(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:00] Laurie: So, I think about those five Middlebury values that I share all the time — integrity, rigor, connectedness, curiosity, and openness. And the integrity and rigor piece are something Middlebury doesn't want to give up, nor should it. It's hardcore in many, many ways. And I think we should all be proud of that.
[00:00:19] Matt: You're listening to Midd Moment, a podcast of ideas from Middlebury's leaders and independent thinkers who create community. I'm Matt Jennings, editor of Middlebury Magazine and the executive director of editorial services at Middlebury. Today, we're talking with Laurie Patton, president of Middlebury and professor of religion.
For frequent listeners of this podcast, this introduction might give you a bit of pause. The music's the same, but it's normally Laurie's voice you hear at this time, and it's Laurie who has served as the host of Midd Moment since its inception. Today, we turned the tables a bit. I'll be asking the questions, and Laurie will be our guest.
At the end of 2024, she'll be concluding her presidency at Middlebury and will become the president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before she leaves, though, we wanted to have this chat. Consider it an exit interview of sorts. And we have a lot to talk about, so let's get going.
Laurie, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:19] Laurie: It’s great to be here.
[00:01:20] Matt: I wanted to say that after listening to you, welcome, Laurie. Welcome to the podcast. I feel like Jeff Probst in Survivor. I get to welcome you.
[00:01:27] Laurie: I know, right. And I am happy to be on the other side of the table.
[00:01:31] Matt: Great. So, I have a first broad-based question to ask you, as we come to the close of a presidency, historic in a lot of ways. How has this job changed you?
[00:01:44] Laurie: There's so many different things to say in response to that. I'll start with the little things that are funny and then I'll do the big things. The little things are that you forget to turn your president mode off. So, as my husband frequently says, “Laurie, you are not the president in the kitchen.” And my first response is, “No, I am. I am still the president of the kitchen.”
But I think you really get used to managing everything and everybody. And so, it's very hard, sometimes, to realize that you can stop doing that. I mean, there's two different modes. One is you're totally off or you're totally on. I think, as a result of 10 years of doing this, the in-between mode is hardest. And if I have to choose in an in-between moment, whether I'm totally off or totally on, I'm going to go back to being the president. So, I think that's one thing, for sure.
Second thing is, because I have really come to know the power of community in this work and the power of what it means to be in a rural cosmopolitan place, which is what I call Middlebury, and how people come together for each other and how people who are having a big old fight one day deal with, you know, clearing each other's roofs of snow the next day, and that is just how we roll, I think that I have become truly invested in the power of the local.
And Middlebury, both the college and the town, has taught me something very profound about the vibrancy of democracy and the power of the local. And I think I always felt it, but you know how, when you're truly changed by something, the values that you already had move from becoming latent to explicit. And I think that's, probably, the most permanent change, is, close-knit communities are actually surprising and interesting. People understand that, the next day, they are going to be in relationship to that person. So, they have a sense of a future and a future relationship, which is also a lot about democracy, right? That when you know you will always have an obligation. I think it was a Vermont legislator who said that rural relationships are both dutiful and they're also profound. There's a kind of connection there that really matters.
And so, when you're aware of that kind of relationship where you will have an obligation to the person, you will have a sense of connection to the person in the future, you change how you relate to them in the present. And I think that's also true in the best of democratic systems as well.
[00:04:40] Matt: It's a microcosm here. And I think Middlebury, the institution, is famously known as the town's college. It was the founding fathers, those who founded the town, then founded the institution. I worked in a building that bears the gentleman's name, Gamaliel Painter. His walking stick is on the wall over there. So, there is that throughline of history, but an evolution, too, as any place should have.
[00:05:05] Laurie: When I think about Gamaliel Painter and I think about his legacy, I think about another thing that is related to small communities. And that is the relationship between loss and generosity, right? So, the thing we know about Gamaliel Painter is that he watched one of his sons drown in Otter Creek. He lost another son, I think, to a fever, to illness. He lost his first wife. Then, when he married again and had a beloved daughter, he lost his second wife and then the beloved daughter.
And so, when he died, he was married a third time, but he had so much loss in his life, much more than in that time period than we're used to now, but even a lot for that time period. And he was known throughout the town as being someone of always good countenance and generosity of spirit. And I can't attribute motivation. That wouldn't be the right thing to do, historically. But I do notice that, throughout all those periods of loss, he kept up his generosity. He would donate a building. He would think about expanding his mill. He would make a gift, including the gift to the college. And all of these moments were moments of generosity. And I like to think of them as moments of generosity in response to grief.
And not only in response to grief, but a kind of way of remaining hopeful in the midst of incredible personal loss. And when people talk about, and at every graduation and every convocation, I talk about Gamaliel Painter walking with his cane and he could be seen walking around the town with his cane, I know, and I know others walk around Middlebury in moments when they're trying to figure something out and in moments of great grief or loss. And I think maybe part of the reason why he walked around the town so much was because of that sense of the possibility combined with a sense of loss. And so, that cane that's sitting on the wall that you just mentioned is a symbol, for me. Originally, it was a symbol of the college when I first got here and learning how to effortlessly embody the values of an institution. Now, it's also a symbol of what it means to be in community in the midst of grief and create hope in the midst of a tumultuous moment or tumultuous time.
So, Gamaliel Painter, also, has become a different kind of symbol, the more I read about what he actually endured in his life and his incredible generosity of spirit and openness and public mindedness in the midst of all of that.
[00:07:53] Matt: I was going to bring this up later in the conversation, but while we're on the topic, I think it makes sense to address it now. You've personally have dealt with loss during the past decade. We've lost students. We've lost faculty members, both president and emerita. You lost a very close colleague in Jeff Cason, and you lost your father. These qualities that you were talking about seeing in Gamaliel Painter, we've seen in you. And I don't know if it's been conscious or not, or if it's, you know, almost symbiotic, getting that from the spirit of the place.
[00:08:30] Laurie: I had never thought of that before. That's a really beautiful thing to say. You know, I'll never forget, I was in Maine when our provost, Jeff Cason… we lost our provost, Jeff Cason. And literally, two weeks earlier, he was sitting on the couch over there talking about his trip to Portugal and how excited he was to be… he was filled with life, you know, as always. And I remember thinking at that point, the only thing we need to do is, you know, kind of, come together and be together because it's almost as like… it's almost as if a community needs to reassemble itself, not only to remember the person, which is the most profound thing, but also to remember that it can move on and that the person would want us to move on.
So, yes, I think, Middlebury has, because it's an old community and because the memories of a small community that is also vibrant and also hugely connected to the world, they're very long memories. People remember 30, 40 years ago, some new administrators or faculty will come and say, “You know, I just had coffee with someone and they were sharing something that was really bothering them.” And they thought, “Okay, you know, I'm sorry, this is such a current issue,” and then you hear that it, you know, happened 30 years ago. And those are all also parts of small communities.
But I think what's interesting about the long memory is that it also allows you to see the long arc of a contribution of a person. So, people remembered Jeff from when he first was a faculty member here. That wasn't that many years after he was this long-haired hitchhiker that went straight down to South America.
[00:10:15] Matt: Walking to South America, right.
[00:10:17] Laurie: Right, and just doing his thing. So, there was a continuity of memory that I think is really important. And I think, for each of the losses that we have had, what I've been impressed by is that the community has found a way to imagine the person in the midst of the continuity of the community that constitutes Middlebury, the institution. And that's been very powerful to watch, as well.
[00:10:43] Matt: Tapping into that, that vein of history and continuity, you, in your first address to the community in Middlebury Chapel, you hit upon the theme that I think has been a constant in how we've thought and talked about Middlebury the past decade, and which is this tension between rootedness and restlessness. And you saw it in the town. You saw it in Middlebury, historically and contemporary. Could you talk a little more about that? What… how the creative tension between the two has informed your thinking of this place and the future that we've built?
[00:11:17] Laurie: Yeah. I think you really hit on the dynamic that has been the most meaningful among many meaningful aspects of leading Middlebury and being a part of the Middlebury community. So, the rootedness has to do with whether it's here in Vermont or also in Monterey, a deep sense of place that never goes away. You're always aware of inhabiting a particular kind of place. Students feel it. It's why I think friendships last as long as they do at Middlebury and beyond, is because you've inhabited together a particular kind of place. You've learned together in a particular kind of place.
So, I think that's super powerful. And I think that is where people do feel rooted. I've had students who come from Brooklyn, who've never been in a rural space, but who's discipline, it has been, is to ride their bicycle down a new road in Middlebury every weekend just to, sort of, learn the place.
And then the restlessness, I think, is, I think it's two different things. One is, we love to have relationships with other institutions, particularly abroad. I'm really proud of the fact that our… all of our, with the exception of our Oxford campus, all of our relationships in our schools abroad are based on social capital and not buildings. We're not creating big campuses. And yet, those are the schools and the affiliations that have thrived and survived. The biggest bounce-back after the COVID was with our schools abroad. So, I think there's a kind of restlessness there that's about always wanting to go out into the world, never to stay just in Middlebury, but always wanting to travel and then come home. And there's that whole dynamic, you know, you never really know a home unless you've left it. And then you come back and you go, “Okay, now I belong here,” right?
[00:13:17] Matt: But you have to leave first. Yeah.
[00:13:19] Laurie: But you have to leave for that first time you leave and then you come back. But I think there's something else about the restlessness, and that is more about the fact that I have never been in an institution that has been this old and has still a spirit of newness in it. Every other American institution that has been this old that I've been part of has not embraced the sense of innovation. And that's an overused word. But I think Middlebury appreciates creativity. There is always going to be what I call grumbly go-alongs, right? Which is, or grumpy grow-along, which is, oh, you know, we're obsessed with innovation. Why can't we just be our great liberal arts and science itself when that great liberal arts and science itself was itself an innovation?
So, I think there's an invitation to creativity that's always been part of Middlebury. And that is also part of the restlessness. It's never going to... I've never seen Middlebury be self-congratulatory. As you know, I think I define mediocrity as you were excellent 10 years ago and still think you are.
[00:14:29] Matt: That one thing you did.
[00:14:30] Laurie: That one thing you did, right. That could be another way to think about it. Middlebury's never been that way. It's always been wondering, I call it jokingly because the congregationalist spirit founded Middlebury and congregationalist ideals founded Middlebury. There's a relentless introspection and self-improvement that, on the tough days, I call congregationalist perfectionism, and on the amazing days I call it that, kind of, restlessness that always drives a spirit of creativity. So, I think there's two different elements of restlessness there.
[00:15:05] Matt: At this time, within that context, you also described Middlebury and the institution as being at a crossroads. This is 2015, 2016. We thought of ourselves correctly as a newly complex institution and all that entailed. And you said we're at a crossroads and there are any number of ways we can go, but we're going to go through this. And I said to myself, I'm not going to talk about strategic planning in a podcast because everyone's going to hit pause or go away. But within this context, I think, I think this is, this is really interesting and engaging. You specifically said we're not going to do strategic plan. There's a framework, a way that will guide us. Little did we know that we would need that flexibility when a global pandemic came along.
But just that way of thinking of being at a crossroads, let's get a framework that will help define who we are and that will help guide us into the future, having gone through that, where we are today, is it where you thought we would be at that time?
[00:16:07] Laurie: I have frequently said and just mentioned in my interview with the campus that every single dream I had for Middlebury I have either accomplished or begun so that I know it's going to stay in some form. And that has been extraordinary to see. So, in that way, yes. And those are things like the School of Abenaki, the conflict transformation work, an initiative and the effect it has had in our community and as well as in broader communities. The work on Energy2028 and the sense that we always need to assume the mantle of leadership because we have a combination of rural resources, capital resources, and a can-do spirit and a legacy that we're proud of. That's very rare. And that means that our obligation to lead environmentally is hugely important. The town-gown relationship being as vibrant and cordial as it always was that, but I really wanted to give that message loud and clear. And I think people have heard that message. I jokingly say, you know, I could claim that it was my dream to become a, you know, athletic powerhouse for women, but maybe that was, sort of, inadvertently wonderful.
But there are other things that have really become meaningful to me, whether it's the Vermont Works Program, where people can sit and be in the summertime in Vermont and think about themselves as workers in Vermont later. So, many different things I could name. The reason why I take the time to name them now is because those are both dreams, as well as parts of a strategic framework, right? So, what we named was where we want to go. And we also had a vision statement, not just a mission statement.
[00:18:05] Matt: And that was different. I mean, you didn't see other institutions doing that.
[00:18:09] Laurie: Some institutions have done it, but I don't think our, you know, closest ones have. But I think because Middlebury is an aspirational place and energetically aspirational place, it was easy to say, okay, you know, the world we want to inhabit is one that is a robust and inclusive public square or public sphere where courageous citizens, ethical citizens cross intellectual, geographical, and cultural boundaries. Those are really important words. That vision statement creates both the rootedness and the restlessness, which I love.
So, I think that the framework for what we did in the last 10 years has supported the dreams that we've accomplished. There are two or three that I, literally, every day, now, in my last month and a half, I'm thinking about making sure that people carry on that legacy and say, you know, this would mean a lot to me if you continue to think about this. Obviously, the museum project is the most important one. There are many others, but I could say more about that. Nocturne is another dream where the students taught us about democracy in a really…
[00:19:21] Matt: In their way.
[00:19:22] Laurie: In their way to say, the way we feel comfortable being part of the public square is through the arts. And just naming that and engaging that on so many different levels. That's another dream.
[00:19:31] Matt: I have in front of me, it actually was two interviews that we condensed into one piece in the print magazine. You had been here a year. So, this was fall of 2016 that we published this. And sprinkled throughout, we don't have the names that we have for it now, like, MiddData, Energy2028 Conflict Transformation, but it's all in here. You talk about data literacy. You talk about, of course, the robust public sphere. You talk about living sustainably, as well as educating on sustainability. So, it's really cool to actually see it all here.
One of the bigger things that I think really, kind of, defines this period is, you said in your inaugural, you talked about having bigger and better arguments. And I want to read something to you. It was in your address to faculty in April 2017. It also… we adapted it for the essay in the magazine, titled Free Speech Inclusivity in the Public Sphere. How does one acknowledge the discomfort that a true liberal education must entail while at the same time recognizing and respecting the often difficult and unfair experiences of our students who have walked in the American margins? There was a committee that was put together at that time that I was privileged and fortunate to have been selected for. So, I was steeped in these conversations, the committee on speech and inclusivity, where we tackled those two twin values head on and how do we honor both. From my perspective as a member of this community, but also recognizing I'm a white male, speaking from privilege, not having to walk on those margins that others have, I feel like we're continuing to make enormous important strides, but the job isn't done. How do you feel about this, seeing it in this community?
[00:21:27] Laurie: Yeah. So, the full aspiration of that sentence was, you know, more and better arguments with greater respect, more resilience and deeper wisdom. And those are the three things that I think have really pushed us and inspired us and motivated us are those three things. 2017 was a moment. And I say this because I speak publicly about this everywhere, where we were broken and we broke open. And I think it's actually good for a community to be broken and to acknowledge that it’s broken, that there were things that we’re building, there were things that were in the outside world, there are increase of the polarization, increase in a student sense that there was nothing they could do. All of that, kind of, came together.
And I think, sometimes, a community tells a story about itself that something happens in the community where it's clearly not what it thought it was. So, I think the last 10 years have been absolutely central and critical for Middlebury to be in a space where it sees its own brokenness and moves from that to do the really honest rebuilding that has to be done, whether that's thinking about freedom of expression and freedom of academic inquiry, two different things, and inclusivity afresh, whether that's thinking about what it means to belong at Middlebury. Also, what it means to be accountable at Middlebury for constructive engagement, in its own right.
I think all of those things have emerged to the fore. And when I tell this story, I talk about the fact that we began by listening. Our first response was not only the group that you were on, but also the Engage Listening Project. And we began with faculty in which we said, “Okay, how do we create those mini public squares where the tension between freedom of expression and inclusivity is framed differently? It's framed in terms of listening better?” Because that, the tension between freedom of expression and inclusivity is never going to go away. And you can have endless arguments about that. And I'm a very patient person in many ways, and I'm also very impatient in others. And I will tolerate having the same conversation twice, but not a third time.
And so, what I felt an urgency about was reframing the conversation. So, we look at, what is our obligation to students to give them the tools to not be afraid in the public square and also not to explode in the public square in a way that shuts down other speech. And those are the two things that we needed to everyone, the whole world needed to work on that. I frequently think that Middlebury, at that point, was given an opportunity to be an example over several years after that. And I think we took that opportunity really well.
After the Engage Listening Project, where diversity of viewpoint in the classroom, listening in the classroom, they have to go hand in hand. Then, continue to get reframed as conflict transformation. And that is a pragmatic skill that some people, at least in the history of education, they have put that skill into a vocational track or a hyper-pragmatic track or a professional track, when it seemed to me that being completely focused on this as a skill that students could bring into every part of their life meant that it was also a liberal art and should be understood as a liberal art.
So, that work was the next part of this community's work. And it's been extraordinary to watch the students take, and faculty and staff, take their own version of what it means to have more and better arguments with greater respect, deeper resilience, and more wisdom. Those kinds of ways of being that are really about everyday ethics. This community has already had the resources to make that part of its soul, but I think it really shifted. And to see the community embrace it as much as it has and to watch, even in tough times, such as after October 7th, 2023, is it perfect? No. Are people still mad? Yes. Are we having the same conversations that other campuses are? Yes.
And when the purpose of the engagement for students is fundamentally about staying at the table and staying in relationship, it means that they are going to show up with a different kind of conversation. And I have watched students embrace that. I've watched faculty embrace it. I've watched staff embrace it in a way that has really affected me. It has been incredibly inspiring to see it. And I think it was already always there and part of what leaders do is just see where the kindling is already gathered and they light the match. We had to do that.
And I think it's also, this is a very beautiful, vibrant, dynamic, sophisticated place, which means it's close to utopia. The line between utopia and dystopia is super thin. And so, I think what happened for us is, because we are so idealized and people move from everywhere to be near Middlebury, we have trustees and trustees emeriti living nearby at a rate that's much higher than other places because they want to be near it. Yeah, they want to be part of it. Those of us who are running the place, it's not… certainly not utopia, but being aware of how we do have an idealized version of Middlebury in our minds and hearts, and sometimes that can translate into brokenheartedness, because we don't live up to, and in some dramatic way, we don't live up to what our idealized version of ourselves is. So, the trick there, and conflict transformation teaches us this, too, is to be super aware and super analytical about any situation where there is conflict and to embrace conflict as a positive opportunity to shift the dynamics in any given society, and also to create as positive tension rather than a negative one.
And I think students are also unafraid of conflict in its own right and more able to use tools to speak what it has felt dangerous in the past. And I'm super moved by that every time I see it.
[00:28:35] Matt: So, there's an additional story here that I want to tap into. A late dear friend of mine, who had my position at the University of Portland, I'm in, and Brian Doyle, who's also a poet and an essayist, had this wonderful essay on the difference between news and story. In this case, you know, we've talked about, there's the news of the establishment of the Conflict Transformation Initiative, established with a $25 million grant from the Mellon Foundation.
[00:29:03] Laurie: The first to Engage Listening Project was a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation that says “From an anonymous donor,” yeah.
[00:29:11] Matt: I believe the largest programmatic grant in the, in the history of the institution. So, that's the news. There's a story behind it, though. This wasn't a grant proposal that went out. And a very few people know this story, so I would like more people to know about it. This might have given some adjectives to some of our fundraising colleagues that you were giving the advice, no, let's don't follow the normal procedure of a grant proposal. What happened?
[00:29:37] Laurie: Yeah, it's a story that people like to hear. And it happens to college presidents, maybe, once in their lifetime. So, I was super aware that this was never going to happen again. So, this was a donor that I met and clearly really clicked, a person who is very aware of some of the dynamics of the world, has friendships across political spectrums, has a sense of wanting to heal the world in a particular way. And they said, “Write me your dream.” And I said, “Okay.” And I got together with my grant proposal writer and I've always wanted to create a program of conflict transformation as a liberal art. And John Paul Lederach, who is on our board and our, sort of, founding thinker, in a way, his ideas about conflict transformation guide us. And we created a really very tight grant proposal. And the donor said, “This is great, but it's way too institutionalized. Don't give me an institutionalized proposal. Write me a letter from the heart.” And I was like, “Whoa, okay.” And I'm like, “Okay, have to write the best letter from the heart ever,” and started to think very, kind of, institutionally about it. And I'm like, as I was writing on an airplane at one point, I said, “I don't think that's what this donor wants.” And so, I literally did sit down and write a letter from the heart. And then the donor said, “That's what I'm looking for. Sounds great. Now, go write a grant proposal.”
So, we had to go from letter from the heart to a very large seven-year matrix of 25 million where every single thing was accounted for in very, very specific ways. And it was a little bit of vertigo in terms of moving to the other. But it was a great lesson because the best grant proposals are ones that come from the heart. You don't have a chance to say, you know, the dream of your lifetime in education.
The other thing that was so amazing about this is, and this is true of Japanese pottery in which, when something's broken, you put the gold line through it. You know, you're like you're healing something and you see that gold line happening through it. And you realize that in the art of fixing, healing, mending, you also see the natural contours of something, right? I gathered the people who were interested in conflict transformation at Middlebury. And there were, I'd say, 30 or 40 immediately. Now, there are hundreds. But even there, you saw the contours of an institution and saw what it might take to build that in really exciting ways.
[00:32:14] Matt: You mentioned it when we were talking about the… you expanded on the bigger, better arguments, you use the word “wisdom, greater wisdom.” You didn't say greater intelligence, greater intellect, but you said wisdom. You have spoken about the difference between intellect and wisdom. And that really, I know it was intended for the students, but this old guy was like, “Wow, that's stayed with me.” Could you speak to that, the difference between the two and why the emphasis on wisdom is so important?
[00:32:42] Laurie: So, I think, for any school that is a selective liberal arts and sciences institution, I think it translates into different kinds of anxieties at different kinds of campuses. But at Middlebury, the anxiety is, you know, “I'm super accomplished as I am. I need to continue to be as accomplished as I am. I came to Middlebury because it feels very open and engaged and nurturing and challenging, right?”
So, I think about those five Middlebury values that I share all the time — integrity, rigor, connectedness, curiosity, and openness. And the integrity and rigor piece are something Middlebury doesn't want to give up, nor should it. It's hardcore in many, many ways. And I think we should all be proud of that.
And then there are times when students do feel that they are surrounded by people who are already more accomplished than they are, naturally more accomplished than they are because they've lived in five places and they've learned six languages, et cetera. It's harder at Middlebury to think about the difference between intelligence and wisdom because people are also super supportive of each other.
So, I frequently say in convocation, yes, the person next to you did write an opera, do three varsity sports, create an NGO and an environmental movement all in high school. And the worst thing is that they were really nice about it, right? And it's true. That is what Middlebury feels like. And they will be super supportive of whatever you're doing. But even that, that would be enough, as they say, in the Jewish liturgy, dayenu, you know, that would be enough, but what's important is that wisdom is something different than all of those things. It's not even accomplishment with humanity, which is a great thing. Like, we could stop there. It's about the fact that there is something of value that goes beyond accomplishment, and that there is something of value, not just a failing, cause it's a cliche now. Everyone says, “Oh, I have to fail well, et cetera.”
[00:34:54] Matt: Failing upward.
[00:34:55] Laurie: Failing forward, failing upward, et cetera. It's more than that. It's about the fact that, as one lives one's life, knowledge is useful and transformational, more importantly, in different ways and always will be. So, if knowledge isn't transformational of relationships, of systems, of ways of being, of politics, et cetera, then it's never wise. It's simply knowledge.
And that doesn't mean that the application of knowledge is the only thing that matters. It means that, if you don't assume that knowledge of any sort at any time can profoundly change you, then you're not being wise. You're just being instrumental about knowledge. And I worry about that because I think, on the one hand, you don't want to avoid or ignore the fact that we have, even today, a greater income gap between college educated and non-college educated students. No matter how many pot shots folks will take at higher education, our application numbers remain very, very high. They were… they've doubled since I've got here, almost.
And so, they're voting with their feet. And as I just said to the faculty in one of my last addresses, we are tasked with explaining something that people don't really understand that is very hard to tell a true story about because it's the entirety of life that is contained in any institution of higher education. So, you're never really going to be able to tell a true story about it. And yet, is also castigated at the same time.
And that's a really tough position to be in. So, the more stories that we can tell about the excellence and the transformational power of higher education, the better off we're going to be because no one else is going to tell that story for us. And that, I think, just thinking about the thing that was one of the toughest things I would say for any leader in higher education is to realize that there are very few forms of press right now that are motivated to tell a true story about higher ed. You can't, because, as soon as you have an angle or a story according to what will sell, no matter how wonderful your newspaper is, you will never be able to tell the truest story about what's happening. And I worry about that a lot. Discomfort, pushing the boundaries, rigorous debate, learning for learning's sake, and then thinking about its value in society, all of that is true every day in most institutions of higher education. The press simply hasn't told that story. And that has been hard, partly because it's not exciting. It's like a happy family, right? You're not going to… but at the other hand, it's also super inspirational. And I've always, as a comparative mythologist, I've always been committed to the idea that, even a happy story can be an interesting one. And not just happy, but a constructive story, a story of dimensions.
[00:38:14] Matt: Yeah. A story well told will grab attention. So, we're a good ways into this and we have not spoken about something I alluded to it. And that's COVID.
[00:38:22] Laurie: Yes, indeed.
[00:38:24] Matt: That happened.
[00:38:25] Laurie: Yep. There was that.
[00:38:27] Matt: I alluded to it earlier when we were talking about a strategic framework, which gave us the flexibility to not have to cancel a plan because the world turned upside down with a global health emergency. But we were still… it's a cliche, but I'll use it because it's accurate. We were in uncharted territory, unless there was anyone with a chart from 1918. I know you've spoken a lot, about the experience as being a leader of an institution during a time that was terrifying, that was uncertain, that was even existential, to a certain degree. Looking back on that now, are you able to think about that holistically?
[00:39:10] Laurie: Yeah. So, I actually found leading during COVID super fulfilling. And the reason why was because there was a commonality of purpose that I absolutely found inspiring. Middlebury pulled together. We found a way forward that protected people. And there was a kind of solidarity that allowed me to feel that I could lead in a really straightforward way. And so, that was really fulfilling. And there were these really fun moments, like, when we decided to open up and we'd gone through phase one and we were going to phase two, we had virtually no cases, very small number of, like, one or tw. And they're like, “We've been so good. Now, we can…” you know, the pressure to get to phase two right when all of the other institutions of higher education were being written up because the off-campus parties were as bad as they were.
So, my approach to that was, okay, we're ready to go to phase two, but given what we know are the super spreader events of parties off campus, Middlebury is small enough for me to have taken two days, get driven around by Matt Curran and assisted by Amy Carlin with goodie bags for every single off-campus house, arrive unannounced and with cookies, a panther, a stuffed panther, a blanket, and a letter that said, “Thank you so much. You guys have been awesome. Please, know that parties off campus are super spreaders. You have one party. I don't care if it's a safe party or not. You're out. And it's not like you're a bad person or anything such as public health wise. You can't be.”
So, it was fun because there were, sort of, urban-like broken down apartments and then there were beautiful houses in the middle of the hills. There was one where they literally were rolling out the kegs and they saw me come up as the president unannounced.
[00:41:15] Matt: In the headlights, yeah.
[00:41:17] Laurie: Yeah, they were, they rolled the kegs back very quickly. I'm sure they'll never forget that. And it was super fun just to walk around, see where everyone lived unannounced. But so much was unusual and upside down at that point that having the president suddenly appear with a goody bag and a letter of tough love was okay.
But those… that was an example of a different kind of leadership that I also really appreciated. There were some super tough moments, such as when people did feel super scared. So, when we were considering opening but we hadn't decided fully, and other places with really different demographics and really different counties and so on, density population, and so on, they were deciding to close even though they were like us in certain ways. I had people come to the house saying, “If you open, you're going to jeopardize the lives of my grandchildren.” And I had people come to the house saying, “If you close, because of the business effects on the county, you're going to jeopardize the lives of my grandchildren.”
So, that was a tough part, kind of, moving forward in that space was really tough. But I do think in the end that the harder thing was not COVID. Even though it was horrific, it was a place where we learned and we grew. And the state of Vermont had a huge amount of connection with us.
A school's success in COVID or its bumpiness in COVID was dependent on three things. One, the county and what the actual conditions of the county were. Second, the relationship to the state health department, wherever they were. And the third is the risk tolerance of the president. Those are the three things that made it either something that could, that you could stand up or something that would be very hard to stand up.
[00:43:10] Matt: And you wrote about this as centrality of place in a pandemic, which comes back for me about the sense of place at Middlebury, as an institution, whether that's in Vermont or in California or at our sites abroad, how important, not necessarily a physical location, but in an idea of community and place informs everything else.
So, this brings me to the two final things I want to get to. You had mentioned earlier in this conversation of your intention to still be a part of this community, even while you have a.. will have a day job in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You've also thought a lot about home. You have a collection of poems about it that we have here. And I would like you, or I would invite you, I shall say, to read from this collection. And then we can discuss further what this meaning of home means.
[00:44:01] Laurie: Sure. I'd be happy to do that.
So, this is a poem, the book that you refer to is a book of poems about the architectural elements of a house and the ways in which the experience of those architectural elements make a house a home. And it's called House Crossing. And so, they are all inspired by Gaston Bachelard, the philosopher who wrote a book called Poetics of Space, in which these architectural elements are talked about as how they shape our imagination. And they're really simple. They're floor, a couple of ceiling, window, hallway, et cetera. And so, I really tried to keep the poems simple based on that structure.
And this is called Grave, and it's about the difference between shelter and home. And it's a meditation on the idea that most, certainly historical, archaeologists would say that the moment that the idea of home, kind of, emerged in the human imagination is when folks started to bury their relatives near them and they started to live near where their relatives were buried. So, there was a sense of a consecrated place or a place that was consecrated by the spirit of the ancestors.
The difference between house and home seems to have been the moment we began to bury our ancestors near us, said the archaeologist, with an elegance given only to those who touch bones on a daily basis. Which moment, I asked, as the lights came up? Was it the hour when the boys broke the stone of that grave in the neighbor's field and we ran to put flowers on the broken slab for weeks after? Was it the day we made up an ancestor who lay under the lily patch, unrelated to us except in our stories? Was it the month the dog dragged a perfect skeleton of a squirrel from the cellar, holding it gently as if afraid to undo the patterns? Or was it the year we finally began singing back to the voice behind the door, the one sending music long before we were born?
[00:46:24] Matt: Well, almost lost for words, and that rarely happens. It touches on what that experience could have been like for you in the boardroom. I know that… I've heard a little about the house, the structure, as well as the home environment that you grew up in, in Salem, Massachusetts. I think I believe it was your sister who famously said, “Why our parents thought it was wise to raise us in a house filled with ghosts was a good thing.” But it does speak to, again, the place of home. This would be the ideal way to conclude this by saying it's wonderful that you will always have a home or continue to have a home here in Addison County in Vermont. But I'd be remiss not to ask you one other question that you have made a part of every other Midd Moment episode, which is putting you on the spot and asking you what your Midd Moment is.
[00:47:11] Laurie: Oh, no. Oh, I've never… it's so funny, no one has ever asked me.
[00:47:17] Matt: I know you're asking that.
[00:47:19] Laurie: What the Midd Moment was, I've never thought about it. There's so many that I'm not sure I could give you one. There's a, kind of, set of bookends, which is interesting, and it's related to the rootedness and restlessness theme, which is, when I was deciding whether I wanted to come and be at Middlebury, someone who I was very close to, who was a professor, who was helping discern whether I should come, and I was walking around incognito, no one knew. I was just this person visiting campus. And I saw him just that afternoon when everything was over and we're just winding down. I saw him walking alone on a beautiful sunny day with an ice cream cone. And I thought, it's really interesting. I don't know that many people would just go and buy an ice cream cone in a close-knit community where it was like, “Oh, that professor's eating an ice cream cone,” and just enjoying himself, having this fabulous time eating an ice cream cone.
And the other day, at one of our goodbye dinners, he was there and he said, “I still feel super comfortable in this place on my own, buying an ice cream cone and just simply enjoying it in the afternoon.” And I thought, if there ever was a moment or a community that could support that freedom to both be in community and to walk around enjoying an ice cream cone, it's the simplest thing in the world. But I think Middlebury is that kind of space, where there's an opportunity simply to be on your own and enjoy in the midst of a community that allows for that tension between both the solitude that creativity demands and the community that creativity demands together.
There are many, many other Midd Moments, but the bookends of both seeing this professor with the ice cream cone and having him say, “Yes, even yesterday, I was going to get an ice cream cone and wander around,” was perfect.
And it's, kind of, this wonderful sense of belonging, too, that you feel that you can be in a place and no one will mind if you simply walk around with an ice cream cone. And I will say, you know, when you're talking about place, that one way of defining home is that place claims you. And the most mysterious thing to me right now, truly mysterious, I have no idea how it's going to work, is, how can I be a proud member of the Middlebury community as someone who used to be the president, still believes profoundly that this is the most interesting place to work in higher education, and to do so in a way that is embodied differently than what I have for the last 10 years? I have no idea what that's going to look like, but even that feels like an adventure to me.
[00:50:15] Matt: And I think you're up for the challenge.
[00:50:17] Laurie: I hope so. I sure do.
[00:50:19] Matt: Well, thank you so much, Laurie, for this conversation. I will conclude with our outro. And again, I get to read it because I'm sitting on this side of the table. So, I'll just say, we'd like to thank Laurie Patton for joining us in conversation today.
This episode of Midd Moment was hosted by me, Matt Jennings, editor of Middlebury Magazine. For all episodes prior, our host was today's guest, Laurie Patton. I hope you all enjoyed this conversation as much as I did.
Today's episode was engineered by Mitch Bluestein of Modry Media. It was produced and edited by the terrific folks at the podcast agency, University FM. Video production was handled by Chris Spencer of Spencer Media.
For more conversations like this, we hope you'll return to this podcast for past conversations, future conversations. Thank you for listening.