- [Announcer] Co-Chairs of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, Samar Ali and former governor Bill Haslam, discuss why Vanderbilt is the right place for the Unity Project, how others can foster constructive dialogue, and they share their encounters with challenging conversations.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Support for the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy was provided by the Leicester G. Ruff Fant Fund.

- So let me start here.

Why did you agree to be a part of this project?

You've got a lot of stuff going on.

- Well, I thought that, given everything that's happening in the country right now and how polarized we are, that we needed a project like this and we needed it at a place like Vanderbilt, in the Heartland, that actually was started right after the Civil War to reconcile differences between the North and the South.

- Right, so yeah, Vanderbilt does have that history.

I actually think universities are particularly appropriate place to have discussions.

They should be places that students come in to learn.

Chancellor Diermeier of Vanderbilt has a saying, he said, "I think every university should have a little arch that students walk in through that says, 'The world is more complex than you think it is.'"

- [Samar] I love that.

- And I think that is true.

And one of the things I hope universities do is become a place where students, no matter what you believe, can come and at least understand better what people who don't think like they do think, and why they think that.

- That's right.

And I think that's the beauty of free speech too, and academic freedom.

And that's why it's also really important that we hold onto that, especially during this turbulent time.

It's good for students, it's good for faculty, it's good for the administration, it's good for the community.

And I think that we touch on all of those things through this project.

- Universities also are, by their very nature, very, while they're institutions, they're inevitably, hopefully, very personal places.

It's where many people make their best long-term friends, it's where we sometimes learn to think and hopefully to learn to think and understand things that we didn't before.

And they're places usually of transformation, those four years of your life.

So let me just start here.

How can universities be places that encourage enlightening dialogue, or helpful dialogue, I guess.

- Well, I know, I'll speak from my own experience, and I wanna hear about yours too.

I know that when I graduated from Waverly Central High School, and my freshman year starting at Vanderbilt, I was a different thinker, a different person than I was when I graduated from Vanderbilt.

And the exposure that I had, even though it's just 65 miles down the road, was different than anything I'd ever experienced before and it set me up for what I'm doing today, really.

And all the different people, the different professors, the different textbooks that I was exposed to, the classes that I took.

What was it like for you?

You went to Emory, right?

And you were involved at UT Knoxville.

- Same, just 200 miles from home.

And I'll say the same part, it's actually we, both of us went to places that were very different than we came from, even though it was same region, et cetera.

I think for me, you know, both high school and college was a place of great transformation.

I learned to love learning, for one thing.

I learned to become intrigued by, how'd we get here?

I majored in history because it's like, well, it's not just this random set of events and circumstances that got here.

People made decisions to get us here.

- Right.

- And we make, life is not just random events, people make decisions and those decisions have consequences, good and bad.

And I think that's what university, going to school did for me.

Let me ask you this, give us a quick 20, 30 second background.

I mean, one of the things that's interesting to me about you is, like I said, you did grow up in a small town, Waverly, Tennessee, just west of Nashville.

Your father, a member of the Tennessee National Guard.

Very traditional upbringing, but you have a Palestinian heritage that probably wasn't real common in Waverly.

- Yeah, Palestinian and Syrian.

So my mom's from Damascus.

So I grew up actually between living in the heartland and spending my summers in the holy land and having that exposure.

And that's one of the reasons I decided to become a peacemaker, is 'cause I felt, how do we reconcile these differences between Palestinians and Israelis and between people that the rest of the world seems are at such odds.

And thinking we've inherited these truths, as you were just saying about history, people made decisions that got us to this point.

Where are we?

Where've we been?

And where do we wanna go and how can we shape where we're going?

- You know, part of the challenge today is, how do you not set aside your own convictions that were not the things that you believe to be true, and yet have a conversation where the other side is not automatically the enemy?

That feels like the challenge of the day.

- Yes, I mean, for me, part of it is, this is what I would call the de-enimization process.

Which is, 'cause I'm a research professor, I have to use those, (laughs) those fancy terms.

But in essence, really, I think what it means is, to when I'm engaging in conversation with somebody that they might think I'm at odds with or I might be at odds with, it helps me understand my own viewpoint better.

And so it challenges me when I'm in conversation with them.

It helps me see my side even better or differently.

So I either see something and say, "Oh, maybe I should change my opinion on that," or "Nope, I'm right."

And so like, this is helping me.

- But how do we learn to say, I think I'm right, okay, I know I might be wrong, but I think I'm right, and yet the other side doesn't become the enemy?

How do you, okay.

- That's important.

Because it's at what cost am I willing to go because I'm right?

And also, what does it mean?

Just because I'm right it doesn't mean I need to dehumanize the other side because they think differently.

Or it could also be, we could both be right.

This is my experience with the truth.

That's my right, and recognizing their experience with the truth is their right.

And then reconciling with that in a way of where we still break bread together.

That sounds maybe a little bit cheesy, but we still can be friends.

We can still get along.

I mean, I say this all the time.

I'm Muslim, you're Christian, and I say this to my Christian friends all the time, by default you've decided you're Christian, you're not Muslim.

And we have inherent differences there on the religions that we decided to be.

We're not 100% on the same page and that's okay.

And we can still do great things together.

And I believe in God, you believe in God, and some people don't believe in God.

And we have different thoughts, I think, on what existence means.

And what I mean by that is, for me as a Muslim, I think that the living in in the world is a test.

It's a test for judgment day.

Not everybody believes that.

And, but somebody might be coming from somewhere else of where they wanna give back to humanity or they wanna help people who... One in five Tennesseans goes to bed hungry.

They don't want one in five Tennesseans to go to bed hungry.

How can we work on that?

- See, I actually think the conversations sometimes are easier.

Like I said, when you said, here's my worldview, I'm coming from a Muslim point of view.

I think that's easier than people who don't believe that they have a worldview.

We all do have things that, this is the place where we're coming from is a place of truth.

It's when people think, oh no, I don't.

I'm coming from a totally neutral worldview.

Alright, let me ask you a more, let me move to, due to what's happening with Israel, Gaza, and Palestine, tensions have never, I shouldn't say have never been higher, that's probably not true, but it's- - [Samar] Painful.

- Painful, right.

- Incredibly painful.

- And so if you're a student at Vanderbilt, or if you're a business person in Omaha, whatever it is, it all feels so personal.

If you're in a conversation with a group of friends who maybe have passions on either side of this, what do you say?

What insight do you bring?

- Well, you know, I'm in those conversations almost hourly now, and I don't know if you know this about me, but at my wedding, I had a matron of honor and a maid of honor.

My matron of honor, Marina Lynn, is Jewish American.

And her family came over as refugees from Russia, as Russian Jews to the United States in the '80s when she was four years old.

And we were roommates in law school.

And my maid of honor is Palestinian American Naja Abuzana.

And I talk to those two women every single day.

And Marina has family in Israel, and Naja has family in the West Bank.

And we are living this, and in ways of where we are holding onto our humanity and trying to make, process what's going on, and also have conversations with each other.

Because we're actually experiencing many, we're experiencing the same, we're having similar experiences with trauma.

And that's what I see also going on.

I see my Jewish-American friends experiencing trauma.

I see my Arab-American, Palestinian-American, Muslim-American friends experiencing trauma.

And I see that this is a communal trauma.

And I study this, so I know what's going on.

But on a personal note, I see pain and I see people who are just trying to figure out how do we make this stop?

How do we stop the violence?

We want the violence to stop and not be misunderstood as that being political.

I mean, this is another thing too, when people never thought that the word peace or ceasefire would be politicized into a negative.

So yeah.

- You said everybody wants it to stop, but there's a very different view of who the good guys and bad guys are.

And so how do you, you know, I always say we all want justice, but we also want mercy.

And those things combined are really, really difficult.

That's one of my experience in leading.

And so in a situation like this where you have people like, I want it to stop, but also wanna make certain, whoever I view as the bad guys, that they get their- - They're held accountable.

- Yes.

- And the rule of law comes in here.

- Right.

- Yes.

- And so how do you, in these very personal, painful conversations, how do you recognize that?

- Yeah, and I think this comes to responsible leadership.

And I think that there are a lot of lessons from history that we can draw on here.

Should Gaza be a demilitarized zone?

This is getting to the policy solutions here.

What does accountability for acts of terror look like?

What is the way forward?

What are our own reflections from the past 20 years of our war on terror for et cetera?

Like what do equal rights in this context look like?

What could a way forward look like of where Israelis and Palestinians are living, are thriving together?

And we're taking into account how they don't always live in fear and live in a state of fear and insecurity, and they're excited about a brighter future for their children.

I mean, I think here, and it gets back to your focus on education and children, and that is, how are we taking care of the children?

Palestinian children, Israeli children, and also saying how do Jews, Muslims, Christians, everybody live together in a way where we can live out our existence and our potential, and that's the American experiment.

I mean, it is what we're trying to do here at home too.

- So let's move there.

And we've talked about you used your education big term and that I've totally stolen, but it's a term called motivation attribution asymmetry.

It's how much people think, not only is the other side wrong on an issue, but they're wrong for bad motives.

Like these are just- - [Samar] Bad actors.

- These are bad actors with bad intentions.

And the motivation attribution asymmetry, this is several years ago but it hasn't changed.

At the time in the US was greater between Republicans and Democrats, and it's only gotten worse, than it was at that point between Israelis and Palestinians.

We've seen how that played out.

So how do we help folks understand that just because somebody disagrees with us doesn't mean they're a bad actor?

- I think it gets into the intent.

Where is the person coming from and their experiences and et cetera?

So it's, we have a saying in mediation, which is, in conflict mediation, be careful how many spoilers you put on the list.

Because if you put too many, there'll be nobody left to negotiate with.

And you'll be stuck in that gridlock, which ultimately, nine times outta 10, leads to violence.

- We have real problems in this country.

I think something like 30% plus of each party thinks violence can can be justified in certain circumstances, which is a really scary number.

- It's very scary.

- So given that reality, and that we have this increasing polarization where everybody thinks the other side are not just wrong, but bad actors, in your term.

What do we, what practical advice do you have?

- So I think that this is something to practice at home.

And so that's first what I would say.

And I think the first is that you have to see, no matter how angry you are now, how justifiably angry you are, you have to work really hard in seeing the other person's humanity and trying to understand where they're coming from and listening.

And that starts with listening.

So the way that you, just as a human being, you break that cycle of negativity is by listening to what you're saying, by listening to what the other person is saying, by committing to being respectful.

By recognizing someone else's dignity, you're also recognizing your own.

And that's to borrow the Xhosan phrase, Ubuntu, which is, I am me because of you, you are you because of me.

It's that shared human experience.

This is key.

And just psychologically it's key.

And then you can begin to empathize with the other person.

And then you get into, what are our differences?

Let's explore that, let's have that conversation.

And why are we having that conversation even?

- I think that sense of the shared idea of humanity, number two, the idea that I might not be exactly right here.

And the third thing would would be... My third piece of advice is always, we should always start with our own tribe.

- [Samar] Yes.

I love that.

- Like, we worry a whole lot about what they are doing.

But if we, change happens when people actually speak truth to their own side, which is a lot harder.

It's a lot more fun to throw rocks across the fence than it is to say, hey, I'm not certain we're actually doing this exactly right.

- You know, to give you this very specific example to, I agree, exactly what you're talking about.

And I remember when I was in law school, I know we're going back to being on campus again, but it was off campus with a law student friend of mine who was a black woman who had a very different upbringing than my own that I didn't understand.

And it was 2005, right after the US went to war in Iraq and after the US Patriot Act.

And I was getting stopped in airports a lot.

And I was being asked a lot of questions.

And I felt I was being profiled in the airports.

And I equated my experience with hers, and she erupted.

She was so upset with me.

And we had a huge fight, a huge disagreement over it.

And I really touched a nerve.

And then she touched a nerve with me.

And we are still friends to this day.

We reconciled our differences, not in that exact moment, but there was another friend of ours who watched this all unfold.

And she basically, my black friend said, how dare you think that your experience in America has been in any way similar to my experience growing up as a black woman in the South.

You have no idea.

And I felt that she was discounting my experiences at the time as a Muslim woman.

What we ended up finding was that we were both in pain and we needed to give ourselves grace, and we needed to have mercy with each other and exploring why we were so upset in that moment and unpacking it.

And sometimes it's also, it's not gonna happen in that moment.

Sometimes you're gonna have to say, actually, I wanna be in fellowship with this person.

I don't wanna be in enemy-ship with this person.

I'm gonna come back and sit down with them.

Not in the heat of the moment, but in to say, hey, let's unpack what just happened there.

And in that you can get, you can learn something about yourself.

I'll never forget that That was like, that was almost, that was 15 years ago, and I still remember that as if it was yesterday.

It was a lesson I needed to learn.

And she remembers it too.

- In the middle of that, you threw in, what I think, is the key word in there, is grace.

You know, we all want justice.

You know, we want, like I said, we want the bad at guys to get caught.

But we also know from our own experience that we need mercy.

Right, I just know like, as a husband, as a father, as a business partner, as a governor, whatever it is, like, I need mercy 'cause I've messed up a lot.

- Yeah, me too.

- And that knowledge of needing mercy while we still want justice, I think is a key to this.

- Yes.

And I thought I was right and I wasn't.

And I walked away realizing, oh, I felt so strong about my beliefs in that moment, and I actually was wrong.

And I realized why I was wrong and it humbled me.

And I needed that.

I needed to experience that humility.

She didn't humiliate me, she didn't.

But it was a moment that fostered humility and I felt, and I've had so many of those.

But it's also about having grace with yourself too.

And I think there, that's what we need.

And I don't know about you, tell us a little bit about some of the times when you've like, oh, I got that wrong, I've learned from that.

What was one of the experiences where you felt that way the most?

- You know, typically, I mean, in the end, the heart issues are always the, the relationship issues, right?

So there's somebody that works for you that you don't think handled a situation well, then you come to a conclusion like, well, maybe they're just not the right person.

And you get there really quick.

And then a little while later you go, well, hold on a minute here.

Or there's a...

Listen, I talk all the time and I even wrote a book about, hey, why we need to listen and understand the other side.

But there's a lot of time when I'm watching the news that I want to yell at that TV really loud, okay?

And it's hard to read news and not go, oh man, they got that so wrong.

I don't wanna revisit the argument with you and your friend who said, but you did have a... Maybe the comparison was wrong, but you did have the experience of being, I dunno if you wanna call it being profiled or what, but one of my best friends after 911, he said like, "I got it.

Like when I flew, I was gonna be looked at differently."

And so you were being looked at differently.

- Yes, yes, yes.

And, I was, and I think that what I learned was I still didn't know what it was like to grow up poor and a black woman in the south, that it inherited circumstances that were very different from my own, and I was being insensitive, just assuming that I got it.

And so the humility that she allowed for me to embrace allowed for me to say, wait a minute, what was it like growing up?

I thought I knew, I obviously don't.

And that gets to the empathy piece of, I didn't even know what questions I needed to ask until that moment.

I thought I understood, but it goes beyond being profiled.

But then that gets to, 'cause we're both, at the time, we're both law students studying the law.

What's the role, how... And that's one of the reasons I'm a law professor now, it is, what's the role of the law and how is the law moving?

How does it move with time?

How does it correct the injustices of the past, but while also moving us forward as a society?

Because I think, and it gets back to that these are deep-seated issues.

Everybody wants their fair share in life.

Everybody wants to see, I think, they wanna live their purpose-driven life.

What is their purpose in life?

- [Bill] Agree 100%.

- And that goes back to the American experiment.

And what worries me is how polarized we are in this country right now.

And that the Republican party has become, if you're a democrat, many people will view it as, has enimized it.

The Republican party, the same thing.

And the distrust of each other is just, it's almost, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face.

And so, are we really that bad?

Is it, if you are a Republican, are you really the enemy?

Do you have to be the enemy?

(both laughing) And it's this way, it's just... - So I'm both incredibly worried about where we are.

Like when you see over 30% think that violence can be justified.

And you realize how tenuous this democracy, this republic is.

But I'm also encouraged.

When I go talk to, what I call, everyday groups, when I go talk to the Rotary Club, the Waverly Rotary Club.

I guarantee you if I go there and ask that question, "How many people are frustrated and exhausted by politics today?"

Every hand will go up.

And by the way, that would be true in Poughkeepsie and in Jackson and wherever.

What I'm encouraged about is more and more people are saying that this road is not going to get us where we want to go.

And I'm so frustrated, and I think what one of the roles that I want this Vanderbilt project and others to be about is to have tell people, don't give up.

What what concerns me is a lot of people who they're, I mean, are like, you know, heck, you got kids and you're a law professor and you're having all these conversations, et cetera.

And a lot of times, it's a lot of, most folks are like, I'm barely hanging on trying to get my kid to soccer practice and get my job done and make certain we pay the mortgage, et cetera.

I don't have time for this foolishness anymore.

And one of the things I try to encourage people is, no, don't withdraw from the process, and don't withdraw from voting in primaries.

Don't withdraw from all that because that's where decisions are made.

And if we leave it only to the most extreme folks on either end, we're not gonna like where this goes.

- Well, how do we get it back?

And what I mean by back is how do we get the trust back in the process?

'Cause the trust itself, for for a while, was there.

And it's diminished.

- Institutions across the spectrum from the military, the court, to government, et cetera.

I would say that here's where I think it starts, is it starts with remembering that this stuff really matters.

One of my frustrations after having been a mayor and governor is I realize these decisions really, really matter.

And it's not about the performance of it.

Politics today has become a performance and you understand why, that social media, it's called a platform for a reason.

It's a platform.

That's where people are acting out.

But I think we begin by reminding people that these decisions, it actually, they have real consequences for us, for our kids, for our grandkids.

And if we limit only to those folks who are yelling the loudest and jumping up on the table, we're not gonna like where it goes.

- Right, so I think that it is getting back to common sense and telling people, what does common sense look like for you?

And vote for the common sense candidate.

- Vote for people who actually have produced results in the past, who have actually solved problems.

It makes me feel good when somebody's yelling about the problem that I care about.

I love that.

But unless that person's actually solved a problem, I'd suggest you vote for somebody else.

- Yes.

And that's what frustrates me too, in terms of what I'm watching overseas as well, is that there's people being rewarded for shouting the loudest, for doing the most extremist things.

- And it's actually in their interest not to solve the problem.

- That's right.

- And whether that be, like I said, in the Middle East or unfortunately here as well.

- Yeah, I mean, people are getting tricked.

It almost feels like people are taking the bait.

- I do think where you ended might be a good place for us to end this conversation.

Our purpose is for people not to take the bait.

- Right, love that.

- Not get tricked into saying, oh, because they're yelling about something that I care about, they're actually solving my problem.

- That's right.

- They're not.

- Well, thank you for everything you do.

- Thanks, Samar.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Support for the Vanderbilt project on Unity and American Democracy was provided by the Lester G. Ruff Fant Fund.

(bright music)