Summary

We live in an age of unprecedented communication tools, yet misunderstandings and conflicts online seem more common than ever. In this episode, we learn from Professor Andrew Brodsky, a management professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of "PING: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication." Drawing from his personal experience with isolation due to illness and his extensive research, Professor Brodsky shares the science behind effective virtual communication. You'll discover his PING framework for better online interactions, learn why we consistently overestimate our ability to convey emotion through text, and get practical advice for avoiding the most common digital communication pitfalls. This episode will help you become not just a better communicator online, but a more thoughtful and gracious person in all your virtual interactions.

About Our Guest

Dr. Andrew Brodsky is a management professor at The University of Texas at Austin in the McCombs School of Business.

By implementing his own research-driven methods, he has won multiple research and teaching awards, including Poets & Quants Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors in the world. Andrew’s expertise on virtual interactions and organization communication led him to publish the book Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication and form the Ping Group. His goal is to help organizations leverage research-based approaches that will enable their employees to improve all types of interactions and communication.

Andrew has consulted, conducted training, and given keynote talks around the world. His research on workplace interactions has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, and he has been regularly quoted for his expertise in major media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, and Reuters.

Useful Links

Andrew Brodsky - Personal & Book Website: https://abrodsky.com

Ping Group Consulting: https://pinggroup.org/

Expert Tips for Better Virtual Communication: https://www.pcma.org/expert-tips-for-better-virtual-communication/

Pleasant Pictures Music

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Andrew Brodsky: I had a advisor in my research career early on who loved to use ellipses at the end of emails. So that, dot, dot, dot. And it was like, "Hey Andrew, thanks for this dot, dot, dot." And as a low powered student, I was like, he hates what I did. Like this dot dot dot. He is like, really? But eventually I like talked to this professor who was like, "Oh no, I always do that, because I mean, to be continued, you know, it's not that like dot, dot, dot really?" And I was like, oh yeah, now it makes sense.

[00:00:35] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller and this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode seven: How to Be a Person Online.

Speaking of being online, I hope you'll take a moment to do two online things that best help this podcast to grow. First of all, will you share an episode with a friend? And then secondly, will you leave us a review? Those two things take only a few minutes of your time, but it makes a huge difference for us. Thank you for supporting the show.

In a previous episode, the interview I did with Judge Griffith, I shared some of George Washington's farewell address to the country after his time as president. I hope you'll indulge me as I share another Washington story in the winter of 1776. The spark of American rebellion was on the verge of being extinguished. After a shocking military success in Boston that drove out British forces, general Washington faced a string of humiliating defeats in and around New York.

The only real successes that his forces could claim then were the surprisingly effective retreats that kept the rebellion from experiencing total collapse. Although widely revered, Washington had to watch his reputation as a military leader slide into serious doubt even among his closest advisors.

One of those was Joseph Reed, a lieutenant colonel who had been an aid to Washington through multiple battles.

In a letter to General Charles Lee, who is second in command of the Continental Army. Colonel Reed praised Lee for his military accomplishments and simultaneously criticized the devastating losses that had happened under Washington's command. Reed specifically criticized Washington's indecisiveness saying to General Lee, "Oh, General, an indecisive mind is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall an army. How often I've lamented it for this campaign."

Lee wrote back to Reed a few days later in full agreement about General Washington's flaws and even compared them to "stupidity or want of personal courage." Lee wasn't calling Washington a dunce or a coward, but he was saying his indecisiveness made him just as bad as one

Lee's letter though was delivered to Washington himself by mistake,

who opened it believing that it was war correspondence and not a personal communication. It's not hard to imagine how devastating it was for General Washington to see what his commanders really thought of him.

Perhaps you can relate to this story. Has there ever been a time when you sent a delicate text to the wrong person? Have you ever had an email misunderstood? Have you ever been on a Zoom call when someone forgot to mute themselves in an embarrassing way? We have at our disposal today the fastest, cheapest, easiest modes of communication ever before put into human hands, and it's no wonder that we're prone to make mistakes with them.

Those mistakes sometimes might just end in a small mishap, but they might also lead to bitter conflict. Look at the rancor that spreads online, even just from a poorly drafted tweet, I thought it would be worthwhile to learn how to communicate better online, and so I've called on the wisdom of an expert to help us do that.

[00:04:09] Andrew Brodsky: So my name is Andrew Brodsky. I am a management professor at the McComb School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. I research virtual communication, the way we interact at work, as well as a few ancillary topics like how we spend our time at work.

[00:04:24] Aaron - Interview: Tell me what drew you into studying virtual communication in particular as a field of study and a, and a professional passion for you.

[00:04:32] Andrew Brodsky: When I was 16 years old, I was very suddenly and surprisingly diagnosed with a bad case of leukemia. Blood cancer. I ended up needing bone marrow transplant. So basically the isolation everyone did during COVID, I experienced that a couple decades ago. For the month after bone marrow transplant, you're in one of these isolation rooms

where people can only come in if they wear gowns, gloves, and masks pretty much from head to toe. So I got this experience pretty early on of often having to communicate with people at a distance. Luckily came through in one piece, but I was left with a long-term immune deficiency where I'm not able to produce my own antibodies.

As a function of that, I've had to be much more careful than many. So when they say, oh, unless you're immune compromised, it's not a big issue. Unfortunately, I fall into that bucket. So yet again, it's a topic that's really important. As I was began studying it during my PhD, I realized it wasn't just important to me, it was important to everyone. Regardless of where you work from, whether it's a home or the office, we're all using these tools, email, instant messaging, video calls, as now a core way of communicating. So being able to put together a book where I can relay this information for me seemed like a really meaningful thing to do.

[00:05:42] Aaron - Narration: Professor Brodsky is the author of the book PING, the Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication.

I read his book earlier this year and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and so we're going to spend some time learning from the science of how to be a better communicator and really just a better person online. Let's start with what I think is the most common pitfall. We've all heard of nonverbal communication that comes from things like body language or facial expressions.

You've probably cited the widely used statistic that only 7% of communication comes from the actual words that we say. Now, this research is often taken out of context, but the principle is true that we communicate volumes through things other than our words. Perhaps the best evidence of this is how strong nonverbal cues are for virtual communication.

You don't even need to be there in person to be misunderstood.

[00:06:38] Aaron - Interview: What are some examples or what some advice you have for how to manage the virtual nonverbal cues in a way that helps avoid conflict? BEcause I feel like we constantly misunderstand each other online, and I think a lot of it has to do with nonverbal cues.

Not even what's written, but sort of how it appeared.

[00:06:56] Andrew Brodsky: Nonverbal behavior in virtual communications is one of the things that people often miss and they don't realize because they think it's not face-to-face, so it's really just what the words I'm typing. But research has shown that there's a lot of nonverbal behavior that we're not realizing we're sending even in the least rich modes like email and instant message text messaging.

[00:07:15] Aaron - Narration: Richness as used by Brodsky here means communication that uses multiple methods and senses all at once. An in-person conversation is rich, where a text message is less so.

[00:07:29] Andrew Brodsky: There's lots of knowledge that can be gained to understand how does their nonverbal behavior come off, whether it's typos, emojis, punctuation, what time of day you respond. There are all these different cues that are important in our communication. But secondarily, one of the tips I like to give is related to our focus when we tend to interact virtually. When we are interacting virtually, we're generally just looking at the text of email, at best, maybe we're looking at a square of the person's video feed on your screen. So it's really easy to be more self-focused.

Whereas when you're in person, there's someone standing right in front of you it's hard to forget they're there. You're thinking about how they're going to react immediately. But when you're just communicating from behind a screen, we're kind of in our own world a little bit. As a result, we often don't take that extra step to think about how might the other person interpret this language.

[00:08:24] Aaron - Narration: People aren't computers. We send and receive communication emotionally, not only rationally. It might be a mild feeling attending or message like confidence, fatigue, or encouragement, but emotion is hard to convey through text alone.

Our mild intentions might get misread as stronger ones like arrogance, exasperation, or condescension. This is a common source of unintended conflict.

[00:08:49] Andrew Brodsky: So for instance, some research shows that when we write emails with emotion, so whether it's sarcasm or anything else, it seems really clear to us. And participants in these studies rate the odds that someone else will correctly predict the emotion they intended is very high.

In reality, people are really bad at interpreting those messages and are generally wrong. So people are really overconfident about their ability to relay emotion in these messages. The reason being is that when you're typing the message, you hear the emotion in your head as you're typing it, so it seems really clear.

But on the recipient side, they're not hearing the same emotion you are. They're coming in with a different set of information, assumptions, that makes them hear something different. So one of the pieces of advice that comes outta this research is when you have a message like this, they found that when they had participants read the message out loud in the completely opposite tone that they intended--so for instance, if, if it's sarcastic, read is serious, if it's serious read is sarcastic-- those participants suddenly realized that their message might not have been as clear as they thought. So taking that little extra step to engage in this kind of perspective taking can be incredibly useful, especially when the person's not standing in front of you.

[00:09:59] Aaron - Narration: Professor Brodsky just mentioned perspective taking, and that's part of the core framework in his book. "Ping" isn't just a reference to the sound your phone makes when a text arrives. In this case, it's an acronym for how we can improve our virtual communication.

[00:10:13] Andrew Brodsky: So the P is for perspective taking. The I is for initiative. The N is for nonverbal. The G is for goals.

So perspective taking, just as an example of what this means is that when we're interacting virtually, we're often tend to be much more self-focused because we're just looking at a screen. Even if the other person's face is there, it's a pretty small portion of your screen as opposed to them standing up right in front of you.

So for instance, as a supervisor, if you send a message with a joke to a subordinate about a work project. The subordinate, who's really anxious in that situation, may feel that it's condescending or may feel like they messed up somehow. Where the supervisor is trying to lighten the mood. So actually putting yourself in the other person's shoes can be incredibly useful.

[00:10:55] Aaron - Narration: A weakness that I have in perspective taking is when I'm grading homework. When I'm in that mode, I'm looking for ways that the assignment could be better, and so my brain is focused on flaws. The result is that my initial feedback could be especially harsh for students to read. To me, it just feels like I'm writing down what needs improvement. But to my students, it would end up coming across as hypercritical or unfeeling.

It's taken practice from me to make sure that I compliment what they did well and I couch my criticisms in a way that I'd want to receive them. And so it's something that I'm still working on. This extra effort in grading is where we see Brodsky's second element, initiative.

[00:11:34] Andrew Brodsky: The I, for initiative. It's, it's valuable to think about what's missing in a given mode of communication and how can we add it back.

So there were some interesting studies in negotiation that found that negotiators who negotiated over instant messaging, as opposed to in person, tend to build less rapport, trust, and do as well in negotiating. But those negotiators who took the initiative to have a short five minute phone call where they just kind of socialized, the authors called it schmoozing, uh, right before the negotiation, and then after the phone call, they did negotiate over instant message. Those people who took that extra initiative ended up building more rapport and trust and improving their own negotiation outcomes compared to those who just went straight to instant messaging and didn't take that initiative.

[00:12:21] Aaron - Narration: What I love about initiative is that it can make us stand out at a time when most people communicate in the default, easy ways. If you've ever just called someone, rather than hashing out a conversation via text, that was a moment of initiative. Also, initiative can work the other way too. Instead of a rambling conversation, you can take the time to craft an email so it has the complete thought. Keep it compact, but use headings and other things that make the email easy to read and follow. That kind of effort reflects initiative too. Initiative is part of how we deal with the nonverbal traps that we'd otherwise miss.

[00:12:57] Andrew Brodsky: The N is nonverbal. And this is valuable because we send so much information over virtual communication, we don't realize. So with text-based communication, there's emoji, there's typos, there's exclamation marks.

But even with video communication, it's not the same as in person. There's a number of studies that show the importance of eye contact during video interviews, but that's a little bit awkward over video because often our web camera is not in the same location as the person's face we're looking at. So, you know, we're looking at their face so it's, we think we're keeping eye contact, but to them it looks like we're just looking off screen. They don't know if we're reading from a script or checking email or just playing games on our phone. So it's important to understand how things might be interpreted or happen differently in virtual as opposed to in person.

[00:13:43] Aaron - Narration: These three insights lose their value if we don't pay attention to the final piece of Brodsky's PING framework goals.

[00:13:52] Andrew Brodsky: And lastly, G's for goals. It would be much easier if I could just say there's one best mode of communication. You know, you should do everything in person, or you should do everything over email. It would make for a very short book though, and unfortunately it's not the case.

[00:14:05] Aaron - Interview: Yeah.

[00:14:06] Andrew Brodsky: So for instance, in this area of research, let's talk about video calls. Cameras on or cameras off: this is like a nice debate that lots of organizations are having. Should we have cameras on or cameras off meetings? And the answer is, it depends on your goals.

So if it's an early stage relationship, you don't really know the person. And your goal is to build trust and to make a good impression, having cameras on can be really useful because we tend to trust people who we feel familiar with. Alternatively, there's research on Zoom fatigue or video conferencing fatigue that shows that being on video can be really exhausting. Staring at yourself, seeing you mess up nonverbal behavior, it's just draining and it can cause burnout. So if your goal is to enable the people in your meeting to have more focus, to be more productive and not be fatigued, then cameras off can be better.

[00:14:52] Aaron - Narration: Here's an example of where goals matter. Less rich modes like email can help us to communicate if there's a likelihood of our emotions getting the best of us.

Emails, texts, and instant messages are a way for us to temper the way we communicate.

[00:15:06] Andrew Brodsky: So there's some good research, uh, that shows that in situations where there's likely to be some degree of competition, but not necessarily extreme competition, less rich modes can be a little bit better because it masks everyone's nonverbal behaviors that show they don't necessarily like each other as much.

[00:15:24] Aaron - Interview: Oh yeah.

[00:15:24] Andrew Brodsky: And the idea is it kind of keeps everyone professional. They don't see them like frowning at each other as much and it hides some of that stuff.

[00:15:32] Aaron - Interview: Is, is there advice about how dialing the richness up or down just helps people treat others with more fairness or more kindness?

[00:15:41] Andrew Brodsky: So when it comes to stereotypes and biases and communication, they impact most everyone. You don't necessarily have to be an underrepresented minority. There's research that shows that men who are shorter earn less money than men who are taller, that people are more attractive, earn more money than people who are less attractive. And we all kind of have different assumptions about people based on how they look. Some might be helpful to them, some less so.

So there's this question about which mode do we use to reduce these kind of biases and stereotypes when they might work against us or others. So the research basically kind of leads to a sort of framework.

The first question that you have is. Are the differences known or not? If the differences are not known. So you don't know if someone's a man or woman or black or white or whatever else, and your goal is to reduce stereotypes and bias, then obviously using less rich modes is best because you can mask the fact that anyone's even different from each other. That said, that's a fairly limited set of circumstances, usually potentially related to job interviews, because after that, everyone knows each other's name, knows each other. It's hard to hide the fact that people are different. You can usually tell from people's names and you've usually seen them at least once.

[00:16:53] Aaron - Narration: Richer communication has the power to reduce our biases because we get to know the people beyond their categories. It's harder to judge someone unfairly if you know them as a person instead of just as a gender, a faith, a race, or an orientation. Less rich modes though might help some people feel more confident in being themselves and act contrary to the stereotypes that are applied to them. A blessing and a curse of virtual communication is that we're more comfortable with being ourselves when we have a screen between us.

[00:17:25] Andrew Brodsky: There's another thing about biases and stereotypes is it not just impacts our views of others. It impacts if we fall into one of those categories, how we behave. So there's a certain way that society often expects men to behave about how women to behave, et cetera. So for instance, negotiation is a topic that often comes up and a negotiation in many types of negotiation, albeit not all of them, being competitive and being aggressive can be beneficial. But that's a type of behavior that's generally seen as better fitting for men than women, who are supposed to be more communal. And what research shows is that if you're trying to have women feel more comfortable being aggressive and competitive in negotiations where it would benefit themselves, it's better to do that over less rich modes.

The reason being is that when other people don't see us, when we don't have our nonverbal behaviors on display, when our differences feel a little bit more masked and anonymous in some ways, we feel more comfortable being free. We feel more comfortable not feeling the need to stick by society's expectations of us. We're less focused on how other people might punish us for varying from those expectations.

[00:18:32] Aaron - Narration: A common social expectation is small talk, and it's one of those things that we all do, but we all also complain about. The research shows that small talk has a lot more value than we give it credit for, though, value that can be lost in virtual communications.

[00:18:49] Andrew Brodsky: Small talk is one of the topics that there's always a lot of debate about, and many people hate small talk because it feels unproductive. And they're not wrong. It takes up time from your reading. It takes up text in your email. It might feel irrelevant.

But on the other side of that, there's an important use to small talk. It's helps us build trust. It helps us to get to know each other. It helps us to take down the barriers between work and life, so we feel like we're actually having a relationship with that person. So by taking a little bit of extra step and adding in a couple sentences about, you know, your weekend, asking a personal question to the other person, can be a really great way to help build trust.

I'm not saying you want to go the too much information route, the TMI route, and have like a 10 paragraph long diatribe about your recent vacation in the email, because you know that's going to bother everyone. But just trying to sneak a little bit extra back in, if your goal is to build trust, can be a really useful thing to do because it helps remind them that there's a human on the other side of this communication as well.

[00:19:53] Aaron - Narration: You remember my episode with Debby Tucker? Part of the reason she's been so persuasive in her work to end domestic violence is that she's excellent at this kind of trust building communication. I kid you not, the emails that she sent to arrange our interview were frankly as delightful as she is in person. She signed off on one of them to tell me she had to go fold some laundry. It's a gift to be as disarming as she is, even when just online. I think the same things that keep us from doing virtual small talk also keep us from more genuine gestures, like giving unsolicited compliments. It's easy to worry that will be seen as insincere.

[00:20:30] Aaron - Interview: What advice do you have for overcoming that worry and concern that our, our good gesture will be read opposite to our intentions?

[00:20:39] Andrew Brodsky: When it comes to how human brains work, we're generally much more concerned about losses than the gains. So we tend to focus on how awkward it might be to reach out to someone we haven't connected with in a while, or how awkward it might be to say something nice to someone, or a kind word or kind gesture, as opposed to how they might feel about it and the warmth they might get by experiencing that.

What I generally recommend to people who are feeling this hesitation to remember the, the last time someone did something nice for them that they completely unexpected, that was unexpected for them. You know, the last time someone from earlier in their life tried to reconnect with them just to hear how they were doing and remember, how did you feel then?

And I'm guessing you felt pretty good and focusing on that as opposed to that first awkward step of like, should I reach out to them or not, can help get you past that hurdle.

[00:21:27] Aaron - Narration: Virtual conversations aren't just about complimenting people or building trust. Sometimes we have to use online tools to deliver bad news or give tough criticism. Brodsky has great advice for those moments.

[00:21:40] Andrew Brodsky: So when it comes to frank feedback, the first step that I generally recommend is to think about, well, how would I want to receive this? There were some stories that went viral during the last couple years of layoffs of these things going really badly. One of the ones that stands out to me was an organization that I won't name, supposedly was doing layoffs, and the manager was laying someone off and the person being laid off didn't want to turn on their camera, but the manager insisted the person turn on their camera in order to be laid off.

And like, here's a good example of a lack of empathy, really backfiring. Like do you really need their camera to be on to fire them? And you can't blame the person being laid off. Like if you're, you want to maintain some dignity. You don't want to necessarily be seen crying in front of your manager.

[00:22:24] Aaron - Narration: In the age of AI, the temptation is incredibly strong to hand over the hard work of difficult or even mundane communication to tools, like ChatGPT.

There are already ridiculous stories about the mistakes people have made, trusting AI to speak for them, like attorneys who submitted court filings that cited fake legal cases. That didn't work out for them. The best advice right now on AI assisted communication is to do it very carefully.

[00:22:53] Andrew Brodsky: We're all talking about in the news and everything about AI, is it good? Is it going to take over for humans? What does this mean for a virtual communication? And my forecast, although I'm occasionally wrong, but we'll see with time, is that for jobs and roles that require a human, making sure that your communication is in your words as opposed to just copy and pasted from ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, whatever else, will always be valuable.

If someone's communicating with you, they want to communicate with you. And there are ways they might tell that you're not communicating yourself and you're just copying and pasting. The other thing is these tools, these AI tools don't know every single thing in your head, and unless we make it to the distant future where there's brain chips that can read our mind, they're never going to. And so there is a use for AI, it's great for editing, brainstorming, for simple repeated interactions, sure, that's fine to use. But for complex and important interactions, showing you care is much more important than making sure that it's perfect in my view.

[00:23:56] Aaron - Narration: Across all of Brodsky's advice is just recognizing that there's a person on the other end, someone who has their own preferences, interests, and experiences. Even just the simple step of asking how they want to communicate can prevent a lot of misunderstanding.

[00:24:12] Andrew Brodsky: And one of the things that I often also recommend, if possible, is early on in the relationship just asking the other person how they prefer to communicate. There's different ways that different people feel

they like more or less. Some people prefer cameras on, some prefer cameras off. Some people have reasons for communicating a certain way. So for those whose English is not their first language, they might actually prefer email or instant message, because it gives them time to proof and make sure their language is what they want it to be. The words match what they want. Or maybe someone has hearing difficulties and they prefer text, or they have difficulty seeing, so they prefer hearing audio.

So there's all these different things that can matter. And one of the best things you can just do is ask the other person. And being able to understand what they like, not only will help you become more effective communicator, but they'll probably want to interact with you more because you're giving them what they want.

[00:25:02] Aaron - Narration: Even following all of this advice, we're all going to make mistakes. It's hard to see all that's going on, even just when sending something as simple as a text. It's easy to have terrible timing, for example, when we're not with a person who's getting our message. And so we ought to be willing to forgive more when others make mistakes too.

[00:25:21] Aaron - Interview: How do we engage with more grace in the way people are communicating, recognizing that nobody's going to be doing it perfectly?

[00:25:28] Andrew Brodsky: One of the best things people can do is not only realizing, hey, I make these mistakes. I failed to engage in perspective taking. But then the step that goes with that is realize, hey, everyone else might not understand this. We're all just getting used to this. By many estimates, humans have been interacting for, you know, over a hundred thousand years. In the scale of human history, technology as an interaction mode is only a very thin sliver. We've had a lot of experience as a species getting to know how to best communicate in person. Email, instant message, video calls, we're all just figuring this out in many ways as we're going along. So just understanding that we're all novices in some regard on this can be really useful for increasing your empathy and realizing that "Maybe this message, they didn't mean that."

And the simple step that so many people miss that often leads to really problematic conflicts, is just to ask a clarifying question, saying, "Hey, just to confirm what did you mean here?" Because so many people think that someone wrote something mean to them, for instance, and then they just stew on it and they don't say anything back, and it turns out the person didn't mean that at all. So just taking that extra step to just ask people what they mean can often stop a whole lot of conflicts in their tracks because it's very possible they don't mean what you think they meant.

[00:26:47] Aaron - Interview: If you could change how people communicate virtually that would make the world a better place, like it'd be a world that we'd enjoy living in more, what are the things that you would change?

[00:26:57] Andrew Brodsky: I would have to say that the first one would be for people to take a moment out of their day just to consider how they're approaching their communication. It's so easy when we're overloaded by emails and meetings just to barely get through the day, and we don't have time to engage in this kind of meta thinking about is there ways that I could have worded things differently? And when you actually take that moment to be mindful, if you do it the right way and actually do it, you'll find you end up saving time because you find more time efficient ways to communicate.

So just taking a moment, thinking, being mindful is one of the best things you could do.

The second is perspective take. It's the first thing in my framework because we get just so in our own world when we're communicating, especially from behind a screen. And if you begin to think about how someone else might interpret something, you realize, "Oh, they would really like to get this congratulatory email. It won't be awkward. Oh, maybe I should say it this way, so I don't accidentally offend them." And so getting out from behind your screen and trying to think about the person on the other side of their screen can be just incredibly useful. And if we all show we care about each other a little bit more, I think the world would be a much better place

[00:28:09] Aaron - Narration: When General Washington read the letter that he wasn't meant to see, to his credit, he didn't seek to punish Charles Lee or Joseph Reed for insubordination. Instead, he responded with grace.

He resealed the letter and made sure that it was passed on to Colonel Reed, but he included a note in which he said this.

"The enclosed letter was put into my hands by an express rider. Having no idea of it being a private letter, I opened it. This, as it is, the truth must be my excuse for saying a letter which neither inclination or intention would have prompted me to. I thank you for the trouble and fatigue you have undergone in your journey to Burlington, and sincerely wish that your labors may be crowned with a desired success.

"My best respects to Mrs. Reed. I am dear sir, your most obedient servant, G. Washington."

It wasn't until the following June, six months later that Reed and Washington were on good terms again.

I am incredibly grateful to Professor Andrew Brodsky for taking the time to do this interview with me, and I'm so glad that we could get such great advice on pitfalls that we all encounter all the time.

How to Help is hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller, and producing collaboration with BYU Radio. My thanks to Erica Price, Kenny Mears, and Blake Morris for their help with this episode. Scoring and Mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes. And if you haven't subscribed yet to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

Summary

Globally, hundreds of millions of people experience hunger, and the majority of those are found in armed conflict zones like Sudan, Yemen, and Gaza. A problem this size can make us feel powerless, but there are many reasons to engage and feel hope. In this episode, we talk with Rebecca Middleton, Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer of World Food Program USA. She tells us about the UN World Food Programme, which delivers aid to places no one else can reach. She explains how U.S. food assistance serves as powerful diplomacy and discusses practical ways to combat hunger through advocacy and support. We also learn about her career going from a Congressional staffer, to lobbying, and on to a vocation in hunger advocacy that was providentially guided. We also address how to help fight hunger while managing empathy fatigue in our suffering-saturated world.

About Our Guest

Rebecca Middleton is the Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer for World Food Program USA, where she and her team work to educate Members of Congress and their staff on the importance of U.S. government support for the U.N. World Food Program. She brings more than 25 years of experience in policy, advocacy, and strategy to the role.

Rebecca began her career in Washington, DC, in 1997 as a Senior Legislative Assistant for Congressman Frank Wolf. Five years later she joined the public affairs firm Cassidy & Associates and quickly became Vice President, managing federal lobbying strategy and tactics for a variety of clients including Fortune 500 companies and organizations in the technology, health care, and defense industries.

Rebecca combined her advocacy and management expertise with her longstanding passion for eradicating hunger in 2013 when she joined the Alliance to End Hunger as its COO; she became its Executive Director in 2016. Rebecca joined World Food Program USA in July of 2020.

Rebecca holds a BA in political science and English from Mary Washington College. She serves on several boards including as treasurer of the Alliance to End Hunger.

Useful Links

About Rebecca Middleton: https://www.wfpusa.org/people/rebecca-middleton/

World Food Program USA: https://www.wfpusa.org

UN World Food Programme: https://www.wfp.org

Alliance to End Hunger: http://www.alliancetoendhunger.org

Write to Congress about Global Food Aid: https://wfpusa.quorum.us/campaign/2505_RES_ERT_Advocacy_Web/

2024 Global Report on Food Crises: https://www.wfp.org/publications/global-report-food-crises-grfc

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Rebecca Middleton: It seems like it's apocryphal, but it actually is true. My parents will validate this. So you're watching the news one night and seeing the stories out of Ethiopia and seeing the work that the United Nations World Food Program was doing. I was in third or fourth grade and it literally brought my piggy bank down and asked my parents to send it to help the kids in Africa.

And little did I know that that would continue into what I feel like it's my vocation now.

[00:00:25] Aaron - Narration: Yeah. What was their reaction, by the way? Did they sort of pat you on that and say, that's sweet? Or did they take the money and send it in? What'd they do with it?

[00:00:33] Rebecca Middleton: I don't remember. I have to ask them the next time I see them.

I'd like to think that they sent it in. I'm fairly confident the funds went out of the piggy bank, so they went somewhere. So I'm sure, hopefully they got where they were intended. Yeah.

[00:00:45] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller and this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode :ix, A World Without Hunger.

If you've been enjoying How to Help, then I hope you'll take a moment to share a favorite episode with others or leave us a positive review. Those are the two things that most help a podcast to grow. It only takes a few minutes of your time, but it makes a huge difference for us, so thank you for supporting the show.

I think my favorite character in just about any book I've ever read is a character in Victor Hugo's book, Les Miserables, which I frequently recommend to anyone who loves a musical. I will say it is a long book, but you can take your time. For me, reading it as a college student while on a random bit of grass in Paris is one of my all time favorite, if cliche, memories.

The bishop at the beginning, Bishop Myriel, is the very reason that Jean Valjean's story could even be told. Now I, I know this is just fiction, but without the generosity of Bishop Myriel Valjean wouldn't have become a new man, and the rest of the story wouldn't have happened. Instead. I don't know, would he have gone back to prison? It seems likely. Perhaps he would've eventually starved. I guess only Victor Hugo would ever know.

The Bishop's generosity at the start of the story is so pivotal that it explains why he appears again at the end of the book when Valjean passes away. The musical has the spirit of the bishop there singing in a beautiful duet. But in the book, Hugo describes the moment this way: at death's door, Valjean is asked if he wants a priest. He replies, "I have had one," pointing to a person no one else in the room could see.

The night that's told early in the story when Bishop Myriel rescues this hungry man is an iconic act. Think about it. Feeding the hungry is an injunction for believers of every world religion. Among the ways that people help people, it's hard to think of any need more urgent than saving someone from hunger.

In all the history of humanity, we today are living in the rare and recent span of time in which we have the means to end hunger.

So why does it still exist, and can we truly end it?

[00:03:21] Rebecca Middleton: The big drivers of hunger globally are conflict, climate, shocks, and cost. There's more than enough supply in the world, but it's how does it get to people who need it in a timely manner and ideally. In a nutrition sensitive way.

[00:03:34] Aaron - Narration: My guest in this episode is Rebecca Middleton. She's the Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer of World Food Program, USA. Her job simply is to persuade the American public and American lawmakers that we can and should end hunger around the world. You've noticed that this season of How to Help has been focusing on how we can help in conflict, and so that's where we're going to begin the conversation with Rebecca.

[00:04:01] Aaron - Interview: Let's talk about why hunger still persists. And so if you had the top reasons that you were explaining to somebody who just didn't understand this, what would you explain to them?

[00:04:09] Rebecca Middleton: I can't emphasize enough the role that manmade conflict has on hunger. If you, if you look at the biggest driver by far, and you could just name the places, right? Sudan, Gaza, Afghanistan, Yemen, Haiti. I mean, all of the top hot spots for hunger around the world are due to man-made conflict. Hunger can also be an exacerbating factor in a fragile state that makes it ripe for conflict, but, but more of what we see is that conflict breaks out and then it drives individuals to hunger due to internal and external migration.

So that, that's the biggest one by far. If we could get conflict under control, we could come pretty darn close to ending hunger.

[00:04:50] Aaron - Narration: The scale of hunger caused by conflict is hard to visualize. The most recent Global Report on Food Crises estimated that last year, 140 million people experienced hunger due to conflict. That's equivalent to over 40% of the entire population of the United States. Like I said, it's too many people to really imagine. And if that's the amount of hunger caused by conflict, is it even really possible to end it?

[00:05:18] Aaron - Interview: The, the idea that we have to end conflict to end hunger feels totally overwhelming, because conflict is for as long as, as people have existed on the earth, there's been conflict between them. If, if that's the barrier, how do we ever get to the place of truly eliminating hunger?

[00:05:34] Rebecca Middleton: I think one of the big challenges with hunger in a conflict zone is access, right? And so I think, making sure that no matter what is going on, having safe, unfettered humanitarian access is, is really, really vital. I, I think making sure that we can get food to those who need it is paramount, no matter the circumstance.

I remember the first time I went to see the World Food Program's work in the field, this is probably eight years ago now, it was in Northern Uganda at a camp called Palorinya, and there are a number of refugee camps in Northern Uganda and they mostly have refugees from Sudan. And at the time, these were mostly women and children who had fled conflict and some of the most horrifying stories that you could imagine, but the, the benefit that they received in the form of food, in the form of basic shelter, in the form of healthcare was so vital and so heartening. And the support from the community, the government, the, the un, the US and other donor support for that really just showed the humanity that exists around the world.

So I don't think we're going to ever ultimately end conflict. I think that's, that's a, an ideal that we can aspire to, but realize that we probably will not attain. But I think thinking of systems and solutions to be able to get assistance to those in need in times of conflict is, is really where we need to focus our efforts.

[00:07:02] Aaron - Narration: Systems and solutions are in many ways the harder part than just acquiring the food. Indeed, moving enough food for many thousands of people into conflict zones takes extraordinary logistics and coordination. This is where the World Food Program stands out. Their unique ability to deliver aid into the world's most challenging environments is not just impressive. It's actually essential.

[00:07:27] Rebecca Middleton: The World Food Program does an amazing job with the supply chain and logistics. They can get places where nobody else can, both on their own and in partnership with some local organizations on the ground.

But a lot of people don't know that the World Food Program is this sort of logistics backbone for the entire humanitarian system. They have airplanes, helicopters, trucks, boats that carry people, goods, and, and supplies all over the world. I've had the privilege of going on an UNHAS flight a couple of times--the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service--and it's, it's incredible where these pilots go and, and the experiences that they have.

And so I think, again, realizing we can't stop conflict, but also making sure that we have access to be able to get food where it's most needed.

[00:08:12] Aaron - Narration: Rebecca's role as Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer is with World Food Program, USA. This organization's mission is to engage US citizens and policymakers in the fight against hunger.

The United States actually has a long tradition of fighting hunger around the world. In 1812, the American government sent five ships with flour to earthquake survivors in Venezuela. In 1845, we provided ships to deliver food from Catholic Charities to the potato famine in Ireland. The US led massive relief efforts after both of the World Wars. This long tradition was embodied officially when the UN World Food Program was created in 1961, and delivered on its first mission just months later, following an earthquake in Iran.

[00:08:59] Rebecca Middleton: The United States has a long history of supporting global food needs around the world, really going back well over a hundred years. It's, I, I joke that, you know, U.S. support for, for global hunger is almost like mom and apple pie. And I think it really started after World War II and then took, took more structure in the early sixties with the formation of USAID and the World Food Program. Those two things started in, in the early sixties with, with leadership from President Kennedy at the time.

But really have continued to position the U.S. As a leader in addressing global hunger issues through Republican and Democratic administrations really consistently over the intervening decades. It's one of the reasons I'm really drawn to the issue is that it's a unifying issue. There are, there are interests, whether they're moral, tied to agriculture, industry, tied to an understanding of US food assistance as a form of soft power, as a stabilizing force, that really bring members of Congress together who may not agree on anything else.

And just to let you know some of what it looks like when this food assistance goes into the field, a lot of the food assistance that is provided by taxpayer funding is in the form of in-kind assistance. So these are products that are grown in the United States by U.S. Farmers that are then purchased, shipped, and packaged and distributed in countries that don't have functioning markets. So think about Sudan right now, for instance. There is a huge gap. People cannot go to a market or a store and buy what they need to feed themselves and their families. And so this is a way to address that type of a need.

And there are amazing images of packages of food that have the American flag and say gift of the American people on them. And, and very often it'll say where the product is grown, whether it's, you know, corn, soy blend, or wheat, or rice. There is no better diplomacy for the United States than that food rolling in on trucks and, and focusing the flag to feed them and their families.

[00:11:03] Aaron - Narration: Despite its importance, the issue of foreign aid, especially food aid, is often misunderstood by citizens. Many Americans mistakenly believe that a huge chunk of the federal budget goes to international assistance. The highest it's ever been was actually in 1963 when our food aid programs first started. And at that time, it was only 4.3% of the federal budget. For the last couple decades, it's hovered around 1%. For such a relatively small investment, the return in terms of global goodwill, stability, and even economic growth is enormous. Unfortunately, persistent myths and misinformation, amplified by some of the media, can distort the public's understanding and make it harder to maintain political support for these life-saving programs.

[00:11:53] Rebecca Middleton: I think it's such an important issue that sometimes, sometimes gets distorted. You know, in polls. Some people think that we spend up to 25% of our, our expenses as a country on international assistance. It's actually less than 1%, and food is just a fraction of that as well. And so for such a small investment, relatively speaking, the benefit that we get as far as goodwill around the world is really amazing.

[00:12:18] Aaron - Narration: Getting people to donate is one thing, but getting the Federal Government to act is something else entirely. How did Rebecca find her way into this role to convince America that it should help eliminate global hunger? She double majored in English and Political Science at Mary Washington University in Virginia, but didn't really know what she wanted to do with those degrees. An interest in policy and lawmaking led her to a job as an intern on Capitol Hill in D.C. With her local member of Congress.

Although she started as a lowly staff assistant, it was her foot in the door to learn firsthand how law and policy are made.

[00:12:55] Aaron - Interview: Can we reflect a bit on, on policy? There are two ways that people see policy. One is they see sort of the elegance, this is the way it ought to be. I think those are mostly academics, right? But also just sort of casual observers of why don't things work this way? And then there're the people who work in trying to actually establish policy and it's so complicated and often quite messy and imperfect in so many ways.

[00:13:19] Rebecca Middleton: Yeah. Well I, I, you know, it's always funny because you take, you know, a government class and you see those beautiful flow charts on how a bill becomes a law or the Schoolhouse Rock, "I'm just a bill, a lonely old bill, sitting here on Capitol Hill." That's not how it works. It is a very messy process. I think what drew me to it was the ability to have impact at scale to make people safer, make lives better, you know, open up paths for opportunity for, for individuals.

I think what makes it messy is also what makes it work, and that's the human aspect of it. You know, folks are coming at it with different philosophies, viewpoints, theories of change, but I think once people align and say, we've got this same goal that we're trying to accomplish, and let's have a conversation and build relationships and put some things aside and move toward a goal. I think relationships are absolutely the most important part of policymaking if you ask me, because that's where you can find ways to the solution that, that may not be what you set out to accomplish in the first place, but really is the best way to get there.

[00:14:23] Aaron - Narration: Rebecca worked her way up from being a staff assistant to being a legislative assistant. In the House of Representatives, a legislative assistant actually has a pretty big portfolio. She had giant areas like defense, agriculture, healthcare, and technology, and they all came under her purview. She then spent some years after that, as a private lobbyist helping organizations forward their policy goals through Congress.

It was during this time that Rebecca felt pulled to shift her career to something closer to her heart.

She thought back on her formative years when global hunger was a cause that inspired her way back in forth grade. And over the years as an adult, she had been active in supporting local food banks. But the fight against hunger called to her.

[00:15:08] Rebecca Middleton: I just happened upon a job listing. For an organization I had never heard of called the Alliance to End Hunger, and they were looking for chief operating officer. I read the job description. I said, I, I meet about half of these criteria. You know, most women will not apply for a job unless they feel like they meet 90% or more of the criteria, whereas typically most men will apply if they feel like they meet 50% or more. And I said, well, let, let's just go for this.

[00:15:31] Aaron - Narration: It just so happened that the executive director of the Alliance to End Hunger was a former congressman named Tony Hall, and Hall was a close friend of her former congressional boss, Frank Wolf.

[00:15:43] Rebecca Middleton: So I was getting ready to, to put my application in, and I called the chief of staff before Frank Wolf, who's a friend of mine. I said, "Dan, can I come in? I've got something to chat with you about." It didn't say what it was. It could have been a client issue. It could have been my parents who are constituents, you know, weren't getting their Federal retirement check or something like that. I walk in the office and before I can even open my mouth, Dan said, "Hey, Tony Hall's looking for somebody. Are you interested?" I, I said, "Dan, that's what I'm here to talk to you about."

And it was, it was one of those moments in life. And you know, I, I am, I'm a spiritual person. I'm a Catholic. I, you know, I believe very much in God, but I think usually as, sort as God's role in our lives, we, we look backwards and we see where it's happened in the past. This, this experience of transitioning to work for the Alliance was one of those where in real time it was almost like there were bright flashing, neon signs saying, go in this direction. I, I, Dan, Dan passed my resume along. I also formally applied for the job, had an interview, and I met with Tony Hall on a rainy Friday at a Starbucks and he offered me the job.

And you know, I'm not gonna lie, it was a significant pay cut over what I was making as a lobbyist. But he said, "You know, think about this. Talk to your husband about it, pray about it, and let me know on Monday."

And that Sunday at church, it was, it was during Lent. It was Transfiguration Sunday and the homily was all about, "Is God calling you to use your time, talent skills for more of a vocation in your life?" And I was sitting there going, I'd already decided I was gonna take this job, but just to put, you know, a little more emphasis on it tha thanks. Thanks for that, Father. And it was the best move I could have made it. It was transformational for me. I think it had a really positive impact on the organization. And it's, I guess it's been almost 12 years now, which is hard to believe. This space is not easy work. It is challenging work. I'm certainly not bored, but it truly feels more like a vocation than a job.

[00:17:42] Aaron - Narration: I love that story because it shows how those providential moments really come sometimes out of nowhere, and they just have so much power when they arrive. After some time with the Alliance to End Hunger, Rebecca had the opportunity to join World Food Program USA, where she manages a large portfolio centered on persuasion.

A big part of her job is lobbying Congress to support international food relief. How do you fit hunger into the many priorities of people in Congress?

[00:18:13] Rebecca Middleton: There are 535 members of Congress. They're 100 members of Senate, 435 members of the House of Representatives, and each one has issues that they're interested in. Some are really interested in national security, some are really interested in agriculture, some are really interested in healthcare. And so what the team here does and also our partners in the NGO community as a whole, we look at each individual office and say, where is their focus? Where are they interested? And we enter through that lens.

So if somebody, if it's a member from Kansas, we go in talking about the tie to U.S. Agriculture. If it's somebody who's on the armed services or foreign relations or foreign affairs committee, we go in talking about how this makes the United States safer, stronger, and more prosperous. If it's somebody who's interested in children's issues, we talk about school feeding or the tie to childhood nutrition and the benefit that that brings throughout the, their lives. And when you meet them where they already are focused, that's a, a way to, to get that shared value and alignment.

But having that starting point in a conversation where somebody's focused makes it much more successful than having a standard playbook that you run for every office. That would be the worst thing you could do.

[00:19:23] Aaron - Interview: How do you respond to the objection that we shouldn't be helping internationally until we help our own people.

[00:19:31] Rebecca Middleton: I love to approach it as an "and". I think that we need to be doing both. We work closely, my family does with our local food pantry in spite of living in a very rich county in Arlington, Virginia. There, there's tremendous need there because housing costs takes such a high percentage of people's income that sometimes food goes by the wayside.

But then we also have a responsibility globally. And it is in our interest. There's a reason why members of Congress and individuals interested in national security and global stability are interested in global hunger issues. There's, there's definitely a tie there. And it's much more affordable to provide foreign assistance in the form of food than it is to provide military support.

[00:20:14] Aaron - Interview: How do average everyday people help in a way that is meaningful when it comes to food insecurity around the world?

[00:20:21] Rebecca Middleton: I think because the issue of hunger has been around as long as time, that sometimes it can feel overwhelming. And no one individual is going to end hunger, but one individual can help address hunger and help meet the needs of a person, a family, a community, and, and there are lots of ways to do that.

At the hyperlocal level, of course, supporting local food bank and making a donation, volunteering, but also at a sort of systems level using your voice for advocacy. And I, I'd say that using that term fairly broadly. So I think one piece of it is educating yourself. On issues around hunger. What does hunger look like in your community? What does hunger look like around the country? And what does hunger look like around the world? And then educating those around you saying, "Hey, you know, did you know that there's a famine in Sudan right now?"

And I go back and I think about the experience that I had as a child. And I think whether you were in Provo or you were in Washington DC or if you were in Manhattan, Kansas, if you stop 10 people on the street and ask them if they knew if there was a famine in Ethiopia, at least eight or nine of them would say yes because everybody was getting access to the same news channels. In those same cities, if you stop 10 people on the street right now and ask them if they knew there was a famine in Sudan, I'd be surprised if more than two or three knew that.

And so I think we all have a responsibility, those of us that are paying attention to these issues, just to let our friends and family know what's going on in the world. And then also to let your policy makers know that you care. You know, the U.S. Is, is an incredibly generous donor, both of the in-kind assistance and also cash assistance for where markets are working. And letting your members of Congress know that this is something you care about, that you think it's a, a really valuable and important contribution from the U.S. Going back decades, some could even make the case centuries, and we want them to continue to, to uphold that for whatever reason ties to you personally. That's really important.

The other thing you can do is also contribute. I think some folks say, well, you know, it's such a big issue. I only have so much to give. It doesn't take much to make a difference in a person's life. And I know that can sound a little bit trite, but it really is true. Whether it's $5 or $50 or $5,000, that means that there are people that will get food that wouldn't have otherwise. The need far exceeds the resources available to address it, and so anything that you can do as an individual from a a financial perspective really does make a difference.

The more of those things you do in tandem, the better. But if you can pick just one, whichever you have time for, you have space for, you, have capacity for, do it, because it really will make a difference.

[00:22:59] Aaron - Interview: We live in a time when human suffering is just constantly paraded before our eyeballs. Even more than just donor fatigue, it's just empathy fatigue that people experience when it relates to human suffering. How do you deal with that in your work? You're more acutely attuned to the scale of human suffering around the world, just related to hunger alone, which I think can be overwhelming. How do you cope with the potential overwhelm that can come in doing this kind of work?

[00:23:25] Rebecca Middleton: I, I really appreciate the question. That's such a, such a human question that I, I think we need to talk about more just generally because it is a lot. If you look just at global hunger issues, you had the Ukraine crisis, you had Afghanistan crisis, Sudan, Yemen, gaza, Haiti, and it just feels like it's just piling up and more and more.

And, and you're right. In this line of work, we do have to pay attention to what's going on and read these reports and know that there are human beings, children of God that are attached to these numbers. I think I just remember the story of the starfish. I, I think many folks are familiar with this. Two people were walking down a beach together, and there are all of these starfish that have been stranded as the tide has gone out thousands and thousands of starfish. And one of the people says, "Well, how on earth can I make a difference? There's so many, there's no way that we can get them all back in the water. And the other person picks up one, tosses it back in the ocean and said, "It made a difference to that one."

And I, I think that's part of it, is realizing no one of us is going to solve all of this. But if all of us can do a little part in whatever matches up with our job, our skills, our resources, our networks, that it can all add up to a really significant impact.

[00:24:43] Aaron - Narration: Like we talked about before, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of global hunger, but there are real reasons for hope. In the past few decades, the world has made remarkable progress. Most people don't even know that in their lifetimes, extreme poverty across the world has been cut in half.

The direst predictions of global starvation from the fifties and sixties were averted thanks to incredible feats of science and political will. If we want to have more hope, we ought to look at what we've already accomplished.

[00:25:17] Rebecca Middleton: When I switched into the anti-hunger space, this is about 12 years ago now, my daughter was seven going on eight at the time.

And the switch in jobs was going to require a bit of a shift in our family's schedule. And we talked to the kids about it at dinner. And I was tucking her in that night and she said, "So mom, your job's going to be to try to end hunger." And I said, "Yes, that's, that's what I'm working on."

And she paused for a minute. She said, "Well, mom, if you do your job then if you end hunger, your job won't exist." And all I could think about was, wow, you know, we all need to have the optimism of an 8-year-old.

And she's almost 20 now, and, and she know, I tell this story and I think she rolls her eyes a little bit, but I asked her, I said, "Sarah, you know, do you still, do you still feel that way? That this is possible? That if all of us bring whatever we can, you know, big or small to this problem, that we could end hunger?"

And she said, "Yeah, mom." She said, "Why not? We've done a lot of amazing things as, as human beings, and if we put our mind to something, it's absolutely something you can accomplish."

[00:26:23] Aaron - Narration: As we wrap up this episode, you might be wondering how to translate concern into action, how to find your own path to meaningful work and contribution. Rebecca's story offers some valuable lessons for anyone hoping to make a difference, whether in hunger relief or any cause that matters to you. Here's what she's learned about building a life and career of impact.

[00:26:46] Rebecca Middleton: I think the thing that I always mention when I'm talking to college students, or or, or just young adults, young professionals, is think about what matters to you. Think about what's meaningful to you, and take opportunities to move in that direction, whether it's in your personal life, your professional life, or ideally both.

This job that I'm in is Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer at the World Food Program USA didn't exist when I was in college. I'm not even sure the World Food Program USA existed when I was graduating college. So there's no way that I could have set out at age 22 and said, "Okay, I'm gonna chart my path to get to this job."

But what I did at each stage of my career was say, what opportunities does this open up? What opportunities does this close? How does this opportunity move me closer to something that's really meaningful work? A lot of times when you start at something feels like a job and, and sometimes you need to do that job so that you build the skills or the relationships or the experience that you need. But at some point, you will probably have the opportunity to meld that with something that you really care about. Those are the moments, those are the moments of enlightenment, grace, joy that I encourage folks to embrace.

[00:27:56] Aaron - Narration: At the beginning of Les Miserables, the hardened convict Jean Valjean had an experience with Bishop Myriel that showed him more generosity than he believed could exist in the entire world. Former prisoners like him were outcasts of society, so he responded with amazement.

Let me quote this passage from the book: said Valjean, "Monsieur, you are good. You do not despise me. You received me into your house. You light your candles for me. Yet I have not concealed from you whence I come and that I am an unfortunate man."

The bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house. It is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer. You are hungry and thirsty. You are welcome."

I'm very grateful to Rebecca Middleton for spending time in this interview with me. I hope you've come away with ideas for what you can do next to aid the fight against hunger around the world. We have links in the show notes for where you can get involved.

How to Help is hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller, and produced in collaboration with BYU Radio. My thanks to Erica Price, Kenny Mears, and Blake Morris for their help with this episode. Scoring and mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes and if you haven't subscribed yet to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

Summary

What if disagreement could actually unite us? Judge Thomas Griffith, retired DC Circuit Court judge, joins us to explore the Constitution’s genius: its embrace of disagreement as a path to the common good. Judge Griffith shares personal stories from his judicial career, including his bipartisan support for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and dispels the myth of “partisans in robes.” He challenges listeners to defend the Constitution through humility, compromise, and local action, and offers hope for those discouraged by political division.

About Our Guest

Judge Thomas B. Griffith was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by President George W. Bush in 2005, and served until his retirement in 2020. He is currently a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute, and Special Counsel at Hunton Andrews Kurth. He is also engaged in rule of law initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe. 

Earlier in his career, Judge Griffith served as General Counsel of Brigham Young University and as Senate Legal Counsel, the nonpartisan chief legal officer of the U.S. Senate. In 2021, President Biden appointed him to the President’s Commission on the Supreme Court. He is also a co-author of Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Biden Won and Trump Lost the 2020 Presidential Election. 

He holds a BA from Brigham Young University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Useful Links

Judge Griffith's Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_B._Griffith

Braver Angels – Bridging Political Divides Through Civil Discourse:

https://braverangels.org

Judge Griffith's Letter in Support of Justice Jackson:

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2.26.22%20-%20Judge%20Thomas%20Griffith%20Support%20for%20Jackson.pdf

Judge Griffith's 2012 Speech at BYU, "The Hard Work of Understanding the Constitution":

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/thomas-b-griffith/the-hard-work-of-understanding-the-constitution/

Pleasant Pictures Music

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Thomas Griffith: I was doing a, a program for judges and academics at Oxford, and we're going out to dinner one night, and I dislike it when people bring their cell phones to dinner, but I had mine on the table. And all of a sudden it started to buzz, buzz, buzz and I asked "Andrew, do you mind if I look at this? This is unusual."

So I, I, I picked it up and looked at it and um, and I was getting all these text messages, that President Biden had just announced that he was nominating Katanji Brown Jackson, to the Supreme Court, and that in his statement that he was quoting me, he was reading from my, from my letter and that was, that was bizarre.

[00:00:43] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller. And this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode five, Disagreement and the Common Good. Before we begin, let me just say that your kind words and positive reviews mean the world to us. To those who have either taken a few minutes to rate the show or to share how to help with friends, you've done the thing that helps the podcast more than anything else.

And if you haven't done that yet, well now you know what to do. Thank you for the generous support and encouragement.

These days, it's easy and reasonable to feel like the US is a nation that's barely holding itself together. Our disagreements seem more bitter and difficult than they've been in any of our lifetimes. I know I 've felt that during the last few years especially. And if you've felt it too can I tell you about a remarkable tradition that's more than a hundred years old now?

Every year since 1893 on George Washington's birthday, a chosen US senator has stood to read aloud Washington's farewell address to the nation. And it's not a short address to deliver, often taking nearly an hour of uninterrupted speaking. After the reading, the senator who had the honor inscribes their name into a leather-bound book that now holds over a century of signatures, a tangible testament to the continued urgency of Washington's message.

His farewell address wasn't a speech. It was published in newspapers in 1796. This was a deliberate choice so he could reach as many Americans as possible. Also, Alexander Hamilton helped him write it. At the time, Washington was nearing the end of his second term as president, and his decision not to seek a third term was made in spite of being so widely loved by his fellow citizens.

Back then, a president could serve more than twice, but the demands of the presidency were simply exhausting. In fact, he revealed in the same address that he had considered stepping down after his first term, but stayed on out of his sense of duty to a nation that was still finding its footing.

The address offered more than a farewell. It was a roadmap for the nation's future. He talks about avoiding foreign entanglements and government debt, but central to his message was the importance of unity. Washington emphasized, quote, "It is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness."

Washington urged Americans to see above regional, political and personal divisions to preserve the union, warning that internal conflicts could undermine the nation's strength.

This tradition might feel meaningless or even hopeless to make any real difference in today's political pain. But consider that the first time the Senate did this reading was in 1862. It was then an appeal to unity during a time of civil war. My guest for this episode is Judge Thomas Griffith, retired judge from the DC Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, widely regarded as the second most important court in America. The DC Circuit Court is where most cases come if the US government is itself a party. The decisions of this court commonly impact the entire nation.

In this episode, Judge Griffith is going to teach us how to disagree while being united. Disagreement is essential to our legal system, of course, but Griffith will persuade you that it's essential to the Constitution itself. In fact, the duality of disagreement and unity are its most essential features

[00:04:30] Thomas Griffith: And the Constitution was designed to encourage, disagreement. It, we want disagreement. I, I don't trust a decision, any decision from anybody, that isn't the product of disagreement. Disagreement is vital.

[00:04:50] Aaron - Narration: Prior to being a Judge, Griffith was a lawyer, a university general counsel, and also the chief legal officer for the US Senate. Let's start the episode though, with the beginning of his judicial career. Like with every federal judge of required a confirmation process, in the same Senate body that has read Washington's farewell address for over a century.

Despite the unifying spirit recommended by our first president, judicial confirmations have a reputation for being especially grueling and political. That in Judge Griffith's nomination turned out not to be the case.

[00:05:23] Aaron - Interview: What was the experience like going through? A Senate confirmation. Yeah. To the federal bench.

[00:05:29] Thomas Griffith: So mine was, uh, a little unusual and little, uh, easier than most for one reason. For four years, I had been the chief lawyer for the United States Senate, a nonpartisan position, and so I had gotten to know the Senate leadership pretty well. We had been in the trenches together, senate leadership on both sides of the aisle. And so I got the benefit of being like family to, to them.

So that's not to say there wasn't some controversy surrounding it because I, the Democrats were in a mode of filibustering, president George W. Bush's nominees to the DC Circuit. A very distinguished pate lawyer in Washington, DC, named Miguel Estrada, who was a first generation immigrant from Central America, just a great American success story, decided to withdraw from the process. President Bush had to decide, okay, who do I nominate to replace Miguel Estrada? And, and I, I ended up being the replacement to the chagrin of some and the pleasure of others.

And they all the, the primary reason for that was that I had these relationships with the Democratic leadership of the Senate. What I had to go through was nothing in comparison to what others had to go through. So I'm not certain that my confirmation process is the, the, the norm because of the, because of those personal relationships.

[00:06:56] Aaron - Narration: Reports from longstanding members of Congress all have a common and very sad theme. The collegiality that Griffith saw as the Senate's lawyer has been dissolving steadily over time. Friends across the aisle are rarer than ever, but personal relationships are essential to compromise. It's much harder to persuade people that you don't know.

Griffith's career has been one of building these relationships, sometimes against the trend as when he endorsed Supreme Court Justice Keji Brown Jackson's nomination. Nominees to the Supreme Court faced stiff political opposition to be confirmed, but it wasn't always that way.

[00:07:33] Aaron - Interview: This history of building relationships, uh, across the political divide seems to have also played out when you introduced Justice Jackson. You made news for this because you were appointed by a Republican president and now you were doing the introduction for a democratically nominated Supreme Court Justice.

[00:07:52] Thomas Griffith: There was a time when that was, that sort of move was completely non-controversial, right? That used to be the norm. I can't remember the exact numbers, but what Justice Scalia was confirmed was it 98 to nothing, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 96 to 3.

And so that was what I would call the good old days. So there was a time when that was not controversial, but as you pointed out, no, it was controversial in, uh, this time.

So let me tell you the story. So I, I know Justice Jackson, she, um, was a trial court judge, a district court judge in the DC circuit when I was a court of appeals judge. And, and I got to know her and anyone who meets her discovers she's a very pleasant person. She's just delightful. She's the type of person you want to have lunch with. She's kind and thoughtful, all these wonderful virtues.

I disagreed with her on some legal matters. I thought her approach was mistaken, but I had no question that this was a person was trying to apply the law impartially. We just had a difference of opinion on a couple of occasions about what the law required. That seems to me completely unremarkable. That happens all the time.

[00:09:08] Aaron - Narration: Shortly after Judge Griffith retired from the DC circuit, Katanji Brown Jackson was nominated to that same court by President Biden.

When that happened, Jackson asked Griffith to write a letter of support, which he did gladly, and she was confirmed. The year following Griffith was at dinner with friends at Oxford when his phone started buzzing with a flood of text messages. President Biden had just announced the nomination of Jackson to the US Supreme Court, and in his announcement, Biden quoted the previous letter of praise written by Judge Griffith.

[00:09:41] Thomas Griffith: She then asked shortly before her confirmation hearing if I would be willing to introduce her. "I'd be honored to." She said, "Okay. You'll be hearing from the White House Council in a day or so about the logistics of that, what happens."

[00:09:55] Aaron - Narration: Judge Griffith eventually found himself in the hearing room for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here's a clip from his introduction for Justice Jackson.

[00:10:05] Thomas Griffith - Senate Testimony: Chairman Durbin, ranking Member Grassley and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I come here today as a retired federal appeals court judge with 15 years of experience on the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. I come here as a jurist appointed by Republican President George W. Bush. And I come here as someone who understands that there are few greater responsibilities under the constitution than serving as a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. It takes a jurist of high character, keen intellect, deep legal knowledge, and broad experience to ensure that the judiciary plays its unique role under the Constitution, to uphold the rule of law impartially and not to be in the words of Justice Steven Breyer "partisans in robes." Today I have the high honor to introduce Judge Katanji Brown Jackson, a jurist who has all of those qualities.

[00:11:08] Aaron - Narration: Judge Griffith noted in his introduction that this moment used to be what he called "regular order," where a judge appointed by a Republican president would support a judge chosen by a Democratic one.

[00:11:20] Thomas Griffith - Senate Testimony: Now some think it noteworthy that a former judge appointed by a Republican president would enthusiastically endorse a nomination to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president. That reaction is a measure of the dangerous hyper-partisanship that has seeped into every nook and cranny of our nation's life, and against which the framers of the Constitution warned us.

There should be nothing unusual about my support for a highly qualified nominee who has demonstrated through her life's work her commitment to the rule of law, and an impartial judiciary.

[00:11:57] Thomas Griffith: Yeah, and it, it was news. It made news. I will tell you, after the hearing, I was approached by several senators on the committee, on both sides of the aisle, to express dissatisfaction with what has become of the confirmation process. Because it's become so partisan and, and so political, and they cheered me in my comments and encouraged me to keep, to keep pushing for this sort of, of approach.

[00:12:32] Aaron - Interview: It's a fantastic story. Yeah. I love that.

[00:12:35] Thomas Griffith: And, and some of Justice Jackson's approaches and opinions she's written, I, they wouldn't be the ones that I wrote. But again, I think the Supreme Court's a better place. I think the United States is a better place for having her voice and, and her approach there.

[00:12:49] Aaron - Narration: The overwhelming perspective of everyday Americans is that federal judges are simply party politicians in robes. I asked Judge Griffith what he would say to those who believe this.

[00:12:59] Thomas Griffith: I think, uh, they'd be surprised and pleasantly surprised to find out that judges are not partisans in robes.

The, the, the phrase that, and I'll state it this way. So my experience was on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit for 15 years. And in 15 years on the DC Circuit, working with 11 other judges in hundreds of cases, I never once saw any of my colleagues make a decision that I thought was in any way painted by their political bias.

Now we're all appointed by different presidents. All of us are products of the political system. Never once did I see any of my colleagues, and hopefully I didn't do it either, cast a decision based on what, what we thought the best result was, political result was. Judges just don't think that way. Sure, you still have your political views and we would talk about those over lunch and stuff. But you just do your level best to keep those views out of your decisions as, as a judge.

And I, it's really inspiring to see people from different political backgrounds put that to one side and try and decide, not what the best outcome is, but what the law requires. And you, and there are times when I disagreed with what the law requires, but you follow the law. You take an oath to do that. You take an oath to be impartial. In my experience, 15 years on the DC circuit, I never once saw anyone who violated that oath.

[00:14:51] Aaron - Narration: This might lead you to misunderstand how disagreement works among judges. Important cases when appealed are often decided by split votes, two to one at the Circuit level, five to four at the Supreme Court level. We often see judges divided up as conservative and liberal, but there are cases where appellate judges side with each other despite political boundaries. What's at stake and where the disagreements lie is over what the law requires.

[00:15:18] Thomas Griffith: Now there's plenty of room for disagreement about all sorts of things. About how do you read a statute, what's the best way to read an act of Congress? Do you read it just according to the words that are there, or do you try and understand what the purpose was? Is there a purpose for the, those, so there's lots of room for disagreement on that. But the disagreements were over how to read a statute, how to interpret the Constitution. They weren't over, "Is this going to help the Rs, or is this going to help the Ds?" And I, I wish American people could see that. Now...

[00:15:52] Aaron - Narration: Why then do Americans see the courts so differently, as just extensions of hyper-partisan politics? It has mostly to do with the hyper-partisans who complain about the courts.

[00:16:04] Thomas Griffith: The problem, of course, is the pundits and politicians characterize our work differently. President Trump famously criticized the decision that went against his administration. And he said "That was an Obama judge." And, uh, in response to that, chief Justice Roberts issued a statement, which was really extraordinary. I, I don't think I've ever seen this in my lifetime, where Chief Justice responds to a criticism of President of the United States where he rebuked that. He said, "We don't have Obama judges or Clinton judges or Bush judges. We have federal judges who are all doing their best to, to apply the law."

[00:16:42] Aaron - Narration: Of course, judges aren't perfect. We have a national history that bears the shame of judicial decisions like Plessy v Ferguson, which upheld segregation as constitutional, or Korematsu v US, which made it legal to put Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II.

But we also have Brown v Board of Education where Plessy was repudiated despite the politics of the moment. Judge Griffith notes that people would be encouraged if they saw how the courts actually worked day-to-day.

[00:17:14] Thomas Griffith: Now, do judges always live up to that standard? No. I'm sure they don't. They fall short. But that's the standard, that's the goal, that's the aspiration. And at least in my experience, uh, that's the reality of it on the DC circuit. I, I wish people could see that because if they did see that, they, I think they would be really inspired. They would say, man, this system is unique, is pretty unique in the world. And it works and people get a fair shot and are treated well and are heard. I think they'd be very encouraged by that.

[00:17:51] Aaron - Narration: Judges ultimately have an obligation to be something that many people have come to see as a weakness in our leaders, the trait of being persuadable you.

[00:18:00] Thomas Griffith: I love the quote it, it's attributed to Oliver Cromwell, I've never done the research to find out if he really said this or not, but the Puritan revolutionary Oliver Cromwell was reported to have said, "I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye might be mistaken." And the cardinal virtue that judges should strive for is humility and to be open to persuasion, as you said.

[00:18:29] Aaron - Narration: The American judicial system is pretty unique in the world, as Judge Griffith said. And its novelty comes down to the genius of the Constitution, where the judicial branch was established as coequal with Congress and the Presidency. But for that position of importance, courts would always be operating under the whims and machinations of people in power.

This is one of the many reasons why defending the Constitution is so critical today, just as it was back when George Washington pled for us to do the same more than 200 years ago. But the Constitution isn't merely an ideal or symbol of patriotism. It's a set of particular ideas and principles that we need to understand and hold onto with all the dedication we can muster.

I asked Judge Griffith what he thinks we need to be doing today to preserve Constitutional government.

[00:19:20] Thomas Griffith: Sure. That's a big question. And first of all, I, I applaud and cheer anyone who wants to defend the Constitution. Because I think the Constitution, it's, it's unique. It defines who we are as a people. We need to be vigilant about, about protecting the Constitution.

I'll use the words of George Washington. George Washington said in, in the transmittal letter, sending the draft Constitution to the Continental Congress. Uh, he said, "This Constitution is the product of that spirit of amity and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political circumstance rendered indispensable."

So the Constitution was created in that sort of spirit, and I believe that it can only continue if we bring those virtues back into the discussion. Sometimes you get your way with a couple of compromises thrown in, and sometimes you don't get your way at all because you lose. The best explanation I heard of this that summarizes this came from a former Utah Supreme Court Justice and current leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints, Dallin Oaks, who said, "On contested issues we should see to moderate and to unify."

That's a pretty good, that's a pretty good approach.

[00:20:59] Aaron - Narration: During our conversation, Judge Griffith highly recommended the new book, American Covenant: How The Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again by Yuval Levin. In his book, Levin makes the case that the Constitution was intended to create a new kind of citizen, one who works by negotiation, bargaining, and compromise.

Levin's argument is that this kind of citizen is made necessary by the limitations placed on majority rule. In many things, even the people in power should have to compromise. Disagreement and compromise make sense if both sides have good reasons for their position, but surely we're not expected to compromise with everyone who disagrees with us.

What about those whose beliefs and ambitions are wrong at a much deeper level?

[00:21:46] Aaron - Interview: How do you recommend the average American think about where is, where, where is truly evil that's worth resisting versus what is open to reconciliation and compromise.

[00:21:56] Thomas Griffith: Yeah. Big question. Big question. So we, it's also pointed out to us that America is unique among nations of the world and that it's, it's founded on some ideas, instead of founded on blood and soil sort of thing. And those ideas are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, right? That's our secular scripture. And the two most fundamental principles are to be an American, means that you're committed to liberty and equality.

Those are abstract concepts. Those are high aspirations. But if you're an American, you gotta be committed to that, right? If you're not, I'm not going to hate you. But I'm sorry, you don't get to sit at the table and help, uh, determine the course of this nation. So therefore, there are some conversations that I'm just not going to have. I, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm not going to invite a Nazi to the table. Uh, no. I, I'm sorry. I'm not going to hate you. Uh, I'm not going to show contempt for you. I will battle your ideas to the day I die, but I'm not going to hate you. But no, you're not going to be part of the, the conversation. You know, there, there is evil out there, but boy, to categorize an idea or a person as evil. Boy, be careful about that.

Right? Be humble about that. And even when we're dealing with evil, I think it's incumbent upon us to do the best we can to understand where is this coming from? Why does this person have these views? And even in studying evil, you may find out that, that there are reasons for why this person has taken these extreme and evil views. And to the extent that we can understand that, then the better we'll be able to combat those truly destructive ideas.

[00:23:50] Aaron - Narration: Social media today is sadly a breeding ground for the wrong kind of citizen, not just for evil, but also for conflict. Social media platforms feed on fear and anger because those emotions keep your attention.

What might help there?

[00:24:07] Thomas Griffith: Stop being on social media, people!

We, we know what's going on! We know what's going on on social media. We know what's going on on cable. We know what's going on on talk radio. This is sounds like the old man saying, stop driving a car, or don't use the internet. But seriously, if you're, if you're consuming information from social media, from cable, and from talk radio, you, we know we're being played, right?

[00:24:37] Aaron - Interview: Yeah.

[00:24:37] Thomas Griffith: We're being played by algorithms. We're being played by revenue dollars, ad dollars. That's what's going on with political views on social media, cable and talk radio. And so, you know, I'm not so naive as to say don't do it at all. I, I, I wish people wouldn't actually, but I'm not that crazy. But realize when you're there, you're being played.

[00:25:00] Aaron - Narration: Because I teach them every day, I like to ask my guest for advice to the rising generation. There is truly a force of good people coming to age in a rough place right now. What should they do with this country that they're inheriting?

[00:25:15] Aaron - Interview: So what advice do you have for them in that regard? Like what, where do you think they should be pointing themselves to have the impact they're looking for?

[00:25:23] Thomas Griffith: First of all, their instincts are right. Their desire to serve is audible. There's so much more to life than economics, right? And, and so any young person who's motivated by a desire to improve the common good the first thing I say to them is, "Bless you! Don't lose that. Don't lose that." Then the question becomes, how do you do it?

In, in our current circumstances, I'm not certain the solution is politics. Politics is a tough world right now. Unfortunately, you're not going to have a lot of role models in the political world, uh, today. But look, look for those. Who are treating their political opponents, not as enemies, but as, as co-laborers in this great democratic enterprise?

For others, I think the real, the real good that's going to be done is locally. I think real change, real meaningful change happens slowly over time, but it typically happens at the local level. At the level of your family, the level of your congregation. If you're a, a person, say in, in the schools that your children attend, the school board, city, county, that's where I think real meaningful change takes place. I'm afraid it's not going to come at the national level. I don't think somebody's going to come riding on a horse, white knight, to, to, to save us from this. It's going to, it's going to come from the local level. And so my encouragement is don't give up on your idealism, but focus on what you can do in your own community, because that's where real, uh, meaningful change over time will, will occur.

[00:27:09] Aaron - Interview: Any parting thoughts for those who are especially discouraged by the political rancor that we're all swimming in?

[00:27:16] Thomas Griffith: Yeah. You have reason to be discouraged. I am too. I am too. So what do you do with that discouragement? We can, uh, retreat to our own shell and watch cable news and just get mad. Or post some sort of invective about our discouragement on social media.

You can do that. That's not helpful. If you're discouraged, the best thing to do is is to work for change at, at, at, at in your life, in the lives of those around you, by modeling the type of, uh, political discourse you'd like to see us have. It turns out social science research shows us that in those very few instances where people do change their mind, that it's typically, um, because of a conversation with a friend.

No, no one changes their mind when they're being yelled at. My, my parting shot, be that type of person and, and hope and pray that, that the model catches on. Try and understand what your fellow citizens are thinking about and what they care about.

[00:28:25] Aaron - Narration: We like to think of our founding fathers as superheroes, philosopher-warriors who somehow had the power to mold an entire nation. But Washington noted in his farewell that he was guilty of many errors in his time as President. Speaking of these failings, he said, "Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend."

Washington also hoped that his faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion In his final address, in his final paragraphs, what Washington asked from his fellow Americans was grace and forgiveness for not doing a better job. If the great George Washington needed grace and forgiveness, surely we do too.

I'm incredibly grateful to my friend, Judge Thomas Griffith for spending time with us. How to Help is a production of BYU Radio and hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller. This episode is produced by Erica Price with help from Blake Morris and Kenny Mears. Scoring and mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club.

For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes. And if you haven't subscribed to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player. As always, thank you so much for listening.

Summary

Domestic violence affects millions, yet most people don’t know how to help when someone they care about is being abused. Deborah Tucker has spent over five decades fighting to end violence against women, from co-founding one of the first shelters in the US to spearheading the Violence Against Women Act. In this episode, you’ll learn the five essential things to say to someone experiencing abuse, why we must work with people who use violence (not just victims), and how individual action connects to ending domestic violence altogether. Deborah’s mix of disarming charm and deep expertise shows why she’s been so effective in this fight—and how you can be too.

About Our Guest

Deborah D. Tucker is a pioneering advocate who has dedicated over five decades to ending violence against women and children. Her journey began in 1974 as a volunteer with Texas’s first rape crisis center, launching a career that would transform domestic violence response nationwide.

Tucker co-founded and led the Austin Center for Battered Women from 1977-1982, then became the first Executive Director of the Texas Council on Family Violence, where she served until 1996. Under her leadership, the Texas Council grew into one of the country’s largest coalitions with over 50 staff members, and launched the National Domestic Violence Hotline, providing 24/7 crisis support nationwide.

Tucker’s national influence includes serving as founding Chair of the National Network to End Domestic Violence during the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 and working on subsequent reauthorizations. In 1998, Tucker co-founded the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence with Sarah M. Buel, creating an organization that provides training and consultation across the country. Tucker also co-chaired the U.S. Department of Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence from 2000-2003.

Her numerous honors include induction into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in 2014, the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration’s Alfred M. Zuck Public Courage Award in 2012, and the Sunshine Lady Award in 2008. Currently serving as President of NCDSV’s Board of Directors, Tucker continues her lifelong mission to create safer communities for all.

Useful Links

National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence:


https://www.ncdsv.org/

National Domestic Violence Hotline:


https://www.thehotline.org/

Five Things to Say to Victims of Domestic Violence: https://www.ncdsv.org/uploads/1/4/2/2/142238266/2023-10-01-thefivethingstosay-adultvictim-puv-child.pdf

CDC Information on Domestic Violence:

https://www.cdc.gov/intimate-partner-violence/about/index.html

The Violence Against Women Act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Against_Women_Act

Pleasant Pictures Music

Join the Pleasant Pictures Music Club to get unlimited access to high-quality, royalty-free music for all of your projects. Use the discount code HOWTOHELP15 for 15% off your first year.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Debby Tucker: My dad had gone to college for while, but my mother never went to college, and both of them were determined to make sure that I went. But, I didn't know why I was going necessarily. I just knew that for them it was an important next step. And I had such a limited view that I thought that women could only be a nurse or a teacher.

So I was like, I don't wanna be a nurse. You know, some of them have to be there at like seven o'clock in the morning. That sounds horrible. School starts at 8:30, I guess I'll go the teacher route. That's how sophisticated my choice was.

[00:00:45] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller, and this is How to Help: a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode four: Ending Domestic Violence.

If you've been enjoying How to Help, then let me tell you the best way that you can help this podcast to grow. More than any number of followers or money spent on advertising or marketing, what works the best is to give it a rating in your podcast app of choice. And when there's an episode that you love, share it with a friend. There's really no substitute for those two things. So thank you for supporting the show.

As you've been listening to How to Help, you've likely noticed that I typically open each episode by setting the context with a story or some interesting piece of history related to the topic. This episode is different precisely because of the topic. Although I won't share any detailed stories of abuse, if this is a topic that's personally difficult for you, then you may want to look over the transcript for this episode to see if listening to it will be helpful.

If you haven't personally experienced domestic abuse, then this episode will definitely be helpful to you. Because even if you haven't experienced it personally, the odds are extremely high that someone you know has been abused, and I hope by listening to this you can be more helpful to victims of abuse and even to the people who use violence. If you don't think you know someone in either of these categories, you are almost certainly wrong.

[00:02:20] Debby Tucker: Oh, absolutely. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's not something that's confined to any one population or strata or whatever. One of my ways of saying is it goes from house coats to fur coats.

[00:02:36] Aaron - Narration: My guest today is Deborah Tucker. She's the co-founder and board president of the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence. She was also its executive director for 17 years.

You won't find anyone with more expertise on what people individually and society together can do to end domestic violence. She helped start one of the first ever victim shelters in the US. She even spearheaded the campaign to make the Violence Against Women Act into federal law.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Throughout this episode, you're going to learn things you never knew. You'll also quickly see why Debby's mix of disarming charm and deep expertise have made her so effective in fighting domestic abuse. Her start in this fight came when she was just a young college student.

[00:03:21] Debby Tucker: I fell into it in the way that a lot of people do, as a volunteer. I read an article in the Daily Texan about a group coming together to discuss sexual assault and the problems that were occurring on campus where people were being assaulted, and if you had any interest or willingness to participate, come on down kind of a thing. And I'm not sure why I latched onto it, but I absolutely did. I had like roommates at the dorm who talked about being attacked on a date or somebody in one of my classes who had obviously been harmed and asking her if I could do anything to help, and she just burst into tears and said, "I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go."

[00:04:18] Aaron - Narration: Debby began as a volunteer, working on a 24-hour phone hotline for victims to report abuse and get help. She quickly became a key volunteer and then an employee. This is something she did while she was still quite young, but too many people in positions to help were just doing a bad job.

[00:04:36] Debby Tucker: We were way in over our head. I think I was 21, and trying to understand the complexities of what people were going through. All the players, the emergency room staff, the law enforcement people.

You know, ministers were a source of great support many times, and people wanted to talk to their minister, but that didn't always turn out. Sometimes they would say the same-old, same-old things that people were saying that were very hurtful. "What did you do to make him mad? He beat you up because you did what now?" And not understanding. So anywhere you look, people can play a role and it can be helpful or it can because somebody to retreat.

And maybe it takes them another year before they reach out and ask for any kind of help.

[00:05:35] Aaron - Narration: As the hotline grew, they quickly realized that they needed to respond urgently to the needs of some of the women who called in. And this gave rise to what might have been the first ever domestic violence shelter in the United States.

[00:05:48] Debby Tucker: I can't say that it was all by ourselves that we figured that out. We had located the

Austin Rape Crisis Center in the Episcopal Seminary. They had offered us, uh, two rooms where we could operate the Austin Rape Crisis Center. And we just accidentally started taking people in to what's called Rather House, this beautiful building that visiting priest used when they were coming to the seminary for a, a visit or a program or whatever.

And one of those priests came downstairs to the kitchen and found us sitting there with a family around the table and he said, "I'm glad that you're doing this, but I'm embarrassed that it never occurred to me that we would have company at seven o'clock in the morning if this is going to be happening.

Maybe we need a, a house or a place that we designate. Uh, for folks to stay."

Of course, what were we thinking? So to his credit, we sat back and said, yeah, we're getting people who need to get away from someone who's actively harming them and their children, and we need a place for them to be safe.

[00:07:10] Aaron - Narration: Today there are over 2000 domestic violence shelters in the US.

This is still too few though, as many of them operate at capacity and have to turn away women and families in need. One study in 2015 found that in a single day, 12,197 people had to be turned away from shelters due to a lack of resources. For the Austin Rape Crisis Center, the increased support also came with increased demand, more than the rather house could fit.

[00:07:42] Debby Tucker: And I think about those early days of opening the shelter itself. We didn't know how we were going to accomplish that. And I got a call from our city manager who said, "Deborah, I want you to be in my office at eight o'clock on Monday morning. I have somebody I want you to meet." And I'm sitting there thinking the city manager wants me to come meet somebody.

What did we do wrong?

[00:08:09] Aaron - Narration: Yeah.

[00:08:11] Debby Tucker: Who did we step up with in a bad way? And so I stewed all weekend long. And I go into his office and there's this gentleman with him and I sit down and they explain to me that he is the program chair for the Home Builders Association, and that he saw a segment on the news about us wanting to establish a shelter and that we were working with the city and trying to get a building and blah, blah, blah.

And he said. "We'd like to build you a building."

[00:08:49] Aaron - Narration: John McFall, who led the Home Builders Association, organized it masterfully. Debby said it was like a barn raising, and the final construction cost was just $50,000 for a building that was actually worth $300,000. Because this was a new thing there was a lot to learn, like how to keep the residents safe.

[00:09:09] Debby Tucker: I had the experience one day of somebody pulling up, putting a rifle on his door frame and pointing it to us. And so everybody in the house was saying, "Okay, Deborah, you're the director. You get the big bucks." I think I was making 13,000 a year. "You need to go out there and talk to this guy.

[00:09:34] Aaron - Interview: Oh my gosh.

[00:09:35] Debby Tucker: "And see what he wants."

And so I went out and said to him, "We've got this really nice bench over here under this tree, and you and I can sit down together for a minute and kind of figure out why you're here, what you need, how we can make this situation better." And so he did. He put down the rifle, he got out of the car, he came over, he sat next to me on the bench.

And we just began to talk. And he was basically there because he knew that his wife and children were in the shelter and he wanted them back. And so I had a conversation with him about what did he think would make them feel safe about coming back. Would driving up with a rifle encourage them to feel safe enough to come home?

Meanwhile, everybody else had called the police, and the police showed up and confiscated the rifle and had a conversation with him about trespassing and. All that kinda stuff. And you know, we're like, okay, so anything and everything is probably going to happen.

[00:10:49] Aaron - Narration: Over the years, as more and more groups started offering victim services, there was an increased need for national collaboration. By this point, Debby was a leader in Texas in the fight against domestic abuse, and she was invited to participate in collaboration meetings in Washington DC. Groups from all over the country were invited. As you might expect, there were strong regional and cultural disagreements in how everyone saw the problem.

Even the little differences came to the surface,

[00:11:17] Debby Tucker: And one of the things that somebody said after I had spoken a little bit was, "What are you doing wearing makeup?" And I said, "I come from the south. You're not dressed. If you don't have on makeup, I'm not going to come to a meeting with anybody without some lipstick."

"Y'all may not have to worry about that, but we do." And it was like, this is going to be hard. And over time though, we began to, like any group of people that are committed to an end, we started to find ways to, to work together and to talk to each other, and to hear each other. I loved it.

[00:12:06] Aaron - Narration: One critical moment of learning and consensus came when they all agreed that victims were not to blame.

This is a perspective that's now more widely shared, but it wasn't that way until the leading advocates laid it down as an essential truth.

[00:12:20] Debby Tucker: And I think that when we all began to adopt the attitude that it's not the child or the adult has done something where they deserve to be disciplined. But in fact the person who is causing the harm believes that they are entitled to react in any way they choose up to and including physical violence or emotional abuse that is devastating, in some ways more harmful than a bruise or a hit can be. We began to come to consensus around critical positions and acknowledge that the real experts were the survivors, the victims who had lived through it. So that we weren't like the professionals telling everybody else

what to do, we were partners with them in learning.

[00:13:23] Aaron - Narration: What are the first things you wish everybody knew about domestic and sexual violence that would maybe help position them to be better helpers?

[00:13:33] Debby Tucker: I think that you can best be a helper if you're willing to listen and to recognize that you don't have to give advice or

direct somebody what to do. But you can offer resources and you can say simple things like, "I'm here when you need me or when you need to talk." Offering things, but not being pushy. You cannot tell people what to do. It never works.

And we made assumptions in the beginning that everybody wanted to get away,

and wanted to end the relationship with the, the person using violence. But in reality, when we asked and we were saying, what can we do? They would say, "Talk to him. Somebody needs to tell him to quit hurting us. And somebody needs to recognize that he was a good father at one point. He was a good husband at one point, and there are things about him that are still good. And what can we do to get rid of these awful things that he's doing now?"

And so they're the ones who made us recognize the reality that we cannot end this kind of violence without working with the people who are using it. What you have to do is listen, if there is still any kind of relationship, and if you have children together, then what do we do to make that safer and better?

[00:15:12] Aaron - Narration: You know, as you're talking about that, I, I think one of the most common responses I see, and that I've also felt, is just cynicism that a person using violence is ever really going to change. What do you have to say to the people who are cynical about any opportunity or possibility of rehabilitation?

[00:15:31] Debby Tucker: What I say is these people are not from another planet. They don't have acid dripping off of their teeth, and we can't communicate at all. They are, in fact, sons and fathers and people who were raised in our society and in our families. So do we offer to them an opportunity to live differently? I remember this one guy who told me, you know, that he was coming home from work and he was walking up to the door and he could hear everybody in his family laughing and joking, and obviously they were having a good time together, and he opened the door and walked, stepped in, and everybody froze, and turned to look at him. And the fear in their faces, and all the laughter and all the enjoyment they were having disappeared. And it was so stark for him that he was able to recognize he had created a situation where they weren't glad that he was home. They were terrified that he was home.

[00:16:50] Aaron - Narration: Blaming victims or demanding that they change their behavior doesn't actually stop abusers. And instead, it just gives room for domestic violence to grow. Sometimes we need to help others understand that too.

[00:17:03] Debby Tucker: I remember early on, one of the groups that we went to, the Lions Club, a guy stood up and, and somebody had made some disparaging remark about women bringing this on themselves by not listening to their husbands and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And one of his fellow Lion members stood up and said, "Sir, I was raised by somebody who beat my mother constantly, who beat all of us. I can tell you that there was nothing about her that caused this. She did everything she could to protect us and to stop it." And those are the kinds of conversations that we wanna see

men have with one another to really learn from each other that it doesn't matter if she is the nastiest, most inappropriate woman in the world. It doesn't mean that you get to beat her up.

[00:18:02] Aaron - Narration: Instead of telling the victim to act differently, the National Center developed this list of the five things to say to victims of abuse.

Here they are: Number one, I'm afraid for your safety. Number two, I'm afraid for the safety of your children. Number three, it will only get worse. Number four, I'm here for you when you're ready to leave. Number five, you don't deserve to be abused. These are the things that they need to hear.

[00:18:35] Debby Tucker: Oh, it's very powerful and very helpful, and that's why we have continued to use it because it works. It gives people the tools to begin a conversation because it's uncomfortable. You don't want to ask somebody point blank. You wanna say gently, I'm concerned for your safety. And to be able to say to the person who you think is causing the harm, I'm concerned for the safety of your family members. Trying to get them to think differently is so powerful.

[00:19:10] Aaron - Narration: Debby also noted that we need to believe that abusers can change. In fact, this is why Debby and others prefer the term "people who use violence," pointing to the possibility that they can become people who don't use violence. And if you feel cynicism about that, you should know that Debby, with her years of experience, has seen that change is possible.

[00:19:33] Debby Tucker: If you don't believe that people can change for the better, then you might as well give up. BEcause the human race is like amazing and people can surprise us. They can appear to be hardheaded and impossible and stuck in a prior century. And if you gently keep applying the tools, they sometimes wake up and listen.

There are some that we can't reach, obviously. And that's why from time to time, I do support somebody going to prison and being away from everyone until possibly there's a chance that they can be safe. But most of the people that we work with will change and will stop causing harm.

One of the things we've asked judges to do in Texas is encourage the person to get a mentor, to identify someone in their life that they trust and respect. It could be a, a minister. It could be their boss. It could be a, a colleague that they interact with. It could be a baseball partner, somebody you play with. Ask them to help you.

[00:20:57] Aaron - Narration: Just expecting change at the individual level isn't going to bring an end to domestic violence. For decades, we've needed systemic improvements to make it easier for victims to come forward, for them to get support if they need to leave home, and for people of influence to have policies and training in place. All of these reasons and more are what gave rise to the Violence Against Women Act, a landmark law first passed in 1994. Debby Tucker spearheaded the lobbying of Congress and started out by working with then Senator Joe Biden.

[00:21:30] Debby Tucker: So one of the things that he said to me was, "You have an assignment, and that is to get representative Jack Brooks, who is the chair of the Judiciary Committee. We can get it through the Senate. I know that I have enough votes to get it out of the Senate, but we are never going to pass it if we don't get the House Judiciary Committee to support it."

[00:21:56] Aaron - Narration: At that time, Brooks was the longest serving member of Congress, representing a district in South Texas. Debby had never met Brooks and had never tried to lobby a congressman like this before.

She connected with everyone she knew, politicians, business leaders, and really just anybody she could think of that might know him. Of course, she also went the formal route of calling his staff, introducing herself, and even going to his office in dc, meeting everybody who worked there asking for an appointment.

Finally, after about 10 months of work, Debby got a call out of the blue from a staff member on the Judiciary Committee saying that Mr. Brooks had set the Violence Against Women Act for a hearing. She was told to be ready to present and to help in whatever other ways the committee needed. On the day of the hearing, she was stunned to find the room was packed full of people.

[00:22:48] Debby Tucker: I got there, opened the door, and the room was full. And I'm like, who are these people? Why is the room full? And there were like cameras on those giant dolly things that they roll around like CBS, ABC. I'm like, what is this all about?

[00:23:07] Aaron - Narration: It turned out that the bill had become national news. And so to calm her nerves, Debby went to talk to the representatives on the committee that she already knew, including Chuck Schumer.

Everyone in the room was waiting to start and all they needed was the committee's chair, Jack Brooks.

[00:23:23] Debby Tucker: And I had my back to the door, and all of a sudden, it's got quiet. I turned around and this bandyrooster of a man is coming in the door and everyone is racing for their seats and sitting down and behaving. And on all four walls where these no smoking signs. And out of his mouth was this giant cigar.

And I'm like, okay, Deborah, this is a big moment. And I just march myself down the center aisle. Stick out my hand and say, "Mr. Brooks, thank you so much for setting the Violence Against Women Act for Hearing today. My name is Deborah Tucker. I'm chair of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. We are excited to be here. We appreciate a chance to talk this through with you and the committee."

And his response was "Debby Tucker! I've had everybody but my first grade teacher call me and ask me to set this bill for a hearing. And I just wanna know one thing." The whole room leaned in and was like, what does Mr. Brooks wanna know? And he said, "Why the ****? Don't the prosecutors help these women? Why don't they put these men in jail so that women can be safe in their own homes and not have to come to your little shelters?"

And I was just like, "Oh my goodness, sir. I don't ****ing know."

And he loved it. And he started laughing and he leaned forward with that giant cigar in his mouth and he caught the front of my hair on fire.

And he is patting the top of my head to put the fire out, and saying "We going to get your little bill out. Don't worry."

[00:25:25] Aaron - Narration: With the smell of burning hair still lingering, Debby went to her assigned seat. Soon after the hearing began, the discussion immediately went to all the complexities of the problem and concerns like those you'd expect for major federal legislation.

But Representative Brooks threw his full weight behind the bill and it passed both the House and Senate in record time. President Clinton signed it soon after.

[00:25:50] Debby Tucker: I'm really proud of the fact that in spite of our regional differences and our cultural challenges, we got to agreement that we were going to help educate folks to the fact that there is nothing that a victim can do, adult or child, by themselves to stop the person who's decided that they're going to use violence. We have to step in, family, friends, neighbors. We've gotta draw a line and say "Up with this, we will not put."

[00:26:27] Aaron - Narration: What keeps you going with hope? This is as monumental a problem as anybody could take on, and you've been at it for a long time. What, what has kept you going and what keeps going now?

[00:26:37] Debby Tucker: I think it is the fact that we've made such significant progress. Even though it's been fits and starts and a couple of steps back, and it's not been linear at all, um, there has been change and there are more and more people who get it, so to speak, and who realize that if you don't end the use of violence then other problems that you see in the world are going to continue. Where do you think that rapists and murderers come from? What families are they raised in who teaches them what to do and what not to do? We're going to never end all forms of violence if we don't end the violence that starts when somebody's a child. And to me it's one big mass of things that are all important.

Dignity, respect, safety, those are fundamental to, to progress. It's gotta operate at all levels. And we gotta get over the differences. Whatever, whoever God is has a strange sense of humor to create so many different languages and belief systems and cultures and ways of doing things. It's not ever been easy for us to understand one another. All of it takes patience and deliberate efforts to reach out and to hear people and to share what you know in a way that might help.

[00:28:30] Aaron - Narration: When I was emailing with Debby about this interview, I'd mentioned that I wanted to discuss how to help people out of domestic violence. In reply, she said we should broaden our view and talk about how we can end domestic violence. I'm confident that as promised, you learned something new about what you can do to help a loved one in this situation.

But I hope you can also see how your help plays a part in a much bigger effort: bringing an end to domestic violence altogether. If you want to get more involved in this effort, we've linked to resources in the show notes. Debby and countless others will be glad to have your help.

How To Help is hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller, and produced in collaboration with BYU Radio.

My thanks to Erica Price, Kenny Mears and Blake Morris for their help with this episode. Scoring and mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes. And if you haven't subscribed yet to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player and find us on all the different social media platforms.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

After you’ve looked these over, I’d love to know: What else do you find makes someone more helpful?

Consider opportunity costs.

For every act of help, there’s another way—perhaps better, perhaps worse—we could help instead. When we do things for others, we often do it instinctively and fail to consider the alternatives. This simple question, “What could I do instead?” almost always improves your thinking.

Imagine you have a neighbor who just lost their job. Your instinct might be to start sending them job openings at your company. But in the immediate aftermath, what they might need instead is a listening ear to help them process what happened.

Assume less.

If you’re good at empathy, defined as perspective-taking, then you’re more likely to be a helpful person. But, we might misunderstand what the other person is really thinking and feeling. We can solve this problem by simply communicating more than we think we need to. Ask questions and share your plans and intentions to help so you get feedback from the person you’re helping.

It finally took my wife telling me that she doesn’t want flowers for Valentine’s Day for me to stop buying her flowers. (She didn’t want to hurt my feelings and I was just doing what I thought a husband was supposed to do.) I’ve become a better gift-giver to her by just asking her for a list of things she would love. I then either choose something from the list as a surprise or use the list for inspiration to get something else. I’m quite proud of the fact that I found what is now her favorite brand of tea.

You don’t need more emotional empathy. In fact, you might be better off with less of it

Empathy comes in three kinds, emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and empathic concern. Emotional empathy—where we feel what we perceive other people feeling—is common to helpers. But it’s rough, especially when we mirror someone’s suffering. Plenty of research shows that you don’t need to be high in emotional empathy to be an effective helper. In fact, too much emotional empathy can backfire and cause depersonalization, making you far less helpful to others.

I teach students who go into public service and many of them struggle with constantly feeling the suffering of others. One of them shared with me, “I have often felt that I need to respond in a state of semi-distress in order for serious situations to be taken seriously.” Another said, “I had always thought empathy was the greatest amount of love you can show another person…Yet I can see and feel the burnout that comes from only having emotional empathy.” The quality of your help is not measured by your feelings of distress for someone else!

Expertise matters, and you can get good-enough expertise reasonably quickly.

We sometimes try and help in ways that are beyond our abilities and knowledge, and so our efforts fall short of meeting the need. It’s good to turn to experts for advice, rather than assuming we can fix a problem we’ve never fixed before. Temper the instinct to help first; cultivate a habit of learning first. We live in an age where experts are constantly sharing their insights. Even just a little bit of learning from an expert can make you a dramatically more helpful person.

When our son was diagnosed in high school with OCD, the best thing that happened for us as parents was getting some simple, but very helpful training from therapists who specialize in OCD treatment. In fact, it corrected ways we’d been accommodating his OCD and unwittingly fueling it. Of course, he also got expert treatment from trained professionals. The help of experts has benefitted him and us immensely.

You can cultivate compassion deliberately.

If there’s anyone in your life that you don’t feel positive feelings for, but you want to, there is a way to feel more compassion for them. Research on loving-kindness meditation indicates that compassion is a skill than can improve with practice. The essence of it is to use a moment of quiet and reflect on the positive feelings you have for someone you love dearly. Then while you bask in those feelings, try to imagine something similar for the person you struggle to care for. This is essentially a kind of practice.

I personally believe that compassionate prayer (praying for one’s enemies) can have a similar effect. There’s ancient wisdom in Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Islamic practices that cultivate love for enemies. But remember, this being hard doesn’t mean you can’t get better at it. It just takes practice.

What other ways of thinking can make us more helpful people? I’d love to hear from you.

Summary

In part two of our conversation with Professor Chad Ford, we take a deeper look at what it means to be a professional peacemaker. Chad shares the realities of mediation work—the challenges, the setbacks, and the deeply rewarding moments that come with helping others resolve conflict. We explore the many paths to a career in peacemaking, from family and organizational mediation to international peacebuilding, and discuss why authentic curiosity and self-reflection are essential for anyone drawn to this work. Chad also shares his path to a career in conflict resolution around the world. Whether you’re considering this work or simply want to bring more peace to your own life, Chad’s story and insights will inspire you to see conflict—and its resolution—in a new light.

About Our Guest

Chad Ford is an international conflict mediator, facilitator, and peace educator known for his extensive peacebuilding work around the world. He holds a Master’s in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University and a JD from Georgetown. He directed the David O. McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding at BYU–Hawaii for nearly twenty years, where he developed programs in intercultural peacebuilding. In 2024, Chad joined Utah State University, teaching courses on religion, peace, and mediation.

He has worked in conflict zones globally, facilitated for governments, NGOs, and corporations, and serves on the board of Peace Players International. Chad is the author of Dangerous Love and 70x7, books that explore transforming conflict and Christian peacebuilding. His hands-on experience gives him a unique perspective on resolving conflicts in families, organizations, and communities worldwide.

Useful Links

Chad Ford’s Book, Dangerous Love:

https://dangerouslovebook.com

Chad's Substack:

https://chadford.substack.com/

Alfred Nobel and the Peace Prize:

https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel

Bertha Von Suttner:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1905/suttner/biographical/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Chad Ford: David Whippy, who is now the director of the McKay Center at BYU Hawaii, was a Fijian rap star. Went under the name WIP Z; came to BYU Hawaii from Fiji; was taking some psychology courses when someone told him, "Oh, you should try to take this peace building course." And I was so surprised that he would come into my class and you would see all these Fijians looking through the glass with their phones, like trying to take pictures of him, because he was really, really famous in Fiji.

[00:00:28] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller. And this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode three: professional Peacemaking. How to Help is proud to be a part of the BYU Radio Family of podcasts.

You've almost certainly heard of the Nobel Prize, but did you know that Alfred Nobel, who funded the prize, manufactured and sold weapons for war?

At the time, his company was actually the largest in Europe. Now, Nobel didn't set out with this as a goal. He was a chemist and the inventor of dynamite, the blasting cap, and other innovations that made industries like mining safer for the workers. And this was the primary beginning of what became his vast wealth.

It was later in life that he turned these inventions into weapons. And though Nobel was a supplier of war, he wasn't a war monger. In fact, he was convinced that as more powerful weapons became available, humanity would've no choice but to seek peaceful resolutions to their conflicts. The alternative in his mind was utter destruction.

But Nobel never lived to see the invention of nuclear weapons.

It might be argued that the power to destroy the world thousands of times over did encourage negotiations between nuclear states, but people still today are being killed by guns and landmines and tanks and missiles. It seems obvious by now that Nobel's vision of a peaceful world is never going to be built on mutual fear.

Albert Einstein even gave a speech after the first nuclear bombs were dropped in Japan by US forces. Einstein used the occasion to invoke Nobel and he said this, "Alfred Nobel invented an explosive, more powerful than any known, an exceedingly effective means of destruction. To atone for this accomplishment, and to relieve his conscience, he instituted his award for the promotion of peace."

Near the very end of his life, Nobel saw peace differently, mostly thanks to the friendship of a former secretary ,named Bertha Von Suttner. She was a lifelong peace activist and, although she worked for Nobel many years earlier and only briefly, they had a friendship that lasted for decades. Von Suttner spent that entire time trying to persuade Nobel to bring his intelligence and financial resources to the pacifist movement, and she consistently failed to convince him.

Only at the end of Nobel's life did her efforts finally bear fruit. In 1888, Alfred allegedly saw an obituary in a French newspaper that was written after his brother's death, except the paper mistakenly thought it was Alfred who had died. It wasn't kind stating only this "A man who cannot very easily pass for a benefactor of humanity died yesterday in Cannes. It is Mr. Nobel, inventor of dynamite."

The next year, Von Suttner wrote a book called Throw Down Your Arms, and it amazed Nobel who praised the way she "made war on war." More letters followed in which Nobel and Von Suttner discussed the idea of a prize for the promotion of peace. Alfred rewrote his will in 1895, died the following year, and the Nobel Prizes were born.

Not only did Bertha Von Suttner win the fourth ever Nobel Peace Prize, and was the first woman to win it, she played a key role in the prize's very creation. But for her, it might never have existed. And the most amazing part is that she did this great thing, not by threats of violence or stoking fear, but by persuasion and peacemaking.

This story embodies the reason for this episode, part two of my conversation with Professor Chad Ford. You last heard him talking about how we can establish more peace in our own lives. In this interview, we'll be talking about how to build peace for others. Professional peacemaking, as it were.

[00:04:44] Chad Ford: As far as the job goes itself, it's hard. It's really, really hard. It takes time. It takes a lot of patience. As a mediator, you often have to push to surface disputes for people, which often turns you into the enemy because you're making people uncomfortable or you're asking people to talk about stuff when most people's conflict style is avoidance and they don't really want to talk about it at all.

But you're asking all of these really hard questions and it makes it really, really difficult. There's a lot of failure involved. If I'm just being honest, I do not have a hundred percent track record or anything close to it. It's, it's, you know, more like maybe in the fifties or like, you know, low sixties of we get where we want to go.

[00:05:25] Aaron - Narration: Maybe talking about the difficulty of the job is not the best way to begin, but trust me, there are encouraging things to come. I just wanted to start with this so we've set out on solid footing. You may listen to this episode and feel called to be a peacemaker for others. I just want to make it clear that professional peacemaking is a tough job.

[00:05:49] Chad Ford: That's hard because a lot of times I have to walk away from those things. And you know, the very delicate question between, "Was this me? Did I just not do this right?" or "Is this just a case where the parties aren't ready?" I can do everything right. And it doesn't matter because the parties themselves just aren't ready to do it. Are there other factors involved, like mental health issues, for example, where they, they really should be in therapy before they are in mediation?

[00:06:16] Aaron - Narration: To be honest, there aren't many jobs you get to keep when you only succeed a little over half the time, and especially where you don't even know if the failure was your fault.

So what exactly is the job of being a professional peacemaker? You've probably heard it called "mediator." Essentially, the work of mediators is to bring people to a resolution where conflict is costly. And I mean, conflict is always costly, but mediators come in when the parties have a strong incentive to find a way forward together.

Where are the jobs for mediators?

[00:06:50] Chad Ford: There's a lot of paths, and it is, as you pointed out, a really viable, viable job. Um. It goes from everything from people who are working in family spaces and anymore you're seeing social workers and, uh, marriage and family therapist and, and psychologists that are picking up mediation skills. And so I've worked with a lot of psychologists and therapists and what have you as an add-on skill right? Now they have a skill that I don't have. I'm not a therapist, I'm not, I'm not trained to do that sort of mental health work that they're so skilled at. But mediation and conflict resolution end up playing a really big part.

[00:07:27] Aaron - Narration: Those are all the places where you might have expected mediation and professional peacemaking, but businesses and other workplaces need effective mediators too.

[00:07:36] Chad Ford: In an organizational sense, the number one space where you see people fall into this is in human resources, right? Like human resources are constantly

resolving conflict between employees and their, their bosses, sometimes with customers, with any sort of challenges that are happening in the organization. And, uh, it's a great entry level type of job where you can get lots of mediation experience, having some conflict resolution. Certificate mediation training is a huge plus on your resume to get in and often those people, and we've, we've have alumni who do that, end up getting promoted fairly quickly throughout the organization, because organizations need problem solvers.

And where early on I was hired in a lot of more of the social context, increasingly the requests that I get are from organizations, uh, to come in because conflict is affecting their bottom line. The, the inability of people to work together in that space is affecting them and hitting them financially. I'll just add because people are like, "Is there any money in that?" There's amazing money, um, in that, right? If, if people are losing millions of dollars because they can't work together, you'd be shocked at what corporations are willing to pay to try to get that problem solved.

Then for a few years, I even would offer essentially like a lawyer, a contingency fee. Like if, if I don't help, I get nothing, but if I help you said it's costing you X amount of dollars. I want 10% of that. Right. So I'll, I'll shoot for the moon and, and I, and I'm usually fairly confident that I can help.

[00:09:13] Aaron - Narration: Okay. Maybe the money isn't what's calling you. And the opportunities Chad's describing here take time to build your career so you have the credibility that gets you hired. If not in family conflict and not in the business world, where else can you be a professional peacemaker?

[00:09:31] Chad Ford: In the nonprofit space and in the public space, you're seeing a growing need for mediators who are working often with other agencies, they're working with various communities. You're seeing a ton of this in environmental cases where mediators are, are the primary source of bringing together multiple stakeholders, that, um, have an interest in a particular environmental issue in a community or, and what have you. Um, the federal government a number of years ago, passed a mediation law that requires federal agencies where they have employee disputes to go through mediation as part of that before you can, let's say sue the federal government. And so every federal agency has on staff full-time mediators that are working in those agencies. So there's amazing things there.

There's obviously the international work, um, that's going on to end, you know, larger scale conflict and wars. There are religious, uh, mediators. I have a good friend who is essentially on the payroll for the Methodist Church to go into congregations and do mediations between congregations that have issues with their pastors, you, you know, for example, and, and he has a full-time, full-time job doing all of that.

[00:10:41] Aaron - Narration: If you haven't noticed in all of these jobs, you'll find opportunities for mediators wherever there's conflict. And there is sadly an endless supply of conflict around the world. If you're feeling drawn to this, but don't know what to do next, I think it's good now to spend some time learning about Chad's career path.

What's it like to be a professional peace builder? How did Chad become one? His story started when he left his childhood home in Kansas City to attend university at BYU Hawaii, half away. .

[00:11:15] Chad Ford: Really, my dream was like, oh, I'll go there and surf and, you know, just, just have this, uh, you know, really fun experience. I'd always wanted to be in Hawaii; I had never even been. And when I got there, I was struck by two things immediately that really turned out to be life changing. One, just the intercultural nature. You know, growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, I'd not been exposed to the dozens, sometimes up to a hundred cultures that were all mingling together at BYU Hawaii.

The other thing that struck me was that generally people got along and were finding ways to work together and, and collaborate together even often when their countries and their cultures historically did not.

[00:11:58] Aaron - Narration: Chad was first interested in doing film production ,and then picked a major in English only to be told by an astute English professor that he might be a better fit in a field that matched his passion for social issues.

This led to a pivotal relationship for him.

[00:12:13] Chad Ford: I met the director of the history program and, and then a younger professor there, Bill Kauaiwi’ulaokalani Wallace, who was, was a native Hawaiian who was working on Hawaiian sovereignty issues in Hawaii. He was an attorney, but it was also teaching Hawaiian history. We hit it off. I started thinking about the work that he was doing in Hawaii around indigenous rights and civil rights and human rights, and it had this deep and profound impact on me. I started thinking about these things more academically. I was writing about them. He encouraged me to go to law school.

And you know, I came from a family that on both sides,

I was going to be the first graduate on either side of my family from an undergraduate, um, program, uh, and that was the top of Everest for me. Had zero thought about going onto graduate school or doing anything else like that.

[00:13:06] Aaron - Narration: Now, law school might seem to be the last place you'd expect to find a budding peacemaker, but lawyers, believe it or not, are meant to resolve conflict.

That's why a lot of mediators are also attorneys, except that the sad truth is that law school doesn't really prepare you for this kind of career. A student has to go their own way to find a path into peace building.

[00:13:28] Chad Ford: The first year curriculum's pretty prescribed. That had nothing to do with what I was interested in. I was doing property law, and contract law, and, and personal injury, and torts. And on top of that I was thinking in this peace mindset, collaboration, working together. And, and you know, I, I don't want to cast aspersions of lawyers, but most of the talk and the program was, was really aggressive. And it honestly felt to me sometimes, like lawyers were creating as much conflict as they were solving.

And, and I, I, I just, culturally, I think I, I just wasn't vibing, but one day I, um, saw flyer in the hall and Dennis Ross, who was the chief US negotiator for Middle East Peace at the time, was having a speech. And he had just got back from the Middle East and it was one of the, unfortunately many times that sort of Middle East peace negotiations had broken down and, and you know, there wasn't going to be an agreement.

So I went and sat in the back, and there was this moment when he was talking about what was going wrong and, and why they were continuing to fail to get an agreement. And this, it's, it's hard to point to certain points in your life that were life-changing moments, but as he was talking, he said, "Look, as a diplomat, we learn how to get leaders together and get them in conversation with each other to make big changes that are going to lead their countries to peace. We actually think we're pretty skilled at it, but what we found in the Middle East is whenever we can get there, the leaders cannot go back to their constituents and sell that. In fact, they're often called traitors. They're often called sellouts that the people on the ground aren't prepared for peace."

And he said like, "What we need are a new generation of people who learn how to work with people on the ground to prepare them for peace."

[00:15:15] Aaron - Narration: A generation to prepare people for peace. Have you ever had a moment of raw inspiration? This was that kind of moment for Chad.

[00:15:24] Chad Ford: It was in that moment sitting there that I said, I, I want to do that. I don't know how to do that, but I, I want to do that. So I waited in line. I asked him, "Hey, you know what, how did you do that? Like, that's what I want to do. Like, is that a law school? What class should I take?" Or whatever. And he, he, he was kind of funny. He said, "If I knew the answer to that, I, I would tell you, but you're going to have to sort of figure that out."

I was, I really disappointed. I'm like, you can't point me anywhere. And he said, "Well, I know this guy, his name is Wallace Warfield, he's at George Mason." They'd just started a new school for conflict analysis and resolution. It's a new master's and PhD program. He worked with Dr. Martin Luther King.

So I skipped school the next day. I took the train to George Mason. I, this is back in the pre cell phone days. I literally like wait outside his office for him to show up. And he comes in and we have this brief conversation where he asked me, you know, what do I know about Martin Luther King? And I, I'm like, oh, I'm ready for this. I, I'm a big fan of Martin Luther King and I, you know, I'm telling him whatever.

He is, like, "No, no, no. How did he do what he did from a social organizational standpoint? How did he create the change that he wanted to see? And I was like, "I, I don't really know." And he handed me his copy of, um, Martin Luther King's book, Strength of Love, and he said, "Read this book and if you're still interested, come back to see me."

And what he didn't know is I was going to go outside of the office, sit under a tree, read the book cover-to-cover that day, and knock back out on his door in the afternoon and, and say I was in. And from that point, I ended up doing a joint degree at Georgetown Master's in Conflict Resolution/Doctorate, um, in law at Georgetown.

I began to become hyper-focused on large scale religious and ethnic conflict with an emphasis on mediation and with an emphasis of really bringing people together who have what I would call intractable types of conflict. In other words, that doesn't seem that there's any way that these people could ever agree on something. How do you build the spaces to get them there?

[00:17:21] Aaron - Narration: You heard in part one of my interview with Chad about his work in the Middle East and other places where he's been helping to create more space for the resolution of conflict, like he and others have done with PeacePlayers International. He's been able to show how peace is possible in the worst conflicts on Earth.

And you might have noticed a theme in Chad's personal story and professional accomplishments. He's had to create these opportunities rather than just taking the ones being handed to him. Professional peacemakers of all kinds tend to share this entrepreneurial instinct.

[00:17:58] Chad Ford: It's hard to get on the ground because the first question anybody asks you is, well, how many cases have you mediated?

And if your answer is like, you're my first, or like, you're one or two, they don't feel that super confidence of going in. So I have to tell my students all the time, you have to be entrepreneurial at first. You have to get out there and offer yourself in lots of different scenarios. I, I even have, I'm teaching 'em how to go on Craigslist and, and say, we'll meet at the McDonald's.

My whole point is get the experience to come in, because once you have that experience. I don't have to advertise for my work anymore. I get multiple emails a week from just referrals. I, I'm a big sports fan, and I've been combining sports and mediation in ways that, that have been really fun and and exciting to me.

And it's, it's a great job. So first of all, I want to say the opportunities are real.

[00:18:46] Aaron - Narration: If professional peacemaking feels like the direction you want to go, I have a bunch of stellar advice for you from Chad. And frankly, if you just want to be better at this for the job you currently have, you need to give the rest of this episode all of your attention. You'll be better at your work if you do. Let's start with a need for personal commitment to the principles of peace.

[00:19:10] Chad Ford: Look, some people are natural mediators. I, I actually wasn't one to be, to be just completely honest. I went to school with some people that without any training, just could walk in, be very balanced, be curious, and listening just sort of naturally. And they were just really good at it. And I was so jealous of those, those students all the time because I would just. I would just be bobbing in class. And then they would, I would watch them and they would walk in and I'm like, how'd you do that? I don't, I don't know. It's just common sense. And I'm like, well, apparently I don't have it.

In fact, I failed my first midterm in my mediation class because I offended one of the role players and they walked out in the middle of my midterm exam and never came back.

[00:19:52] Aaron - Interview: No. Oh my gosh.

[00:19:55] Chad Ford: And I was ready to quit. And. I had to start looking inward. And, and this is something I love about, you know, peace building mediation, which is that if I've got stuff going on in my life that I'm unwilling to address, I am not going to be a particularly good guide to asking other people to look at the hard things and do things in their life.

And, and what, what started to come out of it was I realized who I need to practice on is my family, the conflicts where I'm estranged from people. So I'd say the first attribute is: I'm willing to do this myself, right? I, I think it's the most important thing as a mediator, because your clients are going to know, there's just an authenticity.

[00:20:36] Aaron - Narration: Being an effective peacemaker also means being curious, not making assumptions about the people in conflict or jumping to solutions prematurely. You'll end up asking lots and lots of questions.

[00:20:50] Chad Ford: The second thing is you have to be curious. Anytime I think I know what the right solution is, it's, it's usually going to be a problem for me. Um, right? Because I'll start gently steering people in the direction I think they need to go. And one of the things that I've learned is they're not me, and the only solution that works is one that's very authentic to them. So I have to continue to be curious, even when it starts to occur to me, oh, I think I should know what they should do.

[00:21:19] Aaron - Narration: Withholding judgment of those in conflict is especially hard. When you know that someone has done genuine harm to another person, with an act of cruelty or violence, somehow as a peacemaker you have to find a way to empathy for such people, to see their humanity. That doesn't mean you justify what they've done, but to bring them to peace, you might need to be the last person who hasn't given up on them.

[00:21:49] Chad Ford: As mediators, we see people often at their worst. We see people when they're the most stressed out, when they've, they've said that awful thing or they've done that awful thing. You know, I, I've, I've worked with people that have been terrorists or have, have promoted violent conflict or participated in violence as a potential solution, um, to the conflict.

And, you know, as someone who doesn't feel violence is right, or abuse is right, or, or, uh, mistreating people is of a right, it's really easy to sometimes look at them and, and not see their humanity. And one of the things that I really, really try to work on--and for me this is both a, a professional thing, but it's also a faith thing for me--is to see this sort of divinity in others define that, that spark of goodness in them.

Because if I can discover it and try to amplify it within them, it will often lead them down, down the right path in ways that I never, that I never could. I, I didn't start out good at that. I often would be annoyed at people. And that aspect took a lot of, like, mindfulness, a lot of, a lot of thinking, a lot of training, and frankly, leaning on my faith in a lot of ways, because I, I do believe at, at the core that, you know, as people, we have that spark of the divineness that every human being is important.

They have value regardless of their choices, regardless of the decisions that they've made, and that there is a path to redemption back for people.

[00:23:21] Aaron - Narration: You also have to resist the instinct to enable people even when they're in the right. Sometimes when we're angry, our loved ones keep the anger going by being angry with us. Now, we see that as a sign of their loyalty and love for us, but it's also a source of fuel for some of our worst emotions. And so when we're trying to help someone feel validated, we can get pulled into the conflict along with them and we keep it going. There's a name for the seemingly supportive behavior:

Collusion.

[00:23:54] Chad Ford: I think it's interesting, Aaron, that you said pulled in. Because this is another aspect of conflict that I think is actually a really important one. If I can just address it for a minute, because...

[00:24:03] Aaron - Interview: Yeah, please do.

[00:24:03] Chad Ford: Often we, we get pulled in. In other words, the conflict isn't directly between me and another person, but a loved one, a child, a family member, a good friend has been wronged in some ways, and so they come to us for help.

Often we think that the way to help them is to give them a lot of validation, right? Like, "You're right, they're wrong. That other person is ridiculous. You don't need that toxicity in your life anymore." And we become allies to people in conflict where we give them the justification to actually be bad partners in conflict.

And we do it out of the name of support or out of love or care. And it's really hard to validate the emotion, which I think is fair and okay to do, right, without encouraging them to escalate the conflict without encouraging them to hate the other person. It's a very tricky line, and my wife on more than one occasion has said, "Can you just quit doing your conflict stuff with me right now and just agree with me that this person is the worst person ever?" and we'll laugh, you know, at those moments.

But that never really seems like love to me, because doing that doesn't actually give her the thing that she's actually looking for or really need. It's giving justification, which again, I think is a drug that is not going to serve, serve them well. And so, you know, it's really interesting because those conflicts are easier for us to be blind that we're actually the ones that are pouring gasoline on the fire now.

[00:25:38] Aaron - Narration: You may remember that I promised at the start of the episode that there are encouraging things to say about professional peacemaking and being a mediator. So here are two of the most important ones.

First, this is a deeply satisfying career path. It's always interesting. It gives you new things to learn. It brings you to know others in ways that you would never have known them before. And playing a part in reconnecting people is among the greatest moments of success.

[00:26:09] Chad Ford: It's so fulfilling. It takes so much creativity, which I love. I learn about all sorts of issues and have to become like a semi-expert on things because, you know, we're in a dispute and it's about air quality and all of a sudden I'm, you know, learning about all of these measures and like, what matters, because I need to understand why people feel as strongly as they feel about it. Culturally, I've got to learn all sorts of cool cultures. We are constantly having to adapt the process to create the space for people.

And I, I, I just love that. I get so energized um, as part of that. I'm exhausted afterwards, but there's no feeling like mediating a dispute and the parties walking away feeling reconnected to each other and walking away from that. And knowing that I, I had a little role to play that, uh, it, it will carry me through the next three or four failures, uh, until, you know, until the next, the next one hits.

[00:27:09] Aaron - Narration: The second encouraging thought is that there is a rising generation of peacemakers that's perhaps better prepared and more invested in this work than any generation before it. Chad teaches these young people every day, and they are an invigorating source of hope for him.

[00:27:28] Chad Ford: Aaron, there are so many young people that are leaning in to this world to serve.

I am so impressed with this generation who are coming to college not just to make money or get rich, but really, truly want to solve the social problems that that exist in our world today. They're frustrated at the adults, that we've left them the world that we've left them, um, right now. But they still remain hopeful that they're going to do something.

When I look to those young people that I get to work with every day, there's so much to be hopeful for. And my heroes, of course, some of them are, you know, the Gandhis and Martin Luther Kings and, and you know, frankly, Jesus Christ, who I think is the best of all of the peace builders that I know. But where I really get energy is watching these young people go out and dedicate their lives to doing this type of work.

[00:28:21] Aaron - Narration: You may like me imagine Bertha von Suttner smiling down on this rising generation, seeing in them what she spent years trying to cultivate and so many others, including her friend Alfred Nobel. When she herself received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905, Bon Suttner began her speech this way, "The stars of eternal truth and right have always shown in the firmament of human understanding. The process of bringing them down to earth, remolding them into practical forms, imbuing them with vitality, and then making use of them, has been a long one. One of the eternal truths is that happiness is created and developed in peace."

You may feel the stirrings in you to follow the same professional path as Von Sutter and this rising generation of peacemakers.

But if not, I hope at least that you've taken away a thing or two. I hope you've learned something that can help you establish more peace for those around you.

How to help as a production of BYU Radio and hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller. This episode is produced by Erica Price, Blake Morris, and Kenny Mears.

Our theme song is by Eric Robertson. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes, and if you haven't subscribed to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player. As always, thank you so much for listening.

Summary

Why do we struggle to make peace, even when it's what we want most? Professor Chad Ford joins us to explore the roots of conflict and the power of “dangerous love,” a courageous, empathetic approach to healing divisions. From family rifts to global disputes, Chad’s stories and strategies reveal how fear shapes our reactions, why justice must be about restoration, and how anyone can become a peacemaker. This episode offers real-life examples and actionable insights for anyone seeking more harmony in their relationships and communities.

About Our Guest

Chad Ford is an international conflict mediator, facilitator, and peace educator known for his extensive peacebuilding work around the world. He holds a Master’s in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University and a JD from Georgetown. He directed the David O. McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding at BYU–Hawaii for nearly twenty years, where he developed programs in intercultural peacebuilding. In 2024, Chad joined Utah State University, teaching courses on religion, peace, and mediation.

He has worked in conflict zones globally, facilitated for governments, NGOs, and corporations, and serves on the board of Peace Players International. Chad is the author of Dangerous Love and 70x7, books that explore transforming conflict and Christian peacebuilding. His hands-on experience gives him a unique perspective on resolving conflicts in families, organizations, and communities worldwide.

Useful Links

Chad Ford’s Book, Dangerous Love:

https://dangerouslovebook.com

Chad's Substack:

https://chadford.substack.com/

PeacePlayers International – Bridging Divides Through Sports:

https://www.peaceplayers.org

Mary Kawena Pukui and the Preservation of Hawaiian Culture:

https://www.missingwitches.com/mary-kawena-pukui-morrnah-simeona-a-unified-unifying-force/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Aaron - Interview: How's your family adjusting to Utah? Because that's a big switch from Hawaii, especially after being there so long.

[00:00:06] Chad Ford: This is the first time we've had air conditioning in 20 years. Uh, so, um, that, that has been very, very popular, especially with my teenage girls who are excited to not be sweaty all the time.

[00:00:18] Aaron - Interview: Yeah. Yeah, I don't blame them.

[00:00:20] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller, and this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode two, Peacemaking. Now, I'll take a moment to say that you may be new to our show. How to Help is proud to join the family of BYU Radio podcasts.

We hope you'll listen to all that we have to share in the episodes to come.

Imagine going to see the newest Tom Cruise action movie. I think he's now up to Mission Impossible Eight, due to come out next year. Well, near the end of the movie, we're imagining his character finally comes face-to-face with the villain. Cruise probably has a limp at this point because of all the intense action before this.

They sit down across from each other in a corporate boardroom. On the top floor of a massive skyscraper. Something tells you that cruise is gonna jump from one of those windows in the very near future. And then the conversation begins. This is the one where the villain typically makes this case of why so many people need to die, or why governments need to be brought to their knees, and so on.

And then you'd expect Cruise to deliver a pithy one-liner, that's followed by a fight to the villain's inevitable death. Whatever disaster was looming, will be averted with obviously just one second to spare.

But what if that's not what happened? What if they just, you know, worked it out? What if whatever old grudge was at the heart of this conflict was laid out and both men found a way to come to some sort of shared understanding?

There could be a whole montage of them sharing their feelings and concerns, apologizing tearfully for their mistakes, finally in the end seeing eye-to-eye, and they decide to embrace each other in a big hug. The villain would then stand down his evil plans, and then the two of them would spend years together as best friends.

I mean, be honest. Would you even want to see this movie? I don't think many people would. There's only ever really one story in action movies. It's the story of good vanquishing evil, and that's what we go to see. Of course, there's plenty of conflict and difficulty along the way, and that's where the action comes in.

And I mean, some of Tom Cruise's stunts are truly incredible. He rode a motorcycle off a cliff in the last one, but if the movie ended with anything other than evil's defeat, I think we'd all leave the theater feeling really unsatisfied. Of course, we want peace restored at the end, but what we really want is justice.

The villain has to lose, not just come around. We like peace, but only after victory.

As much as we like peace, we're also easily entertained by conflict. Consider the state of reality television. There's a reason for having a Real Housewives show that takes place in, and this is a long list. Orange County, New York, Atlanta, New Jersey, DC, Beverly Hills, Miami, Potomac, Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Dubai. There's no shortage of people who can be terrible to each other and no lack of an audience excited to watch it all happen.

But all this conflict, were it real in our own lives, would make us miserable. And we know that because the conflicts that we do have make us miserable. In our families, at work, in our neighborhoods, and across our nations conflict is a pervasive source of deep unhappiness. Some conflicts are fresh and recent, and some have lasted for years. And they never entertain us. They only hurt us.

[00:04:04] Chad Ford: Conflict is hard. It distracts us. When we're in a negative conflict spiral. It's often all we can think about and we start to see the entire world through that lens. We start to mistrust even other people because of the hurt or pain or whatever that you feel in the way. So whatever is hard about doing the peace, we can't forget that the conflict itself is hard and in many ways is a cancer that is slowly eroding and eating us away.

[00:04:32] Aaron - Narration: Here at the start of the episode, consider what's maybe the most important thing.

There's no Tom Cruise coming to defeat our villains, to kill off the cancer of conflict in our lives. If we want to escape the contention, the simmering resentment, the distrust, we need to find a better way out. We have to be our own heroes, but not the action kind that defeats enemies. Peace building is perhaps one of the hardest and most heroic things we'll ever set out to do.

[00:05:03] Chad Ford: It's hard, but it's a good hard because the rewards are life changing.

[00:05:09] Aaron - Narration: My guest today is Professor Chad Ford and he's going to help us learn how to find that peace. Chad's an associate professor at Utah State University's Haravi Peace Institute. He's also the author of the book, Dangerous Love: Transforming Fear and Conflict at Home, at Work, and in the World.

[00:05:30] Chad Ford: I like the cancer analogy a lot because, you know, unfortunately a lot of times the response to cancer is chemotherapy and radiation. And anybody that's gone through that, the radiation and chemotherapy is terrible. It makes you nauseated, it, your hair falls out like, you know, it makes you sick. But in many, many cases, and in the case of my stepfather who had had cancer 20 years before, it gave him 20 extra years of life.

When he got cancer the first time, relationships were rocky with lots of family members, including me, and we thought about the gift that that 20 years gave us to, to reconcile, to where he had his whole family around him, loving, supporting. We learned things, he learned things in those 20 years. That chemo, that radiation that he went through 20 years ago was a gift in so many ways because it eradicated his cancer for a long time. However hard this is and how difficult it is to forgive or to confront or to look at these things, um, or what have you, you will look back on it as a gift as opposed to staying estranged, disconnected, broken. Because that, that's a sort of pain that never really heals.

And I've worked with so many people, including family members who then lose somebody and that pain just remains. And I reflect back on my stepfather and the joy and beauty that was in the room when he passed away because the relationships were right. And there's nothing that can bring more peace in an ending moment of life than that, than just to know that we're right with each other.

[00:07:00] Aaron - Narration: I wanted you to hear that story about Chad and his stepfather, so that you could see right from the start that he knows where you're coming from. He knows what it's like to be at odds with someone important to him. But Chad is also a pro at managing conflict. He's not only a professor of peace building, but he's also a professional mediator who's worked in conflict around the globe and at every level, from families going through divorce to boardroom disputes in corporations, and even in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, a part of the world that he's worked in for over two decades.

I don't think before talking with Chad that I've ever met someone who's so optimistic about finding a way through conflict. Let me give you an example that's impossible to be cynical about.

For many years now, Chad has been part of an organization called Peace Players International. They bring kids from across conflict divides and have them play sports together.

The program operates in a variety of places around the world, but it has also been in Israel and Palestine for over a decade. But since October 7th, 2023 armed conflict there has led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Things have never been as bad as they are now. How do you find hope in circumstances as hard as these?

[00:08:15] Chad Ford: I'm a hopeful guy, first of all, Aaron. I mean, I wouldn't be engaged in this. You know, I, I sometimes talk about impossible conflict and it's what I'm drawn to. So, you know, by, by my very nature, I don't get involved in things that I don't think are possible. Right. And it's, it's just partly the way my brain is oriented, and I think it has to be to a certain extent here.

Yeah, I know it's gonna be hard and brutal, but on the other side, I'm really a hopeful guy. With that said, there's been things that I've seen before that are so beautiful where they started so hard. I've worked with Israelis and Palestinians, you know, for a really long time. I'm hurting like a lot of people are hurting over October 7th.

And you know, the murder and, and, and kidnapping of, of so many innocent Israelis followed by the war in Gaza with the, you know, the, the murder and destruction of, uh, tens of thousands of, of Palestinians, including many, many women and children. And I know this is a very polarizing topic, but as somebody who's like worked on the ground with both of those groups for a long time, I, I have a deep love for them.

And I get to see an aspect of them that very few people in the West get to see, which is that both communities have peace builders in them that have been working tirelessly for decades to find a way to live together and collaborate together. And they've done it at personal risk. They've done it often to the extent that their friends or family or their communities have, uh, judged them or expelled them.

And then you watch what happens in something like October 7th and, and the subsequent war in Gaza. Part of the emotion was, how do we ever come back from this? Like, this is so bad.

One of the nonprofits that I've worked for for a long time that works with young people. Everything shut down after October 7th. You know, the safety of the young people, the safety of the families, all that comes priority. Everything had to be shut down. We can't put anybody in danger. Um, and so we, we essentially shut down, um, the program.

About December, I start getting phone calls from the staff in Israel, the Palestinians, Israelis, saying that the children's mothers are calling us and they are telling us we need to start the program again, because they're losing their kids. And their kids, you know, this, this inability to connect with each other, the the social media bubbles that they're in, everything else, that they're losing them, and we can't lose the progress, um, that we've made. We have to start now, but it's dangerous. We're worried about this or this.

We will come out. The parents said we will guard the, the, the spaces. We will take the risks, because these are too important not to take. And so there was a lot of fear and should we do this? And if there's a one problem, like it's done forever. Right? But also sometimes peace building is about taking risks and their parents, the kids were consenting.

So we started programming in December. We thought it's gonna be a couple groups and families, um, that show up. Within the first week, 80% of the kids and their families were back engaging in peace, peace building talks. Even the most optimistic Chad would've told you that number would've been dramatically lower.

It wasn't starting for like a year and giving the ongoing frustrations that this kept going on, it won't last, that people are gonna get frustrated because this thing is dragging on and on and on. And it's been the opposite of that. They continue to meet, they continue to grow.

And one of the groups that we work with is basketball and

they field the only joint Palestinian Israeli youth basketball team in the country. And we were like, well, we're definitely not putting that team in the league this year because they're gonna go to all of these different gyms that are gonna be fully Israeli. And the kids insisted we're gonna go. There was jeering, people threw things at them, they swore at them.

Those amazing young people, and their parents said, we're gonna play anyway. We're gonna show, you know what's what's possible. And that to me, to be honest, Aaron, may be the biggest miracle I've seen in the last 20 years because the conditions couldn't be worse. The, um, challenges they face couldn't be harder.

Even the most optimistic person has the right to be skeptical, um, and jaded and angry, um, at what's happening. Um, but they know there is no future for any of us unless we find a way, um, to, to live together. And, uh, so they're doing what the adults haven't been able to do. And they're setting an example that, you know, for all of us, most of us that are harboring resentments or, or conflicts in our lives are not the people of Gaza and what they're going through right now, or are not the families of those Israelis.

Who sent their young people off to a peace concert only to see them, you know, murdered or raped. I thought on many occasions over the last, um, year where I've, I've experienced plenty of conflicts on my own moving and teenagers and all sorts of things, if they can do it, I don't care what it is that's in my face, like I can do it too.

[00:13:34] Aaron - Narration: What are the things that stand in the way of our peace? I mean, if the Peace Player families can work through ancient conflicts, what keeps us from dealing with our own usually far less stubborn disagreements? One element that runs through Chad's book and teaching is the role that fear plays in fostering conflict.

Conflict is scary and we're naturally inclined to turn away from it.

[00:13:58] Chad Ford: I think the reason we don't talk about fear, as much as. It's one of those emotions that I think is less socially acceptable to admit to, even than anger. I think there's a certain, like righteous anger or, yeah, there's a certain like, almost like macho to, you know, being angry, but you know, we don't really lionize people who are afraid.

When I was reading Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, in his book he describes this moment where early on in the Civil Rights movement, he was getting a lot of death threats and threats towards his family. And one night in his house, he got a phone call in the middle of the night, um, and he picked up the phone and they said, "I'm gonna blow up your house and kill all of your children in it."

And this was very early in, in the movement. He talks about in the night getting up and pacing and worrying about his family and wondering how in the world he got into this space and just wishing he could go back to writing his sermons every Sunday, and live this sort of peaceful life of as a pastor.

And he, he reported that he was just overcome with fear and he was actually trying to think about how he could step out of the movement, let someone else go into the forefront because he was afraid. He was afraid about what was going to happen to his family. He was afraid it was going to happen about him. So he gets on his knees and he, you know, he says this prayer and, and says, "Look, people are looking at me to do the right thing, but I'm afraid and I don't think I can do it. I don't think I have the strength to do it. Can you help me get out of this?"

And his answer was, "No, but I'm going to give you the strength to go through it." And, and it really ties to the title of the book, the Strength to Love. The strength to love will overcome fear.

[00:15:42] Aaron - Narration: Martin Luther King's courage is inspiring to me, but it also makes me feel small.

I mean, no one's threatening to bomb my house because of a disagreement. My fears about conflict, and probably yours, feel so much tinier than that. Luckily, Chad has empathy for our small but potent fears.

[00:16:02] Chad Ford: I, I, I think first it requires the vulnerability to admit I am afraid. I'm afraid you're gonna take something that's important to me. I'm afraid that my voice isn't being heard. I'm afraid that you don't recognize my identity or that our relationship, you don't see me or value me. I mean, there's so many little different fears that go into this, and because of that, I need to protect myself. And I'm gonna start doing insane things that are about protecting me, but are actually making the conflict worse, but I can't see it, right?

So if I'm running from conflict, I'm making it worse, not better. If I'm fighting with the person, I'm inviting them to be defensive. I'm inviting them to experience fear, and I'm actually escalating the conflict. If I freeze and do nothing right, it, it can come off to other people like, "Oh, he just doesn't care," or "It doesn't, doesn't really matter" right?

But it deeply matters inside whether we're avoiding conflict, whether we're competing or fighting, whether we're just giving in or kind of playing dead. Uh, you know, at those moments. Our, our fear-based responses that are the opposite of what we really actually need, which is collaboration.

[00:17:11] Aaron - Narration: Consider the conflicts in your lives.

What are the fears that are hiding underneath them? For me, I think it's a fear that the wrong that was done will happen again. I'm scared of the pain and unmet expectations or a violated trust. I worry too often about being embarrassed or called out for my mistakes. And to be totally honest, I'm an ethics professor for goodness sakes, and I feel like I'm supposed to be above this sort of thing.

I'm scared of being a hypocrite. All of my worries and all of yours stand in the way of our peace By now, it should make sense why Chad named his book Dangerous Love. We need a kind of love that's courageous in the face of fear.

[00:17:53] Chad Ford: You know, in English, it's tough because um, we use the same word to mean so many different things, right?

[00:18:00] Aaron - Interview: Right.

[00:18:00] Chad Ford: So it's not romantic love that we're talking about here, or you know, in the Greek, Eros. It's not Philia, which is the sort of love where we say like, which, you know, often sort of means friendship or you know, what have you. It's, it's not that. But it's this Agape, this other sort of Greek term of love, which is love because of the value of someone else. Love because I can, I can value the soul force--that's a word Gandhi used a lot--within another, and their needs, wants and concerns matter just as much as mine. You don't have to like the person. You don't have to want to be roommates or be married to the person, or like be best friends with them. You don't have to do any of that to experience that sort of love. But I have to value that your needs and wants and desires are just as important to you as mine are.

Our job is to find a way forward where both of those things can be met.

[00:18:57] Aaron - Narration: You might be listening to all of this and feeling, I don't know, maybe skeptical or perhaps even indignant. The conflict that's been needling you all episode probably wasn't even your fault to begin with. If anyone's the peacemaker in this situation, you are. Isn't it at least sometimes true that we're simply in the right?

[00:19:17] Chad Ford: It's funny you say it's sometimes true. It's, it's, at least from a perception standpoint, it's almost always true, because virtually everybody that comes in my office says, "I'm the peacemaker here. And it's the other person who, who won't move and, and won't change."

And it's so interesting to me, first of all, usually it's one person who will instigate and come in and I'll get the other party to come in, they tell me the exact same story, but in reverse, right? "I'm the peacemaker. I'm the one trying to make a difference. They're the ones who are doing this." I think we get in this mode of, of storytelling and conflict narrative where anything that I might do that maybe you would say, oh, Chad, maybe that wasn't the best decision, or whatever, I felt justified in doing it because it was in response to a slight, or was in response to years of someone's using these words against me or what have you.

So look, the first thing I would say, Aaron, is when I hear that, my first thought is, you don't see your role. These, are... conflicts are dynamic. There are patterns that are involved. And in virtually every case, you are involved in the pattern and you can't see it right now, right? Now, there are conflict escalatory patterns called Contender/Defender where someone's always coming, and I'm the defender, and there's been a lot of political science research about this. There's been family research about it. They're rare. But most of the people that I talk to think that that's what they're in, in a conflict escalation. I"'m the defender. This person's the contender" coming in, but they're rare. But almost always those contender/defenders, even if they're, they exist, they will morph into a conflict spiral, which is an action/reaction model that's coming over time.

People won't stay the defender forever. Eventually I'm going to get pushed to take up arms and try to stop the relentless or constant attacks that are coming in. And so it's so fascinating to me when Jesus tells people, if somebody smites you on the cheek, you know, turn the other cheek. I find that to be incredible conflict advice for a second, right? Because when I slap you, what I expect to happen is that you are gonna slap me back, right? And when you do so, I know this is weird and convoluted, but when you slap me back, it gives me justification for that first slap. It makes me actually feel like, "I was right, because look at you, you're violent or you know you're not Christian because you didn't turn the other cheek" or you know what have it. When we respond to negative conflict with negative conflict, when we respond to contention with contention, it almost always gives the person who instigated it the justification that it was right to start it in the first place, because I've exposed your true self and who you are.

And I see this a lot in like verbal conflicts, right? Someone will insult somebody and then somebody will insult them back and they will be shocked. "I, I can't believe you used that language, or I can't believe you stoop that low." And of course, your insult was always worse than mine. You always escalated it, um, further.

And so for most people, I said, you know, forget about what they're doing for a minute. Let's think about. What we're doing and how we're contributing to that, because that's the part that's the easiest to change, right? Our input into the system is the easiest part to change.

[00:22:30] Aaron - Narration: What about the truly one-sided conflicts? There are people in the world who, because of trauma, mental illness, or just a taste for cruelty, abuse those around them. Where does dangerous love fit in these situations?

[00:22:45] Chad Ford: I wrote a book called Dangerous Love, and unfortunately some people read the book and said, "Oh, so I'm just supposed to stay with my abusive spouse and love them and keep getting punched in the face, right?"

And I'm like, no, no, no. That's, that's, that's not what I mean by that sort of dangerous. I mean, vulnerable, dangerous, not like physically I'm dangerous. But even in those cases, I've found that when I can see the humanity of the other person, I can make decisions like "I'm not gonna live with you anymore, or I'm gonna create very strong boundaries that don't allow you to engage in that behavior anymore. I'm going to call the police because that behavior is dangerous to me and to others. I'm going to force you as a teenager to go into rehab even though you don't want to be there, even though you're gonna hate me because you know I've enrolled you in this wilderness program or what have you."

I can engage in those behaviors, but if I am not blaming, if I'm seeing that person with Agape, if I'm doing it because I'm actually trying to help them so that maybe somewhere down the road we can engage in that sort of collaborative process that will make all the difference in the world in our healing.

[00:23:50] Aaron - Narration: My full interview with Chad lasted for about two hours, and there was so much more to include than I had time for in this episode. That's why I've decided to break the things he said into two parts. In this one, we focused on what it takes to make peace in our own lives and relationships. But what if we want to do it for others too? Chad's taught an entire generation, the same generation, he was inspired to join all those years ago to be professional peacemakers. That episode will come next.

So let's end this part of the conversation by going back to our fascination with action movies. Like I said at the start, we love peace, but only if it comes after justice. Can there really be peace if wrong isn't made right? What about justice?

[00:24:36] Aaron - Interview: Especially in personal relationships where there's conflict, what's the right way to think about justice? Because it doesn't feel like it's appropriate to just say justice should never matter here. It's just about getting in harmony again. Surely having justice be your main priority is probably gonna enhance the conflict. How do we think about justice, not just at the big scale, but also in the the personal conflicts we have?

[00:25:03] Chad Ford: You know, the interesting thing about when we use the word justice is, to me it's a lot like love. It means different things to different people. Justice can mean revenge. We see both culturally, religiously, you know, justice used in those ways. But it's not the only way that justice is used. It's not the only definition, um, for justice. And again, this is where sometimes I feel like English fails us a little bit because we are wont to use the same word to mean a lot of different things.

And living in Hawaii for the last 20 years, I've been fascinated by the Hawaiian word for justice. It's called "pono." And it means justice. It means righteousness. It means things becoming right again. And so when things are "pono," we are right with each other.

And there's another word in Hawaiian, 'cause I love, Hawaiians can do this. You can't do this in English. They'll stack the words together, so when they say ponopono, it means the most, right? Right. So pono can be right and we can be right about a lot of things or what makes right. But what is the most, right? So when we say ponopono, what is the most right? And the most right, is relationships, right?

So I can be right on the facts. I can be right on the merits. I can be right on who started something or who didn't start something. I can be right that my interpretation of my religious text or my political text or, or whatever are right and yours are wrong. But I can also be wrong, at the exact same moment, if I'm not right with you.

Their conflict resolution mechanism is called Ho'oponopono, and is about making things the most right again. And the whole process is about reconciliation. And reconciliation has four strands. It has mercy or forgiveness. It has truth, it has justice, and it has peace. And you can't have one without the other to be reconciled.

So truth has to come out. It's important that we talk about the things that are our conflicts, that we surface them, that we speak them, that we don't hide them or bury them in the ground, or ignore them or forgive them. It's important that we practice forgiveness and mercy towards those that have hurt us. It is important that we seek justice for wholeness' sake, so that, that things that were wrong are made right again. Not about punishment, not about hurting the other person, but about a commitment. And, you know, in faith context, sometimes this is called like restitution, like trying our best to sort of make things right again.

And so having a conversation about justice, without talking about mercy, without talking about truth, without talking about peace, and without frankly talking about reconciliation. The goal is and should be injustice to make us more fully connected, to make us ponopono again. Then I have to think about the justice that builds, about the justice that reconnects, not about the sort of justice that destroys, or tears down, or marginalizes or hurts people in another way.

And then peace is a commitment that whatever we've had in the past, we are gonna work to make sure that it doesn't, that it doesn't happen again.

[00:28:26] Aaron - Narration: The Hawaiian tradition of Ho'oponopono was preserved largely thanks to the work of Mary Kawena Pukui, who documented and restored Hawaiian practices during a century of tumultuous change on the islands.

Although the practice is sadly slimmed down now, and popularized today as a kind of new age self-care, the traditional Ho'oponopono is a mix of ritual, accountability, forgiveness, and healing that Pukui described in part this way:

"Every one of us searched our hearts for any hard feelings of one against the other.

And did some thorough mental house cleaning. We forgave and were forgiven, thrashing out every grudge, peeve, or sentiment among us."

The end goal of this process is to do what Chad Ford described, not to make things right in the sense of achieving justice, but to make right our relationships. I'm inspired by Chad to do this more in my life, and I hope that you are, too.

How To Help is hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller, and produced in collaboration with BYU Radio. My thanks to Erica Price, Kenny Mears, and Blake Morris for their help with this episode. Scoring and mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

Summary

In the wake of unimaginable tragedy, how does a community find its way forwardand what can we learn from their resilience? In this episode, I talk with Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who survived the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue. Rabbi Myers shares how his congregation and the broader Pittsburgh community responded to hatred with overwhelming acts of kindness and solidarity, and how he’s become a national voice for interfaith understanding and eradicating the “H-word” from our daily lives.

About Our Guest

Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers has served as the Rabbi and Cantor for the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh since the summer of 2017. He moved to the City of Bridges after spending decades in ministry in New Jersey and Long Island. He received a BA from Rutgers, an MA in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary and studied privately with Cantor Zvi Aroni before graduating from the Cantorial School of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. 

After the horrific morning of October 27, 2018, when a heavily armed gunman began a murderous rampage in the Tree of Life, Rabbi Myers—who survived the attack—became the face of the tragedy. Since then, he has set about sending the key message that love is stronger than hate. Rabbi Myers contends that a lack of understanding of our neighbors leads to fear and sometimes loathing, which can lead to acts of violence. Rabbi Myers believes that if we are ever to remove the "H word" from our society, it must start with pledging not to use that word in speech, just as he has done in honor of the 11 lives lost at the Tree of Life. 

Rabbi Myers is a recipient of multiple awards, including 2019 recipient of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Medal of Valor, given out to those who exemplify the good deeds of outstanding individuals who honor mankind and whose courage and bravery shine a light in the darkest of places. Because of his service and actions during and after the Tree of Life massacre, Rabbi Myers received the medal which is inscribed: “He who saves a single life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.” He has testified before both Houses of Congress, participated in many gatherings in the White House, and has spoken throughout the United States on the proliferation of H-speech.

Useful Links

Tree of Life Synagogue – Rabbi Myers’ Community: https://www.treeoflifepgh.org

Rabbi Myers on Responding to Hate (CNN Feature): https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/18/us/rabbi-myers-pittsburgh-hate/index.html

Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting – Background (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_synagogue_shooting

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Rabbi Myers: I think we've seen throughout history plenty of examples of a single individual who made a difference to any of your listeners. One of them can also be that singular individual to make a difference. There's nothing stopping them from being that person to quote, um, a well-known sneaker manufacturer.

Just do it.

[00:00:18] Aaron - Interview: That's great. The best use of that slogan ever actually.

[00:00:24] Aaron - Narration: Hi, I'm Aaron Miller, and this is How to Help, a podcast about having a life and career with meaning, integrity, and impact. This is season three, episode one: Transcending Tragedy with Love.

How to Help is proud to join the BYU Radio family of podcasts. This means you might be new to our show, and so if you are, please take a look at our past episodes and subscribe for future ones. You can find them all at byuradio.org or at how-to-help.com. You can also follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky. Look for links to those in the show notes. And thank you for listening. I hope you thoroughly enjoy our new season.

On October 27th, 2018, during Shabbat morning services, a gunman entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and he opened fire, killing 11 worshipers and injuring seven others. Among the wounded were four police officers who had risked their lives capturing the shooter. After his arrest, he was tried in federal court and sentenced to death row. His horrific attack on these worshipers is the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history.

Rabbi Jeffrey Meyers, who was leading services that morning, helped evacuate some congregants but couldn't reach everyone. Since that tragic day, he has become a leader in the fight against religious intolerance and hate.

What happens in the aftermath of such senseless violence. How does a community heal? How does faith persist? Rabbi Meyers shows us a way through the darkness. Today, we'll learn from a community's response to hatred and what they can teach us about resilience, about love, about faith, and about the enduring power of hope.

[00:02:19] Rabbi Myers: I'd like to think I'm a hopeful person. I'm a pragmatist, but I'm also an optimist at the same time. And I still believe, like Anne Frank did, that people are basically good.

[00:02:31] Aaron - Narration: This was such an inspiring conversation to me, and I know it will be for you too. But as we begin, you're going to hear me use a word for the last time in this episode. The word is hate. From here on, I'll be calling it the H-word. This isn't my idea, it's Rabbi Myers'. He's been encouraging people for years to scrub the H-word from their daily conversations.

[00:02:56] Aaron - Interview: I'm curious what reactions you've gotten from others as you have encouraged eliminating that word from our vocabulary.

[00:03:05] Rabbi Myers: Actually, I've been really pleased with the positive response from people to take a moment and digest the idea. It makes them think more about just the impact of words. In particular, how hard it is to excise a word from our vocabulary that we just use so easily and readily without giving thought to how emotion laden the  H-word is.

People will smile, they'll, they'll try it, and frequently people who haven't taken the  H-word pledge will cover their mouth instantly and apologize to me for having used it, and they'll at least call the  H-word for that time being. Give it a try and we'll discover it's really difficult. We just toss it about so easily.

[00:03:57] Aaron - Interview: I, I'm sure there will be listeners who wonder if this is authentic, who wonder if, if they had the opportunity to sort of spy on Rabbi Meyers throughout the day, if they were ever actually hear the word.

Maybe you could talk about the day-to-day reality of, of trying to not ever use the word.

[00:04:13] Rabbi Myers: I would say this: when I'm meeting a group for the first time, who aren't aware of the pledge or need to know more, I'll use the word once to model so they know which word I'm talking about.

[00:04:25] Aaron - Interview: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:25] Rabbi Myers: And then teach what the choice is. On that rare occasion if I'm doing, say, an English reading and there might be the adjective or other form of it, so it's not just the immediate four letters, I might use that, or I might just say H-full as opposed to the combined word. But as peculiar as I think people might find it, they'll hear me just say, "I don't like it." "I'm unhappy about it." and comparable things like that.

I'll give you a perfect example. I remember I was in the parking lot of a supermarket. I was leaving the supermarket walking towards my car. A woman was pushing one of the shopping carts. You know, sometimes when you get a shopping cart with that one annoying wheel that doesn't cooperate.

And she goes, "Oh, I just..." and I said, yeah, we just use it so matter of factly, as opposed to, you know, if it happened to me, I would've said, "Oh, this is so annoying." I would've put the cart back and got another cart. She just continued onto the supermarket with a cart with a defective wheel, which I didn't understand why, but it just typified for me how easy it is to just toss it around.

[00:05:42] Aaron - Interview: I think we do this with that word in a lot of ways in the emotions tied to it. I think we sit with those feelings even though we're not obligated to, nobody's forcing it upon us. I think we choose it in many ways.

[00:05:54] Rabbi Myers: And, and I just felt that the real power of suggesting to people that it's a four letter word that belongs in that small collection of other four letter obscenities, gives it, um, a sort of different perspective.

and perception and, and that was my hope and desire from it. Will it change the world? No. I'm, I'm not naive. But if it makes some people think and in the end, if there's one person who might use a, a calmer word and potentially not lead them to a violent act, to me, wonderful. That's what it's about.

[00:06:36] Aaron - Narration: I love the idea of treating the H word as profane.

What it represents certainly drives some of the most profane and horrible deeds that happen in the world. The  H-word can treat such vile things so casually. This is part of the reason in this episode that there won't be a detailed explanation of the tragedy itself, nor will we mention the killer's name. Rehearsing those things does little for us.

But what's extraordinary and worth every minute of this episode is the story of how the Tree of Life community transcended the cruelty of what happened. They didn't do it on their own. Indeed, they were immediately enveloped in love and support.

[00:07:18] Rabbi Myers: Although I'm now at Pittsburgher, I did not originally hail from Pittsburgh, but I came to learn first in my initial year

here is that. people pulling for each other and working as community is the nature of Pittsburgh. It's not the exception. However, when you have such a horrific event, is that even, more so, people from all backgrounds reached out. All faiths, all sexual orientations, all colors, et cetera, everybody reached out in ways small, medium, and large, and extra large.

"How can we help? What do you need? What can we do?" There were hundreds of stories of these incredible acts of, of kindness that really moved me and taught me. That's part of what makes Pittsburgh special, is that innate nature. And Pittsburgh is a, a rather significant immigrant community of people who come from literally all over the world to settle in Pittsburgh over the centuries. So it's not the stream of just one particular country. Just all together, that's what pi, what Pittsburghers are all about. And to me that's just something incredible. Beautiful. You wish you could package it and share it. I don't know if, if that's possible. I think it's just, it's just the nature of what Pittsburghers are like and I've, I've lived in different places in my life and I've never experienced, uh, that kind of grace, that kind of

loving kindness for all fellow human beings. It's remarkably beautiful and I'm grateful that I've been the recipient. And the best I can do is return that kindness every occasion I have.

[00:08:58] Aaron - Narration: Not long after their own tragedy, the Tree of Life congregants had just such an occasion to return kindness. In Christchurch, New Zealand, just five months after the Tree of Life shooting, an attacker went to two different Islamic mosques where he opened fire killing 51 people and injuring 40. Rabbi Myers and his congregation sprung into action raising over $50,000 in just four days, all of the funds going to help the families who lost loved ones. Tree of Life knew firsthand why this mattered.

[00:09:34] Rabbi Myers: There's a, a, a foundational story to then act. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting at the Tree of Life, 36 hours later that Sunday evening, it was a vigil at one of the major municipal buildings in Pittsburgh, the Soldiers and Sailors War Memorial, it's called. I believe it seats roughly 2000 people. There were thousands outside.

I met for the first time, the executive director of the Islamic Center in Pittsburgh, which is located in the middle of the University of Pittsburgh campus. And he announced from the stage at that time that they'd found put together a GoFundMe pitch to fund the funerals.

[00:10:14] Aaron - Narration: It's a practice of both the Jewish and Muslim faith to bury their dead quickly, usually within 24 hours. Wasi Muhammad, the executive director for the Islamic Center, knew this and worked to make sure that the funds were distributed without delay.

[00:10:31] Rabbi Myers: Now, one family had to pay for the funeral, and I thought, first off, what an incredibly beautiful gesture. Number two, what a powerful statement to the rest of the world who just think nonstop that Jews and Muslims can't get along. So when the horrific shooting in the two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand occurred, that was the proper, immediate response was "Of course we have to do that."

[00:10:56] Aaron - Narration: Not only did Tree of Life raise money for the victims on the other side of the globe, they also came to comfort and care for the Muslims in their own community.

That Friday at Juma prayers at the Islamic Center, Rabbi Meyers arrived with a group of his own congregation to show support for the Islamic community in Pittsburgh.

[00:11:17] Rabbi Myers: We made sure there was food and no one had to worry about eating, and we were just there to support them and, and how grateful they were.

And it just showed that's what communities of faith are about. We're here for each other and that, well, my faith might not be yours, that doesn't mean that we have, don't have so much in common. And to me, that's what building bridges is about. And Pittsburgh knows how to build bridges. We have the most bridges in the United States 446. But to me it's not about steel bridges or iron bridges, it's about human bridges from community to community to connect each other. And that's just, just one story of many of building bridges between communities.

[00:12:00] Aaron - Narration: Rabbi Myers is a diligent bridge-builder. In the last six years, he's been a national leader in establishing interfaith understanding. And this has taken him around the country and even to Washington where he testified before both houses of Congress.

Along the way, he's built lasting friendships with leaders of many different faiths like Reverend Eric Manning, who experienced a shooting at his church in 2015. In connecting with the leaders of different faiths, rabbi Meyers hopes to model the care and concern we should all show for each other.

[00:12:35] Rabbi Myers: It's the hard work of one-on-one relationships, and that's investing an immense amount of time. But I think it's worth it. And the time that I've invested has been primarily religious leaders because they're the ones that open the doors to all of their parishioners. So to be able to say that I'm on first name basis and have the cell phone number of, of the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, as one example of many, that's part of, of building those relationships.

Because when you do, then there's so much that you can talk about that goes beyond mere clergy to clergy, but can go into greater depth in terms of conversation, things that matter, avenues to open up and explore, ways to be creative that would've never even thought about, ways to build bridges because the clergy model, eventually it saturates down into the parishioners because we, we are the role models of...whatever behaviors we model, our congregants then say that that's acceptable. If we are role models in a negative manner, we're then saying to people it's okay to behave and speak, that way. If we will model the right things to say and the right ways to behave, that's what people will then see and hopefully duplicate.

[00:13:57] Aaron - Narration: When you look at his leadership, it's fascinating to know that Rabbi Myers becoming the leader of the Tree of Life Synagogue almost didn't happen. He shared with me how he ended up as a rabbi, and then how he came to Tree of Life.

[00:14:11] Rabbi Myers: Judaism is the only faith, to the best of my knowledge, that has two clergy, rabbi and cantor.

Rabbi from the Hebrew, meaning my teacher, and the essential role of the rabbi within the community, although it's evolved over the millennia, is to be the chief interpreter and teacher of the Hebrew Bible. The cantor from the Latin "canto" to sing is the one who chants the prayers, interprets them, and chants them for the congregation.

Both are ordained clergy. There's a lot of similarity and overlap in terms of responsibilities like pastoral care for congregants, just as one example. Teaching, both rabbis and cantors do teach in the in their congregations.

[00:15:03] Aaron - Narration: Because not all synagogues can afford both a rabbi and a cantor, Rabbi Myers' wife suggested that he seek to be ordained so that he could fill both roles.

It wasn't even something he used at first, but when the time was right, it led him to the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh.

[00:15:21] Rabbi Myers: It is only, I think, upon looking back over the years that I see that was the path. At the time, when I made the decision that I was gonna go to cantorial school, I didn't realize that was the path that was laid out for me.

It's only upon reflection and saying, oh, look at all of those touchstones along the way. Now I get it. But at the time when you're seemingly a passenger and not the driver of your car, I didn't see all of those touchstones. And it was just out of luck, that led to a phone call with someone here at Tree of Life, which led into an interview, which eventually then brought me to Pittsburgh.

I came into town July 31st, 2017, and then 14 months later was the shooting.

[00:16:08] Aaron - Narration: In any role like that of a rabbi, a pastor, a minister, or a bishop one quickly comes to know and love the people of the congregation, and those of us who attend weekly services come to know and love each other. In preparation for this episode, I spent time learning about the victims at the Tree of Life Synagogue.

And I was struck by how much they reminded me of the people who attend my congregation. Even now as I think about it, I feel a small measure of the sorrow that we would all feel if we lost some of our own in such a tragic way.

[00:16:39] Aaron - Interview: I'm wondering if you could just share some thoughts or feelings you have about, about those people that were lost and how their memory is enduring.

[00:16:45] Rabbi Myers: I try to focus on what each of those people brought to our Sabbath worship in a joyous sort of way. The fun nature of who they were. The happier moments, and I prefer to focus on that as opposed to taking not just one day, but one unit of time and saying that that's what defines them, because it's not.

It's how they live their lives that defines them. And I try to focus on that in those moments of joy. Most cases, it's an unplanned, spontaneous moment that, oh. So-and-so would've said this, or So-and-so would've done, or I could just see So-and-so standing there doing such a thing. And to celebrate their life, I also feel that when you speak about someone who has passed on and you reference them, they then live through your words and it's their presence that inhabits the space that you're in.

[00:17:41] Aaron - Interview: Are there things you wish people had the chance to know about them?

[00:17:44] Rabbi Myers: You know, I can speak about people, but the challenge is words can't always paint the picture. It's being present with people to not merely know about something that someone might have said or done, but to fully embrace what was the occasion? What was the event?

How did it all play out in real time? Because that gives the picture. So for people who didn't really know any of the 11 victims, yes, you can read about them, you can read obituaries, stories, reminiscences and so forth. But to get the fullest flavor, it's really hard to do that because even a picture of them doesn't tell you enough.

It's having had the privilege to being in their lives, seeing them in action and witnessed the things that they do, that's a treasure. And I'm just grateful that I had those opportunities.

[00:18:43] Aaron - Narration: It takes time to come to a place where you can remember people who are gone in a way that brings joy. Rabbi Meyers noted that in our conversation. To be a faith leader who is also in mourning presents a unique kind of difficulty. You're asked to comfort others when you're one who needs comforting. This story of his shows how hard it can be.

[00:19:06] Rabbi Myers: In the aftermath of the shooting, my wife at the time was working at Jewish Day School and the students had put together a special service within a few days of it, plus an outdoor memorial service.

The eighth graders knew many of the victims because we had a a weekly prayer service that they would join us for the service on a weekday morning. We'd give them breakfast, and then they would be taken to classes. So many of the eighth graders, as seventh graders, knew the deceased. So it was really beautiful they did that.

So I came there for services and I really didn't wanna go, but my wife said, "You need to go. It's the students have done this to support them."

So when, and I had not prayed to that point, uh, I just couldn't get it out. So I stood there and as we reached a particular part of the service where we chanted together, it couldn't come out, nothing came out.

It's like, open your mouth and nothing. Terribly distressing to me.

I just quickly ushered myself out of the room because I was really distressed by that moment. And recognizing my own trauma, "Where am I gonna go right at this moment? What do I turn to?" And it's the answer of course is God, but how in what way?

And the immediate answer I got was Psalms. Psalms reflect the complex life of King David, warrior, statesman, poet, all rolled into one, which is an an incredible combination. If there's anybody who's experienced the entire panoply of emotion in their life, it's King David. There's gotta be something in there somewhere that's gonna help give me some direction.

So I just started with Psalm 1 and just was going through them. Had not found anything yet till I got to the 121st of which their 150. The 121st song. "I lift my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come? My help comes from God, Maker of the heavens and earth." And there was my answer and my practice then became, uh, everyday, start the day with that. It helped reassure me that yes, God was with me, God is with me, and God will continue to be with me.

[00:21:18] Aaron - Narration: This Psalm became the inspiration later for the Tree of Life Synagogue to commission what Rabbi Meyers titled "A Psalm for Pittsburgh." Verses one, two, and eight from Psalm 121 were set to an original musical piece by composer Gerald Cohen. At a performance five years after the shooting, Rabbi Myers sang it with the Pittsburgh Youth Chorus and a special ensemble arranged by the group Violins of Hope.

[00:21:46] Rabbi Myers: For your listeners unfamiliar, a number of musical instruments were found in the aftermath of the Holocaust, owned by Jews. The owners, for the most part, had perished. These instruments over time were rescued, refurbished by this wonderful father and son team and brought back to life to be able to be the witness to tell the story of the owner through music.

And what I initially had envisioned was, uh, a children's course. And the reason for children was because of the hope for the brighter future. And the string instruments that were played that evening for that piece were from the Violins of Hope collection. So, uh, uh, a violin, viola, and a cello that had been rescued and refurbished were played.

So it was powerful in many different levels. So I had my entire congregation for those who could participate, commission it as singular individuals, but yet as a congregation. It surpassed my wildest hopes for what type of piece it could be. It was incredibly moving to me, I know to students. And I recall at the, the last rehersal when I finally got to hear the whole piece, 'because it was the only rehearsal we had with the, uh, instrumentalists.

As it finished, I just wept. It was just the power of music.

[00:23:04] Aaron - Narration: There are so many ways that people heal from tragedy, but I think they almost all involve other people. I ask Rabbi Myers to share his thoughts about how we can help others to heal from such events.

[00:23:18] Rabbi Myers: The fact that people care and want to help is really meaningful.

Sometimes the best thing to do is just ask, "How can I help? What do you need?" But don't be surprised if sometimes people in the midst of tragedy, or even trauma, may not yet know the answers of what they need. That only through time can they adequately begin to formulate an answer to that. And it's not anyone's fault or such. It's the nature of, uh, trauma that we don't know what we don't know. And sometimes it takes time. There's many, so many who step forward and sometimes we say we just don't know. And, as frustrating as that might be to people of goodwill who really, really want to help, sometimes we just don't know.

And even to this day, if people come and ask us, you need help, what can we do? Sometimes we, we still don't know. It's not a function of that you can't make sense, because you can't make sense of the senseless. But to identify what people need, you can't take all of my congregates and put them in one slot and say they all fit there. No two people are the same. Because we're not the same, we all have different needs. We're all at different places in that continuum that I call healing.

And the continuum is not that we're always going upward. I'd like to think that from 30,000 feet, the view is that we're, is that a collective moving upward and continuing to heal. But I think if you would come down and literally put it under a microscope, it might look like in a oscilloscope, with peaks and valleys and peaks and valleys. There will be good moments and bad moments within the same day, a good moment, a bad moment. A good moment. A bad moment. But if you again take it way back, I'd like to think that we are gradually moving up. I submit that. I don't think a community that faces mass violence,

mass murder in our case, can maybe necessarily fully heal. We'll reach as far as we can reach, but I think that process has just continued for the life of the community.

[00:25:34] Aaron - Interview: What still gives you hope today for eliminating the H-word? And I don't just mean the use of it I mean it's, you know, everything it represents.

[00:25:42] Rabbi Myers: I like to think I'm a hopeful person. I'm a pragmatist, but I'm also an optimist at the same time. And I still believe, like Anne Frank did that, people are basically good. I've seen that over the years that I still at cards and letters and emails and so forth from strangers I've never met, sending supportive word, a prayer and so forth, which tells me that the vast majority of the people on this planet are good, decent people.

The media doesn't help us. No, social media doesn't help us because bad news sells. The uglier it is the more we like to gawk at it, but I don't believe that's what our society is about. I believe our society is about good people working in the trenches, trying to just make life better for their fellow citizens.

And I believe they're far more of those people out there. They just don't get the publicity that they deserve. It's the ones not doing good who achieve notoriety, who get our attention all the time. I don't know if you can necessarily change that, but, uh, I do believe that there is enough of a silent majority that needs to find a way somehow to become a vocal majority, to be able to respond in cases where there's a bad actor and say, no, this is not okay.

This is unacceptable. Whether it's based upon one's faith, based upon the laws of the land, whatever that support would be say, no, it doesn't belong here. So I still believe there are plenty of people who can effect that change. And I think we've seen throughout history, plenty of examples of a single individual who made a difference.

I have hope. It's really easy to just see the dark, and if you've ever gone to a dark room, a singular match erases all the dark. That's all it is. Be the match!

[00:27:43] Aaron - Narration: Light to penetrate darkness is a central feature in the new building under construction where the previous synagogue stood. 80% of the old structure is being rebuilt to include not only a place of worship for Tree of Life, but also a memorial for the 11 victims, and a new museum dedicated to understanding the roots of anti-Semitism.

Spanning the distance of the building will be an atrium whose light is designed to symbolize hope. When we can be that match described by Rabbi Myers, no matter how dimly we think we flicker, we have the power to banish darkness in the lives of others. Evil deeds do not define those who suffer at the hands of evil doers, not when they can define themselves through hope, faith, and love.

And we, in turn, have the opportunity to shed some of our light on them just as they do for us. I hope you were as inspired as I have been by Rabbi Myers and the Tree of Life congregation. I'm incredibly grateful to Rabbi Myers for spending the time with us.

How To Help is hosted and written by me, Aaron Miller, and producing collaboration with BYU Radio.

My thanks to Erika Price, Kenny Mears, and Blake Morris for their help with this episode. Scoring and mixing was done by Seth Miller, and our music is by Eric Robertson and the Pleasant Pictures Music Club. For more information about this episode, use the links in the show notes, and if you haven't subscribed yet to How to Help, you can do that in your favorite podcast player.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

Season 3 of How to Help is coming soon! This season will focus on how to help in conflict. Here's the list of upcoming guests and topics:

• Rabbi Jeffrey Myers on recovering from tragedy
• Prof. Chad Ford on personal and professional peacemaking
• Debby Tucker on ending domestic violence
• Judge Thomas Griffith on defending the Constitution
• Rebecca Middleton on ending global hunger
• Prof. Andrew Brodsky on effective virtual communication
• Gen. Philip Breedlove on global conflict and peace engineering

Be sure to follow us in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss an episode!

Most people eventually learn that you can’t make someone like you. If someone decides to hate you or even just mildly dislike you, it’s their choice to make. Of course, there are things that you can do that make it easier for a person to like you: be respectful, be a good listener, be competent, be funny, and so on. But even if you do all of these things, whether or not a person likes you is ultimately outside of your control. You’re destined for bad choices if you try to make it happen anyway.

The same goes for trying to make people happy. Here, I mostly mean the feeling of happiness, the dominant way we think and talk about it. If we think the point of helping is to increase happiness in others, then we’re still on unsteady ground. That’s because another person’s happiness—in the myriad ways people desire it, think about it, experience it, and predict it—is messy and ultimately outside of our control.

We all want happiness, and naturally want it for others and not just ourselves. The economist/philosopher Adam Smith famously wrote:

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

Wanting to be happy is something everyone wants, and wanting others to be happy is what a helpful person wants. There’s nothing wrong with this desire. The problem is when we make someone’s happiness the target of our helping actions.

Happiness is mostly an emotion. Being an emotion means that it has at least three attributes that invites the kind of narrow helping behavior I described in a previous newsletter in this series. We’re at the whims of these three difficulties: experience, variety, and subjectivity.

1. Happiness is an experience.

As an experience, the feeling of happiness is fundamentally intermittent. We never experience happiness at sustained levels consistently over time. If someone’s happiness is the goal of helping, then you’re at the mercy of these very natural swings they experience. Any dip from a state of happiness might prompt you to jump in, typically with quick fixes. New parents often fall into this trap with their child, always wanting to placate their offspring in any moment of dissatisfaction. (Better to find the humor in your kid’s fickle, crazy demands.)

The experience of happiness is also hard to replicate, no two moments being exactly the same. Part of this is explained by something called hedonic adaptation. We get accustomed to the things that bring us happiness, so their power to make us happy diminishes. Your favorite song loses its magic the more you hear it, after all. If making someone consistently happy is your goal, you’ll need far more ways to help than are even realistic.

2. Happiness is varied.

The feeling of happiness also isn’t a switch that’s turned on or off. Happiness comes in degrees (where we feel more or less of it) and in a variety of forms (where we feel it in different ways). Because it isn’t a binary state—on or off—“making” someone happy doesn’t really compute because the threshold of happiness can be ill-defined. Just how happy do they need to be for you to meet your goal? 30%, 75%, 100%, or some other amount?

This exact issue applies if you just want to make them happier. Is 50% enough? 20%? 1%? It’s not a bad thing to try and make someone else’s day just a bit happier, and the ways to do that are often quick and easy. But those are often not the same things that make a person’s life sustainably happier. When I recently offered a student some chocolate to lift his spirits, I know for certain that it didn’t finish his finals for him. Don’t get me wrong, respite is a good thing, but not a standalone solution.

And the variety of happy experiences also matters. In any moment of happiness, you might be excited, loving, satisfied, grateful, or serene. Each of these comes from a wide range of predictable and unpredictable circumstances. If you want to make a person “happy,” exactly what kind of happy did you have in mind?

3. Happiness is subjective.

Perhaps the most vexing thing about happiness is how much it differs from one person to the next. We can only experience happiness in our own way. Of course, there are things that all people need for happiness (more on these in a coming newsletter). But no two people have the same internal formula for what makes them happy.

This is why the dominant psychological measure of happiness is called Subjective Well-Being (SWB). This measure contains more than just emotional happiness, but baked into SWB is the recognition that not all happiness is created equal. As Ed Deiner, SWB’s chief contributor, puts it:

The key is that the person himself/herself is making the evaluation of life - not experts, philosophers, or others. Thus, the person herself or himself is the expert here: Is my life going well, according to the standards that I choose to use?

The best way we bridge this subjectivity gap is through empathy, but that only gets us so far. Even the person closest to you probably intensely enjoys something that you despise. My wife somehow enjoys black licorice in a way that defies all reason to me, for example. I can buy her some black licorice, but I don’t really have any way of knowing how much she’ll enjoy it compared to anything else I might get her, all because I can’t stand the stuff.

The other troubling thing we learn from SWB measures is that there are dispositional differences in happiness. Some people are just naturally happier than others; their internal happiness engine runs stronger. Some of this comes from their habits (gratitude, optimism, and prosociality being the most potent ones), but some of our natural state of happiness is just baked in. If you want to make someone happier, you might be working with a person whose baseline is simply lower.

A Worthy Desire, but a Terrible Target

Fundamentally, it’s hard to control our own emotions, let alone someone else’s. And because happiness is inextricable from what someone is feeling in the moment, making someone happy is a frustratingly difficult goal. Just like we have to be okay with moments when people don’t like us, we have to be okay with moments of unhappiness in the people we care about. There might be very good reasons for a person to not like you. Just so for someone’s moment of unhappiness.

Perhaps the best way to summarize is to say that another person’s happiness is a worthy desire but a terrible target. We have a much better chance of helping by targeting the kind of help that we can measure, that we can reliably count on to improve someone’s life.

So in the next article we’ll turn our attention to another common approach: opportunity. What if we just make sure that everyone is simply planted in good soil?

In my previous article, I talked about how we often give the wrong kind of help with our heart in the right place. Because we take a too-narrow view on what others need, our help turns out to be not so helpful. I suggested that we should instead take a broader view: what does a person need to flourish?

We most quickly answer the question with simple intuition. It’s a good place to start asking “What would I want if I was in their shoes?” The problem, though, with an intuitive approach is that our intuition often gets it wrong by assuming too much.

Precious-Metal Rules

Consider the Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” This version, expressed by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, is just one of countless formulations found around the world. Here are a few of the hundreds of other examples from the Golden Rule Project:

• Judaism: “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow.” - Hillel the Elder
• Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” - Tripitaka Udana-Varga 5:18
• Confucianism: “One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself.” -Mencius Vii.A.4
• Hinduism: “This is the sum of the Dharma duty: do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.” - Mahabharata 5:1517
• Islam: “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” - Number 13 of Imam “Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths

And these are just some of the religious formulations. You’ll also find the idea invoked across a wide range of cultures, philosophies, and politics. The Golden Rule is perhaps one of the most widespread maxims in human history. It’s widespread because it teaches something that every person in the world needs to learn: how to think about someone else. We all live in our own heads, and the Golden Rule teaches us to empathize, an essential life skill.

And yet, there are problems in application of the Golden Rule. Before you think I’m about to burst heathen-like onto sacred ground, please consider that no religion has ever taught only the Golden Rule. On its own, the Rule is incomplete.

Here’s the basic challenge embedded in every version of the Golden Rule: we all want different things. To do for someone what I want for myself assumes that they value what I value. Clearly this is not a reliable assumption, for reasons ranging from the trivial (favorite ice cream flavors) to the intractable (political strife). I love donuts and, strange as it seems to me, there are people who don’t.

If you think I’m picking nits, just consider:

• The birthday present someone gave you because they love it, or
• The unsolicited advice to start the same diet that your friend is on, or
• The invitation to Karaoke when the last thing you want is to get on a stage and sing badly in front of strangers.

Wanting different things is exceedingly common, and yet we still have a hard time seeing those desires in others whom we want to help.

This logical pothole in the Golden Rule inspired someone (unknown) to write the Platinum Rule, “Do unto others as they want done unto them.” Of course, this just substitutes one problem for another. Do I help the meth addict afford her next bump? Do I help a murderer make his escape? The Platinum Rule assumes all desires are good for us. (Consider, too, that the police prefer that I help them catch the murderer. The Platinum Rule doesn’t tell me whom to help when interests collide.) Not everything we want is also helpful to us.

Rules Upon Rules, but Incomplete Answers

We can come up with even more rules to address these gaps or conflicts, but then those rules need testing. For example, we might say, “Do unto others as they wish, but don’t do any harm.” Some harm is ethically justified and proper, though. After all, doctors use scalpels. We have a wide range of tools in society that impose harm with moral necessity, like prisons, taxes, and timeouts for my kids. (We might not think of mild punishment as harm, but kids do.)

The point of all of this precious-metal rule-wrangling is that what people need is hard to simplify, so intuition is at best incomplete. Enhancing our intuition with rules—Golden or otherwise—can be useful as quick tests for our behavior, but rules, too, can be inapt for the moment. We need something more, something richer, to understand what makes people flourish.

In the next article, we’ll take a look at happiness. What if we just focus on making the world a happier place?

In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts. Please email me or leave a comment if you have something to share.

It's distressingly common to give the wrong kind of help. I did it to my son just five days ago.

He was doing some tricky homework at 11:15pm that was due at midnight—as one does in college. The assignment was to build a webpage with HTML and CSS, and my knowledge of both is sketchy, at best. Yet here I was suggesting one idea after another to get a stupid menu item to line up correctly on the page. He finally had to tell me (politely, to his credit) that I was squandering the time he had left before it was due. I apologized, told him I believed in his ability to figure it out, and slunk off to bed wishing I'd been more aware of what he needed.

Fortunately, he did figure out a pretty ingenious little solution that he was actually quite proud of, and turned it in just before the deadline. (No way would I have had the same idea, and honestly the thought stings a tiny bit.) I'm relieved that it worked for him, in spite of my clumsy attempt to help.

Do we know how to help?

Perhaps the most frequent mistake in helping someone comes from giving the wrong kind of help. In everyday, small moments, it’s obvious what help to give. Hold open the door for someone. Let a customer with small kids ahead of you in the checkout line. Carry some boxes to your coworker’s car. This sort of help isn’t likely to go wrong.

But here’s a moment that’s probably given you pause: Should you give $5 to the panhandler? It would be a silly question—after all, it’s only $5—if it wasn’t so difficult to answer. How will they spend it? Does this do long-term harm to them? Are you contributing to a bigger problem?

The panhandler example is just the beginning. How do we really know what help to give to others? We don’t easily know what’s right for a total stranger. But we even struggle to answer this question for someone close to us, someone who is weighed down by problems. Do we give them money, lend them an ear, help them make friends, or let them learn to do it on their own? Can we make things worse with our good intentions?

Narrow help

With so much uncertainty, we easily get it wrong and there are many ways to get it wrong. Let's explore the most common mistake: thinking too narrowly about the help that is needed. Perhaps one of these examples of narrow help rings true to you:

• A dad is so worried about his son’s grades that it comes up in every conversation with him.
• A woman stops talking to her friend who insists on dating the guy that’s bad for her.
• A church group wants to support the local hospital by making blankets that they weren’t asked to bring.
• A supervisor—who’s worried about her employee getting fired—gives warning after warning to him for being ten minutes late every day.
• A neighbor brings a meal that some of the family can’t eat due to food allergies.
• A school district buys thousands of laptops for its elementary schools, and the laptops sit unused by the kids.
• A mentor keeps sending networking opportunities to a protégé who is struggling with imposter syndrome.
• A grandson eagerly sets up smart lights for his grandma, but she finds the technology overwhelming.
• A coworker avoids bringing up the death of a colleague’s mom to avoid making them feel bad.
• A friend who loves dancing keeps inviting an introvert to a club.
• A company implements a wellness program to reduce stress, but employees need flexible work hours to manage needs at home.

These examples all show an intent to help, but with an attempt that misses the mark. All of us are prone to mistakes like this. The problem isn’t lack of interest, or neglecting a responsibility, or thinking about ourselves. The problem is focusing on the wrong thing.

What should be our focus instead? I think the right idea is to fix our gaze on something much bigger than our first thought. We ought instead to think about how people flourish. Starting there will give us better ideas of how to help.

In the next article (coming soon), we'll learn something more about human flourishing and what it can teach us.

In the meantime, think about times that you've given the wrong kind of help. Why did you? I'd love to hear from you in a comment on this article or in an email. Thank you for your thoughts!

“I enjoyed reflecting on a beautiful time in my life and sharing it with you all.”
“I enjoyed this survey because I got to look back fondly on a good memory.”
“It was nice to remember this experience since it was so positive.”
“I liked this survey because it was nice to remember this past event. My grandmother was very supportive of me, and she's been gone 3 years now, so thanks for the memories!”

You probably have similar feelings when you remember a helping story of your own. We tend to recall these experiences with fondness and gratitude. The memory remains with us precisely because we treasure it.

Moral Beauty

But there’s something more at work. This memory is meaningful to you thanks to a phenomenon called Moral Beauty.

For many centuries, philosophers have talked about the connection between moral goodness and beauty. Aristotle argued that the purpose of virtue was ”for the sake of the beautiful.” As scholar and Aristotle translator Joe Sachs put it, “What the person of good character loves with right desire and thinks of as an end with right reason must first be perceived as beautiful.”

Immanuel Kant saw a connection between our ability to appreciate beautiful things and to admire moral actions. He called tenderheartedness “beautiful and lovable,” even if it might lead us at times into poor decisions. True virtue, though, is more than just beautiful; it is sublime. And our appreciation of it comes from a feeling all of us have, a "feeling of the beauty and the dignity of human nature.”

What they and others have recognized is that we all value the feeling we get when seeing goodness between people. Kindness, generosity, selflessness, and sacrifice are beautiful to us. Appreciating those acts of goodness feels like the moments of awe we feel at seeing a mountain vista or a work of art.

Elevation and Kama Muta

More recently, psychologists have studied this feeling we get from seeing moral beauty, a feeling they call elevation. Empirically, people don’t all have the same sensitivity to moral beauty, even though most everyone can feel it. Women experience it more than men, for example. And people who are more easily elevated are also more “grateful, caring, empathetic, agreeable, and forgiving.”

Elevation exists in every culture and political belief. In his global study of awe-inspiring experiences, the psychologist Dacher Keltner found that appreciation of moral beauty is the most common experience of beauty that people have. Over 95% of those experiences involved seeing someone act to the benefit of someone else.

When that feeling of elevation is especially powerful, it becomes something that scholars call Kama Muta, a Sanscrit-derived term that means “moved by love.” If you’ve seen an act of such generosity that made you feel warmth in your chest, a lump in your throat, tears in your eyes, and other buoyant feelings, then you’ve experienced Kama Muta. That moment probably also drew you closer to others so that you felt more connected, even to total strangers. Kama Muta, like elevation more broadly, is also a universal human experience.

Seeking Elevation

Elevation is such a sure thing, that acts of kindness define entire social media businesses. A day doesn’t go by on Instagram or TikTok without seeing a viral video of a man rescuing a scared and stranded dog or an adult daughter who traveled hundreds of miles for a surprise reunion with her mother. The most watched account on YouTube is run by Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast. Starting out first as a Minecraft streamer, Mr. Beast became famous for filming huge acts of generosity, like the time he took over a used car dealership and gave a free car to every customer that walked in.

At BYU, the university where I teach, a Master’s student named Savannah Rebecca Bagley named this phenomenon when she wrote her thesis about the “Altruistic Influencer.” In it, she analyzes the work of Hank and John Green, a pair also known as the Vlogbrothers. The two have built a massive online community called Nerdfighteria that has collectively raised tens of millions of dollars for various charitable causes around the world.

You’ll also notice across all of this discussion of moral beauty that large and small acts of helping elevate us. We’re touched by a teenager thoughtful enough to help an elderly woman with her groceries. We’re moved by a teenager who risks his life to rescue a child from floodwaters. Both acts are beautiful to us, along with a wide range of other helping experiences.

Lastly, elevation does more than feel good. It inspires us. In a wide range of studies, elevation is typically followed by a desire to help other people and to be a better person. In other words, helping is contagious. Moral beauty doesn’t just give us moments of awe, it turns us into more generous people.

“The top 50 American individuals and couples who gave or pledged the most to charity in 2023 committed US$12 billion to foundations, universities, hospitals and more. That total was 28% below an inflation-adjusted $16.5 billion in 2022, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s latest annual tally of these donations.”

Donations by top 50 US donors fell again in 2023, sliding to $12B | The Conversation

Most kids like to collect stuff, but they usually collect normal things like Pokémon cards or interesting rocks. When I was a kid, I collected completely useless facts. My family teased me for starting every few sentences with the phrase, “Did you know…” I still remember this one:

Did you know Americans eat an average of eight pounds of pickles per year?

(Now 35 years later, this is still true by the way.)

When we were predicting what jobs all of us would have as adults, everyone in my family predicted that I would be a college professor. And I considered it seriously for a semester of my freshman year, until one of my professors told me that it wasn’t worth it. :P I decided on law school and a legal career, instead.

After an unexpected set of career twists and turns, I’ve now been a professor for 18 years. I love my job, and feel so fortunate to do what I do.

You may be struggling to find your calling in life. It’s an exceedingly common experience. If this is you, or someone you know, I hope this idea is helpful.

Look back

In my very first episode of the How to Help podcast, I recruited the help of my fellow-professor and friend, Dr. Jeff Thompson. He’s a leading scholar in Calling and how people find purpose and satisfaction in their work.

Here’s one of the tips he offered in that interview: If you are trying to figure out your calling in life, look to your childhood. What were you naturally drawn to?

And don’t think just about topics like dinosaurs, ballet, math, or soccer. Think about the way you enjoyed spending your time, or the role you played in your group of friends, or what people trusted you to do for them. Most people have natural talents and interests that can be traced back to their childhood years. One of mine was a fascination with knowledge and an instinct to share it.

Your calling is calling

Despite early discouragement from a professor, I still found my way into teaching. Once given the opportunity to teach a class as an adjunct professor, I was almost shocked at how much I enjoyed it. That first class led to more opportunities and to the job I have now. It wasn't a path I either predicted or crafted, but it was one that was evident in a younger me.

If you’ve struggled to find your calling, I strongly recommend the interview with him. And take courage! Jeff is convinced from his research that all of us have gifts that we can offer the world. If you’re still not sure what yours might be, know that an expert in calling believes in you.

What are some of your childhood talents or gifts that you could put to work today?