of EPA environmental protection agency dollars to clean up a brownfield site, a 26 acre brownfield site in the heart of the Latino community here in Kansas city, Missouri, there were several nonprofit organizations that were doing social work and education and health, but no one was addressing the environmental contamination. That was right in the heart of our neighborhood as a child used to play in that area and throw rocks and break windows and things like that. Little did I know what the toxicity ground we were walking on. And then mayor Manuel Cleaver was a great friend of the Latino community pulled together some grassroot leaders and formed HEDC to give us ownership and the right to organize, to get the community and the business industries to come to the table to talk about what should we do at this location? It was an abandoned railroad maintenance yard. And today it’s home to a high tech warehouse that employs the roughly 600 employees from across the city, about 375 of those employees come from our neighborhood still today.
Denzil Mohammed:
Wow, that’s terrific. And so bring us up to today, the work that you do now, and the kind of impact that you had,
Pedro Zamora:
The Latino population in Kansas city began in the west side and it’s grown into all 17 counties. We, we see a 33% increase in the past census track census that was completed a 33% increase in a 10 year cycle of Latinos migrating into our greater Kansas city metropolitan area. HED C’s responsibility is definitely focused in the entrepreneurship development. We couldn’t do just entrepreneurship development unless we took a snapshot of that individual and got them comfortable with what, where the world’s going today. Online today, we focus on our digital literacy, integrated financial and business training. Our clients don’t come in for one siloed initiative activity it’s integrated and through our modularly designed program where we take the client through a very interesting wake up call of assessing themselves in the first 12 hours of our program, if they come into a 40 hour program, they’re gonna take 12 hours to think about who they really are.
Pedro Zamora:
They’ll turn on the computer and they’re gonna be responsible for capturing their own story and then build out their strategy of where they want to go and who they wanna bring with them are through this model of helping the individual reestablish trust in themselves, trust with our organizations we find a common theme amongst all our clients, and then we create these small cohorts. So these cohorts can now trust one another and stay together and, and become part of the community and create their own community in their community. So if that, if you can see, we’re just trying to put people together to help them support one another and support other folks within the community to elevate them. We don’t market. All our services are done, word of mouth. And we’re pretty busy.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s not uncommon because the immigrant British center has a free English language program. We’ve never had to advertise.
Pedro Zamora:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And
Denzil Mohammed:
We, and we always have a waiting list of several hundred, sometimes over a thousand. So immigrants and, and again, counted to the prevailing narrative of not wanting to do an English, not wanting to integrate immigrants are signing up. Right.
Pedro Zamora:
Well, the interesting part about our focus is we do not want to be known as an English learning facility because our clients don’t have the time to learn and to master the English language because they’re trying to survive as they’re building and scaling their business. They’re surviving as well as their employees. So we just don’t touch the business owner. We touch the employees of the business owner. We have relationships that tell them, bring us in before your restaurant opens up. We’ll give you two hour training and financials, digital literacy communications to the school systems. So the workers are talking to the schools and learning about the students, looking at the reports. So it’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty in depth, the importance in taking 100 words in business finance marketing concepts, and building off those 100 words in these categories has proven and has now taken our clients to well over 2000 words in each one of those categories. So their conversation learning is, is definitely built beyond that.
Denzil Mohammed:
So therefore, describe to me the entrepreneurial ecosystem in areas that you serve, who are the job makers, what kind of businesses do they have? What are they like? Where do they come from?
Pedro Zamora:
Well, well, the high, the high number of job makers are always those fantastic restaurants that we get frequent from time to time. And the though those restaurants are no longer the text me style. You’re, you’re seeing everything from seafood to really unique dishes. We have a lot of local, I call ’em food artists that are coming in with delivering fantastic cuisines that was pre pandemic during the pandemic. They had to rethink themselves. Restaurants got closed, keep in mind. The first round of assistance from the federal government did not include non-US nationals. They weren’t a part of that help assistance. So they had to rethink themselves. So popup restaurants and pop up markets have popped up in our communities across the city in Kansas city, Missouri and Kansas city, Kansas. And it’s a different menu, but the street tacos are still prominent there.
Pedro Zamora:
The second largest industry, we see that we support both with our financial business development training, and as well as our loan portfolio that we lend to through our C D F I fund, we’ve seen a lot of landscaping yard maintenance companies come to fruition. And then the, of course, the third one that’s high in numbers and high employer is our structure field. We, we, our job is to try to move them out of those three high in, in industries and to try to get them into coding or other forms of business work. We’ve are accomplishing this through our integrated digital literacy courses that we teach. We have three courses certified by the us department of labor, as well as our university of Missouri school system, postsecondary educational system. These are career stackable credentials, and they go into financial processing entrepreneurship, financial management, risk management, learning all the Microsoft Excel tools.
Pedro Zamora:
And then we have a third one that is for networking becoming a, a network using these modern skill sets that will help the first generation or a second generation, a family that has a second generation within their, their business model to think of the new industries that they would like to expand in. Now that they’re comfortable with their operating capital, they should be thinking of a secondary market to spread out their risk in earned incomes. What we saw during the pandemic is if you have mom and dad and the children all working in the restaurant, it was very painful during the pandemic. What we did in 2020 was take 77 small businesses that were in the restaurant industries that we knew were not getting support from the federal government on our local reliefs assistance programs. And they spun up some cons. They had to go back. As I mentioned, we’d like to see a move into the technology sector. We took ’em back into the construction market. Now they, the men were now back in the construction field, the women were waiting to see if the restaurants were gonna be able to reinvent themselves and due to go orders as, as the regulations opened up. Now, we’re having these families, these business owners think of how they can bounce their risk of where they’re gonna earn their income, the conversation doesn’t stop there. They’re still looking at the technology.
Denzil Mohammed:
What are some of the success stories that you can tell us about some of your favorite businesses perhaps, or some of the the businesses that really grew into the ways that you wanted them to?
Pedro Zamora:
I would say those 77 families were a great success, but they’re not just businesses. The individuals are ones that we really are making an impact with. And one great success. I can use his first name, Josh. He was 82 when he started working with us, could not read or write in his native language. Spanish had lived in had, had worked in the agricultural field, picking fruits and vegetables his whole life while he was in the United States. And never learned to read or write in English for Spanish. We were introduced him to him during our, a research development phase of our digital literacy program through a parents’ teachers program. He had no children, but he was the only live and survivor of his niece and nephew that his third parents got killed in an auto accident here in Kansas city.
Pedro Zamora:
And Joshua became the the parent to raise these kids. He had to learn real fast, how to extend his skill sets and communication using technology. We were able to teach him how to read and write in English and in Spanish. Joshua is today, he’s probably 85, 86. The kids are doing great in high school today. But he’s dealing with dementia early stage of dementia, but using technology, he keeps his mind refreshed. And that to me, if an is to take an individual who has sacrificed so much and has life to work and grow his assets, his net worth, but then also to be put in a position where of the unknown raising kids it’s an amazing story in how he has been able to communicate better with his doctors, better with extended family members and his community. He’s been a leader. We call him one of our lits, Latino and technology. He’s one of our leaders. He, he gives a great speech, very articulate individual.
Denzil Mohammed:
So a lot of what you’re talking about, tap taps into the American dream, this concept you state explicitly that your organization is an institution that significantly contributes to enabling the Latino community, to realize its full participation in the American dream. How alive is the American dream among the people you serve
Pedro Zamora:
A great question. It is an amazing observing how we go about measuring that. Economically there’s not one individual that we run across. That’s either documented or undocumented that do not wanna show that they’re paying their fair share. And we help them achieve that with our online bookkeeping platform, as well as the financial risk management courses. Not all businesses are perfect. We, it was tough during the pandemic and it was even more important to see how their financials were in order our community, the Latino community, the immigrant community. They trust very few people, but they trust their churches, their families, and they trust the first kid that may go get financing 1 0 1 done at college or high school <laugh> and they become the, the financial leader. What we saw the American dream is live and working, but if they really wanna participate, we gotta get their financials and their tax consequences in order to, and I, I honestly will sit here and tell you that 100% of every person that we talk about in the financial business as an entrepreneur in the Latino community, want to fully pay their way.
Pedro Zamora:
They’re not here to cheat the system. They’re not depending on the system, they can’t get access to the system. So the American dream to them have a good tax return submitted <laugh>. So those are words that I can’t pull out in my head. I, we had a pop up this past Saturday 35 small businesses. The temperature was well in its nineties. Humidity is high, but these folks were having a fantastic time and, and getting a chance to meet some of them for the first time and visit with them. They, they showed their ledgers that they were keeping on their phones and whether they, they were using an on an online FinTech product or not, they were keeping sure they wanted to make sure they were tracking their expenses and their earnings for that day.
Denzil Mohammed:
You raised a really important point there that undocumented immigrants really want to be, to pay their fair share to be on the straight narrow. I remember experiencing that heat of humidity in June, in Kansas city was not pleasant. But I also was there when they had this beautiful Chinese dragon festival one day, I think it was a Saturday in Kansas city. Can you talk about the broader demographics of Kansas city? You mentioned the change in just 10 years in the Latino population and how are the different groups getting along? It’s pretty diverse, right?
Pedro Zamora:
It’s very diverse. We have one sec sector of our community, which is the Northeast of not far from my office here, Northeast it’s called the Northeast neighborhood. Independence avenue has roughly 69 different countries represented on that corridor. It’s about a three mile corridor. And that’s where the immigrants settle. That’s where they start their businesses. They go to these vacant storefronts and they pull their money together and they begin their journey of contributing. And they’re settled by other NA nationalities from their country and who take these old homes. And they start refurbishing these old homes. What happens then is that they they get along together, but what happens other high investors want to come into those communities cuz they see the economic boom that’s taking place there and it’s eclectic. It becomes desirable and they start using their high level dollars and powerful lawyers to come in and work with our city to be, to talk about building other forms of development projects in those communities. So it’s a challenge, it’s a double edged sword. So it’s not the immigrants that don’t get along. It’s the system that once we do good and once we stabilize the community and we uplift a community, then it’s that gentrification steam shovel that comes rolling over right behind us, very close it’s happening faster and faster with us today.
Denzil Mohammed:
One thing that Americans take for granted is the tremendous variety of cuisines and cultures that we have access to. We really take for granted that we can have Thai food tonight and Mexican food tomorrow and, and you know, Ethiopian food the following day the most popular, fast food chain hair is taco bell first crying out loud. Can you speak a little bit to the value of all these? You mentioned all the different kinds of cuisines that we’ve had. I remember having the best chores of my life in Kansas city and then having Peruvian food from somewhere else. What is the value of, of that kinda diversity to the United States?
Pedro Zamora:
It’s see, it’s, it’s an amazing journey to, to come down independence avenue or Southwest Boulevard or Minnesota avenue today in central avenue, these corridors are known for their diverse cuisines and you, you can go from TexMex all the way to enrich seafood dishes out in Mexico and other Latin American countries. We don’t have any national franchise change like the wonderful taco bell you mentioned. And we, we have to go out of our community to go there, which is a blessing. It, it’s a blessing to have everything from a to Z in the cuisine space in these communities. We’re talking about the it’s important because life journey experiences are pretty exciting when you don’t have to leave, you know, you can go five miles and you’re hitting all these very eloquent dining experiences. And that’s important because we all are, are struggling in from the different ethnic groups that we are settling in, but we have one common theme family and creating community. And, and if we can maintain that cultural arts and demonstrate the economic impacts that we bring with that I think folks really find it a journey when they come visit our communities.
Denzil Mohammed:
Your role in immigration story goes back really far back. Would you mind just sort of sharing your immigration story?
Pedro Zamora:
Yeah, I’m, I’m a son of an immigrant family. My, my dad was born in Mexico and brought into the United States, even though my grandmother had already been living in the United States since the early late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds. My grandmother arrived in the late 1890s into Kansas city. She settled here. There was an unrest in Mexico and she was my, my grandfather and her were just victims of being the landowners that were, they had to do something. And they came to Kansas city because of the railroad, the railroad, on my dad’s side, my ancestors are all railroaders on the men’s side. My mom is a third generation, Nebraska and Latina. Who’s in a migrant family. So there’s three generations of migrant workers that finally obtained success and bought farm land in, in Nebraska. And that’s how my grandfather raised 21 children in Nebraska on my mom’s side. So I’m a sibling of 17. I’m one of 17 in my family with my parents.
Denzil Mohammed:
And it’s what makes this country special. It really is. And the fact that we all have these common threads despite of incredibly diverse backgrounds, thank for sharing the, about the diversity of Kansas city and your even your own immigrant story. We all have these immigrant stories, whether they’re short or long Pedro Zamora executive director of the Hispanic economic development corporation in Kansas city, Missouri. Thank you so much for joining us in Jobmakers.
Pedro Zamora:
Denzel, thank you for the invitation. It was my pleasure
Denzil Mohammed:
Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s story on how immigrants are building up Kansas City. Remember you can subscribe to job makers on apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you got your podcasts. And please leave us a review. I’m Denzil Mohammed. See you next Thursday at noon for another Jobmakers.
Recent Episodes:
This Fourth of July week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Dr. Joseph Ellis, Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. They discuss the resurgence of public interest in the Revolutionary and Founding generations due, in part, to his book, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams. Known as the “Atlas of American Independence,” John Adams was perhaps the best educated among the Founding generation. Ellis describes his deep knowledge of classical liberal arts and Enlightenment subjects, including ancient history, political philosophy, and the law, and how it equipped him for intellectual and political leadership. They review Adams’ key experiences and character traits, as the major author of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which served as a model for the U.S. Constitution; his ardent opposition to slavery; and his critical eye for spotting political talent. Lastly, they explore the relationship between Adams and his beloved, talented wife, Abigail; as well as their gifted son, John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. President; and the family’s remarkable dedication to public service. Prof. Ellis concludes the interview with a reading about John Adams and American Independence.
Stories of the Week: In Mississippi, public K-12 students have made greater gains than in any other state, becoming a national model for both practitioners and policymakers alike, as a result of specific reforms implemented by State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright. At least 12 states are relaxing teacher certification rules, including licensure, to address the labor shortage.
Guest:
Joseph Ellis is Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College and among the nation’s leading scholars of American history. The author of eleven books, Ellis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation and won the National Book Award for American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. His in-depth chronicle of the life of our first President, His Excellency: George Washington, was a New York Times bestseller. Ellis’ most recent book, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, was published in Fall 2021. Professor Ellis’ essays and book reviews appear regularly in national publications, such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. Ellis’ commentaries have been featured on CBS, C-SPAN, CNN, and PBS’s The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and he has appeared in several PBS documentaries on early America, including John and Abigail [Adams] for PBS’s The American Experience and a History Channel documentary on George Washington. He received his A.B. from the College of William and Mary, and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University.
The next episode will air on Weds., July 13th, with Jean Strouse, author of the award-winning biography of J.P. Morgan, Morgan: American Financier.
Tweet of the Week:
The Hawaii Space Grant Consortium, a community educational program supported by @NASA, has partnered with schools across the state to implement robotics in the classroom. #EdChathttps://t.co/UGOKp093EJ
— Education Week (@educationweek) June 30, 2022
News Links:
States Relax Teacher Certification Rules to Combat Shortages
“How’d You Do It?” Mississippi’s Superintendent of Education Explains State’s Learning Gains
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] GR: Hello listeners. Welcome back to another wonderful episode of The Learning Curve. I want to say hello to my 4th of July colleague, Cara, who I’m sure had some really good things she was able to do over the July. Fourth holiday weekend. Ours was less eventful than we expected. family hap.
[00:00:41] Last minute change. And so we had to switch our plans, but with that being said I still take time to celebrate the fourth. I understand all the dynamics racial, cultural, cultural, gender, everything else that goes into it. And I do not say that , but I do at least enjoy the fact that we [00:01:00] still live in a country where we have some freedoms that people in other parts of the world cannot.
[00:01:04] Celebrate. So for me, I enjoyed the day, but didn’t get enough barbecue or school time,
[00:01:11] GR: other things
[00:01:13] Cara: oh, that’s good to hear your voice, Gerard. Yeah, actually we had sort of last minute plan change too. We usually spent the fourth with some good friends of ours and just been a lot of travel in our lives lately.
[00:01:23] So we decided to stay local. And it’s interesting that you talk about how important it is to celebrate the fourth. So we actually, we took our kids to a red Sox game and I am shh, not a baseball fan. It’s not like, not something I used. I, I I’ve heard. Yeah. It’s like I had to ask my husband how many, how many innings, how many innings, but a really interesting part of this was Well, first of all, I, don’t listen to the news on weekends much because I like to have sort of my brain free.
[00:01:51] But as many of our listeners know yet another mass shooting in the United States this time on the 4th of July interestingly, I don’t talk to my kids about these things [00:02:00] until we’re in sort of a safer place. But my daughter, my 12 year old daughter, when I asked her, we were all wearing hats, baseball hats, because it’s very hot out.
[00:02:07] And I said, please, you know, take off your. For the national Anthem and Stan, my daughter asked me really seriously things aren’t really good in this country right now. Why should we be, why should we be singing about it? And I said, well, to your point, Gerard, there are a lot of good things still about this country, but boy, oh boy.
[00:02:24] Yep. We’ve got a lot of work to do. And so my kids will be. making their own choices when they’re older about how they wanna handle things. But for now, I, agree with you. We have to especially thinking about those who’ve served. in wars, I know my own grandfather was a world war II vet.
[00:02:38] Many of us have veterans in our lives and it’s just an important day around. We did have a little bit of barbecue, Gerard, not much. tend toward the salad these days, but I wanted to just point out for our listeners before we get into our stories of the. That there’s a pretty good article out recently in the Atlantic by none other than Mitt Romney.
[00:02:56] So Senator from Utah, former governor of [00:03:00] Massachusetts, I know that surprises many people former governor of Massachusetts and former presidential candidate. And I just, Gerard, if you haven’t seen this one, I would highly recommend it to folks. It is called America. Is in denial. And what Senator Romney talks about here is the idea that, you know, we are in many ways, this country’s in the midst.
[00:03:23] Not one, not two but many crises. And nobody’s talking to one another and we’re hunkered down. We talk about this a lot. We’re hunkered down in our own little corners, blaming the other side for problems that are of everybody’s making. interestingly he, quotes here. He says, he’s reminded of the old adage that for evil to thrive only requires good men to do nothing.
[00:03:43] So I was reading that this morning, Jordan, and it was really sticking with me a lot. Especially as we think about. Really important holiday for our country, but the fact that it’s been an increasingly tough couple of years, so not to get too, too depressing here, [00:04:00] but I think that it’s an important holiday to reflect upon as well as just to celebrate with fireworks and heart clogging foods.
[00:04:07] So that’s my take. I, do have another less depressing story of the week. I actually have a happy story of the week chart but I know, I know you’ve got some good stuff
[00:04:16] GR: You wanna kick us off or do you want me to go first? Yeah, no. And by the way, I found the MI Roney article. I will check it out.
[00:04:23] I’ve been a, fan of his work and people also forget he’s a founder of Bain, so he’s. Yeah. Also an entrepreneur. So I would check
[00:04:30] Cara: this out. Yeah. And just an all around really smart guy and a leader, I would say. Okay. So here’s my, here’s my happy story of the week. It’s bittersweet actually, because this is about Mississippi and somebody, I believe that, you know, Dr.
[00:04:43] Carrie Wright, who has been state chief in Mississippi for almost. Decade, Gerard let that marinate for a minute. Almost a decade. This woman has been leading the state of Mississippi’s education system and she’s leaving. and the, title of this article, this is from ed next. It’s by, it’s an interview with [00:05:00] Robert PIO and it’s entitled how’d you do it.
[00:05:02] Mississippi’s superintendent of education explains state learning gains. Now we’ve talked about Mississippi on this show before they have gone from much like Florida did right before it. Interestingly, they’ve adopted many of the same reforms, but they have gone from being dead last in the nation on a number of measures.
[00:05:19] But boy, oh boy, especially on reading to really showing dramatic gains in the next couple years. I know I am personally watching to see, I don’t think anybody has super high expectations for the next round of nap scores, nor does anybody think that they’re gonna be maybe a reliable indicator Of what kids know, given everything that we’ve been through in the past couple years, but I will be really interested to see the extent to which Mississippi’s results.
[00:05:44] Keep sort of a pace and or if there’s less slippage in some of these states where we’ve seen meaningful growth in past decade than in other states, but to get to Dr. Wright and her pretty amazing tenure, you know, PIO asks her a really, I think, great set of questions.
[00:05:59] And he [00:06:00] asks her questions that have everything to do with like, you know, how is it that you. Got kids reading well answer. They passed an early literacy law, which means that in Mississippi kids are learning in a curriculum that is based in gasp the science of reading because yes, we actually do know that there’s a science based way.
[00:06:18] a proven way to teach kids to read. And it relies on phonics, which is out of Vogue in some circles since remains out of Vogue in some circles. I know it was out of Vogue when I was a kid and my mom taught me anyway. She was always appalled. That our schools were not teaching phonics. But there were some controversial steps too, that they did with the reading program.
[00:06:34] And that is when kids in Mississippi, aren’t reading on grade level by grade three, with some exceptions, they will repeat grade. And it’s called, it’s not a punishment it’s retention because we have really great data to show that if kids aren’t reading on grade level by grade three, man, the outcomes are not.
[00:06:51] it’s a really important sort of milestone for children. So that’s, that’s one of the things that Mississippi did, but I think that [00:07:00] the way I would like the way I would just look large, talk about what Dr. Wright says she did. She just and I’m sure you know, her Gerard. She’s quite frankly, prep, maybe one of the last of what I would call the old school reformers.
[00:07:12] She believes in the kinds of things that are now going out of Vogue, but that really helped. They certainly here in Massachusetts and in many other states helped kids make gains, helped move the needle just a little bit for kids in some states. And that’s sort of this mix of. Actual accountability.
[00:07:28] What I like to call like a mix between support and accountability. So accountability, not just the hammer, that, oh, you’re doing badly there are all these myths out there that under no child left behind, right. When schools didn’t perform money was taken away. Not true, but that when we shine a light on schools that aren’t serving kids well, that we need to go in and give folks the right support.
[00:07:49] One example in Mississippi would be reading coaches everywhere, man, to get kids to read, not only were they teaching in the science of reading, not only were they helping kids to read on grade level by grade three, but [00:08:00] they equipped their districts with reading coaches, reading coaches, reading coaches, all of them highly trained.
[00:08:05] And so that’s part of what helped Mississippi realized gains both in reading and, in math though, reading is really their success story. And Dr. Wright talks in this article about just the importance of data. Like actually using data. And, you know, especially in the past couple years, I fear that we’re in a place where, well, the data aren’t reliable and the data aren’t gonna tell us the data is still the data they’re gonna tell us something.
[00:08:28] Yeah. They might tell us a lot of stuff that we don’t wanna hear, especially post pandemic, but I’ll tell you what places like Mississippi and Florida. Decades ago before they really saw a great increase in NAPE scores. They were seeing a lot of data that they really didn’t wanna see. So it’s about confronting that data.
[00:08:45] The other thing that strikes me about Dr Wright’s tenure that really comes out in this article is that, let me repeat. This woman has served the state of Mississippi for almost a decade. That is, you know, Gerard you’re a state [00:09:00] chief and state chief you’re formative two states, right. State chiefs.
[00:09:03] It’s often a political position sometimes. You’re gonna be out based on who’s in office and Punic asks her in the article, did it help that you really Mississippi right as just, it’s a, it’s kind of a one party state as much as Massachusetts is dominated by the democratic party, Mississippi tends to be very Republican.
[00:09:21] And he asked her, like, did that just always get people on board with what you wanted to do? Could you pass any legislation you wanted? And she said, absolutely not. Let’s not assume that that just because somebody votes a certain way, that they’re gonna really prioritize the things that I need them to prioritize.
[00:09:35] But I think that for me, the thing about her tenure that sticks out is a consistent approach over time. So a decade of saying. We’re gonna teach kids to read in this way. We’re gonna make sure that kids can read this way. By third grade, we’re gonna shine a light on underperforming schools and go in and support them.
[00:09:54] That consistency. We saw it to some extent in Florida, we have seen it in [00:10:00] Mississippi. , we see it in two few places these days, Gerard. And so I think we can only hope. That Mississippi and the great staff that Dr. Wright has cultivated will find a way to sort of, carry out the reforms that she has put in place and not, move incrementally forward, but not reverse pace and what we know works.
[00:10:22] And I dare say, That if some other states, the one I’m sitting in too would, would, have an approach that is less political and about policy churn. And one that’s really focused on consistently trying and seeing what works and then only double backing when it’s clear that something doesn’t work that that’s the way to go for kids because she’s served now an entire generation of kids and they’re better for it.
[00:10:44] So, you know, Dr. Wright, Gerard, what are your thoughts?
[00:10:48] GR: Well, first of all, let me congratulate her on. Graceful exit from that position it is a position where some state chiefs do not exit with grace. Some are pushed out, pulled [00:11:00] out, some are, , dragged through the media mud. And she didn’t have that.
[00:11:03] And that says a lot about her but also the environment in which she works in the last time we were together in person. We were on a panel together talking about accountability and standards. The third person on the panel was at that time, the Wisconsin commissioner of education Tony Evers, who’s now the governor.
[00:11:22] And when you mentioned staff, she had a number of people from Mississippi who were there, two of them. We knew each other through mutual friends. But she talked about the importance of having good people in the right place. Being a state, chief, being a state secretary, you do a lot of the face forward work.
[00:11:42] You’re ultimately responsible for what takes place internally, but you gotta have really good people behind. You and around you. So I’m glad you mentioned staff. She’s got a lot to leave on in terms of, of good area. And I’d also like to say she spent time working with groups outside of Mississippi or these headquartered outside of [00:12:00] Mississippi.
[00:12:00] And one person that comes to mind is Peggy Brookins. Uh, Who’s a president and CEO of the national board for professional teaching standards. She worked with the department of ed, the governor, legislators and others. More board certified teachers into the right zip codes and county areas in Mississippi to make that happen.
[00:12:18] So, she actually could be a a case study to follow because again, staying nearly a decade while John King in Louisiana, I believe was close to seven years, you had combined a number of years for Hannah. So there’s a good case study that someone could write or maybe in the position of writing.
[00:12:34] Congratulations to her and a great feel, good story for one of our state chiefs. Well, Kara speaking about education commission of the states again, last place I saw Dr. Wright. My story of the week is from education week and Matt line will, is the author it’s titled. States relax, teacher certification rules to combat shortages, a subject that we discussed before.
[00:12:56] But what we haven’t discussed before is the education week [00:13:00] and education commissions of the state’s studies, where they’ve actually not only looked at what people are saying, but they’ve actually looked at legislation and they’ve identifi that some states are either amending the law or considering to.
[00:13:13] in order to combat the teacher shortage. Now you and I know that for nearly a decade, the number of people who were rallying to become teachers did. So, at a smaller level, percentage wise, and we’ve seen, you know, in the last 30 years, so there was a slow drip decline. Time naturally with the pandemic, a couple of things resulted from that one, a number of teachers who saying I’m going to retire or leave the profession all together.
[00:13:39] And number two, some who said they’ll stay, but just wasn’t sure how long they would do so. And so to combat some of that law markets got together, both Republicans and Democrats and said, we’ve gotta figure out an independents. We’ve gotta. Figure out what to do. And so in this article here are a few states who are trying to address this.
[00:13:59] So [00:14:00] let’s take my former home state of California the legislators and the golden state voted last year to allow teacher candidates to skip two exams. First, the basic skills test, second, a subject matter exam. And this will occur if. They have taken college approved courses. So that’s California.
[00:14:17] Well, let’s go to Oklahoma. The governor there assigned a bill this past may. And with that legislation now as law of the land for Oklahoma, it removes a requirement for teacher candidates to pass a general education examination that covers communication, critical skills and computation, lawmakers, and state of.
[00:14:37] Said the exam was redundant and it actually presented a financial barrier to a number of teachers. So in Missouri, it state board of education voted earlier this month to actually grant teacher certificates, to test takers who score within one standard era of measurement. So. So when you’re looking at a standard error of measurement in the past, some people missed the cut score.
[00:14:59] Well, under this new [00:15:00] rule, they’re trying to make some exceptions. So the education department says 550 teachers will benefit from this policy change. 80% of them who were working toward certification in one or more of the state’s top 15 up 15 shortage areas. And so at least there they’re making a move with the cut score or really measurement in Alabama.
[00:15:21] The state board of education also is considering looking at how to assess teachers based upon standard error measure. So with Alabama, they said, guess what? Nearly 1,200 teachers in the state scored one standard error measure below the passing score between 2019 and. 21. So if they decide to change that the way that Missouri did then nearly 1200 teachers would find themselves in the classroom.
[00:15:49] So from. Legislative standpoint. And from a regulatory standpoint, be board of education, they decided to make a move well not everyone’s excited about that. And [00:16:00] so one person is Heather pesky, who is the president of the national council on teacher quality. Meaning if you know, it’s a Waston based thing tank that calls for more rigorous teacher preparation.
[00:16:10] And so according to Heather, she says, I don’t understand why our response to concerns about shortages, that we have to have a major policy reaction that lowers standards to reentry. And she goes on further to say that endorsing an option that asks less of teachers in terms of their contact knowledge means you’re gonna shift the burdens onto students.
[00:16:34] And she would further talk about what we could look at that was different now. What she did say is that there is a five year pilot in New Jersey where not only are they going to modify certification rules for teachers, but for the teachers, they do. They’re actually gonna watch over five years to see what’s gonna happen.
[00:16:51] She said, while it’s not an ideal program, at least waiting five years, following the research, seeing what works, what does not is a good [00:17:00] compromise, but she’s pretty clear that this is gonna fall on students. Now naturally, when we have convers. About test scores. And we know that there’s debate in federal courts regarding affirmative action.
[00:17:09] Action. The question is, well, why aren’t students of color doing as well as their white counterpart. So in this article, some experts have identified reasons why this is the case. Some questions that tests might be culturally biased. Others say the candidates of color may in fact have test anxiety.
[00:17:25] Fees to take the test and we take the test could be prohibitive. And of course, systematic educational inequalities across time has made some students of color less prepared as their white candidates. Students of color is probably too large of a phrase to really look at what we’re.
[00:17:44] GR: discussing is that including Asian students and even with Asian students, these Japanese Hmong versus Chinese if we’re saying black students is that black students is Haitian students, Jamaican Nigerian students.
[00:17:55] So I think we can unpack this. This has been something I had to deal with when I was in [00:18:00] Florida as related to stem entry exam. We had to make some tough calls. So this is a really interesting topic. It’s tough. I think that the lawmakers are trying to do something that’s different. I think Heather’s onto something you have experience having worked in this area before.
[00:18:16] What are your thoughts?
[00:18:17] Cara: Oh, so many I did. I worked in, teacher training at the national academy of advanced teacher education for many years. And we focused on retaining high flying teachers, which. is a part of the conversation about teacher shortage. That seems to get completely left outta the equation.
[00:18:35] We seem to be focusing on new teachers and pipelines and stuff, which is all well and good, but I am very, very concerned. the teachers that are leaving, many of them are the ones that are close to retirement. Many of whom know what they’re doing, many of whom would serve as mentors and models for incoming teachers.
[00:18:50] Are we gonna have I’m not to be ageist. Are we gonna have schools full of 22 year olds teaching who haven’t, who haven’t passed a basic. Exam that proves that they have basic [00:19:00] subject matter knowledge. Listen, I think I agree with Heather pesky, who was at the Massachusetts department of education for a very long time and, by all counts as excellent.
[00:19:08] No doubt. There are things about these certification exams, that could be changed and we have plenty of evidence to show that certification. Self does not necessarily correlate with teacher quality, but that doesn’t mean that the basic exams can’t tell us something. So I just want real quick draw, because I know we don’t have a lot of time.
[00:19:29] I just wanna tell you, I have a vivid memory of a high school science teacher who showed us videos of rollerblading was really cool in the late eighties and early nineties. When I was in high school who shoulders rollerblading video. Like four or five days a week because here’s something guy didn’t know a thing about science.
[00:19:47] like, I have nightmares for the children of this country who will be, , learning from teachers who, if you can’t pass a basic content test in your subject area. I do think that we need to ask some really [00:20:00] tough questions and I would agree that instead. thinking about ways. Yeah. We’re gonna be in crisis, but lowering the bar.
[00:20:06] Isn’t the only way to get folks into the profession. And by the way, lowering the bar doesn’t mean more people are going to come into a profession that in too many places still doesn’t pay well in too many places. Teachers are asked to be all things to all, people. So I don’t know that that’s necessarily a magic bullet.
[00:20:22] We do know that there are alternative routes to certification that work and yes, some of those. Testing requirements among other things, but there are other ways to evaluate or, ask a candidate to take a test into their tenure, six months into their tenure a year into their tenure. A good principal is gonna know if a teacher’s worth salt, if a good principal is evaluating in the way they should.
[00:20:44] And asking somebody to. A basic competency test, I don’t think is too much while at the same time we evaluate those tests for exactly the things you mentioned, whether it’s cultural bias or barriers to entry because of fees, et cetera. I’m not denying that those things exist, but this [00:21:00] conversation is frightening to me.
[00:21:02] I just talked about, States that have come up on Nate scores and too many haven’t and one of the reasons, so one of our answers to the pandemic is gonna be just like let’s, if you breathe, please come and be a teacher. Sorry for, you know, I’m not saying that folks who can’t pass an exam are terrible.
[00:21:18] They might need other supports, but I think it writ large. We need to look at this much more deeply. So I’m interested to see what the New Jersey study bears. And I certainly hope we don’t let go of accountability in this country because if we do, we’re gonna have no way to tell. Whether or not teachers that are being let in without a certification exam are able to do the job or not.
[00:21:36] So I don’t know, Jared, maybe I’m just feeling salty today. I feel like I don’t have a lot of nice things to say but that’s my take on your story, my friend,
[00:21:45] GR: and a great take, indeed.
[00:21:47] Cara: All right. Well, Gerard coming up right after this, we are gonna be speaking to give this another Pulitzer prize winner, professor Joseph Ellis, speaking to us about John Adams and American independence.
[00:21:59] [00:22:00] Given the moon I’m in, I am eager to talk about this and hear what this gentleman asked to say, coming up.
[00:22:43] Listeners help us give a warm welcome to Joseph Ellis. He is professor emeritus of history at Mount Holyoke college and among the nation’s leading scholars of American history. The author of 11 books. Ellis was awarded the Pulitzer prize for founding brothers, the revolutionary generation, and won the national [00:23:00] book award for Americans Sphinx, the character of Thomas Jefferson, his in-depth Chronicle of the life of our first president, his excellency, George Washington was a New York times.
[00:23:10] Best seller Alice’s most recent book. The cause the American revolution and its discontents was published in fall 2021 Professor Ellis’s essays and book reviews appear regularly in national publications, such as the New York times, the Los Angeles, times the wall street journal, Chicago prune, new Republic and the new Yorker Ellis’s commentaries have been featured on CBS.
[00:23:32] CSPAN CNN. And PBS’s my favorite. The news are with Jim lair and he’s appeared in several PBS documentaries on early America, including John and Abigail Adams for PBS’s the American experience and the history channel documentary on George Washington. He received his AB from the college of William and Mary, not far from where Gerard sits right now.
[00:23:53] And he earned his ma and PhD from Yale university, professor Ellis, welcome to the
[00:23:58] show.
[00:23:59] Professor Ellis: It’s [00:24:00] really a pleasure to be with you.
[00:24:01] Cara: We’re really happy to have you here, especially right after independence day holiday here in the us. So let’s get right to it because you have done a lot of work that we’d like to learn about.
[00:24:12] So over the past 30 years, your writing has really helped to lead this major resurgence of public interest in the revolutionary and founding generations. I mean, even, even my kids can now name All of the founding fathers, which I, I credit to this resurgence and of course, to Hamilton among other things.
[00:24:31] But in addition to your book, I love this title, passionate Sage, the character and legacy of John Adams. That book has greatly enhanced the reputation and fame of the Atlas of American independence. So as we have just celebrated the 4th of July, could you please talk to us about why John Adams should be on our minds?
[00:24:51] Professor Ellis: John Adams is the most outspoken, candid self revealed member of the founders. And when I first started [00:25:00] trying to write a history of the founding, I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but it turns out that to what I was doing. I started with Adams and the book. You mentioned passion at Sage.
[00:25:10] In part, because of that and part, because of how it influenced me, I realized that my major interpretive posture was we’ve got to recover the founders as human beings who are imperfect creatures in the same way that we are and get away from the mythology. And the notion that they’re inspired by the gods that really does no justice to their achievement.
[00:25:35] And after all, if they were Demi gods, what in heaven’s name would we have to learn from them? And John Adams is the most, as I said, Candid and outspoken of the founders who exposes his humanity in his diary, in his correspondence. And if you’re a biographer as, I guess I am a historian biographer that you need somebody to give you [00:26:00] material that brings the, person to life.
[00:26:02] That is part of the historical record and the Adam’s historical record to include his unbelievable correspondence with Abigail is the most extensive self revealed deeply interesting and lyrically impressive of any correspondence among the founders. So those are all reasons why I find this man, the most worthy of our attention and.
[00:26:26] In some ways he’s emblematic of the very human beings that we sometimes mythologize. Hmm.
[00:26:35] Cara: and you’ve also discussed in your books, how Adams was, he was really among the best educated of the founding generation, especially in terms of his knowledge of ancient history and political philosophy.
[00:26:45] Mm-hmm . So could you tell us a little bit about his education and I’m really curious to know how it compared to other founders and how, you think that assisted in their political leadership.
[00:26:58] Professor Ellis: Well, the founders as [00:27:00] a group, it doesn’t true for all of them are classically educated, meaning that they went through courses in Latin and Greek, and they all believe that the ancient world of Greece and Rome contained wisdom that they could draw upon.
[00:27:15] And Adams is probably the best read of all the founders. And that’s saying something, cuz Jefferson was extremely well read too. And so was Franklin. Washington was not among all the founders. Well, let’s put it this way. Adams went to Harvard. Jefferson went to William, Mary Washington, went to war.
[00:27:35] And his own education occurred in battle and in war in action mm-hmm . But I think that the values that the founders carry out of the classical period forgive you an example. Adams is made head of war in ordinance in June of 1776, just before the declaration. He’s the equivalent of the secretary of war for the country.
[00:27:57] And the first thing he does is he write his friends at Harvard [00:28:00] and says, send me all the books you count on military history, especially through acidities on the pian war. And in two acidities he finds wisdom that he gives to Washington and Washington’s staff about how to fight British in the war.
[00:28:15] Don’t attempt to defeat them in the open battlefield. You cannot win a war against the British army on a conventional battlefield. You must fight what he calls a war of posts, meaning it’s not quite a gorilla war, cause they are a conventional army, but avoid conflict. Except when you have a decided advantage because, and this is the big insight.
[00:28:38] We don’t have to win the war. The British have to win the war. We have only not to lose the war, which is much easier. And therefore it , comes from acidities and is discussion of the PE pian war. And an insight that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. And it affects the outcome of the revolution.
[00:28:58] Cara: That’s really fascinating to think [00:29:00] about. And something that I didn’t know, we have only not to lose the war rather than win it. And that’s fascinating thinking. Um,
[00:29:07] Professor Ellis: It is. I mean, if you think about it, that it’s an insight that People fighting us in Vietnam realized.
[00:29:13] And it was one of the reasons that was gonna be really difficult for us. But the British never understood this and. At any rate. And the book I’ve recently written is talks about this to some extent the book called the cause. And Adams’ insight here is, and when, when he’s debating the British officials on one occasion who are just won a big battle in New York and Manhattan and are preening about it, he says We just want a small little portion of America and that it’s like the crusade. He says Christianity went to the middle east, presuming it was gonna take over and look what happened to them. Mm-hmm and so he’s always drawn on historical models to inform his own behavior in his own policy, in the.
[00:29:57] Cara: I would imagine that some of today’s leaders would do very well [00:30:00] to be reminded of this, especially . I think we need
[00:30:02] Professor Ellis: a historian in the presence of any major strategic decision to try to tell us what, we have to learn from the past. It’s,
[00:30:09] Cara: it’s really fascinating to think about in the current context.
[00:30:11] Thank you for that So here you are a professor Mount Holyoke here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I am recording from Newton. Pioneer is in Boston and John Adams, of course, major presence here in Massachusetts author of the 1780 constitution. One of the world’s oldest functioning written constitutions, and it served as a model for the us constitution, which we’ve been talking about at least at my dinner table a lot as of late.
[00:30:39] Could you talk to us a little bit about. Are there unique features of the Massachusetts constitution. And we’re really curious to hear a bit about the famous education clause, which I’ve studied education for a couple decades now. And, you know, the clause that says to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences Adams [00:31:00] went out of his way to include that in our founding document.
[00:31:03] Can you talk about those things?
[00:31:05] Professor Ellis: sure Adams single handedly wrote the Massachusetts constitution in late 1779 when he was just back from France. And he’s had to go again soon thereafter, Abigail did read drafts of it as he was doing it. The distinguishing feature of the Massachusetts constitution was as a model for a Republic.
[00:31:26] And there wasn’t a clear model for Republic until that time, the state or then colonial governments were somewhat models, but he is providing a model of a government in which power does not flow from above, from God to a Monarch and then downward from there. But upward from that group called the people.
[00:31:48] And it will be filtered through certain branches of the government to purify it because the people are often ill informed. And so the [00:32:00] distinguishing feature of the Massachusetts constitution is there three branches, an executive branch, a legislative branch and that there must be two houses.
[00:32:09] In the legislative branch, what we now call Senate and a house. And the third branch is the judicial branch is discussion of the executive branch is something that Abigail criticized him on and he didn’t change it in , his version, the president or the chief. Could overrule any decision by the legislature and could himself or herself later on, not be overruled.
[00:32:36] Abigail thought it was that smelled like monarchy and would be criticized for that. And she was right. Because when the Massachusetts legislature took the document, that’s one thing they changed. It’s the only major thing they changed in the document. He also is talking about a judiciary that has considerable power.
[00:32:57] Doesn’t quite look like the current [00:33:00] Supreme court, but it comes pretty close. So it is a model for what will eventually become the us constitution. And within its structure is the presumption of some sort of balance of power. That is to say the branches of government will govern and control each other.
[00:33:19] and that’s a, normally that’s associated with James Madison and Madison deserves credit for it in Philadelphia during the constitutional convention and the ratification process, because it’s a point he keeps making, but the idea itself originates with Adams. and I. All of your listeners should go to Quincy and go through the house and the library there, and they have on display, version of the Massachusetts constitution.
[00:33:48] And they have, and they talk to you about what it’s meaning is there. And it’s really a good show and worthy of your time.
[00:33:55] GR: Well, professor, as we think about the 4th of July and what it means [00:34:00] to. Country right now, particularly at this time we’re a number of cultural wars going on. There’s some who say that we shouldn’t celebrate the fourth or we shouldn’t celebrate the founding members of our country in part, because all of them were slave owners and you and I, both, all of them were not slave owners.
[00:34:15] Professor Ellis: Yeah, Adam, John Adams was not. Yeah. Exactly. And
[00:34:20] GR: so, yeah, I I’d love for you to talk
[00:34:22] Professor Ellis: about that. It is a huge question that dominates the profession now in ways that are difficult to negotiate without sounding partisan on one side or the other. I guess what I’d say is that. The founding area is the big bang in the American political universe.
[00:34:37] Adams is one of the central sources of the explosion. And it fundamentally changes the contours of Western political thought. As I said, with power not flowing down from God, to the people, but upward from the people. And That there are huge achievements here during the founding.
[00:34:53] One of which is a separation of church and state, which had never occurred before, also unprecedented in that [00:35:00] sense and the creation of a nation size Republic, which had never existed before it was assumed that republics only existed in small towns or small areas like Greek city. Those achievements.
[00:35:12] However, rest aside, two major failures. One is the failure to reach just accommodation with the native Americans. And the other is to put slavery on the road to extinction. Why they failed on those accounts is worthy of serious discussion. I don’t think that especially the slavery issue can all be avoid.
[00:35:32] I’m currently working on the next book, which is addressing this very question. Was the failure to end slavery, a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean tragedy. Was it impossible to achieve despite any kind of leadership embedded as the will of the gods in American history? Or was it something that could have gone the other way with decisions made that weren’t made, et cetera?
[00:35:58] I think that is a [00:36:00] debatable issue now. But I also think that the attempt to interpret the founders exclusively through their failure misconstrues the greatest political generation in American history. and I just think that Adams is himself an example of a person who never owned a slave.
[00:36:17] Who is obviously one of the most primary figures here. But this is a debate that we ought to have it. , we shouldn’t attempt to avoid it. And Adams himself would say that, you know what Adams believed on the slavery. Was slavery was fundamentally incompatible with the values on which the American revolution was based.
[00:36:38] He said that clearly, most of the other prominent founders agreed, but you could not attack it frontally right away. Because as soon as you did that, you split the union. And if you split the union during the war, you probably lost the war. And if you split the union during the constitutional convention, you never got a nation.
[00:36:59] [00:37:00] So that let’s delay it into the future until we’re a solid secure Republic and then deal with it. He didn’t realize that the clock was running out. He couldn’t foresee the cotton gen. And as a result, when he’s an old man in 1820, he says to his son, John Quincy, this is after the Missouri compromise that I have not attacked slavery during my time for the very reasons I just mentioned, but it is clear now that Virginia’s not gonna take the lead on this as I hope they would.
[00:37:33] And you go get. And John Quincy’s career from then on is a predominant anti-slavery direction. So it’s a complicated question. It’s one that we need to talk about, but it’s one in which the overall achievement of the founding generation cannot be and must not be obscured.
[00:37:53] GR: So here’s a question.
[00:37:55] John Adams had a good, critical eye for identifying, great talent. [00:38:00] For example, we nominated George Washington to lead the continental army, right Jefferson to draft the constitution and John Marshall to become the chief justice of the Supreme court. Could you talk to us about the kind of political leadership Adams admired as well as his sharper views regarding the political figures and ideas?
[00:38:15] He
[00:38:15] Professor Ellis: Yeah, you’re right. Those three men, you mentioned Washington Jefferson and Marshall are obviously crucial decisions. When asked about white nominated Washington, he always told the joke. He said, because Washington was always the tallest man in the room. And as far as Jefferson’s appointments drafted the declaration, the, committee that drafted it, initially thought that Adams was gonna draft.
[00:38:39] Adam said, no, I have earned too many enemies in the debates over independence. And therefore I’m somewhat controversial. And, he also thought maybe Franklin would do it. Franklin said, no, he never wrote anything that would be edited by a committee. And so that it ended up being Jefferson.
[00:38:57] Marshall was one of his so-called midnight [00:39:00] of appointees. He really liked Marshall because Marshall had served as his secretary of state during his presidency. he was also a Virginia who could speak to a larger constituency. But I think that. There are people within the generation that Adams really was highly critical of too.
[00:39:18] Very good people. I mean, he thought that Hamilton was a dangerous monarchist. That’s probably not fair to Hamilton, but he thought that Tom Payne was a radical who was good at tearing down, but not good at building up and that there was conflict among the founders. And the personalities temperaments of the founding generation.
[00:39:40] And then in some sense the different disagreements within the founding generation constitutes an inherent sense of checks and balances. Diversity in the full sense of that term is represented there. And Adams, for example, and Jefferson on different sides of the revolution after the revolution is over and [00:40:00] understanding what it was.
[00:40:01] So that. personalities and personal temperaments were not at all compatible on all these occasions and Adams himself regarded the conflict among the different founders as the source of strength. Adams’ favorite form of conversation was an argument. And in the dialogue between Adams and Jefferson in their Twilight years, you see this clearly.
[00:40:25] So. He did recognize talent. went to his grave thinking that Washington was the founding, his father of them all, but that he worried that Washington, what he called these pilgrimages to Mount Vernon, that Washington was becoming a kind of Saint like figure and that worried Adams, he didn’t.
[00:40:45] Any of his fellows, including himself to be regarded as above human frailty. And especially in his latter years, he’s critical of the way in which world seems to be. It seems that new nations require [00:41:00] mythical heroes. For the same reason that religions require supernatural profits and he didn’t like that he wanted the founding generation to be seen.
[00:41:10] As a collection of ordinary men brought together in a great crisis. That forced, probably the most consequential crisis in American history. And that crisis brought out of them leadership qualities, which otherwise would’ve never come into Adams. Would’ve just been a normal lawyer in, the Boston area in Washington, just been in a Virginia Squire.
[00:41:31] They were created by the revolution and they were not created by.
[00:41:35] GR: You mentioned Abigail Adams earlier. You also talked about their son, John Quincy Adams sixth president of the United States. Mm. And the letters they wrote, in a 20, right. An article that I published, I actually have a quote from a letter that Abigail wrote to.
[00:41:50] John August 14th, 1766, where she said, if we mean to have hero statements and philosophers, we should have learned women. And so, they [00:42:00] were a powerful couple or a power couple, I guess, in today’s terms, could you discuss with us this history, changing family and their enormous sense of patriotic duty and their dedication of public service?
[00:42:12] We should all
[00:42:13] Professor Ellis: it’s all true. It’s all true. It’s hard to exaggerate that the correspondence between John and AGA, which in the published form is approximately 1300 letters. Is the most fully revealed marriage, certainly in the revolutionary era. And I would make the case that the Abigail John correspondence is the most impressive intellectually and stylistically impressive correspondence of any pair of prominent leaders in American history.
[00:42:44] ABI. Nobody’d use the word first lady then I think that was first used with regard to uh, do Madison, but that she was a equal partner with John. And there’s not another woman in American history who is the first lady who [00:43:00] duplicates her at all until you get to Eleanor Roosevelt. She’s a force I would say that if that listeners ever just get a copy that’s in paper, back of the two volumes on their correspondence in 75, 70. It’s unbelievable. The honesty the connection between intellectual insights and emotional understanding the relationship between what’s going on in the country and what’s going on inside the family at the moment that the declaration is being written, she and the children are undergoing smallpox inoculation in Boston.
[00:43:35] And in some ways John’s mind is more on. As he is on the declaration of independence itself. So yeah, I mean, at one point in time, he says, I’ve decided to by a folio volume. This is in April 76. I’m gonna put all your letters that you sent me and I, and I make copies of mine and I want you to do the same on your side.
[00:43:57] And by the way, I think your letters are [00:44:00] better than mine. And guess what I think he might be. Right. So. If you’re looking for a couple who are a married couple in American history, that brings you closer to the texture of what’s really happening at the highest level of American history, you cannot do better than Abigail and John.
[00:44:19] GR: It’s a great recommendation. Well, professor, what I’d like to do is to turn over to you to read something that you wanna share with our listeners could be something you’re working on previous book, your.
[00:44:29] Professor Ellis: what I’d like to do, and it’s not that long, but I would like to read my version of what the declaration of independence would’ve said at the start.
[00:44:39] If Adams had written it, is that okay? Absolutely. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created. That they are endowed by their creator with mutually dependent rights and responsibilities that among these rights are life, Liberty in the pursuit of virtue. [00:45:00] And among these responsibilities are self denial duty to the Commonwealth and a decent respect for the wisdom of the ages.
[00:45:08] That to secure these rights and enforce these responsibilities. Governments are instituted in all civilized societies, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed and from the accumulated experience of preceding generations. Prudence indeed will dictate that government’s long establi should not be changed for light and transient reasons.
[00:45:30] And the lamp of experience will demonstrate that human passions aligned with dreams of perfection, not seduce governments to embrace revolutionary change when imperfect evolution is possible or listen to tribunes of the people who ignore the abiding interests of the public. And accordingly all experience has shown that mankind must resist the tyranny of despots and the tyranny of majorities must balance their urge [00:46:00] for freedom and their obligation to others must contain their pursuit of personal happiness within the covenant of the collective must in some strive to subordinate, the selfish impulses that animate our expectations to the better angels of our nature.
[00:46:16] Let these principles be declared to a candid world at this propitious moment with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, and the civic sense that our mutual pledge binds us together within the expansive limits of our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
[00:46:35] GR: Cara and I thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:46:37] Thank you for sharing those beautiful words with our listeners. And we look forward to additional work coming out from you in the. you’ve got, I’m still going. You’re still going well,
[00:46:48] Professor Ellis: keep on going, still going still scribbling every morning. but I appreciate your interest. And especially in the moment we’re living now, the atoms of perspective on our civic responsibilities is an extraordinarily [00:47:00] important.
[00:47:01] I myself would favor mandatory national service, even though that chances of that passing are remote. But I do think that the interest in what Massachusetts and now Virginia and Kentucky and Pennsylvania call it, Commonwealth is a clue to the notion that there’s a collective sense of American identity that doesn’t exist anymore.
[00:47:23] And that needs to be.
[00:47:25] GR: Well, you’ve definitely given all of us something to think about over the next few months. Thank you for your time.
[00:47:30] Professor Ellis: Thank you for having me take care.[00:48:00]
[00:48:20] GR: The Hawaii state grant consortium. Community educational partner supported by NASA has partnered with schools across the state to implement robotics in the classroom. You and I are both big supporters of stem, really big supporters of steam, and glad to see this taking place in Hawaii.
[00:48:41] Cara: Absolutely go Hawaii.
[00:48:42] I I’d like to go to Hawaii. I’ve never been there. Gerard next week now I’m not gonna be with you next week. Try not to cry. I know I’m sad to miss this guest because actually I have been reading a book on this very topic. you are going be speaking to Jean Straus, the award winning biographer of [00:49:00] JP Morgan in the arise of American finance.
[00:49:04] So that is coming up next week on the learning curve, Gerard I’ll miss you. we’ll be in touch.
[00:49:10] GR: yeah, we’ll be in touch, but you won’t miss me.
[00:49:11] Cara: Yeah. I won’t tell you where I’m gonna be, but it’s gonna be sunny and warm, guaranteed. That’s all I have to say. so I’ll be certainly thinking of you while you record.
[00:49:20] And I’m, Suning myself, somewhere on a beach, but until then, Gerard, please stay safe and happy be elated. 4th of July be, well, my friend,
[00:49:29] GR: same to you.[00:50:00]
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In Massachusetts, the Know-Nothing amendments prevent more than 100,000 urban families with children in chronically underperforming school districts from receiving scholarship vouchers that would allow them access to additional educational alternatives. These legal barriers, also known as Blaine amendments, restrict government funding from flowing to religiously affiliated organizations in nearly 40 states and are a violation of the first and fourteenth amendments.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case this year, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, that could end these amendments. In 2018, Pioneer produced a 30-minute documentary on the impact of the Blaine amendments on families in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Michigan.
“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Help families like the Costons in Michigan to end the bigoted Blaine amendments in their state that are blocking tuition scholarships and other types of financial support that would make it possible for families to send their children to high-quality schools that are best suited for their children.
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This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Ilya Shapiro, constitutional scholar, author, and senior fellow of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute, about the changing makeup of the court, and how this term’s most high-profile decisions reveal the judicial philosophies that comprise the current bench.
Guest:
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute, director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Shapiro is the author of Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/?adviser to the Multi-?National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. It has been said that each new justice is a new court as the 2022 Supreme court term winds to close the first term to include all three former president Trump’s nominees court Watchers, policy makers, and concerned citizens have new information about how each of the nine justices apply the 230 year old US constitution to modern legal disputes. Indeed, each court decision exposes the tension that arises between a constitutional democracy’s power to enact laws and the constraints imposed when those same laws must comport with constitutional principles to observers. It can be a relief when the court’s majority limits legislative prerogatives that they do not favor, but unsettling. When the court strikes down, laws seen as necessary for our modern polity. Nevertheless, each case reveals the complexity and nuance of each Justice’s view of their role in the process.
Joe Selvaggi:
What has this term told us about the philosophical makeup of this court? How do the most recent high profile decisions reveal each Justice’s views? And what does the court’s makeup suggest about how it may rule in the future? My guest today is legal scholar, author, and senior fellow of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, Ilia Shapiro, his new book, Supreme disorder, judicial nominations, and the politics of the nation’s highest court just released in paperback this week looks at the controversies of past courts and their decisions. Mr. Shapiro will share with us the way in which individual philosophies influence Justice’s decisions, how the cases in this current term reveal the views of the nine justices and what those views will likely pretend for the court’s future decisions. When I return, I’ll be joined by constitutional scholar, Ilya Shapiro. Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk I’m Joe Selvaggi and now pleased to be joined by author and senior fellow on constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Ilya Shapiro welcome back to Hubwonk, Ilya.
Ilya Shapiro:
Good to be with you, Joe. A lot’s happened since we last talked.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed it has. I don’t wanna dwell on the past. We we’re always looking forward but there’s two big pieces of news. Just this week, one of course, is that you are now a brand new member of the Manhattan Institute. Congratulations on that. The other big piece of news that I’m sure our listeners are interested in is that your wonderful book that we discussed in an earlier episode, Supreme disorder, judicial nominations, and the politics of America’s highest court just came out on soft cover. So paperbacks, very soft plugging the show looks good, looks bigger for our listeners who already bought the hard copy. Is there any difference with the new a paperback?
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah, so I caught some typos that’s always good to do. And I added an epilogue about 3000 words on well, what’s happened since the hard cover came out in the fall of 2020, which is two more justices Amy Coney Barrett and, and Ketanji Brown Jackson,
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed a lot has happened perhaps not a whole new book’s worth, but a lot certainly to talk about. So let’s jump into, we wanna do a around the world sort of a review of what’s happened in this past term. Everything everything’s been decided now we closed the book on this, this term, so let’s do a little recap and and start at the beginning. I want to talk about judicial philosophy specifically as it be pertains to the nine justices that we now have including Breyer. We’re not gonna talk about Ketanji Brown Jackson just yet. But before we jump into the cases themselves that were decided, let’s define some terms for our listeners who were not constitutional scholars, ones that have been thrown around in the wake of the decisions specifically, what is, what people will call an originalist what is what people call a textualist? We also have heard the word institutionalist and finally what I would call broadly consequentialist. So let’s start at the beginning with let’s say originalist. What, what does that mean?
Ilya Shapiro:
Originalism is a, a method of constitutional interpretation that looks at the original public meaning of a constitutional provision. That is the original constitution, the, the powers that are granted to Congress that was ratified in 1789. So what does the power to regulate interstate commerce mean? When it was ratified in 1789, we look at the Federalist papers. We look at contemporaneous dictionaries. We try to figure out what those words mean, or the 14th amendment, obviously much in play this term, the meaning of due process of law, the meaning of equal protection. What did those words mean? When the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868. So it’s, it’s, it’s not getting, trying to get into the head of James Madison or Thomas Jefferson. And what would they have thought of violent video games or something like that? It’s, it’s looking at the words on the page, trying to understand their original public meaning and look originalists can disagree just like historians can disagree about how to interpret certain events in our, in our history.
Ilya Shapiro:
That’s, that’s okay. Both, both judges and academics can have a lively discussion, but that’s what originalists try to get at textualist is, is a related interpretive method that’s applied to statutes. So we, we focus on the text of the clean air act, say that was an issue in one of the big cases this term. And so when, when that was passed in the seventies, when it was amended in the nineties what do those words on the page mean again, not what Congress or the sponsors of the legislation intend not what someone might have understood it to mean, and they could have been wrong, but what do the words on the page actually mean? What does the text mean? And then you get to institutionalist, which isn’t a method of interpretation so much as an approach.
Ilya Shapiro:
And so John Roberts, the chief justice is often called an institutionalist because he operates not primarily at trying to get at what the text means necessarily, or the original public meaning of a provision is, but he wants to preserve the institutional reputation of of the court. And so might wanna move not as quickly as some of his other colleagues that say I’m just gonna interpret as I see fit and let the, the chips fall where they may Roberts tries to be a little KR, maybe narrower in, in what kind of opinions he writes. And so an institutionalist cares about the institution for that matter. It doesn’t have to be just the court could care about the institutions in general Congress, the presidency you know, maintaining those big things rather than a focus on the words on the page and finally consequentialist or sometimes a related might be a, a pragmatist you know, looking at the consequences, the result of a particular holding of a particular ruling might be and, you know, either with a view to not rocking the boat too much, either with a view of, I don’t know, not costing the government too much money, not disrupting society in some ways, or in any of that, weighing those practical concerns in some measure, not, not exclusive to everything else, but, but that’s a significant part of, of, of what that kind of jus cares about
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. So you you’ve laid that out very clearly. Before we get into, you know, how each justice ruled on every case, is there a single continuum on which you could map each of the justices? Well, we’re often talking about liberal or conservative or Republican and Democrat. Is, is there a continuum or is it more a scatter shot? There’s so many dimensions of, of the way a justice can look at a case that it doesn’t really map to what we would consider political preferences.
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah, I think, I think it’s too simplistic to call talk about a spectrum or even a three dimensional spectrum, cuz there’s more than kind of three AEs on which one can, can look at the justices or can any, any, any judges methodology in terms of, you know, the, the practical outcomes of their votes, you know, we can talk in shorthand and we do talk in shorthand about, you know, liberals and conservatives. That’s unfortunate because I don’t think any of them make decisions based on trying to implement liberal or conservative policy preferences. You know, that tends to, you know, end up as the case for the, the, the most politically salient controversies. But it’s, it’s, it’s shorthand that, you know, can be useful in talking shortly, but it, you know, I, I, I would certainly not want the public to generally think of them as, as junior varsity politicians ideologically let alone in terms of partisanship.
Ilya Shapiro:
I hate it even more when people talk about the Republican justices or the democratic ones, I sometimes talk about the Republican appointed justices or the democratic appointed justices, which is, is again, somewhat useful shorthand because that’s often relevant and increasingly relevant in modern times because the, the parties seem to have adopted divergent theories of interpretation. But still you know, you, the reason why you’re interviewing someone like me is to, to drill down beyond the, the shorthand that you can in like a tweet or a, a short associated press story about the news of a particular case.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed, you’re you are, are careful when you, in your writing, in your books, in your articles to, to to discourage lazy thinking and reducing everybody to political through the political lens. So let’s again on, on, by way of background, let’s start with some history of how we get rights. We like to think of ourselves as a rights based society those rights foundationally, if we’re talking about the Supreme court, they’re looking to the instantiation of those rights, I, I hope you’ll agree that that starts with the constitution. So let’s talk about, we, we often refer to the first 10 amendments as the bill of rights which by my reading, our, our so-called negative rights or, or natural rights those are the rights we can’t have taken from us. Describe for our listeners, what are we talking about when we talk about fundamental rights or those rights in the bill of rights,
Ilya Shapiro:
Those are separate questions in a sense the legal scholars talk about enumerated rights, which just means listed rights, the first eight amendments say, you know, the first amendment, speech, religion right to petition, right, to assemble second amendment, right. To keep and bear arms et cetera. But the founders were careful to add a ninth amendment that says that the enumeration of these rights is not to deny or disparage others that are retained by the people. And so to the extent that modern jurisprudence, and we’ll get into this a little bit, because that matters in how Dobbs the abortion case and Bruen the second amendment case were decided to the extent that we, you know think that enumerated rights, those that aren’t listed in the first ten amendments are somehow secondary to the ones that are listed.
Ilya Shapiro:
That’s clearly not what the, the original public meaning nor the original intent of the framers. Would’ve, would’ve been, we’ve talked about fundamental rights in a legal sense, not in kind of delay conception of what is fundamental, what’s basic what’s most important, but in the legal sense because of the way that the jurisprudence has evolved over decades, specifically for UN-enumerated rights, those that aren’t courts often ask is it given rights claims that based on something that’s fundamental or is it ancillary? Is it not a core right that we have under the constitution? I don’t think that’s quite the right way to look at it because the there’s no indication that when the framers were instituting the constitutional provisions or especially when the framers of the 14th amendment, the post-Civil War amendments were looking to protect rights you know, they could have, they had the English language, they had the terminology, they could have said, these are the fundamental rights.
Ilya Shapiro:
They didn’t do that. You know, they, the 14th amendment speaks of due process privileges or immunities equal protection. They could have just said, the first eight amendments are now applied to the states, but they didn’t, they spoke in these, these other terms. So the modern jurisprudence has gotten away, I think, from the original public meaning of rights protections. But nevertheless going back to the thirties in a case called caroling products, the famous or infamous footnote four does bifurcate rights effectively into fundamental and non fundamental ones. And that’s why, especially with UN-enumerated rights, claims rights that aren’t explicitly listed in the first eight amendments. That’s what jus tend to think about is, is a particular claim involving a core or fundamental, right?
Joe Selvaggi:
So the, the constitution establishes enumerated rights list them, and then says in the ninth, there are other rights that are not here, but nevertheless our rights as well. You mentioned the 14th. I wanted to go a little bit deeper on that because it does speak it does have influence on some of the decisions that came down this term. I’ll read it. My favorite part of the 14th amendment is from section one, a quote, no state shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall only state deprive a person of life, Liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny any person without a, within his jurisdiction, the equal protection of the law. So effectively, as you’ve mentioned, it says that these liberties or these rights that start or that are protected by the constitution at the federal level also apply to the states say more about the fact that reading more deeply. I, I, for myself, I discovered both. It means that states can’t infringe on rights, but also it has a affirmative obligation to protect rights, as well, say, say more about this, of course the 14th in the wake of the, the civil war and the, and the stain of slavery. But, you know, that’s the context, but say more about what that means.
Ilya Shapiro:
The original constitution only protected us against the federal government. The bill of rights only protected us against violations by the federal government. That’s why the post civil war amendments, the 13th, that outlawed that outlawed slavery, the 14th, which you just read in the 15th, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting that’s known as the second founding because it fundamentally reoriented restructured our constitutional order, such that an individual could go to federal court to enforce his or her own individual rights against state violation. That that was an innovation. So the 14th amendment says that states can’t violate your due process of law or equal protection of the laws or privileges or immunities of citizenship. Again, that’s that, that was a revolutionary type of thing. It, it restructured fundamentally our constitutional order. And so you know, when we’re talking about most of the so-called cultural war issues or rights claims, whether it’s abortion or guns, or same-sex marriage, the things that tend to come up, generally, those are challenges to state laws. And so even in the Bruin case, which we’ll talk about regarding the right to their arms sure. It’s a second amendment case, but it’s really a 14th amendment case because that’s how that right. Applies to the states.
Joe Selvaggi:
And one more, bit of a housekeeping before jump into the cases, the concept of stare decisis, or I think literally means
Ilya Shapiro:
Let the decision
Joe Selvaggi:
Stand by. Yeah. Let, stand by things decided how does that weigh in on the court effectively says, you know, we, we need to look to the past a lot has been alleged that in, in confirmation hearings those who have said that they believe in stare decisis and then changed their mind, your book, I think was very useful in saying while it’s a principle, it’s one that everybody seems to have violated. I don’t know if that’s the right word say more about stare decisis.
Ilya Shapiro:
I think the only two justices on the current court who are consistent with regard to stare decisis are Clarence Thomas and Atlanta Kagan. Thomas I’m answering the question backward because I haven’t defined it yet. I’ll, I’ll get to that. But Thomas basically always prefers to get the law, right. You know, forget, you know, how disruptive overturning the precedent might be and Kagan, I don’t think ever votes to overturn precedent probably because she’s always had an eye on Roe V. Wade. That’s how this concept is often kind of viewed has been viewed through that lens, but it’s the idea that sometimes disrupting the legal architecture or the stability, social stability that kind of disruption is greater and, and, and would be a bigger, wrong than writing the wrong of an erroneous previous decision. And so there, this is a Prudential doctrine it’s not listed in the constitution or anything like that, but it’s the idea that sometimes it’s better to let erroneous precedents stand than to correct it.
Ilya Shapiro:
Just because for example, businesses have been built on those kinds of reliance interests, if you rule a certain way. And all of a sudden, you know, all of fortune 500 companies have to dissolve that’s quite disruptive courts would wanna someone who has a, a, you know, thinking about stare decisis would, would want to avoid that kind of result. And so again, Thomas doesn’t care so much about that. He’s the most consistent in saying I wanna get the law, right. I don’t care if it’s a hundred year old president that lots of people have relied on. I don’t care if it’s last term I’m, I’m gonna vote for what the right law is. Kagan says, no, we, we shouldn’t disrupt. We should build on, on the previous and, and, and things like that. And everyone else is in between and, and is very much fair weather. That is the, the, the, if one of the considerations in stare decisis is how wrong was the previous precedent. Well everyone essentially, other than Thomas and Kegan said, you know, finds precedent that they really like to be not very wrong at all. And, and precedent, they don’t like to be egregiously wrong as the, as the as the standard has evolved.
Joe Selvaggi:
So, okay. Now we’ve set the table, let’s get into the, some of the cases let’s start with the most let’s say controversial, the perhaps I, I don’t know for our listeners, so we’re talk, gonna talk about Dobs versus Jackson women’s health organization, which did indeed explicitly overturn the finding in row which has lasted for nearly 50 years, 1973. Explain the argument and then let’s talk about the way in which Dobs refuted the argument. The argument for Roe. I mean, again, I know these are deep topics, so we’re, you know, these are sort of the quick explanations, but give us a quick,
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah, the rulings themselves are not that complicated. And, and should I wrote a piece in the in the Washington examiner last week saying that they’re, they really shouldn’t be, you can disagree with the various rulings in, in these big, controversial cases, school choice and guns and religion and abortion. But they shouldn’t be seen as, as radical or, or extreme or, or complicated in some way. So the ruling in dos is is simply that there is no deeply rooted right to abortion as justice Alito found in his majority opinion in looking at American history and therefore it’s subject to state regulation rather than some federal baseline. I wouldn’t have decided it quite that way. I think I, I, I do think that Roe versus Wade is without constitutional basis. You know, I would’ve looked at things a, a different way in terms of, as you said, natural rights through the privileges or immunities clause rather than this deeply rooted test that was put in, in a case 30 years ago called Luxford.
Ilya Shapiro:
But, but in any event this even before overturning Roe and Casey, because importantly planned parenthood versus Casey for the last 30 years has been the governing standard for looking at abortion restrictions and regulations. What, you know, Roe put in a, a trimester system and kind of a sliding scale based on viability of the fetus of when states can regulate Casey threw that out and it preserved the right to abortion, of course, but it, it put in an undue burden standard. And, you know, for the longest time, the joke that was that what what’s an undue burden while it’s whatever gave justice Kennedy a headache cause he’s the only one, he was the deciding vote and nobody else knew what, you know, what that actually meant. But this case came along from Mississippi, which had a a law restricting abortion past 15 weeks, I think with exceptions for, for the mother’s health curiously that law is actually more liberal than those laws in place.
Ilya Shapiro:
In most Western European countries, Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, you know, the, the, the list goes on and on. I think only the UK and, and, and the Netherlands have more liberal, less restrictive rules than that. And nevertheless that’s Mississippi’s law. The conventional wisdom before oral argument was that the court would sort of muddle through that this court might eventually overturn Roe, but this would be an incremental step. They’d find a way to uphold the missis, the Mississippi law without overturning Roe. Well, it turns out based on oral argument which changed everybody’s minds about how the case was gonna go. And this was confirmed by the eventual decision. Only John Roberts took that compromise position as it were everyone else, including the advocates for both sides said that the court had to go fully up or fully down meaning uphold or overturn Roe fully.
Ilya Shapiro:
Which was, which was interesting a bit of a gamble I probably for, for both sides advocates. But that’s that, that’s what they said. And, and ultimately that’s what the decision was, was based on first that the right was not deeply rooted in American history such as the modern jurisprudence regarding UN enumerated rights required that kind of analysis. And second principles of stare decisis do not militate for, for maintaining Roe and Casey, despite their lack of constitutional foundation, the dissenting justices, the three more liberal ones to use that shorthand argued mostly on consequentialist and stare decisis grounds, basically saying it would be too much of a disruption after 50 years to, to, to to, to overturn these precedent
Joe Selvaggi:
A as a, a constitutional matter. There is a lot of people who are concerned about this in the most extreme decision, if it, if it is indeed entirely left to the decisions of the states the, the health or the, the life of the mother, I I’m careful it’s not actually the health, or it is the indeed the life of the mother is that constitution protected. In other words, is the constitution recognized an absolute right for mothers to save their own lives in a life threatening pregnancy.
Ilya Shapiro:
We’ll see, I’m sure there’s going to be litigation over this because we’ve, we’ve already you know, less than two weeks after the decision came down, or I guess now it’s, it is exactly two weeks since the decision came down, as we’re recording this the the states have done all sorts of things. And I don’t know if there’s any law that’s been passed that does not have an exception for the life of the mother. But that would be, you know, it’s not that there won’t ever be litigation. Now that Roe is overturned if states acted arbitrarily or applied their restrictions unequally in some way, whether, you know, based on, on race or based on some other arbitrary consideration, then that would be subject to to litigation, or what about fetal abnormalities, or what about you know, there there’s definitions that legislative drafters in the various states could make errors or not foresee fully certain things.
Ilya Shapiro:
There was a hub of a few months ago. I think it was Missouri, or somebody was the way that their draft legislation worked didn’t even allow abortion for ectopic pregnancies that is implantation in the fallopian tubes, which are non-viable and, and by definition, life threatening. And that was a mistake that wasn’t some, I don’t think it was some moral judgment that, that some, you know, extremist lawmaker was putting in, they just didn’t draft it correctly. So you know, we’ll see litigation based on the way that different restrictions work.
Joe Selvaggi:
And I don’t wanna dwell in this case, but just one more issue. The, the Thomas concurrence went a step further in, in saying the, this right didn’t exist. And it was predicated on a I don’t know if you would call it an imaginary or a, a conjured right. Of, of, of, of privacy in this case that those other so-called privacy related rights in more modern cases, those that relate to interracial marriage, gay marriage right to contraception, those things that have been found to be constitutionally protected, it, it, it may undermine the, the foundation of those rulings and perhaps jeopardize those as, as recognized by the constitution. Do you see that, you know, is that a outlier, is Thomas, or is that sort of a, a true, let’s say originalist view of, of these kinds of privacy oriented rights?
Ilya Shapiro:
I, I think it’s, it’s not an outlier to criticize substantive due process because of the way the jurisprudence has evolved. It’s, it’s much more constitutionally sound to protect most substantive rights through the privileges or immunities clause than the due process clause. The due process clause isn’t wholly isn’t entirely procedural. So you know, a well functioning, transparent kangaroo court still violates the due process of law clause. But the way that the jurisprudence has evolved, you know, Thomas is quite right to say that, you know, for example, Roe itself, which was based on an earlier case Griswold regarding the right to contraception found that right to privacy not in the ninth amendment or the privileges or immunities clause there was a concurrence by justice Goldberg about the ninth amendment, but it was about how certain parts of the bill of rights have emanations that overlap making penumbras this very kind of physics, heavy like light beam analysis.
Ilya Shapiro:
And these rights are hidden in those, in those penumbras that that’s the legal term for that analysis is hogwash. So I, you know, I, to the extent that’s what Thomas is saying, I fully agree with that now, the consequences for the application of the right to privacy or some of these other things, that’s, you know, that’s not clear. Thomas himself, I’m sure would uphold some of these rights on an equal protection basis. He himself is in an interracial marriage. I’m sure he’s not trying to invalidate his own his own marriage, but the things like that, or same sex marriage for that matter, I think are more faithfully argued and protected under equal protection than a substantive rights protections, other things like contraceptives or private sexual behaviors say you know, you know, I, my, my own view is that privacy is certainly protected in various ways but substantive process, I think he was correct to identify the weakness there, but for practical purposes you have to note that the majority written by justice Alito and signed by joined by Justice Thomas joined by five members, not Roberts, he only concurred in the judgment, but Alito’s opinion did say that for various reasons, distinguished abortion from everything else, because with abortion at a certain point, there’s a second life in being, there’s a second human who has rights, what that point is.
Ilya Shapiro:
He says you know, courts, judges, lawyers aren’t equipped to point out, which is why he sent it back to the states. But unlike with all these other activities with consenting adults here, there’s a second, right. A second life in being, and finally, I don’t think there’s, the most recent polling about contraceptive shows a desire to ban contraceptives to be in the low single digits in America.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. I don’t wanna dwell on that. So let’s move on another important case Bruen. We actually had an episode entirely entire episode of hub wonk on Bruin. We talked with your former colleague, Trevor burs about the issue. I just wanna ask you in your view, did the ruling I think it was a sixth grade decision, did it follow along the originalist versus consequentialist? In my reading of the dissent, it just said, look if we don’t do something about guns a lot of people die. It didn’t really appeal to some sort of weakness in, in the Bruin case, but rather just sort of you know, an emotional appeal to the consequences of, of holding Bruin.
Ilya Shapiro:
That’s exactly right, Joe, unlike Heller the, the previous second amendment case in 2008 involving the right to keep go guns at home for, for self defense where both justice Scalia’s majority opinion, justice Stevens’ dissent were dueling originalist opinions here. Thomas’s for the majority and this, by the way, we can, we can talk about this. I think this is the, really the term where after 30 years on the bench finally Clarence Thomas is at the, a Apigee of his powers because he’s the senior associate justice. And so in cases like Bruin and Dobs for that matter where the chief justice isn’t fully on board, it’s Thomas who’s either writing the opinion as he did in Bruin or assigning it as, as he did in, but Thomas’s opinion is, is very originalist and Briar’s in dissent is not it, it is consequentialist as you say it. So it’s, it’s different than what Stevens is was in, in Heller 14 years ago.
Joe Selvaggi:
So again, I wanna move on then to the West Virginia versus EPA, I found this very interesting it didn’t get a lot of press, but it’s something we talked about in our, in our earlier episode talking about at what point when Congress delegates power to con to an executive agency, at what point is it obligated to define you know, the limits of its, of its delegation of power? I’m, you know, I, I’m gonna use layman term and, and sort of paraphrase. I think the essence of what you said is the more important the issue or the larger, the mandate, the more the need, the obligation to define that in, in, in the delegation, meaning you can’t just give away huge powers in, in, in, in small ways, you have to be clear. And I think the, the the Supreme court decided against the EPA when regulating power plans say more about what your view of, of that decision was.
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah. This opinion did get some press. It was decided on the last day of the term, an opinion by, by chief justice, John Roberts, and he paired it with another opinion in an immigration case where he ruled for the administration. So he’s trying to be cagey, you know, one for the, the administration one against and the opinion said as you were discussing that for major order called major questions, Congress has to be explicit if it’s giving that kind of awesome power to an agency, what the, what the government here argued starting with the Obama administration, and now with the Biden administration is that if you look at several provisions in the clean air act and you kind of almost like that pin numbers and emanations in the abortion context or the privacy context, if you put these various provisions together, that gives the EPA the power to regulate in this novel way, even though it’s you know, hugely economically significant.
Ilya Shapiro:
And the court rejected that because for regulations that of major questions, whether in terms of economics, in terms of social impact or what have you Congress really does have to speak clearly, we can’t just assume or defer to an agency’s interpretation of its own operative statute in that way. And it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. The court did not as many expected apply or discuss what’s known as Chevron deference, which is deference that judges give to agency interpretations. It simply said we don’t even have to get into that because the statute is, is, is silent. And we’re not gonna implicitly read in these major powers in major questions. Justice Gorsuch wrote a concurrent joined by justice Alito that expound more about giving guidance to lower courts about what a major question is.
Ilya Shapiro:
And that’s an important concurrence because those two Gorsuch and Alito were on opposite sides in a case called Gundy a few years ago, which used yet again, a different doctrine called non delegation. They were on, on opposite sides of applying the idea that Congress can’t delegate legislative power, but here on major questions, which is kind of the flip side of non delegation, they were together. So clearly the court is without having to get into some of these other doctrines using this major question doctrine to limit administrative reach. And so throwing the ball back into Congress’s court and saying, if you really want to have this, you know, awesome major, significant, controversial, clean power plan in place, you’re gonna have to legislate it and take the political hits yourself.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed again, going back to some of the themes in your book, it’s really Congress ought to be doing its job and, and legislating and, and and the executive branch ought to be executing those leg, those laws. I read the Kagan dissent and it was really chilling in that it’s essential argument for supporting the EPA was EPAs full of experts and Congress doesn’t know very much, so experts should be running the show, not elected officials. I, I, you know,
Ilya Shapiro:
As, as well as the kind of Obama pen and phone argument that when Congress won’t act I will, this is too important, an issue, you know, not to have this, this this law making on
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. Oh goodness. I heard my Kennedy school professors applauding Kagan’s point of view. But it’s not one I share. So we’re running outta time. I wanna jump into the, the final. These are sort of the tension of religion in one case is in a school and the other, well, it they’re both school related. One where the a football coach wanted to pray after our game Kennedy versus Bremerton school district, and the, also the school voucher in Maine that could be applied to religious schools. I think let’s just dilate a little bit and, and sort of talk about this idea of we, in the first amendment, we don’t wanna establish a religion, but we also wanna respect the practice of religion. So to share with our listeners, where is that tension resolved? How, how does the state protect your right to exercise your religion without being seen to be establishing that as a, as a religion,
Ilya Shapiro:
Basically where the court is going is that religion does not have to depart the public’s sphere as long as the government isn’t coercing people to, towards a particular religion or religion in general, as long as it’s not discriminating against people, whether that’s in terms of students in public schools or, or other contexts who, who don’t adopt a particular tenant then, you know, if you’re, if people are acting in their private capacity, then the, the government isn’t gonna stop that. And at the same time, when it has institutes programs, it can’t treat religious institutions differently than secular ones which is different than this was discussed in the Kennedy versus Bremerton case. The, the praying coach, the, the lemon test from a case called lemon versus Kurtzman 50 years ago, that talked about an entanglement of religion an entanglement of government with, with religion that effectively had been read to you know, negate any, any, any religiosity, any exercise in the public square justice Gorsuch in the Kennedy case said that that, that lemon had long ago been abandoned.
Ilya Shapiro:
And indeed it hadn’t been used by the court as a governing doctrine in a long, long time. All the juice had been squeezed outta the lemon. So now they were discarding Therin if you will. And conversely with the school choice case. So when Maine created this program of tuition assistance and said, parents could use it to send their kids to, to any, any school of their choice except religious ones. And the court said, look, you don’t have to have this kind of program, but if you do, you can’t treat religious schools differently than, than, than, than secular ones. So that’s, that’s where we are on the state of, of, of religion. And I think it’s tremendously overwrought to say as a lot of media commentators did, or as justice Sotomayor did in her dissent in, in Carson that this eviscerates, the division between the separation of church and state and the separation of church and state itself comes from a case in the early eighties called Everton and, or, sorry, an interpretation of a, of, of, of, of Everson’s line from, I think the, the forties or fifties, and is, it’s more complicated than simply saying, you know religion can’t enter the public sphere and the public sphere can’t enter religion.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’re getting to the end of the show. We we would be Remis. We didn’t mention that we’re getting a a a change of just justices in the new term. We’re losing Breyer who is retiring and we’re getting the newly appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson as his replacement. I think they’re both regarded as again, we shorthand as liberal justices. How do you think her joining the court will change if at all how the courts will decide cases?
Ilya Shapiro:
I don’t know if I can, off the top of my head identify cases where she would vote differently than the justice she’s replacing, her former boss Steven Breyer for whom she clerked. So in terms of vote count, I don’t think things will be very different. You have different specializations, Breyer was famously an administrative law specialist. I’m not sure whether justice Jackson really carved out a niche for herself in terms of substantive areas of law and as Justice White used to say, every justice makes for a new court in terms of their internal dynamics. You know, how convincing will she be? How you know in terms of the social dynamics behind the scenes, which don’t necessarily affect Justices’ votes on major issues, but they can affect the way they interreact. And you know, the dynamic of the court more broadly, will, you know, turn off Chief Justice Roberts, and in effect marginally have him closer to his more conservative colleagues. I don’t know. I think in the short term, we’re not gonna see that much of a difference other than in oral argument, the absence of Justice Breyer’s kind of long meandering, multipart, hypotheticals, and those kinds of opinions that he was known for with kind of a pragmatic multifactor balancing tests.
Joe Selvaggi:
So it would be less about her judicial capabilities or her or her wisdom, but rather her salesmanship how she can influence others either to her position or not alienate others away from her position. That would be more influential than perhaps the how she decides a particular case.
Ilya Shapiro:
I think that’s probably right.
Joe Selvaggi:
All right. We’ve run outta time. I appreciate you being with us now, one last chance to plug your book before we go. I think it’s a must read for those who want to pretend to be constitutional scholars at cocktail parties. Where can our listeners get your brand new paperback book?
Ilya Shapiro:
Sure. I mean, you can go to Amazon of, of course, but you can also type in Supreme disorder.com and that’ll give you lots of options of where you can get it beyond Amazon independent book sellers and whatnot. And also there, you can download for free a 20 page statistical historical appendix of all Supreme court confirmation battles, as well as some lower court ones in the modern era. And in addition to my book, I have my new subs stack to plug. This is a digital platform, did bill newsletter it’s called Shapiro’s gavel, and there you can subscribe for free. I, I, I, I’ve committed to at least one post a week and I’ll have other stuff for paid subscribers. There’s gonna be additional goodies it’s you know, it’s reader supported as they say and you know, we’ll see where we’ll see where that takes us. It’s an interesting thing for thoughts and musings and analysis that I wouldn’t necessarily write up in the pages, the wall street journal or Newsweek, or, or the examiner.
Joe Selvaggi:
Perfect, perfect stuff for those of us who are Ilya, Shapiro groupies. So thanks for that plug. So we’re at the end of our time together, thank you for again, for joining me Ilya. It was great. I really do wish you luck at your new home at the Manhattan Institute.
Ilya Shapiro:
Thanks very much. I I’m you know, come back from vacation, tan, rested, and ready to be in the arena.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of hub won a podcast of pioneer Institute. If you enjoy today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show and pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to hub wonk on your iTunes podcaster, you can now find hub won on YouTube at the pioneer Institute channel. If you wanna make it easier for others to find hub won, it would be great. If you offer us a five star rating or a favorable review, we’re always grateful. If you want to share hub won with friends. If you have ideas for me, or suggestions or comments about future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me. Hub won pioneer institute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of hub.
Recent Episodes
This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Pedro Zamora, executive director of the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation of Greater Kansas City. Pedro and his organization work on initiatives that are crucial to the economic vitality of the area, and they’ve helped more than 4,700 businesses. Immigrants there are having an outsized economic and cultural impact, and so Kansas City is yet another example of how localities can bounce back and benefit from immigrants and refugees, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers podcast.
Guest:
Pedro Zamora is the Executive Director of the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation of Greater Kansas City. He brings over 34 years of leadership experience, in both the corporate for-profit and not-for-profit worlds. Pedro previously held leadership positions in research and development in the telecom industry. In 2007, he founded and served as CEO of Kyland USA, an industrial Ethernet communication manufacturer. Pedro has experience in R&D, product development, traditional manufacturing organizations and has international sales and marketing experience. Selling the company in 2014 allowed Pedro to enter his second leadership chapter as a nonprofit executive. Pedro has dedicated his leadership energies to improve business relationships, and economic impacts of the Latino community and business in the Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Area.
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed and welcome to Jobmakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
I have some really special memories of Kansas city, Missouri there. I had the warmest sweetest churros, the most incredible barbecue, of course, and even gourmet handmade chocolates from a Swiss confectionary topped off by watching a beautiful Chinese dragon boat festival. In 2000, immigrants made about four and a half percent of the Kansas city Metro area population. By 2019 that had grown to 7%. And importantly, the area’s immigrants had $3.5 Billion dollars in spending power – more than 80% of them were in their prime working age. And there were more than 11,000 immigrant business owners. For Pedro Zamora, executive director of the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation of Greater Kansas City, these immigrant entrepreneurs are increasingly crucial to the economic vitality of the area. Not only are they powerful economic drivers and job creators, the wealth of cuisines, cultures and art make the area vibrant, exciting, and flourishing. Pedro and his organization work to develop and implement economic development initiatives that contribute to the quality of life for Latinos in the greater Kansas City area. And to date they’ve helped more than 4,700 businesses and immigrants. They are having an outsized economic and cultural impact. And so Kansas City is yet another example of how localities can bounce back and benefit from immigrants and refugees. As you learn in this week’s Jobmakers podcast,
Denzil Mohammed:
Pedro Zamora, executive director of the Hispanic economic development corporation at Kansas city, Missouri. Welcome to the Jobmakers podcast. How are you?
Pedro Zamora:
I’m doing well this morning, Denzil, thank you for the invitation.
Denzil Mohammed:
So tell us a little bit about the Hispanic economic development corporation and the kind of work that you do and the people that you serve.
Pedro Zamora:
H E D C, the Hispanic economic development corporation, was founded in 1993 for the sole purpose as a pass through entity to receive $30 million of EPA environmental protection agency dollars to clean up a brownfield site, a 26 acre brownfield site in the heart of the Latino community here in Kansas city, Missouri, there were several nonprofit organizations that were doing social work and education and health, but no one was addressing the environmental contamination. That was right in the heart of our neighborhood as a child used to play in that area and throw rocks and break windows and things like that. Little did I know what the toxicity ground we were walking on. And then mayor Manuel Cleaver was a great friend of the Latino community pulled together some grassroot leaders and formed HEDC to give us ownership and the right to organize, to get the community and the business industries to come to the table to talk about what should we do at this location? It was an abandoned railroad maintenance yard. And today it’s home to a high tech warehouse that employs the roughly 600 employees from across the city, about 375 of those employees come from our neighborhood still today.
Denzil Mohammed:
Wow, that’s terrific. And so bring us up to today, the work that you do now, and the kind of impact that you had,
Pedro Zamora:
The Latino population in Kansas city began in the west side and it’s grown into all 17 counties. We, we see a 33% increase in the past census track census that was completed a 33% increase in a 10 year cycle of Latinos migrating into our greater Kansas city metropolitan area. HED C’s responsibility is definitely focused in the entrepreneurship development. We couldn’t do just entrepreneurship development unless we took a snapshot of that individual and got them comfortable with what, where the world’s going today. Online today, we focus on our digital literacy, integrated financial and business training. Our clients don’t come in for one siloed initiative activity it’s integrated and through our modularly designed program where we take the client through a very interesting wake up call of assessing themselves in the first 12 hours of our program, if they come into a 40 hour program, they’re gonna take 12 hours to think about who they really are.
Pedro Zamora:
They’ll turn on the computer and they’re gonna be responsible for capturing their own story and then build out their strategy of where they want to go and who they wanna bring with them are through this model of helping the individual reestablish trust in themselves, trust with our organizations we find a common theme amongst all our clients, and then we create these small cohorts. So these cohorts can now trust one another and stay together and, and become part of the community and create their own community in their community. So if that, if you can see, we’re just trying to put people together to help them support one another and support other folks within the community to elevate them. We don’t market. All our services are done, word of mouth. And we’re pretty busy.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s not uncommon because the immigrant British center has a free English language program. We’ve never had to advertise.
Pedro Zamora:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And
Denzil Mohammed:
We, and we always have a waiting list of several hundred, sometimes over a thousand. So immigrants and, and again, counted to the prevailing narrative of not wanting to do an English, not wanting to integrate immigrants are signing up. Right.
Pedro Zamora:
Well, the interesting part about our focus is we do not want to be known as an English learning facility because our clients don’t have the time to learn and to master the English language because they’re trying to survive as they’re building and scaling their business. They’re surviving as well as their employees. So we just don’t touch the business owner. We touch the employees of the business owner. We have relationships that tell them, bring us in before your restaurant opens up. We’ll give you two hour training and financials, digital literacy communications to the school systems. So the workers are talking to the schools and learning about the students, looking at the reports. So it’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty in depth, the importance in taking 100 words in business finance marketing concepts, and building off those 100 words in these categories has proven and has now taken our clients to well over 2000 words in each one of those categories. So their conversation learning is, is definitely built beyond that.
Denzil Mohammed:
So therefore, describe to me the entrepreneurial ecosystem in areas that you serve, who are the job makers, what kind of businesses do they have? What are they like? Where do they come from?
Pedro Zamora:
Well, well, the high, the high number of job makers are always those fantastic restaurants that we get frequent from time to time. And the though those restaurants are no longer the text me style. You’re, you’re seeing everything from seafood to really unique dishes. We have a lot of local, I call ’em food artists that are coming in with delivering fantastic cuisines that was pre pandemic during the pandemic. They had to rethink themselves. Restaurants got closed, keep in mind. The first round of assistance from the federal government did not include non-US nationals. They weren’t a part of that help assistance. So they had to rethink themselves. So popup restaurants and pop up markets have popped up in our communities across the city in Kansas city, Missouri and Kansas city, Kansas. And it’s a different menu, but the street tacos are still prominent there.
Pedro Zamora:
The second largest industry, we see that we support both with our financial business development training, and as well as our loan portfolio that we lend to through our C D F I fund, we’ve seen a lot of landscaping yard maintenance companies come to fruition. And then the, of course, the third one that’s high in numbers and high employer is our structure field. We, we, our job is to try to move them out of those three high in, in industries and to try to get them into coding or other forms of business work. We’ve are accomplishing this through our integrated digital literacy courses that we teach. We have three courses certified by the us department of labor, as well as our university of Missouri school system, postsecondary educational system. These are career stackable credentials, and they go into financial processing entrepreneurship, financial management, risk management, learning all the Microsoft Excel tools.
Pedro Zamora:
And then we have a third one that is for networking becoming a, a network using these modern skill sets that will help the first generation or a second generation, a family that has a second generation within their, their business model to think of the new industries that they would like to expand in. Now that they’re comfortable with their operating capital, they should be thinking of a secondary market to spread out their risk in earned incomes. What we saw during the pandemic is if you have mom and dad and the children all working in the restaurant, it was very painful during the pandemic. What we did in 2020 was take 77 small businesses that were in the restaurant industries that we knew were not getting support from the federal government on our local reliefs assistance programs. And they spun up some cons. They had to go back. As I mentioned, we’d like to see a move into the technology sector. We took ’em back into the construction market. Now they, the men were now back in the construction field, the women were waiting to see if the restaurants were gonna be able to reinvent themselves and due to go orders as, as the regulations opened up. Now, we’re having these families, these business owners think of how they can bounce their risk of where they’re gonna earn their income, the conversation doesn’t stop there. They’re still looking at the technology.
Denzil Mohammed:
What are some of the success stories that you can tell us about some of your favorite businesses perhaps, or some of the the businesses that really grew into the ways that you wanted them to?
Pedro Zamora:
I would say those 77 families were a great success, but they’re not just businesses. The individuals are ones that we really are making an impact with. And one great success. I can use his first name, Josh. He was 82 when he started working with us, could not read or write in his native language. Spanish had lived in had, had worked in the agricultural field, picking fruits and vegetables his whole life while he was in the United States. And never learned to read or write in English for Spanish. We were introduced him to him during our, a research development phase of our digital literacy program through a parents’ teachers program. He had no children, but he was the only live and survivor of his niece and nephew that his third parents got killed in an auto accident here in Kansas city.
Pedro Zamora:
And Joshua became the the parent to raise these kids. He had to learn real fast, how to extend his skill sets and communication using technology. We were able to teach him how to read and write in English and in Spanish. Joshua is today, he’s probably 85, 86. The kids are doing great in high school today. But he’s dealing with dementia early stage of dementia, but using technology, he keeps his mind refreshed. And that to me, if an is to take an individual who has sacrificed so much and has life to work and grow his assets, his net worth, but then also to be put in a position where of the unknown raising kids it’s an amazing story in how he has been able to communicate better with his doctors, better with extended family members and his community. He’s been a leader. We call him one of our lits, Latino and technology. He’s one of our leaders. He, he gives a great speech, very articulate individual.
Denzil Mohammed:
So a lot of what you’re talking about, tap taps into the American dream, this concept you state explicitly that your organization is an institution that significantly contributes to enabling the Latino community, to realize its full participation in the American dream. How alive is the American dream among the people you serve
Pedro Zamora:
A great question. It is an amazing observing how we go about measuring that. Economically there’s not one individual that we run across. That’s either documented or undocumented that do not wanna show that they’re paying their fair share. And we help them achieve that with our online bookkeeping platform, as well as the financial risk management courses. Not all businesses are perfect. We, it was tough during the pandemic and it was even more important to see how their financials were in order our community, the Latino community, the immigrant community. They trust very few people, but they trust their churches, their families, and they trust the first kid that may go get financing 1 0 1 done at college or high school <laugh> and they become the, the financial leader. What we saw the American dream is live and working, but if they really wanna participate, we gotta get their financials and their tax consequences in order to, and I, I honestly will sit here and tell you that 100% of every person that we talk about in the financial business as an entrepreneur in the Latino community, want to fully pay their way.
Pedro Zamora:
They’re not here to cheat the system. They’re not depending on the system, they can’t get access to the system. So the American dream to them have a good tax return submitted <laugh>. So those are words that I can’t pull out in my head. I, we had a pop up this past Saturday 35 small businesses. The temperature was well in its nineties. Humidity is high, but these folks were having a fantastic time and, and getting a chance to meet some of them for the first time and visit with them. They, they showed their ledgers that they were keeping on their phones and whether they, they were using an on an online FinTech product or not, they were keeping sure they wanted to make sure they were tracking their expenses and their earnings for that day.
Denzil Mohammed:
You raised a really important point there that undocumented immigrants really want to be, to pay their fair share to be on the straight narrow. I remember experiencing that heat of humidity in June, in Kansas city was not pleasant. But I also was there when they had this beautiful Chinese dragon festival one day, I think it was a Saturday in Kansas city. Can you talk about the broader demographics of Kansas city? You mentioned the change in just 10 years in the Latino population and how are the different groups getting along? It’s pretty diverse, right?
Pedro Zamora:
It’s very diverse. We have one sec sector of our community, which is the Northeast of not far from my office here, Northeast it’s called the Northeast neighborhood. Independence avenue has roughly 69 different countries represented on that corridor. It’s about a three mile corridor. And that’s where the immigrants settle. That’s where they start their businesses. They go to these vacant storefronts and they pull their money together and they begin their journey of contributing. And they’re settled by other NA nationalities from their country and who take these old homes. And they start refurbishing these old homes. What happens then is that they they get along together, but what happens other high investors want to come into those communities cuz they see the economic boom that’s taking place there and it’s eclectic. It becomes desirable and they start using their high level dollars and powerful lawyers to come in and work with our city to be, to talk about building other forms of development projects in those communities. So it’s a challenge, it’s a double edged sword. So it’s not the immigrants that don’t get along. It’s the system that once we do good and once we stabilize the community and we uplift a community, then it’s that gentrification steam shovel that comes rolling over right behind us, very close it’s happening faster and faster with us today.
Denzil Mohammed:
One thing that Americans take for granted is the tremendous variety of cuisines and cultures that we have access to. We really take for granted that we can have Thai food tonight and Mexican food tomorrow and, and you know, Ethiopian food the following day the most popular, fast food chain hair is taco bell first crying out loud. Can you speak a little bit to the value of all these? You mentioned all the different kinds of cuisines that we’ve had. I remember having the best chores of my life in Kansas city and then having Peruvian food from somewhere else. What is the value of, of that kinda diversity to the United States?
Pedro Zamora:
It’s see, it’s, it’s an amazing journey to, to come down independence avenue or Southwest Boulevard or Minnesota avenue today in central avenue, these corridors are known for their diverse cuisines and you, you can go from TexMex all the way to enrich seafood dishes out in Mexico and other Latin American countries. We don’t have any national franchise change like the wonderful taco bell you mentioned. And we, we have to go out of our community to go there, which is a blessing. It, it’s a blessing to have everything from a to Z in the cuisine space in these communities. We’re talking about the it’s important because life journey experiences are pretty exciting when you don’t have to leave, you know, you can go five miles and you’re hitting all these very eloquent dining experiences. And that’s important because we all are, are struggling in from the different ethnic groups that we are settling in, but we have one common theme family and creating community. And, and if we can maintain that cultural arts and demonstrate the economic impacts that we bring with that I think folks really find it a journey when they come visit our communities.
Denzil Mohammed:
Your role in immigration story goes back really far back. Would you mind just sort of sharing your immigration story?
Pedro Zamora:
Yeah, I’m, I’m a son of an immigrant family. My, my dad was born in Mexico and brought into the United States, even though my grandmother had already been living in the United States since the early late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds. My grandmother arrived in the late 1890s into Kansas city. She settled here. There was an unrest in Mexico and she was my, my grandfather and her were just victims of being the landowners that were, they had to do something. And they came to Kansas city because of the railroad, the railroad, on my dad’s side, my ancestors are all railroaders on the men’s side. My mom is a third generation, Nebraska and Latina. Who’s in a migrant family. So there’s three generations of migrant workers that finally obtained success and bought farm land in, in Nebraska. And that’s how my grandfather raised 21 children in Nebraska on my mom’s side. So I’m a sibling of 17. I’m one of 17 in my family with my parents.
Denzil Mohammed:
And it’s what makes this country special. It really is. And the fact that we all have these common threads despite of incredibly diverse backgrounds, thank for sharing the, about the diversity of Kansas city and your even your own immigrant story. We all have these immigrant stories, whether they’re short or long Pedro Zamora executive director of the Hispanic economic development corporation in Kansas city, Missouri. Thank you so much for joining us in Jobmakers.
Pedro Zamora:
Denzel, thank you for the invitation. It was my pleasure
Denzil Mohammed:
Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s story on how immigrants are building up Kansas City. Remember you can subscribe to job makers on apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you got your podcasts. And please leave us a review. I’m Denzil Mohammed. See you next Thursday at noon for another Jobmakers.
Recent Episodes:
This Fourth of July week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Dr. Joseph Ellis, Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. They discuss the resurgence of public interest in the Revolutionary and Founding generations due, in part, to his book, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams. Known as the “Atlas of American Independence,” John Adams was perhaps the best educated among the Founding generation. Ellis describes his deep knowledge of classical liberal arts and Enlightenment subjects, including ancient history, political philosophy, and the law, and how it equipped him for intellectual and political leadership. They review Adams’ key experiences and character traits, as the major author of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which served as a model for the U.S. Constitution; his ardent opposition to slavery; and his critical eye for spotting political talent. Lastly, they explore the relationship between Adams and his beloved, talented wife, Abigail; as well as their gifted son, John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. President; and the family’s remarkable dedication to public service. Prof. Ellis concludes the interview with a reading about John Adams and American Independence.
Stories of the Week: In Mississippi, public K-12 students have made greater gains than in any other state, becoming a national model for both practitioners and policymakers alike, as a result of specific reforms implemented by State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright. At least 12 states are relaxing teacher certification rules, including licensure, to address the labor shortage.
Guest:
Joseph Ellis is Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College and among the nation’s leading scholars of American history. The author of eleven books, Ellis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation and won the National Book Award for American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. His in-depth chronicle of the life of our first President, His Excellency: George Washington, was a New York Times bestseller. Ellis’ most recent book, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, was published in Fall 2021. Professor Ellis’ essays and book reviews appear regularly in national publications, such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. Ellis’ commentaries have been featured on CBS, C-SPAN, CNN, and PBS’s The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and he has appeared in several PBS documentaries on early America, including John and Abigail [Adams] for PBS’s The American Experience and a History Channel documentary on George Washington. He received his A.B. from the College of William and Mary, and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University.
The next episode will air on Weds., July 13th, with Jean Strouse, author of the award-winning biography of J.P. Morgan, Morgan: American Financier.
Tweet of the Week:
The Hawaii Space Grant Consortium, a community educational program supported by @NASA, has partnered with schools across the state to implement robotics in the classroom. #EdChathttps://t.co/UGOKp093EJ
— Education Week (@educationweek) June 30, 2022
News Links:
States Relax Teacher Certification Rules to Combat Shortages
“How’d You Do It?” Mississippi’s Superintendent of Education Explains State’s Learning Gains
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] GR: Hello listeners. Welcome back to another wonderful episode of The Learning Curve. I want to say hello to my 4th of July colleague, Cara, who I’m sure had some really good things she was able to do over the July. Fourth holiday weekend. Ours was less eventful than we expected. family hap.
[00:00:41] Last minute change. And so we had to switch our plans, but with that being said I still take time to celebrate the fourth. I understand all the dynamics racial, cultural, cultural, gender, everything else that goes into it. And I do not say that , but I do at least enjoy the fact that we [00:01:00] still live in a country where we have some freedoms that people in other parts of the world cannot.
[00:01:04] Celebrate. So for me, I enjoyed the day, but didn’t get enough barbecue or school time,
[00:01:11] GR: other things
[00:01:13] Cara: oh, that’s good to hear your voice, Gerard. Yeah, actually we had sort of last minute plan change too. We usually spent the fourth with some good friends of ours and just been a lot of travel in our lives lately.
[00:01:23] So we decided to stay local. And it’s interesting that you talk about how important it is to celebrate the fourth. So we actually, we took our kids to a red Sox game and I am shh, not a baseball fan. It’s not like, not something I used. I, I I’ve heard. Yeah. It’s like I had to ask my husband how many, how many innings, how many innings, but a really interesting part of this was Well, first of all, I, don’t listen to the news on weekends much because I like to have sort of my brain free.
[00:01:51] But as many of our listeners know yet another mass shooting in the United States this time on the 4th of July interestingly, I don’t talk to my kids about these things [00:02:00] until we’re in sort of a safer place. But my daughter, my 12 year old daughter, when I asked her, we were all wearing hats, baseball hats, because it’s very hot out.
[00:02:07] And I said, please, you know, take off your. For the national Anthem and Stan, my daughter asked me really seriously things aren’t really good in this country right now. Why should we be, why should we be singing about it? And I said, well, to your point, Gerard, there are a lot of good things still about this country, but boy, oh boy.
[00:02:24] Yep. We’ve got a lot of work to do. And so my kids will be. making their own choices when they’re older about how they wanna handle things. But for now, I, agree with you. We have to especially thinking about those who’ve served. in wars, I know my own grandfather was a world war II vet.
[00:02:38] Many of us have veterans in our lives and it’s just an important day around. We did have a little bit of barbecue, Gerard, not much. tend toward the salad these days, but I wanted to just point out for our listeners before we get into our stories of the. That there’s a pretty good article out recently in the Atlantic by none other than Mitt Romney.
[00:02:56] So Senator from Utah, former governor of [00:03:00] Massachusetts, I know that surprises many people former governor of Massachusetts and former presidential candidate. And I just, Gerard, if you haven’t seen this one, I would highly recommend it to folks. It is called America. Is in denial. And what Senator Romney talks about here is the idea that, you know, we are in many ways, this country’s in the midst.
[00:03:23] Not one, not two but many crises. And nobody’s talking to one another and we’re hunkered down. We talk about this a lot. We’re hunkered down in our own little corners, blaming the other side for problems that are of everybody’s making. interestingly he, quotes here. He says, he’s reminded of the old adage that for evil to thrive only requires good men to do nothing.
[00:03:43] So I was reading that this morning, Jordan, and it was really sticking with me a lot. Especially as we think about. Really important holiday for our country, but the fact that it’s been an increasingly tough couple of years, so not to get too, too depressing here, [00:04:00] but I think that it’s an important holiday to reflect upon as well as just to celebrate with fireworks and heart clogging foods.
[00:04:07] So that’s my take. I, do have another less depressing story of the week. I actually have a happy story of the week chart but I know, I know you’ve got some good stuff
[00:04:16] GR: You wanna kick us off or do you want me to go first? Yeah, no. And by the way, I found the MI Roney article. I will check it out.
[00:04:23] I’ve been a, fan of his work and people also forget he’s a founder of Bain, so he’s. Yeah. Also an entrepreneur. So I would check
[00:04:30] Cara: this out. Yeah. And just an all around really smart guy and a leader, I would say. Okay. So here’s my, here’s my happy story of the week. It’s bittersweet actually, because this is about Mississippi and somebody, I believe that, you know, Dr.
[00:04:43] Carrie Wright, who has been state chief in Mississippi for almost. Decade, Gerard let that marinate for a minute. Almost a decade. This woman has been leading the state of Mississippi’s education system and she’s leaving. and the, title of this article, this is from ed next. It’s by, it’s an interview with [00:05:00] Robert PIO and it’s entitled how’d you do it.
[00:05:02] Mississippi’s superintendent of education explains state learning gains. Now we’ve talked about Mississippi on this show before they have gone from much like Florida did right before it. Interestingly, they’ve adopted many of the same reforms, but they have gone from being dead last in the nation on a number of measures.
[00:05:19] But boy, oh boy, especially on reading to really showing dramatic gains in the next couple years. I know I am personally watching to see, I don’t think anybody has super high expectations for the next round of nap scores, nor does anybody think that they’re gonna be maybe a reliable indicator Of what kids know, given everything that we’ve been through in the past couple years, but I will be really interested to see the extent to which Mississippi’s results.
[00:05:44] Keep sort of a pace and or if there’s less slippage in some of these states where we’ve seen meaningful growth in past decade than in other states, but to get to Dr. Wright and her pretty amazing tenure, you know, PIO asks her a really, I think, great set of questions.
[00:05:59] And he [00:06:00] asks her questions that have everything to do with like, you know, how is it that you. Got kids reading well answer. They passed an early literacy law, which means that in Mississippi kids are learning in a curriculum that is based in gasp the science of reading because yes, we actually do know that there’s a science based way.
[00:06:18] a proven way to teach kids to read. And it relies on phonics, which is out of Vogue in some circles since remains out of Vogue in some circles. I know it was out of Vogue when I was a kid and my mom taught me anyway. She was always appalled. That our schools were not teaching phonics. But there were some controversial steps too, that they did with the reading program.
[00:06:34] And that is when kids in Mississippi, aren’t reading on grade level by grade three, with some exceptions, they will repeat grade. And it’s called, it’s not a punishment it’s retention because we have really great data to show that if kids aren’t reading on grade level by grade three, man, the outcomes are not.
[00:06:51] it’s a really important sort of milestone for children. So that’s, that’s one of the things that Mississippi did, but I think that [00:07:00] the way I would like the way I would just look large, talk about what Dr. Wright says she did. She just and I’m sure you know, her Gerard. She’s quite frankly, prep, maybe one of the last of what I would call the old school reformers.
[00:07:12] She believes in the kinds of things that are now going out of Vogue, but that really helped. They certainly here in Massachusetts and in many other states helped kids make gains, helped move the needle just a little bit for kids in some states. And that’s sort of this mix of. Actual accountability.
[00:07:28] What I like to call like a mix between support and accountability. So accountability, not just the hammer, that, oh, you’re doing badly there are all these myths out there that under no child left behind, right. When schools didn’t perform money was taken away. Not true, but that when we shine a light on schools that aren’t serving kids well, that we need to go in and give folks the right support.
[00:07:49] One example in Mississippi would be reading coaches everywhere, man, to get kids to read, not only were they teaching in the science of reading, not only were they helping kids to read on grade level by grade three, but [00:08:00] they equipped their districts with reading coaches, reading coaches, reading coaches, all of them highly trained.
[00:08:05] And so that’s part of what helped Mississippi realized gains both in reading and, in math though, reading is really their success story. And Dr. Wright talks in this article about just the importance of data. Like actually using data. And, you know, especially in the past couple years, I fear that we’re in a place where, well, the data aren’t reliable and the data aren’t gonna tell us the data is still the data they’re gonna tell us something.
[00:08:28] Yeah. They might tell us a lot of stuff that we don’t wanna hear, especially post pandemic, but I’ll tell you what places like Mississippi and Florida. Decades ago before they really saw a great increase in NAPE scores. They were seeing a lot of data that they really didn’t wanna see. So it’s about confronting that data.
[00:08:45] The other thing that strikes me about Dr Wright’s tenure that really comes out in this article is that, let me repeat. This woman has served the state of Mississippi for almost a decade. That is, you know, Gerard you’re a state [00:09:00] chief and state chief you’re formative two states, right. State chiefs.
[00:09:03] It’s often a political position sometimes. You’re gonna be out based on who’s in office and Punic asks her in the article, did it help that you really Mississippi right as just, it’s a, it’s kind of a one party state as much as Massachusetts is dominated by the democratic party, Mississippi tends to be very Republican.
[00:09:21] And he asked her, like, did that just always get people on board with what you wanted to do? Could you pass any legislation you wanted? And she said, absolutely not. Let’s not assume that that just because somebody votes a certain way, that they’re gonna really prioritize the things that I need them to prioritize.
[00:09:35] But I think that for me, the thing about her tenure that sticks out is a consistent approach over time. So a decade of saying. We’re gonna teach kids to read in this way. We’re gonna make sure that kids can read this way. By third grade, we’re gonna shine a light on underperforming schools and go in and support them.
[00:09:54] That consistency. We saw it to some extent in Florida, we have seen it in [00:10:00] Mississippi. , we see it in two few places these days, Gerard. And so I think we can only hope. That Mississippi and the great staff that Dr. Wright has cultivated will find a way to sort of, carry out the reforms that she has put in place and not, move incrementally forward, but not reverse pace and what we know works.
[00:10:22] And I dare say, That if some other states, the one I’m sitting in too would, would, have an approach that is less political and about policy churn. And one that’s really focused on consistently trying and seeing what works and then only double backing when it’s clear that something doesn’t work that that’s the way to go for kids because she’s served now an entire generation of kids and they’re better for it.
[00:10:44] So, you know, Dr. Wright, Gerard, what are your thoughts?
[00:10:48] GR: Well, first of all, let me congratulate her on. Graceful exit from that position it is a position where some state chiefs do not exit with grace. Some are pushed out, pulled [00:11:00] out, some are, , dragged through the media mud. And she didn’t have that.
[00:11:03] And that says a lot about her but also the environment in which she works in the last time we were together in person. We were on a panel together talking about accountability and standards. The third person on the panel was at that time, the Wisconsin commissioner of education Tony Evers, who’s now the governor.
[00:11:22] And when you mentioned staff, she had a number of people from Mississippi who were there, two of them. We knew each other through mutual friends. But she talked about the importance of having good people in the right place. Being a state, chief, being a state secretary, you do a lot of the face forward work.
[00:11:42] You’re ultimately responsible for what takes place internally, but you gotta have really good people behind. You and around you. So I’m glad you mentioned staff. She’s got a lot to leave on in terms of, of good area. And I’d also like to say she spent time working with groups outside of Mississippi or these headquartered outside of [00:12:00] Mississippi.
[00:12:00] And one person that comes to mind is Peggy Brookins. Uh, Who’s a president and CEO of the national board for professional teaching standards. She worked with the department of ed, the governor, legislators and others. More board certified teachers into the right zip codes and county areas in Mississippi to make that happen.
[00:12:18] So, she actually could be a a case study to follow because again, staying nearly a decade while John King in Louisiana, I believe was close to seven years, you had combined a number of years for Hannah. So there’s a good case study that someone could write or maybe in the position of writing.
[00:12:34] Congratulations to her and a great feel, good story for one of our state chiefs. Well, Kara speaking about education commission of the states again, last place I saw Dr. Wright. My story of the week is from education week and Matt line will, is the author it’s titled. States relax, teacher certification rules to combat shortages, a subject that we discussed before.
[00:12:56] But what we haven’t discussed before is the education week [00:13:00] and education commissions of the state’s studies, where they’ve actually not only looked at what people are saying, but they’ve actually looked at legislation and they’ve identifi that some states are either amending the law or considering to.
[00:13:13] in order to combat the teacher shortage. Now you and I know that for nearly a decade, the number of people who were rallying to become teachers did. So, at a smaller level, percentage wise, and we’ve seen, you know, in the last 30 years, so there was a slow drip decline. Time naturally with the pandemic, a couple of things resulted from that one, a number of teachers who saying I’m going to retire or leave the profession all together.
[00:13:39] And number two, some who said they’ll stay, but just wasn’t sure how long they would do so. And so to combat some of that law markets got together, both Republicans and Democrats and said, we’ve gotta figure out an independents. We’ve gotta. Figure out what to do. And so in this article here are a few states who are trying to address this.
[00:13:59] So [00:14:00] let’s take my former home state of California the legislators and the golden state voted last year to allow teacher candidates to skip two exams. First, the basic skills test, second, a subject matter exam. And this will occur if. They have taken college approved courses. So that’s California.
[00:14:17] Well, let’s go to Oklahoma. The governor there assigned a bill this past may. And with that legislation now as law of the land for Oklahoma, it removes a requirement for teacher candidates to pass a general education examination that covers communication, critical skills and computation, lawmakers, and state of.
[00:14:37] Said the exam was redundant and it actually presented a financial barrier to a number of teachers. So in Missouri, it state board of education voted earlier this month to actually grant teacher certificates, to test takers who score within one standard era of measurement. So. So when you’re looking at a standard error of measurement in the past, some people missed the cut score.
[00:14:59] Well, under this new [00:15:00] rule, they’re trying to make some exceptions. So the education department says 550 teachers will benefit from this policy change. 80% of them who were working toward certification in one or more of the state’s top 15 up 15 shortage areas. And so at least there they’re making a move with the cut score or really measurement in Alabama.
[00:15:21] The state board of education also is considering looking at how to assess teachers based upon standard error measure. So with Alabama, they said, guess what? Nearly 1,200 teachers in the state scored one standard error measure below the passing score between 2019 and. 21. So if they decide to change that the way that Missouri did then nearly 1200 teachers would find themselves in the classroom.
[00:15:49] So from. Legislative standpoint. And from a regulatory standpoint, be board of education, they decided to make a move well not everyone’s excited about that. And [00:16:00] so one person is Heather pesky, who is the president of the national council on teacher quality. Meaning if you know, it’s a Waston based thing tank that calls for more rigorous teacher preparation.
[00:16:10] And so according to Heather, she says, I don’t understand why our response to concerns about shortages, that we have to have a major policy reaction that lowers standards to reentry. And she goes on further to say that endorsing an option that asks less of teachers in terms of their contact knowledge means you’re gonna shift the burdens onto students.
[00:16:34] And she would further talk about what we could look at that was different now. What she did say is that there is a five year pilot in New Jersey where not only are they going to modify certification rules for teachers, but for the teachers, they do. They’re actually gonna watch over five years to see what’s gonna happen.
[00:16:51] She said, while it’s not an ideal program, at least waiting five years, following the research, seeing what works, what does not is a good [00:17:00] compromise, but she’s pretty clear that this is gonna fall on students. Now naturally, when we have convers. About test scores. And we know that there’s debate in federal courts regarding affirmative action.
[00:17:09] Action. The question is, well, why aren’t students of color doing as well as their white counterpart. So in this article, some experts have identified reasons why this is the case. Some questions that tests might be culturally biased. Others say the candidates of color may in fact have test anxiety.
[00:17:25] Fees to take the test and we take the test could be prohibitive. And of course, systematic educational inequalities across time has made some students of color less prepared as their white candidates. Students of color is probably too large of a phrase to really look at what we’re.
[00:17:44] GR: discussing is that including Asian students and even with Asian students, these Japanese Hmong versus Chinese if we’re saying black students is that black students is Haitian students, Jamaican Nigerian students.
[00:17:55] So I think we can unpack this. This has been something I had to deal with when I was in [00:18:00] Florida as related to stem entry exam. We had to make some tough calls. So this is a really interesting topic. It’s tough. I think that the lawmakers are trying to do something that’s different. I think Heather’s onto something you have experience having worked in this area before.
[00:18:16] What are your thoughts?
[00:18:17] Cara: Oh, so many I did. I worked in, teacher training at the national academy of advanced teacher education for many years. And we focused on retaining high flying teachers, which. is a part of the conversation about teacher shortage. That seems to get completely left outta the equation.
[00:18:35] We seem to be focusing on new teachers and pipelines and stuff, which is all well and good, but I am very, very concerned. the teachers that are leaving, many of them are the ones that are close to retirement. Many of whom know what they’re doing, many of whom would serve as mentors and models for incoming teachers.
[00:18:50] Are we gonna have I’m not to be ageist. Are we gonna have schools full of 22 year olds teaching who haven’t, who haven’t passed a basic. Exam that proves that they have basic [00:19:00] subject matter knowledge. Listen, I think I agree with Heather pesky, who was at the Massachusetts department of education for a very long time and, by all counts as excellent.
[00:19:08] No doubt. There are things about these certification exams, that could be changed and we have plenty of evidence to show that certification. Self does not necessarily correlate with teacher quality, but that doesn’t mean that the basic exams can’t tell us something. So I just want real quick draw, because I know we don’t have a lot of time.
[00:19:29] I just wanna tell you, I have a vivid memory of a high school science teacher who showed us videos of rollerblading was really cool in the late eighties and early nineties. When I was in high school who shoulders rollerblading video. Like four or five days a week because here’s something guy didn’t know a thing about science.
[00:19:47] like, I have nightmares for the children of this country who will be, , learning from teachers who, if you can’t pass a basic content test in your subject area. I do think that we need to ask some really [00:20:00] tough questions and I would agree that instead. thinking about ways. Yeah. We’re gonna be in crisis, but lowering the bar.
[00:20:06] Isn’t the only way to get folks into the profession. And by the way, lowering the bar doesn’t mean more people are going to come into a profession that in too many places still doesn’t pay well in too many places. Teachers are asked to be all things to all, people. So I don’t know that that’s necessarily a magic bullet.
[00:20:22] We do know that there are alternative routes to certification that work and yes, some of those. Testing requirements among other things, but there are other ways to evaluate or, ask a candidate to take a test into their tenure, six months into their tenure a year into their tenure. A good principal is gonna know if a teacher’s worth salt, if a good principal is evaluating in the way they should.
[00:20:44] And asking somebody to. A basic competency test, I don’t think is too much while at the same time we evaluate those tests for exactly the things you mentioned, whether it’s cultural bias or barriers to entry because of fees, et cetera. I’m not denying that those things exist, but this [00:21:00] conversation is frightening to me.
[00:21:02] I just talked about, States that have come up on Nate scores and too many haven’t and one of the reasons, so one of our answers to the pandemic is gonna be just like let’s, if you breathe, please come and be a teacher. Sorry for, you know, I’m not saying that folks who can’t pass an exam are terrible.
[00:21:18] They might need other supports, but I think it writ large. We need to look at this much more deeply. So I’m interested to see what the New Jersey study bears. And I certainly hope we don’t let go of accountability in this country because if we do, we’re gonna have no way to tell. Whether or not teachers that are being let in without a certification exam are able to do the job or not.
[00:21:36] So I don’t know, Jared, maybe I’m just feeling salty today. I feel like I don’t have a lot of nice things to say but that’s my take on your story, my friend,
[00:21:45] GR: and a great take, indeed.
[00:21:47] Cara: All right. Well, Gerard coming up right after this, we are gonna be speaking to give this another Pulitzer prize winner, professor Joseph Ellis, speaking to us about John Adams and American independence.
[00:21:59] [00:22:00] Given the moon I’m in, I am eager to talk about this and hear what this gentleman asked to say, coming up.
[00:22:43] Listeners help us give a warm welcome to Joseph Ellis. He is professor emeritus of history at Mount Holyoke college and among the nation’s leading scholars of American history. The author of 11 books. Ellis was awarded the Pulitzer prize for founding brothers, the revolutionary generation, and won the national [00:23:00] book award for Americans Sphinx, the character of Thomas Jefferson, his in-depth Chronicle of the life of our first president, his excellency, George Washington was a New York times.
[00:23:10] Best seller Alice’s most recent book. The cause the American revolution and its discontents was published in fall 2021 Professor Ellis’s essays and book reviews appear regularly in national publications, such as the New York times, the Los Angeles, times the wall street journal, Chicago prune, new Republic and the new Yorker Ellis’s commentaries have been featured on CBS.
[00:23:32] CSPAN CNN. And PBS’s my favorite. The news are with Jim lair and he’s appeared in several PBS documentaries on early America, including John and Abigail Adams for PBS’s the American experience and the history channel documentary on George Washington. He received his AB from the college of William and Mary, not far from where Gerard sits right now.
[00:23:53] And he earned his ma and PhD from Yale university, professor Ellis, welcome to the
[00:23:58] show.
[00:23:59] Professor Ellis: It’s [00:24:00] really a pleasure to be with you.
[00:24:01] Cara: We’re really happy to have you here, especially right after independence day holiday here in the us. So let’s get right to it because you have done a lot of work that we’d like to learn about.
[00:24:12] So over the past 30 years, your writing has really helped to lead this major resurgence of public interest in the revolutionary and founding generations. I mean, even, even my kids can now name All of the founding fathers, which I, I credit to this resurgence and of course, to Hamilton among other things.
[00:24:31] But in addition to your book, I love this title, passionate Sage, the character and legacy of John Adams. That book has greatly enhanced the reputation and fame of the Atlas of American independence. So as we have just celebrated the 4th of July, could you please talk to us about why John Adams should be on our minds?
[00:24:51] Professor Ellis: John Adams is the most outspoken, candid self revealed member of the founders. And when I first started [00:25:00] trying to write a history of the founding, I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but it turns out that to what I was doing. I started with Adams and the book. You mentioned passion at Sage.
[00:25:10] In part, because of that and part, because of how it influenced me, I realized that my major interpretive posture was we’ve got to recover the founders as human beings who are imperfect creatures in the same way that we are and get away from the mythology. And the notion that they’re inspired by the gods that really does no justice to their achievement.
[00:25:35] And after all, if they were Demi gods, what in heaven’s name would we have to learn from them? And John Adams is the most, as I said, Candid and outspoken of the founders who exposes his humanity in his diary, in his correspondence. And if you’re a biographer as, I guess I am a historian biographer that you need somebody to give you [00:26:00] material that brings the, person to life.
[00:26:02] That is part of the historical record and the Adam’s historical record to include his unbelievable correspondence with Abigail is the most extensive self revealed deeply interesting and lyrically impressive of any correspondence among the founders. So those are all reasons why I find this man, the most worthy of our attention and.
[00:26:26] In some ways he’s emblematic of the very human beings that we sometimes mythologize. Hmm.
[00:26:35] Cara: and you’ve also discussed in your books, how Adams was, he was really among the best educated of the founding generation, especially in terms of his knowledge of ancient history and political philosophy.
[00:26:45] Mm-hmm . So could you tell us a little bit about his education and I’m really curious to know how it compared to other founders and how, you think that assisted in their political leadership.
[00:26:58] Professor Ellis: Well, the founders as [00:27:00] a group, it doesn’t true for all of them are classically educated, meaning that they went through courses in Latin and Greek, and they all believe that the ancient world of Greece and Rome contained wisdom that they could draw upon.
[00:27:15] And Adams is probably the best read of all the founders. And that’s saying something, cuz Jefferson was extremely well read too. And so was Franklin. Washington was not among all the founders. Well, let’s put it this way. Adams went to Harvard. Jefferson went to William, Mary Washington, went to war.
[00:27:35] And his own education occurred in battle and in war in action mm-hmm . But I think that the values that the founders carry out of the classical period forgive you an example. Adams is made head of war in ordinance in June of 1776, just before the declaration. He’s the equivalent of the secretary of war for the country.
[00:27:57] And the first thing he does is he write his friends at Harvard [00:28:00] and says, send me all the books you count on military history, especially through acidities on the pian war. And in two acidities he finds wisdom that he gives to Washington and Washington’s staff about how to fight British in the war.
[00:28:15] Don’t attempt to defeat them in the open battlefield. You cannot win a war against the British army on a conventional battlefield. You must fight what he calls a war of posts, meaning it’s not quite a gorilla war, cause they are a conventional army, but avoid conflict. Except when you have a decided advantage because, and this is the big insight.
[00:28:38] We don’t have to win the war. The British have to win the war. We have only not to lose the war, which is much easier. And therefore it , comes from acidities and is discussion of the PE pian war. And an insight that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. And it affects the outcome of the revolution.
[00:28:58] Cara: That’s really fascinating to think [00:29:00] about. And something that I didn’t know, we have only not to lose the war rather than win it. And that’s fascinating thinking. Um,
[00:29:07] Professor Ellis: It is. I mean, if you think about it, that it’s an insight that People fighting us in Vietnam realized.
[00:29:13] And it was one of the reasons that was gonna be really difficult for us. But the British never understood this and. At any rate. And the book I’ve recently written is talks about this to some extent the book called the cause. And Adams’ insight here is, and when, when he’s debating the British officials on one occasion who are just won a big battle in New York and Manhattan and are preening about it, he says We just want a small little portion of America and that it’s like the crusade. He says Christianity went to the middle east, presuming it was gonna take over and look what happened to them. Mm-hmm and so he’s always drawn on historical models to inform his own behavior in his own policy, in the.
[00:29:57] Cara: I would imagine that some of today’s leaders would do very well [00:30:00] to be reminded of this, especially . I think we need
[00:30:02] Professor Ellis: a historian in the presence of any major strategic decision to try to tell us what, we have to learn from the past. It’s,
[00:30:09] Cara: it’s really fascinating to think about in the current context.
[00:30:11] Thank you for that So here you are a professor Mount Holyoke here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I am recording from Newton. Pioneer is in Boston and John Adams, of course, major presence here in Massachusetts author of the 1780 constitution. One of the world’s oldest functioning written constitutions, and it served as a model for the us constitution, which we’ve been talking about at least at my dinner table a lot as of late.
[00:30:39] Could you talk to us a little bit about. Are there unique features of the Massachusetts constitution. And we’re really curious to hear a bit about the famous education clause, which I’ve studied education for a couple decades now. And, you know, the clause that says to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences Adams [00:31:00] went out of his way to include that in our founding document.
[00:31:03] Can you talk about those things?
[00:31:05] Professor Ellis: sure Adams single handedly wrote the Massachusetts constitution in late 1779 when he was just back from France. And he’s had to go again soon thereafter, Abigail did read drafts of it as he was doing it. The distinguishing feature of the Massachusetts constitution was as a model for a Republic.
[00:31:26] And there wasn’t a clear model for Republic until that time, the state or then colonial governments were somewhat models, but he is providing a model of a government in which power does not flow from above, from God to a Monarch and then downward from there. But upward from that group called the people.
[00:31:48] And it will be filtered through certain branches of the government to purify it because the people are often ill informed. And so the [00:32:00] distinguishing feature of the Massachusetts constitution is there three branches, an executive branch, a legislative branch and that there must be two houses.
[00:32:09] In the legislative branch, what we now call Senate and a house. And the third branch is the judicial branch is discussion of the executive branch is something that Abigail criticized him on and he didn’t change it in , his version, the president or the chief. Could overrule any decision by the legislature and could himself or herself later on, not be overruled.
[00:32:36] Abigail thought it was that smelled like monarchy and would be criticized for that. And she was right. Because when the Massachusetts legislature took the document, that’s one thing they changed. It’s the only major thing they changed in the document. He also is talking about a judiciary that has considerable power.
[00:32:57] Doesn’t quite look like the current [00:33:00] Supreme court, but it comes pretty close. So it is a model for what will eventually become the us constitution. And within its structure is the presumption of some sort of balance of power. That is to say the branches of government will govern and control each other.
[00:33:19] and that’s a, normally that’s associated with James Madison and Madison deserves credit for it in Philadelphia during the constitutional convention and the ratification process, because it’s a point he keeps making, but the idea itself originates with Adams. and I. All of your listeners should go to Quincy and go through the house and the library there, and they have on display, version of the Massachusetts constitution.
[00:33:48] And they have, and they talk to you about what it’s meaning is there. And it’s really a good show and worthy of your time.
[00:33:55] GR: Well, professor, as we think about the 4th of July and what it means [00:34:00] to. Country right now, particularly at this time we’re a number of cultural wars going on. There’s some who say that we shouldn’t celebrate the fourth or we shouldn’t celebrate the founding members of our country in part, because all of them were slave owners and you and I, both, all of them were not slave owners.
[00:34:15] Professor Ellis: Yeah, Adam, John Adams was not. Yeah. Exactly. And
[00:34:20] GR: so, yeah, I I’d love for you to talk
[00:34:22] Professor Ellis: about that. It is a huge question that dominates the profession now in ways that are difficult to negotiate without sounding partisan on one side or the other. I guess what I’d say is that. The founding area is the big bang in the American political universe.
[00:34:37] Adams is one of the central sources of the explosion. And it fundamentally changes the contours of Western political thought. As I said, with power not flowing down from God, to the people, but upward from the people. And That there are huge achievements here during the founding.
[00:34:53] One of which is a separation of church and state, which had never occurred before, also unprecedented in that [00:35:00] sense and the creation of a nation size Republic, which had never existed before it was assumed that republics only existed in small towns or small areas like Greek city. Those achievements.
[00:35:12] However, rest aside, two major failures. One is the failure to reach just accommodation with the native Americans. And the other is to put slavery on the road to extinction. Why they failed on those accounts is worthy of serious discussion. I don’t think that especially the slavery issue can all be avoid.
[00:35:32] I’m currently working on the next book, which is addressing this very question. Was the failure to end slavery, a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean tragedy. Was it impossible to achieve despite any kind of leadership embedded as the will of the gods in American history? Or was it something that could have gone the other way with decisions made that weren’t made, et cetera?
[00:35:58] I think that is a [00:36:00] debatable issue now. But I also think that the attempt to interpret the founders exclusively through their failure misconstrues the greatest political generation in American history. and I just think that Adams is himself an example of a person who never owned a slave.
[00:36:17] Who is obviously one of the most primary figures here. But this is a debate that we ought to have it. , we shouldn’t attempt to avoid it. And Adams himself would say that, you know what Adams believed on the slavery. Was slavery was fundamentally incompatible with the values on which the American revolution was based.
[00:36:38] He said that clearly, most of the other prominent founders agreed, but you could not attack it frontally right away. Because as soon as you did that, you split the union. And if you split the union during the war, you probably lost the war. And if you split the union during the constitutional convention, you never got a nation.
[00:36:59] [00:37:00] So that let’s delay it into the future until we’re a solid secure Republic and then deal with it. He didn’t realize that the clock was running out. He couldn’t foresee the cotton gen. And as a result, when he’s an old man in 1820, he says to his son, John Quincy, this is after the Missouri compromise that I have not attacked slavery during my time for the very reasons I just mentioned, but it is clear now that Virginia’s not gonna take the lead on this as I hope they would.
[00:37:33] And you go get. And John Quincy’s career from then on is a predominant anti-slavery direction. So it’s a complicated question. It’s one that we need to talk about, but it’s one in which the overall achievement of the founding generation cannot be and must not be obscured.
[00:37:53] GR: So here’s a question.
[00:37:55] John Adams had a good, critical eye for identifying, great talent. [00:38:00] For example, we nominated George Washington to lead the continental army, right Jefferson to draft the constitution and John Marshall to become the chief justice of the Supreme court. Could you talk to us about the kind of political leadership Adams admired as well as his sharper views regarding the political figures and ideas?
[00:38:15] He
[00:38:15] Professor Ellis: Yeah, you’re right. Those three men, you mentioned Washington Jefferson and Marshall are obviously crucial decisions. When asked about white nominated Washington, he always told the joke. He said, because Washington was always the tallest man in the room. And as far as Jefferson’s appointments drafted the declaration, the, committee that drafted it, initially thought that Adams was gonna draft.
[00:38:39] Adam said, no, I have earned too many enemies in the debates over independence. And therefore I’m somewhat controversial. And, he also thought maybe Franklin would do it. Franklin said, no, he never wrote anything that would be edited by a committee. And so that it ended up being Jefferson.
[00:38:57] Marshall was one of his so-called midnight [00:39:00] of appointees. He really liked Marshall because Marshall had served as his secretary of state during his presidency. he was also a Virginia who could speak to a larger constituency. But I think that. There are people within the generation that Adams really was highly critical of too.
[00:39:18] Very good people. I mean, he thought that Hamilton was a dangerous monarchist. That’s probably not fair to Hamilton, but he thought that Tom Payne was a radical who was good at tearing down, but not good at building up and that there was conflict among the founders. And the personalities temperaments of the founding generation.
[00:39:40] And then in some sense the different disagreements within the founding generation constitutes an inherent sense of checks and balances. Diversity in the full sense of that term is represented there. And Adams, for example, and Jefferson on different sides of the revolution after the revolution is over and [00:40:00] understanding what it was.
[00:40:01] So that. personalities and personal temperaments were not at all compatible on all these occasions and Adams himself regarded the conflict among the different founders as the source of strength. Adams’ favorite form of conversation was an argument. And in the dialogue between Adams and Jefferson in their Twilight years, you see this clearly.
[00:40:25] So. He did recognize talent. went to his grave thinking that Washington was the founding, his father of them all, but that he worried that Washington, what he called these pilgrimages to Mount Vernon, that Washington was becoming a kind of Saint like figure and that worried Adams, he didn’t.
[00:40:45] Any of his fellows, including himself to be regarded as above human frailty. And especially in his latter years, he’s critical of the way in which world seems to be. It seems that new nations require [00:41:00] mythical heroes. For the same reason that religions require supernatural profits and he didn’t like that he wanted the founding generation to be seen.
[00:41:10] As a collection of ordinary men brought together in a great crisis. That forced, probably the most consequential crisis in American history. And that crisis brought out of them leadership qualities, which otherwise would’ve never come into Adams. Would’ve just been a normal lawyer in, the Boston area in Washington, just been in a Virginia Squire.
[00:41:31] They were created by the revolution and they were not created by.
[00:41:35] GR: You mentioned Abigail Adams earlier. You also talked about their son, John Quincy Adams sixth president of the United States. Mm. And the letters they wrote, in a 20, right. An article that I published, I actually have a quote from a letter that Abigail wrote to.
[00:41:50] John August 14th, 1766, where she said, if we mean to have hero statements and philosophers, we should have learned women. And so, they [00:42:00] were a powerful couple or a power couple, I guess, in today’s terms, could you discuss with us this history, changing family and their enormous sense of patriotic duty and their dedication of public service?
[00:42:12] We should all
[00:42:13] Professor Ellis: it’s all true. It’s all true. It’s hard to exaggerate that the correspondence between John and AGA, which in the published form is approximately 1300 letters. Is the most fully revealed marriage, certainly in the revolutionary era. And I would make the case that the Abigail John correspondence is the most impressive intellectually and stylistically impressive correspondence of any pair of prominent leaders in American history.
[00:42:44] ABI. Nobody’d use the word first lady then I think that was first used with regard to uh, do Madison, but that she was a equal partner with John. And there’s not another woman in American history who is the first lady who [00:43:00] duplicates her at all until you get to Eleanor Roosevelt. She’s a force I would say that if that listeners ever just get a copy that’s in paper, back of the two volumes on their correspondence in 75, 70. It’s unbelievable. The honesty the connection between intellectual insights and emotional understanding the relationship between what’s going on in the country and what’s going on inside the family at the moment that the declaration is being written, she and the children are undergoing smallpox inoculation in Boston.
[00:43:35] And in some ways John’s mind is more on. As he is on the declaration of independence itself. So yeah, I mean, at one point in time, he says, I’ve decided to by a folio volume. This is in April 76. I’m gonna put all your letters that you sent me and I, and I make copies of mine and I want you to do the same on your side.
[00:43:57] And by the way, I think your letters are [00:44:00] better than mine. And guess what I think he might be. Right. So. If you’re looking for a couple who are a married couple in American history, that brings you closer to the texture of what’s really happening at the highest level of American history, you cannot do better than Abigail and John.
[00:44:19] GR: It’s a great recommendation. Well, professor, what I’d like to do is to turn over to you to read something that you wanna share with our listeners could be something you’re working on previous book, your.
[00:44:29] Professor Ellis: what I’d like to do, and it’s not that long, but I would like to read my version of what the declaration of independence would’ve said at the start.
[00:44:39] If Adams had written it, is that okay? Absolutely. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created. That they are endowed by their creator with mutually dependent rights and responsibilities that among these rights are life, Liberty in the pursuit of virtue. [00:45:00] And among these responsibilities are self denial duty to the Commonwealth and a decent respect for the wisdom of the ages.
[00:45:08] That to secure these rights and enforce these responsibilities. Governments are instituted in all civilized societies, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed and from the accumulated experience of preceding generations. Prudence indeed will dictate that government’s long establi should not be changed for light and transient reasons.
[00:45:30] And the lamp of experience will demonstrate that human passions aligned with dreams of perfection, not seduce governments to embrace revolutionary change when imperfect evolution is possible or listen to tribunes of the people who ignore the abiding interests of the public. And accordingly all experience has shown that mankind must resist the tyranny of despots and the tyranny of majorities must balance their urge [00:46:00] for freedom and their obligation to others must contain their pursuit of personal happiness within the covenant of the collective must in some strive to subordinate, the selfish impulses that animate our expectations to the better angels of our nature.
[00:46:16] Let these principles be declared to a candid world at this propitious moment with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, and the civic sense that our mutual pledge binds us together within the expansive limits of our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
[00:46:35] GR: Cara and I thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:46:37] Thank you for sharing those beautiful words with our listeners. And we look forward to additional work coming out from you in the. you’ve got, I’m still going. You’re still going well,
[00:46:48] Professor Ellis: keep on going, still going still scribbling every morning. but I appreciate your interest. And especially in the moment we’re living now, the atoms of perspective on our civic responsibilities is an extraordinarily [00:47:00] important.
[00:47:01] I myself would favor mandatory national service, even though that chances of that passing are remote. But I do think that the interest in what Massachusetts and now Virginia and Kentucky and Pennsylvania call it, Commonwealth is a clue to the notion that there’s a collective sense of American identity that doesn’t exist anymore.
[00:47:23] And that needs to be.
[00:47:25] GR: Well, you’ve definitely given all of us something to think about over the next few months. Thank you for your time.
[00:47:30] Professor Ellis: Thank you for having me take care.[00:48:00]
[00:48:20] GR: The Hawaii state grant consortium. Community educational partner supported by NASA has partnered with schools across the state to implement robotics in the classroom. You and I are both big supporters of stem, really big supporters of steam, and glad to see this taking place in Hawaii.
[00:48:41] Cara: Absolutely go Hawaii.
[00:48:42] I I’d like to go to Hawaii. I’ve never been there. Gerard next week now I’m not gonna be with you next week. Try not to cry. I know I’m sad to miss this guest because actually I have been reading a book on this very topic. you are going be speaking to Jean Straus, the award winning biographer of [00:49:00] JP Morgan in the arise of American finance.
[00:49:04] So that is coming up next week on the learning curve, Gerard I’ll miss you. we’ll be in touch.
[00:49:10] GR: yeah, we’ll be in touch, but you won’t miss me.
[00:49:11] Cara: Yeah. I won’t tell you where I’m gonna be, but it’s gonna be sunny and warm, guaranteed. That’s all I have to say. so I’ll be certainly thinking of you while you record.
[00:49:20] And I’m, Suning myself, somewhere on a beach, but until then, Gerard, please stay safe and happy be elated. 4th of July be, well, my friend,
[00:49:29] GR: same to you.[00:50:00]
Recent Episodes
Supreme Court Shift: Interpreting Changes in Justices, Majorities, and Philosophies
/in Featured, Podcast Hubwonk /by Editorial StaffThis week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Ilya Shapiro, constitutional scholar, author, and senior fellow of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute, about the changing makeup of the court, and how this term’s most high-profile decisions reveal the judicial philosophies that comprise the current bench.
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Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. It has been said that each new justice is a new court as the 2022 Supreme court term winds to close the first term to include all three former president Trump’s nominees court Watchers, policy makers, and concerned citizens have new information about how each of the nine justices apply the 230 year old US constitution to modern legal disputes. Indeed, each court decision exposes the tension that arises between a constitutional democracy’s power to enact laws and the constraints imposed when those same laws must comport with constitutional principles to observers. It can be a relief when the court’s majority limits legislative prerogatives that they do not favor, but unsettling. When the court strikes down, laws seen as necessary for our modern polity. Nevertheless, each case reveals the complexity and nuance of each Justice’s view of their role in the process.
Joe Selvaggi:
What has this term told us about the philosophical makeup of this court? How do the most recent high profile decisions reveal each Justice’s views? And what does the court’s makeup suggest about how it may rule in the future? My guest today is legal scholar, author, and senior fellow of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, Ilia Shapiro, his new book, Supreme disorder, judicial nominations, and the politics of the nation’s highest court just released in paperback this week looks at the controversies of past courts and their decisions. Mr. Shapiro will share with us the way in which individual philosophies influence Justice’s decisions, how the cases in this current term reveal the views of the nine justices and what those views will likely pretend for the court’s future decisions. When I return, I’ll be joined by constitutional scholar, Ilya Shapiro. Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk I’m Joe Selvaggi and now pleased to be joined by author and senior fellow on constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Ilya Shapiro welcome back to Hubwonk, Ilya.
Ilya Shapiro:
Good to be with you, Joe. A lot’s happened since we last talked.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed it has. I don’t wanna dwell on the past. We we’re always looking forward but there’s two big pieces of news. Just this week, one of course, is that you are now a brand new member of the Manhattan Institute. Congratulations on that. The other big piece of news that I’m sure our listeners are interested in is that your wonderful book that we discussed in an earlier episode, Supreme disorder, judicial nominations, and the politics of America’s highest court just came out on soft cover. So paperbacks, very soft plugging the show looks good, looks bigger for our listeners who already bought the hard copy. Is there any difference with the new a paperback?
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah, so I caught some typos that’s always good to do. And I added an epilogue about 3000 words on well, what’s happened since the hard cover came out in the fall of 2020, which is two more justices Amy Coney Barrett and, and Ketanji Brown Jackson,
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed a lot has happened perhaps not a whole new book’s worth, but a lot certainly to talk about. So let’s jump into, we wanna do a around the world sort of a review of what’s happened in this past term. Everything everything’s been decided now we closed the book on this, this term, so let’s do a little recap and and start at the beginning. I want to talk about judicial philosophy specifically as it be pertains to the nine justices that we now have including Breyer. We’re not gonna talk about Ketanji Brown Jackson just yet. But before we jump into the cases themselves that were decided, let’s define some terms for our listeners who were not constitutional scholars, ones that have been thrown around in the wake of the decisions specifically, what is, what people will call an originalist what is what people call a textualist? We also have heard the word institutionalist and finally what I would call broadly consequentialist. So let’s start at the beginning with let’s say originalist. What, what does that mean?
Ilya Shapiro:
Originalism is a, a method of constitutional interpretation that looks at the original public meaning of a constitutional provision. That is the original constitution, the, the powers that are granted to Congress that was ratified in 1789. So what does the power to regulate interstate commerce mean? When it was ratified in 1789, we look at the Federalist papers. We look at contemporaneous dictionaries. We try to figure out what those words mean, or the 14th amendment, obviously much in play this term, the meaning of due process of law, the meaning of equal protection. What did those words mean? When the 14th amendment was ratified in 1868. So it’s, it’s, it’s not getting, trying to get into the head of James Madison or Thomas Jefferson. And what would they have thought of violent video games or something like that? It’s, it’s looking at the words on the page, trying to understand their original public meaning and look originalists can disagree just like historians can disagree about how to interpret certain events in our, in our history.
Ilya Shapiro:
That’s, that’s okay. Both, both judges and academics can have a lively discussion, but that’s what originalists try to get at textualist is, is a related interpretive method that’s applied to statutes. So we, we focus on the text of the clean air act, say that was an issue in one of the big cases this term. And so when, when that was passed in the seventies, when it was amended in the nineties what do those words on the page mean again, not what Congress or the sponsors of the legislation intend not what someone might have understood it to mean, and they could have been wrong, but what do the words on the page actually mean? What does the text mean? And then you get to institutionalist, which isn’t a method of interpretation so much as an approach.
Ilya Shapiro:
And so John Roberts, the chief justice is often called an institutionalist because he operates not primarily at trying to get at what the text means necessarily, or the original public meaning of a provision is, but he wants to preserve the institutional reputation of of the court. And so might wanna move not as quickly as some of his other colleagues that say I’m just gonna interpret as I see fit and let the, the chips fall where they may Roberts tries to be a little KR, maybe narrower in, in what kind of opinions he writes. And so an institutionalist cares about the institution for that matter. It doesn’t have to be just the court could care about the institutions in general Congress, the presidency you know, maintaining those big things rather than a focus on the words on the page and finally consequentialist or sometimes a related might be a, a pragmatist you know, looking at the consequences, the result of a particular holding of a particular ruling might be and, you know, either with a view to not rocking the boat too much, either with a view of, I don’t know, not costing the government too much money, not disrupting society in some ways, or in any of that, weighing those practical concerns in some measure, not, not exclusive to everything else, but, but that’s a significant part of, of, of what that kind of jus cares about
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. So you you’ve laid that out very clearly. Before we get into, you know, how each justice ruled on every case, is there a single continuum on which you could map each of the justices? Well, we’re often talking about liberal or conservative or Republican and Democrat. Is, is there a continuum or is it more a scatter shot? There’s so many dimensions of, of the way a justice can look at a case that it doesn’t really map to what we would consider political preferences.
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah, I think, I think it’s too simplistic to call talk about a spectrum or even a three dimensional spectrum, cuz there’s more than kind of three AEs on which one can, can look at the justices or can any, any, any judges methodology in terms of, you know, the, the practical outcomes of their votes, you know, we can talk in shorthand and we do talk in shorthand about, you know, liberals and conservatives. That’s unfortunate because I don’t think any of them make decisions based on trying to implement liberal or conservative policy preferences. You know, that tends to, you know, end up as the case for the, the, the most politically salient controversies. But it’s, it’s, it’s shorthand that, you know, can be useful in talking shortly, but it, you know, I, I, I would certainly not want the public to generally think of them as, as junior varsity politicians ideologically let alone in terms of partisanship.
Ilya Shapiro:
I hate it even more when people talk about the Republican justices or the democratic ones, I sometimes talk about the Republican appointed justices or the democratic appointed justices, which is, is again, somewhat useful shorthand because that’s often relevant and increasingly relevant in modern times because the, the parties seem to have adopted divergent theories of interpretation. But still you know, you, the reason why you’re interviewing someone like me is to, to drill down beyond the, the shorthand that you can in like a tweet or a, a short associated press story about the news of a particular case.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed, you’re you are, are careful when you, in your writing, in your books, in your articles to, to to discourage lazy thinking and reducing everybody to political through the political lens. So let’s again on, on, by way of background, let’s start with some history of how we get rights. We like to think of ourselves as a rights based society those rights foundationally, if we’re talking about the Supreme court, they’re looking to the instantiation of those rights, I, I hope you’ll agree that that starts with the constitution. So let’s talk about, we, we often refer to the first 10 amendments as the bill of rights which by my reading, our, our so-called negative rights or, or natural rights those are the rights we can’t have taken from us. Describe for our listeners, what are we talking about when we talk about fundamental rights or those rights in the bill of rights,
Ilya Shapiro:
Those are separate questions in a sense the legal scholars talk about enumerated rights, which just means listed rights, the first eight amendments say, you know, the first amendment, speech, religion right to petition, right, to assemble second amendment, right. To keep and bear arms et cetera. But the founders were careful to add a ninth amendment that says that the enumeration of these rights is not to deny or disparage others that are retained by the people. And so to the extent that modern jurisprudence, and we’ll get into this a little bit, because that matters in how Dobbs the abortion case and Bruen the second amendment case were decided to the extent that we, you know think that enumerated rights, those that aren’t listed in the first ten amendments are somehow secondary to the ones that are listed.
Ilya Shapiro:
That’s clearly not what the, the original public meaning nor the original intent of the framers. Would’ve, would’ve been, we’ve talked about fundamental rights in a legal sense, not in kind of delay conception of what is fundamental, what’s basic what’s most important, but in the legal sense because of the way that the jurisprudence has evolved over decades, specifically for UN-enumerated rights, those that aren’t courts often ask is it given rights claims that based on something that’s fundamental or is it ancillary? Is it not a core right that we have under the constitution? I don’t think that’s quite the right way to look at it because the there’s no indication that when the framers were instituting the constitutional provisions or especially when the framers of the 14th amendment, the post-Civil War amendments were looking to protect rights you know, they could have, they had the English language, they had the terminology, they could have said, these are the fundamental rights.
Ilya Shapiro:
They didn’t do that. You know, they, the 14th amendment speaks of due process privileges or immunities equal protection. They could have just said, the first eight amendments are now applied to the states, but they didn’t, they spoke in these, these other terms. So the modern jurisprudence has gotten away, I think, from the original public meaning of rights protections. But nevertheless going back to the thirties in a case called caroling products, the famous or infamous footnote four does bifurcate rights effectively into fundamental and non fundamental ones. And that’s why, especially with UN-enumerated rights, claims rights that aren’t explicitly listed in the first eight amendments. That’s what jus tend to think about is, is a particular claim involving a core or fundamental, right?
Joe Selvaggi:
So the, the constitution establishes enumerated rights list them, and then says in the ninth, there are other rights that are not here, but nevertheless our rights as well. You mentioned the 14th. I wanted to go a little bit deeper on that because it does speak it does have influence on some of the decisions that came down this term. I’ll read it. My favorite part of the 14th amendment is from section one, a quote, no state shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall only state deprive a person of life, Liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny any person without a, within his jurisdiction, the equal protection of the law. So effectively, as you’ve mentioned, it says that these liberties or these rights that start or that are protected by the constitution at the federal level also apply to the states say more about the fact that reading more deeply. I, I, for myself, I discovered both. It means that states can’t infringe on rights, but also it has a affirmative obligation to protect rights, as well, say, say more about this, of course the 14th in the wake of the, the civil war and the, and the stain of slavery. But, you know, that’s the context, but say more about what that means.
Ilya Shapiro:
The original constitution only protected us against the federal government. The bill of rights only protected us against violations by the federal government. That’s why the post civil war amendments, the 13th, that outlawed that outlawed slavery, the 14th, which you just read in the 15th, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting that’s known as the second founding because it fundamentally reoriented restructured our constitutional order, such that an individual could go to federal court to enforce his or her own individual rights against state violation. That that was an innovation. So the 14th amendment says that states can’t violate your due process of law or equal protection of the laws or privileges or immunities of citizenship. Again, that’s that, that was a revolutionary type of thing. It, it restructured fundamentally our constitutional order. And so you know, when we’re talking about most of the so-called cultural war issues or rights claims, whether it’s abortion or guns, or same-sex marriage, the things that tend to come up, generally, those are challenges to state laws. And so even in the Bruin case, which we’ll talk about regarding the right to their arms sure. It’s a second amendment case, but it’s really a 14th amendment case because that’s how that right. Applies to the states.
Joe Selvaggi:
And one more, bit of a housekeeping before jump into the cases, the concept of stare decisis, or I think literally means
Ilya Shapiro:
Let the decision
Joe Selvaggi:
Stand by. Yeah. Let, stand by things decided how does that weigh in on the court effectively says, you know, we, we need to look to the past a lot has been alleged that in, in confirmation hearings those who have said that they believe in stare decisis and then changed their mind, your book, I think was very useful in saying while it’s a principle, it’s one that everybody seems to have violated. I don’t know if that’s the right word say more about stare decisis.
Ilya Shapiro:
I think the only two justices on the current court who are consistent with regard to stare decisis are Clarence Thomas and Atlanta Kagan. Thomas I’m answering the question backward because I haven’t defined it yet. I’ll, I’ll get to that. But Thomas basically always prefers to get the law, right. You know, forget, you know, how disruptive overturning the precedent might be and Kagan, I don’t think ever votes to overturn precedent probably because she’s always had an eye on Roe V. Wade. That’s how this concept is often kind of viewed has been viewed through that lens, but it’s the idea that sometimes disrupting the legal architecture or the stability, social stability that kind of disruption is greater and, and, and would be a bigger, wrong than writing the wrong of an erroneous previous decision. And so there, this is a Prudential doctrine it’s not listed in the constitution or anything like that, but it’s the idea that sometimes it’s better to let erroneous precedents stand than to correct it.
Ilya Shapiro:
Just because for example, businesses have been built on those kinds of reliance interests, if you rule a certain way. And all of a sudden, you know, all of fortune 500 companies have to dissolve that’s quite disruptive courts would wanna someone who has a, a, you know, thinking about stare decisis would, would want to avoid that kind of result. And so again, Thomas doesn’t care so much about that. He’s the most consistent in saying I wanna get the law, right. I don’t care if it’s a hundred year old president that lots of people have relied on. I don’t care if it’s last term I’m, I’m gonna vote for what the right law is. Kagan says, no, we, we shouldn’t disrupt. We should build on, on the previous and, and, and things like that. And everyone else is in between and, and is very much fair weather. That is the, the, the, if one of the considerations in stare decisis is how wrong was the previous precedent. Well everyone essentially, other than Thomas and Kegan said, you know, finds precedent that they really like to be not very wrong at all. And, and precedent, they don’t like to be egregiously wrong as the, as the as the standard has evolved.
Joe Selvaggi:
So, okay. Now we’ve set the table, let’s get into the, some of the cases let’s start with the most let’s say controversial, the perhaps I, I don’t know for our listeners, so we’re talk, gonna talk about Dobs versus Jackson women’s health organization, which did indeed explicitly overturn the finding in row which has lasted for nearly 50 years, 1973. Explain the argument and then let’s talk about the way in which Dobs refuted the argument. The argument for Roe. I mean, again, I know these are deep topics, so we’re, you know, these are sort of the quick explanations, but give us a quick,
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah, the rulings themselves are not that complicated. And, and should I wrote a piece in the in the Washington examiner last week saying that they’re, they really shouldn’t be, you can disagree with the various rulings in, in these big, controversial cases, school choice and guns and religion and abortion. But they shouldn’t be seen as, as radical or, or extreme or, or complicated in some way. So the ruling in dos is is simply that there is no deeply rooted right to abortion as justice Alito found in his majority opinion in looking at American history and therefore it’s subject to state regulation rather than some federal baseline. I wouldn’t have decided it quite that way. I think I, I, I do think that Roe versus Wade is without constitutional basis. You know, I would’ve looked at things a, a different way in terms of, as you said, natural rights through the privileges or immunities clause rather than this deeply rooted test that was put in, in a case 30 years ago called Luxford.
Ilya Shapiro:
But, but in any event this even before overturning Roe and Casey, because importantly planned parenthood versus Casey for the last 30 years has been the governing standard for looking at abortion restrictions and regulations. What, you know, Roe put in a, a trimester system and kind of a sliding scale based on viability of the fetus of when states can regulate Casey threw that out and it preserved the right to abortion, of course, but it, it put in an undue burden standard. And, you know, for the longest time, the joke that was that what what’s an undue burden while it’s whatever gave justice Kennedy a headache cause he’s the only one, he was the deciding vote and nobody else knew what, you know, what that actually meant. But this case came along from Mississippi, which had a a law restricting abortion past 15 weeks, I think with exceptions for, for the mother’s health curiously that law is actually more liberal than those laws in place.
Ilya Shapiro:
In most Western European countries, Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, you know, the, the, the list goes on and on. I think only the UK and, and, and the Netherlands have more liberal, less restrictive rules than that. And nevertheless that’s Mississippi’s law. The conventional wisdom before oral argument was that the court would sort of muddle through that this court might eventually overturn Roe, but this would be an incremental step. They’d find a way to uphold the missis, the Mississippi law without overturning Roe. Well, it turns out based on oral argument which changed everybody’s minds about how the case was gonna go. And this was confirmed by the eventual decision. Only John Roberts took that compromise position as it were everyone else, including the advocates for both sides said that the court had to go fully up or fully down meaning uphold or overturn Roe fully.
Ilya Shapiro:
Which was, which was interesting a bit of a gamble I probably for, for both sides advocates. But that’s that, that’s what they said. And, and ultimately that’s what the decision was, was based on first that the right was not deeply rooted in American history such as the modern jurisprudence regarding UN enumerated rights required that kind of analysis. And second principles of stare decisis do not militate for, for maintaining Roe and Casey, despite their lack of constitutional foundation, the dissenting justices, the three more liberal ones to use that shorthand argued mostly on consequentialist and stare decisis grounds, basically saying it would be too much of a disruption after 50 years to, to, to to, to overturn these precedent
Joe Selvaggi:
A as a, a constitutional matter. There is a lot of people who are concerned about this in the most extreme decision, if it, if it is indeed entirely left to the decisions of the states the, the health or the, the life of the mother, I I’m careful it’s not actually the health, or it is the indeed the life of the mother is that constitution protected. In other words, is the constitution recognized an absolute right for mothers to save their own lives in a life threatening pregnancy.
Ilya Shapiro:
We’ll see, I’m sure there’s going to be litigation over this because we’ve, we’ve already you know, less than two weeks after the decision came down, or I guess now it’s, it is exactly two weeks since the decision came down, as we’re recording this the the states have done all sorts of things. And I don’t know if there’s any law that’s been passed that does not have an exception for the life of the mother. But that would be, you know, it’s not that there won’t ever be litigation. Now that Roe is overturned if states acted arbitrarily or applied their restrictions unequally in some way, whether, you know, based on, on race or based on some other arbitrary consideration, then that would be subject to to litigation, or what about fetal abnormalities, or what about you know, there there’s definitions that legislative drafters in the various states could make errors or not foresee fully certain things.
Ilya Shapiro:
There was a hub of a few months ago. I think it was Missouri, or somebody was the way that their draft legislation worked didn’t even allow abortion for ectopic pregnancies that is implantation in the fallopian tubes, which are non-viable and, and by definition, life threatening. And that was a mistake that wasn’t some, I don’t think it was some moral judgment that, that some, you know, extremist lawmaker was putting in, they just didn’t draft it correctly. So you know, we’ll see litigation based on the way that different restrictions work.
Joe Selvaggi:
And I don’t wanna dwell in this case, but just one more issue. The, the Thomas concurrence went a step further in, in saying the, this right didn’t exist. And it was predicated on a I don’t know if you would call it an imaginary or a, a conjured right. Of, of, of, of privacy in this case that those other so-called privacy related rights in more modern cases, those that relate to interracial marriage, gay marriage right to contraception, those things that have been found to be constitutionally protected, it, it, it may undermine the, the foundation of those rulings and perhaps jeopardize those as, as recognized by the constitution. Do you see that, you know, is that a outlier, is Thomas, or is that sort of a, a true, let’s say originalist view of, of these kinds of privacy oriented rights?
Ilya Shapiro:
I, I think it’s, it’s not an outlier to criticize substantive due process because of the way the jurisprudence has evolved. It’s, it’s much more constitutionally sound to protect most substantive rights through the privileges or immunities clause than the due process clause. The due process clause isn’t wholly isn’t entirely procedural. So you know, a well functioning, transparent kangaroo court still violates the due process of law clause. But the way that the jurisprudence has evolved, you know, Thomas is quite right to say that, you know, for example, Roe itself, which was based on an earlier case Griswold regarding the right to contraception found that right to privacy not in the ninth amendment or the privileges or immunities clause there was a concurrence by justice Goldberg about the ninth amendment, but it was about how certain parts of the bill of rights have emanations that overlap making penumbras this very kind of physics, heavy like light beam analysis.
Ilya Shapiro:
And these rights are hidden in those, in those penumbras that that’s the legal term for that analysis is hogwash. So I, you know, I, to the extent that’s what Thomas is saying, I fully agree with that now, the consequences for the application of the right to privacy or some of these other things, that’s, you know, that’s not clear. Thomas himself, I’m sure would uphold some of these rights on an equal protection basis. He himself is in an interracial marriage. I’m sure he’s not trying to invalidate his own his own marriage, but the things like that, or same sex marriage for that matter, I think are more faithfully argued and protected under equal protection than a substantive rights protections, other things like contraceptives or private sexual behaviors say you know, you know, I, my, my own view is that privacy is certainly protected in various ways but substantive process, I think he was correct to identify the weakness there, but for practical purposes you have to note that the majority written by justice Alito and signed by joined by Justice Thomas joined by five members, not Roberts, he only concurred in the judgment, but Alito’s opinion did say that for various reasons, distinguished abortion from everything else, because with abortion at a certain point, there’s a second life in being, there’s a second human who has rights, what that point is.
Ilya Shapiro:
He says you know, courts, judges, lawyers aren’t equipped to point out, which is why he sent it back to the states. But unlike with all these other activities with consenting adults here, there’s a second, right. A second life in being, and finally, I don’t think there’s, the most recent polling about contraceptive shows a desire to ban contraceptives to be in the low single digits in America.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. I don’t wanna dwell on that. So let’s move on another important case Bruen. We actually had an episode entirely entire episode of hub wonk on Bruin. We talked with your former colleague, Trevor burs about the issue. I just wanna ask you in your view, did the ruling I think it was a sixth grade decision, did it follow along the originalist versus consequentialist? In my reading of the dissent, it just said, look if we don’t do something about guns a lot of people die. It didn’t really appeal to some sort of weakness in, in the Bruin case, but rather just sort of you know, an emotional appeal to the consequences of, of holding Bruin.
Ilya Shapiro:
That’s exactly right, Joe, unlike Heller the, the previous second amendment case in 2008 involving the right to keep go guns at home for, for self defense where both justice Scalia’s majority opinion, justice Stevens’ dissent were dueling originalist opinions here. Thomas’s for the majority and this, by the way, we can, we can talk about this. I think this is the, really the term where after 30 years on the bench finally Clarence Thomas is at the, a Apigee of his powers because he’s the senior associate justice. And so in cases like Bruin and Dobs for that matter where the chief justice isn’t fully on board, it’s Thomas who’s either writing the opinion as he did in Bruin or assigning it as, as he did in, but Thomas’s opinion is, is very originalist and Briar’s in dissent is not it, it is consequentialist as you say it. So it’s, it’s different than what Stevens is was in, in Heller 14 years ago.
Joe Selvaggi:
So again, I wanna move on then to the West Virginia versus EPA, I found this very interesting it didn’t get a lot of press, but it’s something we talked about in our, in our earlier episode talking about at what point when Congress delegates power to con to an executive agency, at what point is it obligated to define you know, the limits of its, of its delegation of power? I’m, you know, I, I’m gonna use layman term and, and sort of paraphrase. I think the essence of what you said is the more important the issue or the larger, the mandate, the more the need, the obligation to define that in, in, in the delegation, meaning you can’t just give away huge powers in, in, in, in small ways, you have to be clear. And I think the, the the Supreme court decided against the EPA when regulating power plans say more about what your view of, of that decision was.
Ilya Shapiro:
Yeah. This opinion did get some press. It was decided on the last day of the term, an opinion by, by chief justice, John Roberts, and he paired it with another opinion in an immigration case where he ruled for the administration. So he’s trying to be cagey, you know, one for the, the administration one against and the opinion said as you were discussing that for major order called major questions, Congress has to be explicit if it’s giving that kind of awesome power to an agency, what the, what the government here argued starting with the Obama administration, and now with the Biden administration is that if you look at several provisions in the clean air act and you kind of almost like that pin numbers and emanations in the abortion context or the privacy context, if you put these various provisions together, that gives the EPA the power to regulate in this novel way, even though it’s you know, hugely economically significant.
Ilya Shapiro:
And the court rejected that because for regulations that of major questions, whether in terms of economics, in terms of social impact or what have you Congress really does have to speak clearly, we can’t just assume or defer to an agency’s interpretation of its own operative statute in that way. And it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. The court did not as many expected apply or discuss what’s known as Chevron deference, which is deference that judges give to agency interpretations. It simply said we don’t even have to get into that because the statute is, is, is silent. And we’re not gonna implicitly read in these major powers in major questions. Justice Gorsuch wrote a concurrent joined by justice Alito that expound more about giving guidance to lower courts about what a major question is.
Ilya Shapiro:
And that’s an important concurrence because those two Gorsuch and Alito were on opposite sides in a case called Gundy a few years ago, which used yet again, a different doctrine called non delegation. They were on, on opposite sides of applying the idea that Congress can’t delegate legislative power, but here on major questions, which is kind of the flip side of non delegation, they were together. So clearly the court is without having to get into some of these other doctrines using this major question doctrine to limit administrative reach. And so throwing the ball back into Congress’s court and saying, if you really want to have this, you know, awesome major, significant, controversial, clean power plan in place, you’re gonna have to legislate it and take the political hits yourself.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed again, going back to some of the themes in your book, it’s really Congress ought to be doing its job and, and legislating and, and and the executive branch ought to be executing those leg, those laws. I read the Kagan dissent and it was really chilling in that it’s essential argument for supporting the EPA was EPAs full of experts and Congress doesn’t know very much, so experts should be running the show, not elected officials. I, I, you know,
Ilya Shapiro:
As, as well as the kind of Obama pen and phone argument that when Congress won’t act I will, this is too important, an issue, you know, not to have this, this this law making on
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. Oh goodness. I heard my Kennedy school professors applauding Kagan’s point of view. But it’s not one I share. So we’re running outta time. I wanna jump into the, the final. These are sort of the tension of religion in one case is in a school and the other, well, it they’re both school related. One where the a football coach wanted to pray after our game Kennedy versus Bremerton school district, and the, also the school voucher in Maine that could be applied to religious schools. I think let’s just dilate a little bit and, and sort of talk about this idea of we, in the first amendment, we don’t wanna establish a religion, but we also wanna respect the practice of religion. So to share with our listeners, where is that tension resolved? How, how does the state protect your right to exercise your religion without being seen to be establishing that as a, as a religion,
Ilya Shapiro:
Basically where the court is going is that religion does not have to depart the public’s sphere as long as the government isn’t coercing people to, towards a particular religion or religion in general, as long as it’s not discriminating against people, whether that’s in terms of students in public schools or, or other contexts who, who don’t adopt a particular tenant then, you know, if you’re, if people are acting in their private capacity, then the, the government isn’t gonna stop that. And at the same time, when it has institutes programs, it can’t treat religious institutions differently than secular ones which is different than this was discussed in the Kennedy versus Bremerton case. The, the praying coach, the, the lemon test from a case called lemon versus Kurtzman 50 years ago, that talked about an entanglement of religion an entanglement of government with, with religion that effectively had been read to you know, negate any, any, any religiosity, any exercise in the public square justice Gorsuch in the Kennedy case said that that, that lemon had long ago been abandoned.
Ilya Shapiro:
And indeed it hadn’t been used by the court as a governing doctrine in a long, long time. All the juice had been squeezed outta the lemon. So now they were discarding Therin if you will. And conversely with the school choice case. So when Maine created this program of tuition assistance and said, parents could use it to send their kids to, to any, any school of their choice except religious ones. And the court said, look, you don’t have to have this kind of program, but if you do, you can’t treat religious schools differently than, than, than, than secular ones. So that’s, that’s where we are on the state of, of, of religion. And I think it’s tremendously overwrought to say as a lot of media commentators did, or as justice Sotomayor did in her dissent in, in Carson that this eviscerates, the division between the separation of church and state and the separation of church and state itself comes from a case in the early eighties called Everton and, or, sorry, an interpretation of a, of, of, of, of Everson’s line from, I think the, the forties or fifties, and is, it’s more complicated than simply saying, you know religion can’t enter the public sphere and the public sphere can’t enter religion.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’re getting to the end of the show. We we would be Remis. We didn’t mention that we’re getting a a a change of just justices in the new term. We’re losing Breyer who is retiring and we’re getting the newly appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson as his replacement. I think they’re both regarded as again, we shorthand as liberal justices. How do you think her joining the court will change if at all how the courts will decide cases?
Ilya Shapiro:
I don’t know if I can, off the top of my head identify cases where she would vote differently than the justice she’s replacing, her former boss Steven Breyer for whom she clerked. So in terms of vote count, I don’t think things will be very different. You have different specializations, Breyer was famously an administrative law specialist. I’m not sure whether justice Jackson really carved out a niche for herself in terms of substantive areas of law and as Justice White used to say, every justice makes for a new court in terms of their internal dynamics. You know, how convincing will she be? How you know in terms of the social dynamics behind the scenes, which don’t necessarily affect Justices’ votes on major issues, but they can affect the way they interreact. And you know, the dynamic of the court more broadly, will, you know, turn off Chief Justice Roberts, and in effect marginally have him closer to his more conservative colleagues. I don’t know. I think in the short term, we’re not gonna see that much of a difference other than in oral argument, the absence of Justice Breyer’s kind of long meandering, multipart, hypotheticals, and those kinds of opinions that he was known for with kind of a pragmatic multifactor balancing tests.
Joe Selvaggi:
So it would be less about her judicial capabilities or her or her wisdom, but rather her salesmanship how she can influence others either to her position or not alienate others away from her position. That would be more influential than perhaps the how she decides a particular case.
Ilya Shapiro:
I think that’s probably right.
Joe Selvaggi:
All right. We’ve run outta time. I appreciate you being with us now, one last chance to plug your book before we go. I think it’s a must read for those who want to pretend to be constitutional scholars at cocktail parties. Where can our listeners get your brand new paperback book?
Ilya Shapiro:
Sure. I mean, you can go to Amazon of, of course, but you can also type in Supreme disorder.com and that’ll give you lots of options of where you can get it beyond Amazon independent book sellers and whatnot. And also there, you can download for free a 20 page statistical historical appendix of all Supreme court confirmation battles, as well as some lower court ones in the modern era. And in addition to my book, I have my new subs stack to plug. This is a digital platform, did bill newsletter it’s called Shapiro’s gavel, and there you can subscribe for free. I, I, I, I’ve committed to at least one post a week and I’ll have other stuff for paid subscribers. There’s gonna be additional goodies it’s you know, it’s reader supported as they say and you know, we’ll see where we’ll see where that takes us. It’s an interesting thing for thoughts and musings and analysis that I wouldn’t necessarily write up in the pages, the wall street journal or Newsweek, or, or the examiner.
Joe Selvaggi:
Perfect, perfect stuff for those of us who are Ilya, Shapiro groupies. So thanks for that plug. So we’re at the end of our time together, thank you for again, for joining me Ilya. It was great. I really do wish you luck at your new home at the Manhattan Institute.
Ilya Shapiro:
Thanks very much. I I’m you know, come back from vacation, tan, rested, and ready to be in the arena.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of hub won a podcast of pioneer Institute. If you enjoy today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show and pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to hub wonk on your iTunes podcaster, you can now find hub won on YouTube at the pioneer Institute channel. If you wanna make it easier for others to find hub won, it would be great. If you offer us a five star rating or a favorable review, we’re always grateful. If you want to share hub won with friends. If you have ideas for me, or suggestions or comments about future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me. Hub won pioneer institute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of hub.
Recent Episodes
Pedro Zamora on Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Kansas City
/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers, News /by Editorial StaffThis week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Pedro Zamora, executive director of the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation of Greater Kansas City. Pedro and his organization work on initiatives that are crucial to the economic vitality of the area, and they’ve helped more than 4,700 businesses. Immigrants there are having an outsized economic and cultural impact, and so Kansas City is yet another example of how localities can bounce back and benefit from immigrants and refugees, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers podcast.
Guest:
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed and welcome to Jobmakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
I have some really special memories of Kansas city, Missouri there. I had the warmest sweetest churros, the most incredible barbecue, of course, and even gourmet handmade chocolates from a Swiss confectionary topped off by watching a beautiful Chinese dragon boat festival. In 2000, immigrants made about four and a half percent of the Kansas city Metro area population. By 2019 that had grown to 7%. And importantly, the area’s immigrants had $3.5 Billion dollars in spending power – more than 80% of them were in their prime working age. And there were more than 11,000 immigrant business owners. For Pedro Zamora, executive director of the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation of Greater Kansas City, these immigrant entrepreneurs are increasingly crucial to the economic vitality of the area. Not only are they powerful economic drivers and job creators, the wealth of cuisines, cultures and art make the area vibrant, exciting, and flourishing. Pedro and his organization work to develop and implement economic development initiatives that contribute to the quality of life for Latinos in the greater Kansas City area. And to date they’ve helped more than 4,700 businesses and immigrants. They are having an outsized economic and cultural impact. And so Kansas City is yet another example of how localities can bounce back and benefit from immigrants and refugees. As you learn in this week’s Jobmakers podcast,
Denzil Mohammed:
Pedro Zamora, executive director of the Hispanic economic development corporation at Kansas city, Missouri. Welcome to the Jobmakers podcast. How are you?
Pedro Zamora:
I’m doing well this morning, Denzil, thank you for the invitation.
Denzil Mohammed:
So tell us a little bit about the Hispanic economic development corporation and the kind of work that you do and the people that you serve.
Pedro Zamora:
H E D C, the Hispanic economic development corporation, was founded in 1993 for the sole purpose as a pass through entity to receive $30 million of EPA environmental protection agency dollars to clean up a brownfield site, a 26 acre brownfield site in the heart of the Latino community here in Kansas city, Missouri, there were several nonprofit organizations that were doing social work and education and health, but no one was addressing the environmental contamination. That was right in the heart of our neighborhood as a child used to play in that area and throw rocks and break windows and things like that. Little did I know what the toxicity ground we were walking on. And then mayor Manuel Cleaver was a great friend of the Latino community pulled together some grassroot leaders and formed HEDC to give us ownership and the right to organize, to get the community and the business industries to come to the table to talk about what should we do at this location? It was an abandoned railroad maintenance yard. And today it’s home to a high tech warehouse that employs the roughly 600 employees from across the city, about 375 of those employees come from our neighborhood still today.
Denzil Mohammed:
Wow, that’s terrific. And so bring us up to today, the work that you do now, and the kind of impact that you had,
Pedro Zamora:
The Latino population in Kansas city began in the west side and it’s grown into all 17 counties. We, we see a 33% increase in the past census track census that was completed a 33% increase in a 10 year cycle of Latinos migrating into our greater Kansas city metropolitan area. HED C’s responsibility is definitely focused in the entrepreneurship development. We couldn’t do just entrepreneurship development unless we took a snapshot of that individual and got them comfortable with what, where the world’s going today. Online today, we focus on our digital literacy, integrated financial and business training. Our clients don’t come in for one siloed initiative activity it’s integrated and through our modularly designed program where we take the client through a very interesting wake up call of assessing themselves in the first 12 hours of our program, if they come into a 40 hour program, they’re gonna take 12 hours to think about who they really are.
Pedro Zamora:
They’ll turn on the computer and they’re gonna be responsible for capturing their own story and then build out their strategy of where they want to go and who they wanna bring with them are through this model of helping the individual reestablish trust in themselves, trust with our organizations we find a common theme amongst all our clients, and then we create these small cohorts. So these cohorts can now trust one another and stay together and, and become part of the community and create their own community in their community. So if that, if you can see, we’re just trying to put people together to help them support one another and support other folks within the community to elevate them. We don’t market. All our services are done, word of mouth. And we’re pretty busy.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s not uncommon because the immigrant British center has a free English language program. We’ve never had to advertise.
Pedro Zamora:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And
Denzil Mohammed:
We, and we always have a waiting list of several hundred, sometimes over a thousand. So immigrants and, and again, counted to the prevailing narrative of not wanting to do an English, not wanting to integrate immigrants are signing up. Right.
Pedro Zamora:
Well, the interesting part about our focus is we do not want to be known as an English learning facility because our clients don’t have the time to learn and to master the English language because they’re trying to survive as they’re building and scaling their business. They’re surviving as well as their employees. So we just don’t touch the business owner. We touch the employees of the business owner. We have relationships that tell them, bring us in before your restaurant opens up. We’ll give you two hour training and financials, digital literacy communications to the school systems. So the workers are talking to the schools and learning about the students, looking at the reports. So it’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty in depth, the importance in taking 100 words in business finance marketing concepts, and building off those 100 words in these categories has proven and has now taken our clients to well over 2000 words in each one of those categories. So their conversation learning is, is definitely built beyond that.
Denzil Mohammed:
So therefore, describe to me the entrepreneurial ecosystem in areas that you serve, who are the job makers, what kind of businesses do they have? What are they like? Where do they come from?
Pedro Zamora:
Well, well, the high, the high number of job makers are always those fantastic restaurants that we get frequent from time to time. And the though those restaurants are no longer the text me style. You’re, you’re seeing everything from seafood to really unique dishes. We have a lot of local, I call ’em food artists that are coming in with delivering fantastic cuisines that was pre pandemic during the pandemic. They had to rethink themselves. Restaurants got closed, keep in mind. The first round of assistance from the federal government did not include non-US nationals. They weren’t a part of that help assistance. So they had to rethink themselves. So popup restaurants and pop up markets have popped up in our communities across the city in Kansas city, Missouri and Kansas city, Kansas. And it’s a different menu, but the street tacos are still prominent there.
Pedro Zamora:
The second largest industry, we see that we support both with our financial business development training, and as well as our loan portfolio that we lend to through our C D F I fund, we’ve seen a lot of landscaping yard maintenance companies come to fruition. And then the, of course, the third one that’s high in numbers and high employer is our structure field. We, we, our job is to try to move them out of those three high in, in industries and to try to get them into coding or other forms of business work. We’ve are accomplishing this through our integrated digital literacy courses that we teach. We have three courses certified by the us department of labor, as well as our university of Missouri school system, postsecondary educational system. These are career stackable credentials, and they go into financial processing entrepreneurship, financial management, risk management, learning all the Microsoft Excel tools.
Pedro Zamora:
And then we have a third one that is for networking becoming a, a network using these modern skill sets that will help the first generation or a second generation, a family that has a second generation within their, their business model to think of the new industries that they would like to expand in. Now that they’re comfortable with their operating capital, they should be thinking of a secondary market to spread out their risk in earned incomes. What we saw during the pandemic is if you have mom and dad and the children all working in the restaurant, it was very painful during the pandemic. What we did in 2020 was take 77 small businesses that were in the restaurant industries that we knew were not getting support from the federal government on our local reliefs assistance programs. And they spun up some cons. They had to go back. As I mentioned, we’d like to see a move into the technology sector. We took ’em back into the construction market. Now they, the men were now back in the construction field, the women were waiting to see if the restaurants were gonna be able to reinvent themselves and due to go orders as, as the regulations opened up. Now, we’re having these families, these business owners think of how they can bounce their risk of where they’re gonna earn their income, the conversation doesn’t stop there. They’re still looking at the technology.
Denzil Mohammed:
What are some of the success stories that you can tell us about some of your favorite businesses perhaps, or some of the the businesses that really grew into the ways that you wanted them to?
Pedro Zamora:
I would say those 77 families were a great success, but they’re not just businesses. The individuals are ones that we really are making an impact with. And one great success. I can use his first name, Josh. He was 82 when he started working with us, could not read or write in his native language. Spanish had lived in had, had worked in the agricultural field, picking fruits and vegetables his whole life while he was in the United States. And never learned to read or write in English for Spanish. We were introduced him to him during our, a research development phase of our digital literacy program through a parents’ teachers program. He had no children, but he was the only live and survivor of his niece and nephew that his third parents got killed in an auto accident here in Kansas city.
Pedro Zamora:
And Joshua became the the parent to raise these kids. He had to learn real fast, how to extend his skill sets and communication using technology. We were able to teach him how to read and write in English and in Spanish. Joshua is today, he’s probably 85, 86. The kids are doing great in high school today. But he’s dealing with dementia early stage of dementia, but using technology, he keeps his mind refreshed. And that to me, if an is to take an individual who has sacrificed so much and has life to work and grow his assets, his net worth, but then also to be put in a position where of the unknown raising kids it’s an amazing story in how he has been able to communicate better with his doctors, better with extended family members and his community. He’s been a leader. We call him one of our lits, Latino and technology. He’s one of our leaders. He, he gives a great speech, very articulate individual.
Denzil Mohammed:
So a lot of what you’re talking about, tap taps into the American dream, this concept you state explicitly that your organization is an institution that significantly contributes to enabling the Latino community, to realize its full participation in the American dream. How alive is the American dream among the people you serve
Pedro Zamora:
A great question. It is an amazing observing how we go about measuring that. Economically there’s not one individual that we run across. That’s either documented or undocumented that do not wanna show that they’re paying their fair share. And we help them achieve that with our online bookkeeping platform, as well as the financial risk management courses. Not all businesses are perfect. We, it was tough during the pandemic and it was even more important to see how their financials were in order our community, the Latino community, the immigrant community. They trust very few people, but they trust their churches, their families, and they trust the first kid that may go get financing 1 0 1 done at college or high school <laugh> and they become the, the financial leader. What we saw the American dream is live and working, but if they really wanna participate, we gotta get their financials and their tax consequences in order to, and I, I honestly will sit here and tell you that 100% of every person that we talk about in the financial business as an entrepreneur in the Latino community, want to fully pay their way.
Pedro Zamora:
They’re not here to cheat the system. They’re not depending on the system, they can’t get access to the system. So the American dream to them have a good tax return submitted <laugh>. So those are words that I can’t pull out in my head. I, we had a pop up this past Saturday 35 small businesses. The temperature was well in its nineties. Humidity is high, but these folks were having a fantastic time and, and getting a chance to meet some of them for the first time and visit with them. They, they showed their ledgers that they were keeping on their phones and whether they, they were using an on an online FinTech product or not, they were keeping sure they wanted to make sure they were tracking their expenses and their earnings for that day.
Denzil Mohammed:
You raised a really important point there that undocumented immigrants really want to be, to pay their fair share to be on the straight narrow. I remember experiencing that heat of humidity in June, in Kansas city was not pleasant. But I also was there when they had this beautiful Chinese dragon festival one day, I think it was a Saturday in Kansas city. Can you talk about the broader demographics of Kansas city? You mentioned the change in just 10 years in the Latino population and how are the different groups getting along? It’s pretty diverse, right?
Pedro Zamora:
It’s very diverse. We have one sec sector of our community, which is the Northeast of not far from my office here, Northeast it’s called the Northeast neighborhood. Independence avenue has roughly 69 different countries represented on that corridor. It’s about a three mile corridor. And that’s where the immigrants settle. That’s where they start their businesses. They go to these vacant storefronts and they pull their money together and they begin their journey of contributing. And they’re settled by other NA nationalities from their country and who take these old homes. And they start refurbishing these old homes. What happens then is that they they get along together, but what happens other high investors want to come into those communities cuz they see the economic boom that’s taking place there and it’s eclectic. It becomes desirable and they start using their high level dollars and powerful lawyers to come in and work with our city to be, to talk about building other forms of development projects in those communities. So it’s a challenge, it’s a double edged sword. So it’s not the immigrants that don’t get along. It’s the system that once we do good and once we stabilize the community and we uplift a community, then it’s that gentrification steam shovel that comes rolling over right behind us, very close it’s happening faster and faster with us today.
Denzil Mohammed:
One thing that Americans take for granted is the tremendous variety of cuisines and cultures that we have access to. We really take for granted that we can have Thai food tonight and Mexican food tomorrow and, and you know, Ethiopian food the following day the most popular, fast food chain hair is taco bell first crying out loud. Can you speak a little bit to the value of all these? You mentioned all the different kinds of cuisines that we’ve had. I remember having the best chores of my life in Kansas city and then having Peruvian food from somewhere else. What is the value of, of that kinda diversity to the United States?
Pedro Zamora:
It’s see, it’s, it’s an amazing journey to, to come down independence avenue or Southwest Boulevard or Minnesota avenue today in central avenue, these corridors are known for their diverse cuisines and you, you can go from TexMex all the way to enrich seafood dishes out in Mexico and other Latin American countries. We don’t have any national franchise change like the wonderful taco bell you mentioned. And we, we have to go out of our community to go there, which is a blessing. It, it’s a blessing to have everything from a to Z in the cuisine space in these communities. We’re talking about the it’s important because life journey experiences are pretty exciting when you don’t have to leave, you know, you can go five miles and you’re hitting all these very eloquent dining experiences. And that’s important because we all are, are struggling in from the different ethnic groups that we are settling in, but we have one common theme family and creating community. And, and if we can maintain that cultural arts and demonstrate the economic impacts that we bring with that I think folks really find it a journey when they come visit our communities.
Denzil Mohammed:
Your role in immigration story goes back really far back. Would you mind just sort of sharing your immigration story?
Pedro Zamora:
Yeah, I’m, I’m a son of an immigrant family. My, my dad was born in Mexico and brought into the United States, even though my grandmother had already been living in the United States since the early late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds. My grandmother arrived in the late 1890s into Kansas city. She settled here. There was an unrest in Mexico and she was my, my grandfather and her were just victims of being the landowners that were, they had to do something. And they came to Kansas city because of the railroad, the railroad, on my dad’s side, my ancestors are all railroaders on the men’s side. My mom is a third generation, Nebraska and Latina. Who’s in a migrant family. So there’s three generations of migrant workers that finally obtained success and bought farm land in, in Nebraska. And that’s how my grandfather raised 21 children in Nebraska on my mom’s side. So I’m a sibling of 17. I’m one of 17 in my family with my parents.
Denzil Mohammed:
And it’s what makes this country special. It really is. And the fact that we all have these common threads despite of incredibly diverse backgrounds, thank for sharing the, about the diversity of Kansas city and your even your own immigrant story. We all have these immigrant stories, whether they’re short or long Pedro Zamora executive director of the Hispanic economic development corporation in Kansas city, Missouri. Thank you so much for joining us in Jobmakers.
Pedro Zamora:
Denzel, thank you for the invitation. It was my pleasure
Denzil Mohammed:
Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s story on how immigrants are building up Kansas City. Remember you can subscribe to job makers on apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you got your podcasts. And please leave us a review. I’m Denzil Mohammed. See you next Thursday at noon for another Jobmakers.
Recent Episodes:
Mt. Holyoke’s Pulitzer-Winning Prof. Joseph Ellis on John Adams & American Independence
/in Featured, Podcast, US History /by Editorial StaffThis Fourth of July week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal talk with Dr. Joseph Ellis, Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. They discuss the resurgence of public interest in the Revolutionary and Founding generations due, in part, to his book, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams. Known as the “Atlas of American Independence,” John Adams was perhaps the best educated among the Founding generation. Ellis describes his deep knowledge of classical liberal arts and Enlightenment subjects, including ancient history, political philosophy, and the law, and how it equipped him for intellectual and political leadership. They review Adams’ key experiences and character traits, as the major author of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, which served as a model for the U.S. Constitution; his ardent opposition to slavery; and his critical eye for spotting political talent. Lastly, they explore the relationship between Adams and his beloved, talented wife, Abigail; as well as their gifted son, John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. President; and the family’s remarkable dedication to public service. Prof. Ellis concludes the interview with a reading about John Adams and American Independence.
Stories of the Week: In Mississippi, public K-12 students have made greater gains than in any other state, becoming a national model for both practitioners and policymakers alike, as a result of specific reforms implemented by State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright. At least 12 states are relaxing teacher certification rules, including licensure, to address the labor shortage.
Guest:
Joseph Ellis is Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College and among the nation’s leading scholars of American history. The author of eleven books, Ellis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation and won the National Book Award for American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. His in-depth chronicle of the life of our first President, His Excellency: George Washington, was a New York Times bestseller. Ellis’ most recent book, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, was published in Fall 2021. Professor Ellis’ essays and book reviews appear regularly in national publications, such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. Ellis’ commentaries have been featured on CBS, C-SPAN, CNN, and PBS’s The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and he has appeared in several PBS documentaries on early America, including John and Abigail [Adams] for PBS’s The American Experience and a History Channel documentary on George Washington. He received his A.B. from the College of William and Mary, and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University.
The next episode will air on Weds., July 13th, with Jean Strouse, author of the award-winning biography of J.P. Morgan, Morgan: American Financier.
Tweet of the Week:
News Links:
States Relax Teacher Certification Rules to Combat Shortages
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/states-relax-teacher-certification-rules-to-combat-shortages/2022/06
“How’d You Do It?” Mississippi’s Superintendent of Education Explains State’s Learning Gains
https://www.educationnext.org/howd-you-do-it-mississippis-superintendent-of-education-explains-states-learning-gains/
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] GR: Hello listeners. Welcome back to another wonderful episode of The Learning Curve. I want to say hello to my 4th of July colleague, Cara, who I’m sure had some really good things she was able to do over the July. Fourth holiday weekend. Ours was less eventful than we expected. family hap.
[00:00:41] Last minute change. And so we had to switch our plans, but with that being said I still take time to celebrate the fourth. I understand all the dynamics racial, cultural, cultural, gender, everything else that goes into it. And I do not say that , but I do at least enjoy the fact that we [00:01:00] still live in a country where we have some freedoms that people in other parts of the world cannot.
[00:01:04] Celebrate. So for me, I enjoyed the day, but didn’t get enough barbecue or school time,
[00:01:11] GR: other things
[00:01:13] Cara: oh, that’s good to hear your voice, Gerard. Yeah, actually we had sort of last minute plan change too. We usually spent the fourth with some good friends of ours and just been a lot of travel in our lives lately.
[00:01:23] So we decided to stay local. And it’s interesting that you talk about how important it is to celebrate the fourth. So we actually, we took our kids to a red Sox game and I am shh, not a baseball fan. It’s not like, not something I used. I, I I’ve heard. Yeah. It’s like I had to ask my husband how many, how many innings, how many innings, but a really interesting part of this was Well, first of all, I, don’t listen to the news on weekends much because I like to have sort of my brain free.
[00:01:51] But as many of our listeners know yet another mass shooting in the United States this time on the 4th of July interestingly, I don’t talk to my kids about these things [00:02:00] until we’re in sort of a safer place. But my daughter, my 12 year old daughter, when I asked her, we were all wearing hats, baseball hats, because it’s very hot out.
[00:02:07] And I said, please, you know, take off your. For the national Anthem and Stan, my daughter asked me really seriously things aren’t really good in this country right now. Why should we be, why should we be singing about it? And I said, well, to your point, Gerard, there are a lot of good things still about this country, but boy, oh boy.
[00:02:24] Yep. We’ve got a lot of work to do. And so my kids will be. making their own choices when they’re older about how they wanna handle things. But for now, I, agree with you. We have to especially thinking about those who’ve served. in wars, I know my own grandfather was a world war II vet.
[00:02:38] Many of us have veterans in our lives and it’s just an important day around. We did have a little bit of barbecue, Gerard, not much. tend toward the salad these days, but I wanted to just point out for our listeners before we get into our stories of the. That there’s a pretty good article out recently in the Atlantic by none other than Mitt Romney.
[00:02:56] So Senator from Utah, former governor of [00:03:00] Massachusetts, I know that surprises many people former governor of Massachusetts and former presidential candidate. And I just, Gerard, if you haven’t seen this one, I would highly recommend it to folks. It is called America. Is in denial. And what Senator Romney talks about here is the idea that, you know, we are in many ways, this country’s in the midst.
[00:03:23] Not one, not two but many crises. And nobody’s talking to one another and we’re hunkered down. We talk about this a lot. We’re hunkered down in our own little corners, blaming the other side for problems that are of everybody’s making. interestingly he, quotes here. He says, he’s reminded of the old adage that for evil to thrive only requires good men to do nothing.
[00:03:43] So I was reading that this morning, Jordan, and it was really sticking with me a lot. Especially as we think about. Really important holiday for our country, but the fact that it’s been an increasingly tough couple of years, so not to get too, too depressing here, [00:04:00] but I think that it’s an important holiday to reflect upon as well as just to celebrate with fireworks and heart clogging foods.
[00:04:07] So that’s my take. I, do have another less depressing story of the week. I actually have a happy story of the week chart but I know, I know you’ve got some good stuff
[00:04:16] GR: You wanna kick us off or do you want me to go first? Yeah, no. And by the way, I found the MI Roney article. I will check it out.
[00:04:23] I’ve been a, fan of his work and people also forget he’s a founder of Bain, so he’s. Yeah. Also an entrepreneur. So I would check
[00:04:30] Cara: this out. Yeah. And just an all around really smart guy and a leader, I would say. Okay. So here’s my, here’s my happy story of the week. It’s bittersweet actually, because this is about Mississippi and somebody, I believe that, you know, Dr.
[00:04:43] Carrie Wright, who has been state chief in Mississippi for almost. Decade, Gerard let that marinate for a minute. Almost a decade. This woman has been leading the state of Mississippi’s education system and she’s leaving. and the, title of this article, this is from ed next. It’s by, it’s an interview with [00:05:00] Robert PIO and it’s entitled how’d you do it.
[00:05:02] Mississippi’s superintendent of education explains state learning gains. Now we’ve talked about Mississippi on this show before they have gone from much like Florida did right before it. Interestingly, they’ve adopted many of the same reforms, but they have gone from being dead last in the nation on a number of measures.
[00:05:19] But boy, oh boy, especially on reading to really showing dramatic gains in the next couple years. I know I am personally watching to see, I don’t think anybody has super high expectations for the next round of nap scores, nor does anybody think that they’re gonna be maybe a reliable indicator Of what kids know, given everything that we’ve been through in the past couple years, but I will be really interested to see the extent to which Mississippi’s results.
[00:05:44] Keep sort of a pace and or if there’s less slippage in some of these states where we’ve seen meaningful growth in past decade than in other states, but to get to Dr. Wright and her pretty amazing tenure, you know, PIO asks her a really, I think, great set of questions.
[00:05:59] And he [00:06:00] asks her questions that have everything to do with like, you know, how is it that you. Got kids reading well answer. They passed an early literacy law, which means that in Mississippi kids are learning in a curriculum that is based in gasp the science of reading because yes, we actually do know that there’s a science based way.
[00:06:18] a proven way to teach kids to read. And it relies on phonics, which is out of Vogue in some circles since remains out of Vogue in some circles. I know it was out of Vogue when I was a kid and my mom taught me anyway. She was always appalled. That our schools were not teaching phonics. But there were some controversial steps too, that they did with the reading program.
[00:06:34] And that is when kids in Mississippi, aren’t reading on grade level by grade three, with some exceptions, they will repeat grade. And it’s called, it’s not a punishment it’s retention because we have really great data to show that if kids aren’t reading on grade level by grade three, man, the outcomes are not.
[00:06:51] it’s a really important sort of milestone for children. So that’s, that’s one of the things that Mississippi did, but I think that [00:07:00] the way I would like the way I would just look large, talk about what Dr. Wright says she did. She just and I’m sure you know, her Gerard. She’s quite frankly, prep, maybe one of the last of what I would call the old school reformers.
[00:07:12] She believes in the kinds of things that are now going out of Vogue, but that really helped. They certainly here in Massachusetts and in many other states helped kids make gains, helped move the needle just a little bit for kids in some states. And that’s sort of this mix of. Actual accountability.
[00:07:28] What I like to call like a mix between support and accountability. So accountability, not just the hammer, that, oh, you’re doing badly there are all these myths out there that under no child left behind, right. When schools didn’t perform money was taken away. Not true, but that when we shine a light on schools that aren’t serving kids well, that we need to go in and give folks the right support.
[00:07:49] One example in Mississippi would be reading coaches everywhere, man, to get kids to read, not only were they teaching in the science of reading, not only were they helping kids to read on grade level by grade three, but [00:08:00] they equipped their districts with reading coaches, reading coaches, reading coaches, all of them highly trained.
[00:08:05] And so that’s part of what helped Mississippi realized gains both in reading and, in math though, reading is really their success story. And Dr. Wright talks in this article about just the importance of data. Like actually using data. And, you know, especially in the past couple years, I fear that we’re in a place where, well, the data aren’t reliable and the data aren’t gonna tell us the data is still the data they’re gonna tell us something.
[00:08:28] Yeah. They might tell us a lot of stuff that we don’t wanna hear, especially post pandemic, but I’ll tell you what places like Mississippi and Florida. Decades ago before they really saw a great increase in NAPE scores. They were seeing a lot of data that they really didn’t wanna see. So it’s about confronting that data.
[00:08:45] The other thing that strikes me about Dr Wright’s tenure that really comes out in this article is that, let me repeat. This woman has served the state of Mississippi for almost a decade. That is, you know, Gerard you’re a state [00:09:00] chief and state chief you’re formative two states, right. State chiefs.
[00:09:03] It’s often a political position sometimes. You’re gonna be out based on who’s in office and Punic asks her in the article, did it help that you really Mississippi right as just, it’s a, it’s kind of a one party state as much as Massachusetts is dominated by the democratic party, Mississippi tends to be very Republican.
[00:09:21] And he asked her, like, did that just always get people on board with what you wanted to do? Could you pass any legislation you wanted? And she said, absolutely not. Let’s not assume that that just because somebody votes a certain way, that they’re gonna really prioritize the things that I need them to prioritize.
[00:09:35] But I think that for me, the thing about her tenure that sticks out is a consistent approach over time. So a decade of saying. We’re gonna teach kids to read in this way. We’re gonna make sure that kids can read this way. By third grade, we’re gonna shine a light on underperforming schools and go in and support them.
[00:09:54] That consistency. We saw it to some extent in Florida, we have seen it in [00:10:00] Mississippi. , we see it in two few places these days, Gerard. And so I think we can only hope. That Mississippi and the great staff that Dr. Wright has cultivated will find a way to sort of, carry out the reforms that she has put in place and not, move incrementally forward, but not reverse pace and what we know works.
[00:10:22] And I dare say, That if some other states, the one I’m sitting in too would, would, have an approach that is less political and about policy churn. And one that’s really focused on consistently trying and seeing what works and then only double backing when it’s clear that something doesn’t work that that’s the way to go for kids because she’s served now an entire generation of kids and they’re better for it.
[00:10:44] So, you know, Dr. Wright, Gerard, what are your thoughts?
[00:10:48] GR: Well, first of all, let me congratulate her on. Graceful exit from that position it is a position where some state chiefs do not exit with grace. Some are pushed out, pulled [00:11:00] out, some are, , dragged through the media mud. And she didn’t have that.
[00:11:03] And that says a lot about her but also the environment in which she works in the last time we were together in person. We were on a panel together talking about accountability and standards. The third person on the panel was at that time, the Wisconsin commissioner of education Tony Evers, who’s now the governor.
[00:11:22] And when you mentioned staff, she had a number of people from Mississippi who were there, two of them. We knew each other through mutual friends. But she talked about the importance of having good people in the right place. Being a state, chief, being a state secretary, you do a lot of the face forward work.
[00:11:42] You’re ultimately responsible for what takes place internally, but you gotta have really good people behind. You and around you. So I’m glad you mentioned staff. She’s got a lot to leave on in terms of, of good area. And I’d also like to say she spent time working with groups outside of Mississippi or these headquartered outside of [00:12:00] Mississippi.
[00:12:00] And one person that comes to mind is Peggy Brookins. Uh, Who’s a president and CEO of the national board for professional teaching standards. She worked with the department of ed, the governor, legislators and others. More board certified teachers into the right zip codes and county areas in Mississippi to make that happen.
[00:12:18] So, she actually could be a a case study to follow because again, staying nearly a decade while John King in Louisiana, I believe was close to seven years, you had combined a number of years for Hannah. So there’s a good case study that someone could write or maybe in the position of writing.
[00:12:34] Congratulations to her and a great feel, good story for one of our state chiefs. Well, Kara speaking about education commission of the states again, last place I saw Dr. Wright. My story of the week is from education week and Matt line will, is the author it’s titled. States relax, teacher certification rules to combat shortages, a subject that we discussed before.
[00:12:56] But what we haven’t discussed before is the education week [00:13:00] and education commissions of the state’s studies, where they’ve actually not only looked at what people are saying, but they’ve actually looked at legislation and they’ve identifi that some states are either amending the law or considering to.
[00:13:13] in order to combat the teacher shortage. Now you and I know that for nearly a decade, the number of people who were rallying to become teachers did. So, at a smaller level, percentage wise, and we’ve seen, you know, in the last 30 years, so there was a slow drip decline. Time naturally with the pandemic, a couple of things resulted from that one, a number of teachers who saying I’m going to retire or leave the profession all together.
[00:13:39] And number two, some who said they’ll stay, but just wasn’t sure how long they would do so. And so to combat some of that law markets got together, both Republicans and Democrats and said, we’ve gotta figure out an independents. We’ve gotta. Figure out what to do. And so in this article here are a few states who are trying to address this.
[00:13:59] So [00:14:00] let’s take my former home state of California the legislators and the golden state voted last year to allow teacher candidates to skip two exams. First, the basic skills test, second, a subject matter exam. And this will occur if. They have taken college approved courses. So that’s California.
[00:14:17] Well, let’s go to Oklahoma. The governor there assigned a bill this past may. And with that legislation now as law of the land for Oklahoma, it removes a requirement for teacher candidates to pass a general education examination that covers communication, critical skills and computation, lawmakers, and state of.
[00:14:37] Said the exam was redundant and it actually presented a financial barrier to a number of teachers. So in Missouri, it state board of education voted earlier this month to actually grant teacher certificates, to test takers who score within one standard era of measurement. So. So when you’re looking at a standard error of measurement in the past, some people missed the cut score.
[00:14:59] Well, under this new [00:15:00] rule, they’re trying to make some exceptions. So the education department says 550 teachers will benefit from this policy change. 80% of them who were working toward certification in one or more of the state’s top 15 up 15 shortage areas. And so at least there they’re making a move with the cut score or really measurement in Alabama.
[00:15:21] The state board of education also is considering looking at how to assess teachers based upon standard error measure. So with Alabama, they said, guess what? Nearly 1,200 teachers in the state scored one standard error measure below the passing score between 2019 and. 21. So if they decide to change that the way that Missouri did then nearly 1200 teachers would find themselves in the classroom.
[00:15:49] So from. Legislative standpoint. And from a regulatory standpoint, be board of education, they decided to make a move well not everyone’s excited about that. And [00:16:00] so one person is Heather pesky, who is the president of the national council on teacher quality. Meaning if you know, it’s a Waston based thing tank that calls for more rigorous teacher preparation.
[00:16:10] And so according to Heather, she says, I don’t understand why our response to concerns about shortages, that we have to have a major policy reaction that lowers standards to reentry. And she goes on further to say that endorsing an option that asks less of teachers in terms of their contact knowledge means you’re gonna shift the burdens onto students.
[00:16:34] And she would further talk about what we could look at that was different now. What she did say is that there is a five year pilot in New Jersey where not only are they going to modify certification rules for teachers, but for the teachers, they do. They’re actually gonna watch over five years to see what’s gonna happen.
[00:16:51] She said, while it’s not an ideal program, at least waiting five years, following the research, seeing what works, what does not is a good [00:17:00] compromise, but she’s pretty clear that this is gonna fall on students. Now naturally, when we have convers. About test scores. And we know that there’s debate in federal courts regarding affirmative action.
[00:17:09] Action. The question is, well, why aren’t students of color doing as well as their white counterpart. So in this article, some experts have identified reasons why this is the case. Some questions that tests might be culturally biased. Others say the candidates of color may in fact have test anxiety.
[00:17:25] Fees to take the test and we take the test could be prohibitive. And of course, systematic educational inequalities across time has made some students of color less prepared as their white candidates. Students of color is probably too large of a phrase to really look at what we’re.
[00:17:44] GR: discussing is that including Asian students and even with Asian students, these Japanese Hmong versus Chinese if we’re saying black students is that black students is Haitian students, Jamaican Nigerian students.
[00:17:55] So I think we can unpack this. This has been something I had to deal with when I was in [00:18:00] Florida as related to stem entry exam. We had to make some tough calls. So this is a really interesting topic. It’s tough. I think that the lawmakers are trying to do something that’s different. I think Heather’s onto something you have experience having worked in this area before.
[00:18:16] What are your thoughts?
[00:18:17] Cara: Oh, so many I did. I worked in, teacher training at the national academy of advanced teacher education for many years. And we focused on retaining high flying teachers, which. is a part of the conversation about teacher shortage. That seems to get completely left outta the equation.
[00:18:35] We seem to be focusing on new teachers and pipelines and stuff, which is all well and good, but I am very, very concerned. the teachers that are leaving, many of them are the ones that are close to retirement. Many of whom know what they’re doing, many of whom would serve as mentors and models for incoming teachers.
[00:18:50] Are we gonna have I’m not to be ageist. Are we gonna have schools full of 22 year olds teaching who haven’t, who haven’t passed a basic. Exam that proves that they have basic [00:19:00] subject matter knowledge. Listen, I think I agree with Heather pesky, who was at the Massachusetts department of education for a very long time and, by all counts as excellent.
[00:19:08] No doubt. There are things about these certification exams, that could be changed and we have plenty of evidence to show that certification. Self does not necessarily correlate with teacher quality, but that doesn’t mean that the basic exams can’t tell us something. So I just want real quick draw, because I know we don’t have a lot of time.
[00:19:29] I just wanna tell you, I have a vivid memory of a high school science teacher who showed us videos of rollerblading was really cool in the late eighties and early nineties. When I was in high school who shoulders rollerblading video. Like four or five days a week because here’s something guy didn’t know a thing about science.
[00:19:47] like, I have nightmares for the children of this country who will be, , learning from teachers who, if you can’t pass a basic content test in your subject area. I do think that we need to ask some really [00:20:00] tough questions and I would agree that instead. thinking about ways. Yeah. We’re gonna be in crisis, but lowering the bar.
[00:20:06] Isn’t the only way to get folks into the profession. And by the way, lowering the bar doesn’t mean more people are going to come into a profession that in too many places still doesn’t pay well in too many places. Teachers are asked to be all things to all, people. So I don’t know that that’s necessarily a magic bullet.
[00:20:22] We do know that there are alternative routes to certification that work and yes, some of those. Testing requirements among other things, but there are other ways to evaluate or, ask a candidate to take a test into their tenure, six months into their tenure a year into their tenure. A good principal is gonna know if a teacher’s worth salt, if a good principal is evaluating in the way they should.
[00:20:44] And asking somebody to. A basic competency test, I don’t think is too much while at the same time we evaluate those tests for exactly the things you mentioned, whether it’s cultural bias or barriers to entry because of fees, et cetera. I’m not denying that those things exist, but this [00:21:00] conversation is frightening to me.
[00:21:02] I just talked about, States that have come up on Nate scores and too many haven’t and one of the reasons, so one of our answers to the pandemic is gonna be just like let’s, if you breathe, please come and be a teacher. Sorry for, you know, I’m not saying that folks who can’t pass an exam are terrible.
[00:21:18] They might need other supports, but I think it writ large. We need to look at this much more deeply. So I’m interested to see what the New Jersey study bears. And I certainly hope we don’t let go of accountability in this country because if we do, we’re gonna have no way to tell. Whether or not teachers that are being let in without a certification exam are able to do the job or not.
[00:21:36] So I don’t know, Jared, maybe I’m just feeling salty today. I feel like I don’t have a lot of nice things to say but that’s my take on your story, my friend,
[00:21:45] GR: and a great take, indeed.
[00:21:47] Cara: All right. Well, Gerard coming up right after this, we are gonna be speaking to give this another Pulitzer prize winner, professor Joseph Ellis, speaking to us about John Adams and American independence.
[00:21:59] [00:22:00] Given the moon I’m in, I am eager to talk about this and hear what this gentleman asked to say, coming up.
[00:22:43] Listeners help us give a warm welcome to Joseph Ellis. He is professor emeritus of history at Mount Holyoke college and among the nation’s leading scholars of American history. The author of 11 books. Ellis was awarded the Pulitzer prize for founding brothers, the revolutionary generation, and won the national [00:23:00] book award for Americans Sphinx, the character of Thomas Jefferson, his in-depth Chronicle of the life of our first president, his excellency, George Washington was a New York times.
[00:23:10] Best seller Alice’s most recent book. The cause the American revolution and its discontents was published in fall 2021 Professor Ellis’s essays and book reviews appear regularly in national publications, such as the New York times, the Los Angeles, times the wall street journal, Chicago prune, new Republic and the new Yorker Ellis’s commentaries have been featured on CBS.
[00:23:32] CSPAN CNN. And PBS’s my favorite. The news are with Jim lair and he’s appeared in several PBS documentaries on early America, including John and Abigail Adams for PBS’s the American experience and the history channel documentary on George Washington. He received his AB from the college of William and Mary, not far from where Gerard sits right now.
[00:23:53] And he earned his ma and PhD from Yale university, professor Ellis, welcome to the
[00:23:58] show.
[00:23:59] Professor Ellis: It’s [00:24:00] really a pleasure to be with you.
[00:24:01] Cara: We’re really happy to have you here, especially right after independence day holiday here in the us. So let’s get right to it because you have done a lot of work that we’d like to learn about.
[00:24:12] So over the past 30 years, your writing has really helped to lead this major resurgence of public interest in the revolutionary and founding generations. I mean, even, even my kids can now name All of the founding fathers, which I, I credit to this resurgence and of course, to Hamilton among other things.
[00:24:31] But in addition to your book, I love this title, passionate Sage, the character and legacy of John Adams. That book has greatly enhanced the reputation and fame of the Atlas of American independence. So as we have just celebrated the 4th of July, could you please talk to us about why John Adams should be on our minds?
[00:24:51] Professor Ellis: John Adams is the most outspoken, candid self revealed member of the founders. And when I first started [00:25:00] trying to write a history of the founding, I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but it turns out that to what I was doing. I started with Adams and the book. You mentioned passion at Sage.
[00:25:10] In part, because of that and part, because of how it influenced me, I realized that my major interpretive posture was we’ve got to recover the founders as human beings who are imperfect creatures in the same way that we are and get away from the mythology. And the notion that they’re inspired by the gods that really does no justice to their achievement.
[00:25:35] And after all, if they were Demi gods, what in heaven’s name would we have to learn from them? And John Adams is the most, as I said, Candid and outspoken of the founders who exposes his humanity in his diary, in his correspondence. And if you’re a biographer as, I guess I am a historian biographer that you need somebody to give you [00:26:00] material that brings the, person to life.
[00:26:02] That is part of the historical record and the Adam’s historical record to include his unbelievable correspondence with Abigail is the most extensive self revealed deeply interesting and lyrically impressive of any correspondence among the founders. So those are all reasons why I find this man, the most worthy of our attention and.
[00:26:26] In some ways he’s emblematic of the very human beings that we sometimes mythologize. Hmm.
[00:26:35] Cara: and you’ve also discussed in your books, how Adams was, he was really among the best educated of the founding generation, especially in terms of his knowledge of ancient history and political philosophy.
[00:26:45] Mm-hmm . So could you tell us a little bit about his education and I’m really curious to know how it compared to other founders and how, you think that assisted in their political leadership.
[00:26:58] Professor Ellis: Well, the founders as [00:27:00] a group, it doesn’t true for all of them are classically educated, meaning that they went through courses in Latin and Greek, and they all believe that the ancient world of Greece and Rome contained wisdom that they could draw upon.
[00:27:15] And Adams is probably the best read of all the founders. And that’s saying something, cuz Jefferson was extremely well read too. And so was Franklin. Washington was not among all the founders. Well, let’s put it this way. Adams went to Harvard. Jefferson went to William, Mary Washington, went to war.
[00:27:35] And his own education occurred in battle and in war in action mm-hmm . But I think that the values that the founders carry out of the classical period forgive you an example. Adams is made head of war in ordinance in June of 1776, just before the declaration. He’s the equivalent of the secretary of war for the country.
[00:27:57] And the first thing he does is he write his friends at Harvard [00:28:00] and says, send me all the books you count on military history, especially through acidities on the pian war. And in two acidities he finds wisdom that he gives to Washington and Washington’s staff about how to fight British in the war.
[00:28:15] Don’t attempt to defeat them in the open battlefield. You cannot win a war against the British army on a conventional battlefield. You must fight what he calls a war of posts, meaning it’s not quite a gorilla war, cause they are a conventional army, but avoid conflict. Except when you have a decided advantage because, and this is the big insight.
[00:28:38] We don’t have to win the war. The British have to win the war. We have only not to lose the war, which is much easier. And therefore it , comes from acidities and is discussion of the PE pian war. And an insight that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. And it affects the outcome of the revolution.
[00:28:58] Cara: That’s really fascinating to think [00:29:00] about. And something that I didn’t know, we have only not to lose the war rather than win it. And that’s fascinating thinking. Um,
[00:29:07] Professor Ellis: It is. I mean, if you think about it, that it’s an insight that People fighting us in Vietnam realized.
[00:29:13] And it was one of the reasons that was gonna be really difficult for us. But the British never understood this and. At any rate. And the book I’ve recently written is talks about this to some extent the book called the cause. And Adams’ insight here is, and when, when he’s debating the British officials on one occasion who are just won a big battle in New York and Manhattan and are preening about it, he says We just want a small little portion of America and that it’s like the crusade. He says Christianity went to the middle east, presuming it was gonna take over and look what happened to them. Mm-hmm and so he’s always drawn on historical models to inform his own behavior in his own policy, in the.
[00:29:57] Cara: I would imagine that some of today’s leaders would do very well [00:30:00] to be reminded of this, especially . I think we need
[00:30:02] Professor Ellis: a historian in the presence of any major strategic decision to try to tell us what, we have to learn from the past. It’s,
[00:30:09] Cara: it’s really fascinating to think about in the current context.
[00:30:11] Thank you for that So here you are a professor Mount Holyoke here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I am recording from Newton. Pioneer is in Boston and John Adams, of course, major presence here in Massachusetts author of the 1780 constitution. One of the world’s oldest functioning written constitutions, and it served as a model for the us constitution, which we’ve been talking about at least at my dinner table a lot as of late.
[00:30:39] Could you talk to us a little bit about. Are there unique features of the Massachusetts constitution. And we’re really curious to hear a bit about the famous education clause, which I’ve studied education for a couple decades now. And, you know, the clause that says to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences Adams [00:31:00] went out of his way to include that in our founding document.
[00:31:03] Can you talk about those things?
[00:31:05] Professor Ellis: sure Adams single handedly wrote the Massachusetts constitution in late 1779 when he was just back from France. And he’s had to go again soon thereafter, Abigail did read drafts of it as he was doing it. The distinguishing feature of the Massachusetts constitution was as a model for a Republic.
[00:31:26] And there wasn’t a clear model for Republic until that time, the state or then colonial governments were somewhat models, but he is providing a model of a government in which power does not flow from above, from God to a Monarch and then downward from there. But upward from that group called the people.
[00:31:48] And it will be filtered through certain branches of the government to purify it because the people are often ill informed. And so the [00:32:00] distinguishing feature of the Massachusetts constitution is there three branches, an executive branch, a legislative branch and that there must be two houses.
[00:32:09] In the legislative branch, what we now call Senate and a house. And the third branch is the judicial branch is discussion of the executive branch is something that Abigail criticized him on and he didn’t change it in , his version, the president or the chief. Could overrule any decision by the legislature and could himself or herself later on, not be overruled.
[00:32:36] Abigail thought it was that smelled like monarchy and would be criticized for that. And she was right. Because when the Massachusetts legislature took the document, that’s one thing they changed. It’s the only major thing they changed in the document. He also is talking about a judiciary that has considerable power.
[00:32:57] Doesn’t quite look like the current [00:33:00] Supreme court, but it comes pretty close. So it is a model for what will eventually become the us constitution. And within its structure is the presumption of some sort of balance of power. That is to say the branches of government will govern and control each other.
[00:33:19] and that’s a, normally that’s associated with James Madison and Madison deserves credit for it in Philadelphia during the constitutional convention and the ratification process, because it’s a point he keeps making, but the idea itself originates with Adams. and I. All of your listeners should go to Quincy and go through the house and the library there, and they have on display, version of the Massachusetts constitution.
[00:33:48] And they have, and they talk to you about what it’s meaning is there. And it’s really a good show and worthy of your time.
[00:33:55] GR: Well, professor, as we think about the 4th of July and what it means [00:34:00] to. Country right now, particularly at this time we’re a number of cultural wars going on. There’s some who say that we shouldn’t celebrate the fourth or we shouldn’t celebrate the founding members of our country in part, because all of them were slave owners and you and I, both, all of them were not slave owners.
[00:34:15] Professor Ellis: Yeah, Adam, John Adams was not. Yeah. Exactly. And
[00:34:20] GR: so, yeah, I I’d love for you to talk
[00:34:22] Professor Ellis: about that. It is a huge question that dominates the profession now in ways that are difficult to negotiate without sounding partisan on one side or the other. I guess what I’d say is that. The founding area is the big bang in the American political universe.
[00:34:37] Adams is one of the central sources of the explosion. And it fundamentally changes the contours of Western political thought. As I said, with power not flowing down from God, to the people, but upward from the people. And That there are huge achievements here during the founding.
[00:34:53] One of which is a separation of church and state, which had never occurred before, also unprecedented in that [00:35:00] sense and the creation of a nation size Republic, which had never existed before it was assumed that republics only existed in small towns or small areas like Greek city. Those achievements.
[00:35:12] However, rest aside, two major failures. One is the failure to reach just accommodation with the native Americans. And the other is to put slavery on the road to extinction. Why they failed on those accounts is worthy of serious discussion. I don’t think that especially the slavery issue can all be avoid.
[00:35:32] I’m currently working on the next book, which is addressing this very question. Was the failure to end slavery, a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean tragedy. Was it impossible to achieve despite any kind of leadership embedded as the will of the gods in American history? Or was it something that could have gone the other way with decisions made that weren’t made, et cetera?
[00:35:58] I think that is a [00:36:00] debatable issue now. But I also think that the attempt to interpret the founders exclusively through their failure misconstrues the greatest political generation in American history. and I just think that Adams is himself an example of a person who never owned a slave.
[00:36:17] Who is obviously one of the most primary figures here. But this is a debate that we ought to have it. , we shouldn’t attempt to avoid it. And Adams himself would say that, you know what Adams believed on the slavery. Was slavery was fundamentally incompatible with the values on which the American revolution was based.
[00:36:38] He said that clearly, most of the other prominent founders agreed, but you could not attack it frontally right away. Because as soon as you did that, you split the union. And if you split the union during the war, you probably lost the war. And if you split the union during the constitutional convention, you never got a nation.
[00:36:59] [00:37:00] So that let’s delay it into the future until we’re a solid secure Republic and then deal with it. He didn’t realize that the clock was running out. He couldn’t foresee the cotton gen. And as a result, when he’s an old man in 1820, he says to his son, John Quincy, this is after the Missouri compromise that I have not attacked slavery during my time for the very reasons I just mentioned, but it is clear now that Virginia’s not gonna take the lead on this as I hope they would.
[00:37:33] And you go get. And John Quincy’s career from then on is a predominant anti-slavery direction. So it’s a complicated question. It’s one that we need to talk about, but it’s one in which the overall achievement of the founding generation cannot be and must not be obscured.
[00:37:53] GR: So here’s a question.
[00:37:55] John Adams had a good, critical eye for identifying, great talent. [00:38:00] For example, we nominated George Washington to lead the continental army, right Jefferson to draft the constitution and John Marshall to become the chief justice of the Supreme court. Could you talk to us about the kind of political leadership Adams admired as well as his sharper views regarding the political figures and ideas?
[00:38:15] He
[00:38:15] Professor Ellis: Yeah, you’re right. Those three men, you mentioned Washington Jefferson and Marshall are obviously crucial decisions. When asked about white nominated Washington, he always told the joke. He said, because Washington was always the tallest man in the room. And as far as Jefferson’s appointments drafted the declaration, the, committee that drafted it, initially thought that Adams was gonna draft.
[00:38:39] Adam said, no, I have earned too many enemies in the debates over independence. And therefore I’m somewhat controversial. And, he also thought maybe Franklin would do it. Franklin said, no, he never wrote anything that would be edited by a committee. And so that it ended up being Jefferson.
[00:38:57] Marshall was one of his so-called midnight [00:39:00] of appointees. He really liked Marshall because Marshall had served as his secretary of state during his presidency. he was also a Virginia who could speak to a larger constituency. But I think that. There are people within the generation that Adams really was highly critical of too.
[00:39:18] Very good people. I mean, he thought that Hamilton was a dangerous monarchist. That’s probably not fair to Hamilton, but he thought that Tom Payne was a radical who was good at tearing down, but not good at building up and that there was conflict among the founders. And the personalities temperaments of the founding generation.
[00:39:40] And then in some sense the different disagreements within the founding generation constitutes an inherent sense of checks and balances. Diversity in the full sense of that term is represented there. And Adams, for example, and Jefferson on different sides of the revolution after the revolution is over and [00:40:00] understanding what it was.
[00:40:01] So that. personalities and personal temperaments were not at all compatible on all these occasions and Adams himself regarded the conflict among the different founders as the source of strength. Adams’ favorite form of conversation was an argument. And in the dialogue between Adams and Jefferson in their Twilight years, you see this clearly.
[00:40:25] So. He did recognize talent. went to his grave thinking that Washington was the founding, his father of them all, but that he worried that Washington, what he called these pilgrimages to Mount Vernon, that Washington was becoming a kind of Saint like figure and that worried Adams, he didn’t.
[00:40:45] Any of his fellows, including himself to be regarded as above human frailty. And especially in his latter years, he’s critical of the way in which world seems to be. It seems that new nations require [00:41:00] mythical heroes. For the same reason that religions require supernatural profits and he didn’t like that he wanted the founding generation to be seen.
[00:41:10] As a collection of ordinary men brought together in a great crisis. That forced, probably the most consequential crisis in American history. And that crisis brought out of them leadership qualities, which otherwise would’ve never come into Adams. Would’ve just been a normal lawyer in, the Boston area in Washington, just been in a Virginia Squire.
[00:41:31] They were created by the revolution and they were not created by.
[00:41:35] GR: You mentioned Abigail Adams earlier. You also talked about their son, John Quincy Adams sixth president of the United States. Mm. And the letters they wrote, in a 20, right. An article that I published, I actually have a quote from a letter that Abigail wrote to.
[00:41:50] John August 14th, 1766, where she said, if we mean to have hero statements and philosophers, we should have learned women. And so, they [00:42:00] were a powerful couple or a power couple, I guess, in today’s terms, could you discuss with us this history, changing family and their enormous sense of patriotic duty and their dedication of public service?
[00:42:12] We should all
[00:42:13] Professor Ellis: it’s all true. It’s all true. It’s hard to exaggerate that the correspondence between John and AGA, which in the published form is approximately 1300 letters. Is the most fully revealed marriage, certainly in the revolutionary era. And I would make the case that the Abigail John correspondence is the most impressive intellectually and stylistically impressive correspondence of any pair of prominent leaders in American history.
[00:42:44] ABI. Nobody’d use the word first lady then I think that was first used with regard to uh, do Madison, but that she was a equal partner with John. And there’s not another woman in American history who is the first lady who [00:43:00] duplicates her at all until you get to Eleanor Roosevelt. She’s a force I would say that if that listeners ever just get a copy that’s in paper, back of the two volumes on their correspondence in 75, 70. It’s unbelievable. The honesty the connection between intellectual insights and emotional understanding the relationship between what’s going on in the country and what’s going on inside the family at the moment that the declaration is being written, she and the children are undergoing smallpox inoculation in Boston.
[00:43:35] And in some ways John’s mind is more on. As he is on the declaration of independence itself. So yeah, I mean, at one point in time, he says, I’ve decided to by a folio volume. This is in April 76. I’m gonna put all your letters that you sent me and I, and I make copies of mine and I want you to do the same on your side.
[00:43:57] And by the way, I think your letters are [00:44:00] better than mine. And guess what I think he might be. Right. So. If you’re looking for a couple who are a married couple in American history, that brings you closer to the texture of what’s really happening at the highest level of American history, you cannot do better than Abigail and John.
[00:44:19] GR: It’s a great recommendation. Well, professor, what I’d like to do is to turn over to you to read something that you wanna share with our listeners could be something you’re working on previous book, your.
[00:44:29] Professor Ellis: what I’d like to do, and it’s not that long, but I would like to read my version of what the declaration of independence would’ve said at the start.
[00:44:39] If Adams had written it, is that okay? Absolutely. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created. That they are endowed by their creator with mutually dependent rights and responsibilities that among these rights are life, Liberty in the pursuit of virtue. [00:45:00] And among these responsibilities are self denial duty to the Commonwealth and a decent respect for the wisdom of the ages.
[00:45:08] That to secure these rights and enforce these responsibilities. Governments are instituted in all civilized societies, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed and from the accumulated experience of preceding generations. Prudence indeed will dictate that government’s long establi should not be changed for light and transient reasons.
[00:45:30] And the lamp of experience will demonstrate that human passions aligned with dreams of perfection, not seduce governments to embrace revolutionary change when imperfect evolution is possible or listen to tribunes of the people who ignore the abiding interests of the public. And accordingly all experience has shown that mankind must resist the tyranny of despots and the tyranny of majorities must balance their urge [00:46:00] for freedom and their obligation to others must contain their pursuit of personal happiness within the covenant of the collective must in some strive to subordinate, the selfish impulses that animate our expectations to the better angels of our nature.
[00:46:16] Let these principles be declared to a candid world at this propitious moment with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, and the civic sense that our mutual pledge binds us together within the expansive limits of our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
[00:46:35] GR: Cara and I thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:46:37] Thank you for sharing those beautiful words with our listeners. And we look forward to additional work coming out from you in the. you’ve got, I’m still going. You’re still going well,
[00:46:48] Professor Ellis: keep on going, still going still scribbling every morning. but I appreciate your interest. And especially in the moment we’re living now, the atoms of perspective on our civic responsibilities is an extraordinarily [00:47:00] important.
[00:47:01] I myself would favor mandatory national service, even though that chances of that passing are remote. But I do think that the interest in what Massachusetts and now Virginia and Kentucky and Pennsylvania call it, Commonwealth is a clue to the notion that there’s a collective sense of American identity that doesn’t exist anymore.
[00:47:23] And that needs to be.
[00:47:25] GR: Well, you’ve definitely given all of us something to think about over the next few months. Thank you for your time.
[00:47:30] Professor Ellis: Thank you for having me take care.[00:48:00]
[00:48:20] GR: The Hawaii state grant consortium. Community educational partner supported by NASA has partnered with schools across the state to implement robotics in the classroom. You and I are both big supporters of stem, really big supporters of steam, and glad to see this taking place in Hawaii.
[00:48:41] Cara: Absolutely go Hawaii.
[00:48:42] I I’d like to go to Hawaii. I’ve never been there. Gerard next week now I’m not gonna be with you next week. Try not to cry. I know I’m sad to miss this guest because actually I have been reading a book on this very topic. you are going be speaking to Jean Straus, the award winning biographer of [00:49:00] JP Morgan in the arise of American finance.
[00:49:04] So that is coming up next week on the learning curve, Gerard I’ll miss you. we’ll be in touch.
[00:49:10] GR: yeah, we’ll be in touch, but you won’t miss me.
[00:49:11] Cara: Yeah. I won’t tell you where I’m gonna be, but it’s gonna be sunny and warm, guaranteed. That’s all I have to say. so I’ll be certainly thinking of you while you record.
[00:49:20] And I’m, Suning myself, somewhere on a beach, but until then, Gerard, please stay safe and happy be elated. 4th of July be, well, my friend,
[00:49:29] GR: same to you.[00:50:00]
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