How Public Voices Gifts Yale

Kimberly George

In my own vocational journey, I navigate life as both an aspiring scholar and a budding social entrepreneur. I know too well that academic and entrepreneurial contexts are quite different-— even sometimes at odds with one another in their unspoken norms and strategies. Which is why I have been so thrilled this year, as a postgraduate associate at Yale, to witness the Yale Public Voices Fellowship harness the resources of both entrepreneurial and university contexts to offer something truly game changing to the
wider public.

This past Saturday, I had the privilege of observing our 3rd convening. What follows are my reflections on how the fellowship not only supports our scholars as they offer brilliant intellectual gifts to public thought leadership, but also simultaneously gifts our academic community with strategies so often honed in entrepreneurship.

Public Voices Gifts Collaborations
It is clear from observing these convenings that only part of the goal is helping individual scholars successfully build their public platforms. Even more importantly, the fellowship cultivates networks and communities that carry the currents of synergy needed to accomplish something much larger than any one individual voice.

This approach is not insignificant, for individualism has a strong precedence in the production of traditional scholarship, even as it looks different amidst different disciplinary norms. Yet, the partnership Yale has with The OpEd Project is part of new,
collaborative synergies, which I believe will mark dynamic cultural changes this century between higher education and social entrepreneurship. Public Voices Fellowships provides a microcosm of these innovative strategies—a fertile soil for new ways of being together in the production of knowledge and social change.

Public Voices Gifts Play
We are good at a lot of things at Yale—but I wouldn’t put playfulness at the top of our list. And yet, any creative work, whether one is drafting a scholarly journal, writing a TED Talk, or partnering with on-the-ground activists, needs some spirit of play. Too much
seriousness leads to rigidity, but play opens up un-thought possibilities.

Public Voices convenings help us experience new approaches to our work. For instance, this Saturday Katie Orenstein set up chairs in two circles (an internal and exterior circle) in the middle of the room. I immediately suspected a game of sorts, and I was relieved to be only an observer— until Katie invited me to join the circle. Oh no, I thought. Katie, a room full of Yale scholars doesn’t really play games very well. Can’t we just sit obediently at our desks taking notes? As feared, Katie’s game involved improvisation and charades, such that I soon find myself, per the rules of the game, sparring in a ridiculous fashion with the Dean of Yale College, Mary Miller.

As I participated, I noticed there was a significant shift into something less self-conscious—something more present, playful, and improvisational, ways of being which are actually useful for the writing process. I realized Katie knew what she was doing with us, as she invited us into the risk-taking needing for this work.

Public Voices Gifts Self-Reflection
Finally, self-reflection and assessment is often critical in entrepreneurial endeavors.  While such thinking also happens in the academy, it is also true that we don’t reserve as much time for discussing the experiential components of our work. After all, scholarship—at least in principle— is about a trained “objective” distance. The subjective “I” often takes a backseat.

But, Courtney and Zeba strategically guide the fellows in certain kinds of self-reflection.  For instance, they have invited them to analyze the particular risks of their positionality as writers. “Consider your buckets” as Courtney would say—which means we need to name our location and what is at stake. It’s particularly important to get precise about our fears, not just let them linger vaguely, for once we name the risks, we can make more strategic decisions. Such assessment of risk can unblock hesitations and unleash powerful results—a needed approach as academics venture outside of traditional academic space into new partnerships and spheres of influence.

Kimberly B. George is a creative and academic writer, a writing coach, and an innovator of online feminist theory classes. She’s also a Postgraduate Associate in Gender Equity and Policy for the Women Faculty Forum at Yale University. You can read more about her work at kimberlybgeorge.com.

Wow: Two OEP women make WaPo’s short list!

As many of you know, The Washington Post is holding a contest to find America’s Next Great Pundit. Almost 5000 people entered the contest, and ten finalists have been chosen. Over the next few weeks, they’ll all submit op-eds to the paper, and readers will have a chance to vote on who should advance to win the grand prize: a weekly column for thirteen weeks (the short list, for those who are wondering, is half men and half women).

We are incredibly proud to announce that an OEP alum and an OEP Mentor Editor have both made the short list.

The first is Zeba Khan, who attended our seminar with the organization Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, is a social media expert whose writing and research interests are women in Islamic societies. Our second finalist is the wonderful Courtney E. Martin, Mentor Editor. Courtney is the author of Perfect Girls; Starving Daughters and the forthcoming Do it Anyway: Portraits of the Next Generation of Activists. She’s been with the OEP almost since its inception (and taught the first OEP session I ever attended!). You can read respective winning entries below.

If you want to see these wonderful thought leaders advance to the next round of competition, read their op-eds in WaPo throughout this week and then, this weekend, VOTE! Voting starts on Saturday, Nov. 7 at 8am ET and closes on Monday, Nov. 9 at 3pm ET.

The women of the web, by Zeba Khan

It may have been the youth that used the web to elect President Obama, but if the White House wants to mobilize its virtual army to push health-care reform, it might want to consider calling on the women of the web instead.

Women have always been leaders in using and understanding social networks. Sixty years ago, Brownie Wise, a single mother from Dearborn, Mich., saved the Tupperware brand by launching the first of what would become known as Tupperware parties. As Wise hosted these parties to introduce Tupperware to her friends, some of those friends became Tupperware sellers themselves, hosting parties for their friends and on it went. Within a decade, Wise and her exponentially growing cadre of hostesses sold millions of dollars’ worth of product every year through their networks.

Today, social networks have moved online with companies like Facebook, Ning and MySpace leading the way. And just like in the ’50s, women dominate the social networks of today. MySpace’s U.S. user base, for example, is 64 percent female, followed by Ning’s at 62 percent and Facebook at 59 percent.

Not only are there more women networking online than men, but the number of older women in particular is growing at a phenomenal rate. In the first quarter of 2009 on Facebook, women aged 35-44 experienced a 154 percent growth, women 45-54 grew by 165.3 percent and women 55-65 grew by an incredible 175.3 percent.

Recently, Team Obama used its online tools to organize a national phone banking drive resulting in over 300,000 commitments to call Congress demanding health-care reform. But considering that this same pool of supporters helped turn nine states from red to blue last November, this response is hardly reflective of the potential mobilizing power this groups has.

Health-care reform is not as sexy as a presidential election. The youth vote that put Obama in the White House is the healthiest demographic in the country. It is no surprise that the urgency of health-care reform has not struck a chord with them. Women, on the other hand, are the dominant drivers in the household when it comes to health-care and understand firsthand the problems with the current system.

Social networking appeals to women because they are relationship-driven, and the White House must capitalize on this connection. If it can figure out how to reach its female supporters, it just might get the backup it has been waiting for.

Between work and life, by Courtney E. Martin

Though my dad retired over five years ago now, his ankles are still hairless and skinny, as if they can’t quite get over the 40 years that he squeezed them into dress socks befitting a man going to the office. In fact, my father’s lawyer identity is like a phantom limb. Without his daily doses of e-mail and ego-boost that the firm provided, his self-image aches and spasms. He lies on the hammock for hours at a time, bicycles in embarrassing spandex outfits, drives my mother crazy.

My mother isn’t having the same trouble adjusting. Like most women of the supermom ’80s, she juggled her clinical practice with community activism, caretaking, and even founded a film festival. For my father, the line between work and the rest of life was always thick and black. For my mother it was porous — everything was life and work, some of it better compensated in dollars and hugs.

I thought of these two, bumping into one another in the kitchen, when I heard that women are now officially half of the workforce. Despite all the recent hogwash pitting the sexes against one another, the Center for American Progress reports that three-fourths of people see this new reality — women comprising 50 percent of American workers — positively.

The women of my generation — the entitled, earnest Millennials — are not “opting out” of the workforce, as claimed by Lisa Belkin and others. In fact, I don’t know a single one who isn’t committed to having a career. Perhaps even more important, I don’t know a single young man who isn’t committed to being an involved father someday. My guy friends, late in their 20s and starting to spend fewer nights on bar stools, talk about the struggle to balance their careers with their interests and relationships. They want to do meaningful work, have love, to measure success by passion, not paychecks.

It seems that the real revolution is not that women are working as much as men; it’s that both women and men are starting to crave the porous kind of life that my mom led, instead of the compartmentalized version that my father has left behind. That’s good news for everybody, even my dear old dad who has at least a decade or two left to figure out who, not what, he wants to be when he grows up.

Don’t forget: America’s Next Great Pundit contest!

Don’t forget that The Washington Post is offering its readers a chance to write to change the world with the America’s Next Great Pundit competition. The deadline to enter the contest, with a 400-word argument, is 11:59pm on Wednesday the 21^st. If you’ve been to an OEP workshop, this is your chance to put what you learned there into action!

If you had 400 words to change the world, what would you write? Better figure it out soon, because the deadline is fast approaching!