MAG AZ INE
THE
EDUCATION OF
ZACH WILSON By Ethan Bauer
THE
CONTROVERSY OVER
CRITICAL RACE THEORY THE
TROUBLING RISE OF
CAMPUS ACTIVISM By Robby Soave
INSIDE THE NEW SCIENCE OF MATERNAL
INSTINCT
SEPTEMBER 2021 ISSUE 07 Volume 01 deseret.com $4.95
iv yinteriorsslc .com
THE VIEW FROM HERE
LESSONS FROM MY GRANDFATHER BY JESSE HYDE
M
y grandfather never graduated from high school, but that never got in the way of his education. He came from a different time. He told me stories of rounding up wild horses in Nevada’s high desert, of pushing cattle down steep canyons of pinyon pine and scrub oak, and breaking horses like the bronc fighter Marty Robbins sang about in “The Strawberry Roan,” which was as close as we got to a bedtime lullaby in the house where I grew up. He was also a constant reader and deeply curious about the world around him. Its strangeness, its unexpected adventures. Wherever we went — the Native American reservation where he served on assignment for our Latter-day Saint stake, the auction yard in town to see what cattle were selling for — he talked to everyone and seemed to know everyone. The world delighted him. I think he was ashamed that he never got a diploma, even though the circumstances of his life — raised in abject poverty reminiscent of the characters in “The Grapes of Wrath” — offered more than enough explanation. But even when I found out, it never mattered to me; my grandpa is my hero. If anything, it only reinforced a belief I picked up from my time with him: There isn’t much correlation between formal education and intelligence. To this day, he is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, a man who saw the wonder in all things large and small. I like to think he passed that inquisitiveness on to me, and it’s one reason I became a journalist. But he also taught me an unspoken secret 4 DESERET MAGAZINE
about learning — the best education is fueled by curiosity, not necessarily what we learn in the classroom, but rather what we go out and find on our own, without the artificial pressures of grades and test scores. This issue is dedicated to education — starting with our cover story on Zach Wilson, the former Brigham Young University phenom who’s learning what it takes to compete as a quarterback on the NFL’s biggest stage with the New York Jets. LaGarrett King, a professor at the University of Missouri, writes about learning American history as a Black child in Louisiana and encourages us to become a more compassionate nation by considering our shared experiences through one another’s eyes. Robby Soave, a senior editor at Reason, examines an illiberal strain of activism that is silencing free inquiry on college campuses and spreading throughout American life. And Deseret editor Kelsey Dallas warns of looming threats to religious colleges, including my alma mater of BYU. It’s an issue I’m proud of, and that feeling is a little extra sweet considering a conversation I had with my grandma over the summer. It’s been nine years since my grandfather passed away, and she’d just moved onto my parents’ property, into a home my uncles and brothers and cousins helped my dad remodel. She told me how much she appreciates this magazine. She told me she highlights her favorite parts. And she assured me my grandpa would like it, too. I’d like to think he’d learn a little something by reading it.
CONTENTS
H I, MY NA ME IS …
18
BY F E ND I WA NG
TH E PA RA DOX OF OVERDOING IT
20
BY S OFIA J ER EMIAS
TH E LOOMING TH REAT TO R ELI G IOUS CO L L EG ES
24
10
How the pandemic inspired some families to take class time to the open highway.
BY K E LS EY DA L L AS
TH E RIVER IS RO UND
ROAD SCHOLARS
GOING THE DISTANCE
14
Midwives who travel could give rural women a better birthing experience. by Sofia Jeremias
by Matt Crossman
JACK CANFIELD DISHES UP BLISS
22
The “Chicken Soup for the Soul” guy shares his recipe for a happy life. as told to Jennifer Graham
46
BY S C OT T C A R R IER
TH E MOM PA RT OF TH E BRA IN
58
BY ABIG A IL T U C K ER
BRAIN MECHA NIC S
76
BY ERIN BERG ER
NEIGHBORHOOD, WATCHED
28
Do local crime apps like Nextdoor make us any safer? by Ethan Bauer
TH E L AST WORD
SPEED AND BRINE
30
The unlikely story of legacy, land speed records and conservation. by Mary McIntyre
THE BEST WORST PLACE
38
What one Western town has learned from an experimental tent city for the homeless. by Sofia Jeremias
82
BY LOIS M. C OL L INS
THE EDUCATION OF ZACH WILSON COVE R ILLU STR ATION BY M IKE M CQUAD E
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50
Can a BYU phenom make it in the NFL? by ethan bauer
WO KE U Is illiberal campus activism redefining American values? by Robby Soave
64
COUNTERING MISEDUCATION Racism and the politics of history. by Lagarrett king
70
Visit chick-fil-a.com/catering for all your catering needs!
CONTRIBUTORS
Deseret, which was proposed as a state in 1849, spanned from the Sierras in California to the Rockies in Colorado, and from the border of Mexico north to Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming. Informed by our heritage and values, Deseret Magazine covers the people and culture of that territory and its intersection with broader culture.
ABIGAIL TUCKER
ROBBY SOAVE
JOSEPH GOUGH
Abigail Tucker is The New York Times bestselling author of “The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World,” named a Best Science Book of 2016 by Library Journal and Forbes, now translated into 13 languages. A correspondent for Smithsonian magazine, she lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband and four children.
Robby Soave is a senior editor at Reason. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, U.S. News & World Report, The Orange County Register and The Detroit News. In 2016, Forbes named him to the “30 Under 30” list in the category of law and policy. A Detroit native and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Soave now lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Carrie, and their two Yorkies, Caesar and Oliver.
Joseph Gough is an illustrator who graduated from the illustration as visual essay Master of Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts in 2018. His clients include The New Yorker, Bloomberg, The New York Times and The Washington Post Magazine. He’s from the United Kingdom and lives in New York City.
MIA MEREDITH LAGARRETT KING
Dr. LaGarrett King, Ph.D., is a Black history educator, consultant, speaker and writer. He is the Isabelle Wade Lyda and Paul C. Lyda professor of education and the founding director of the Carter Center for K-12 Black History Education at the University of Missouri. He researches the teaching and learning of Black history education in schools and society.
SCOTT CARRIER
Scott Carrier is a writer, photographer and Peabody Award-winning radio producer. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, his print articles and photos have appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone and Mother Jones. Carrier’s radio stories have been broadcast by “All Things Considered,” “Day to Day,” “The Story,” “The Savvy Traveler” and “This American Life.”
Mia Meredith is an award-winning graphic designer currently working with The New York Times for Kids team. Originally from New York, she’s a graduate of the Bachelor of Fine Arts graphic design program at Brigham Young University. Professional interests span branding, and print and interaction design, while personal interests include sewing, pizza and Mario Kart. A few favorite recent projects include a cloud chart centerspread and every new New York Times for Kids section that comes out.
Deseret Magazine (ISSN PP324) is published 10 times a year by Deseret News Publishing Co., with double issues in July/August and December/January. The Deseret News’ principal office is 55 N. 300 West, Suite 500, Salt Lake City, Utah. Subscriptions are $29 a year. To subscribe visit pages.deseret.com/subscribe. Copyright 2021 Deseret News Publishing Co. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.
8 DESERET MAGAZINE
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PARK.EDU
MODERN FAMILY
ROAD SCHOLARS HOW THE PANDEMIC INSPIRED SOME FAMILIES TO TAKE CLASS TIME TO THE OPEN HIGHWAY BY MAT T CROSSMA N
C
helsea forsythe was a teacher early in her career, ran a preschool out of her home and earned a master’s degree in education. The idea of homeschooling long percolated in the back of her mind, a backup plan in case of emergency. That emergency came last fall as her kids returned to school. When the physical building reopened after the COVID-19 shutdown, the kids encountered drama about masks, drama about outbreaks, drama about how to safely do just about anything. “Being a kid was pressure enough,” Chelsea says. “And to have to add that on top of it I was like, nope.” Thus began the Forsythes’ foray into homeschooling. The reckoning over what kind of education Chelsea and her husband, John, wanted for their six kids turned into a reckoning about what kind of life they wanted. Life is short. Did they really want to spend so much of it on Zoom? If education doesn’t have to be done in a school, does life have to be done in a house? “Why are we just stuck in this home, stuck in this hamster wheel?” Chelsea wondered. If ever there was a time to get off of that wheel, this was it. John, who has an MBA, sensed the time was no longer right for the family business venture he had embarked upon and decided to change course. Meanwhile the housing market boomed, and their neighbor sold their house for a big number. An idea — strange, exciting, bold — coalesced in their minds. They called a family meeting to discuss it. Their children, now ages two to 14, gathered around the dinner table in their Richfield, Utah, home to hear a bombshell: Mom and Dad wanted to become roadschoolers. That is, they wanted to buy a pickup truck and trailer, travel the country full time, and hold class along the way. It did not go over well. What about school? the kids asked. What about friends? And dance lessons and music lessons and chess club? John and Chelsea countered with questions of their own: Of the places you’ve seen in movies and TV, which do you want to visit? What experiences do you want to have? What’s on your bucket list? Eventually the kids flipped from worried about what they’d miss if they embraced roadschooling to worrying about what they’d miss if they didn’t. Together the family cooked up a plan to visit all the lower 48 states, every temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and each national park. It seemed like a dream, even as the Forsythes put their house on the market, even as they sold it, even as they bought a used truck
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and a 400-square-foot, fifth-wheel trailer, packed as many books as they could fit, and hit the road. “When we actually drove away,” Chelsea says, “we were like, ‘We’re really doing this. This is it.’ ”
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Homeschooling exploded during the pandemic, both in interest and in
practice. As a homeschool dad, I watched this with a benevolent smirk. Suddenly we weren’t just a bunch of cloistered weirdos. Brian Ray, director of the National Home Education Research Institute, says the number of homeschool students roughly doubled from March 2019 (2.5 million) to March 2021 (4.5 million to 5 million). A Census Bureau study of the number of households with homeschooled children found similar growth — from 5.4% at the start of spring 2020 to 11.1% at the start of fall 2020. Granted it’s one thing to teach your kids at home and quite another to teach them on the road. But roadschooling is a subset of homeschooling, and both start from the same place: dissatisfaction with the education system. The pandemic revealed what veteran homeschoolers knew all along: There is more than one way to teach a child. Nobody collects roadschooling data, but Fulltime Families, a membership organization serving families who live in RVs, started a roadschooling branch in 2016 and now has nearly 1,000 members. A necdotal evidence suggests roadschooling has grown in the last two years as families reassessed their lives. The allure goes beyond untethering from the drudgery of modern life. It gives families a chance to create indelible memories, moments possible only when you get away from screens and start taking what you want out of life instead of letting life take what it wants out of you. For Rachel Raum, whose family has been roadschooling for more than three years, one of those moments came when strangers plopped themselves “elbow deep” in mud to push her stuck trailer. For Kaylee Techau, who is in her second year of roadschooling with her husband and two children, it was a trip to Space Center Houston, where interactive exhibits absorbed her kids for nine hours. Nine hours. “There’s something about the freedom of not having to be anywhere at any certain time,” Chelsea Forsythe says, “not even knowing what day of the week it is, getting confused on what state or where we’re even at, that just makes you embrace and slow down and reconnect with your kids.” IL LUST RAT ION BY BR I AN CR ONI N
SEPTEMBER 2021 11
MODERN FAMILY
The classroom can be anywhere — the table in the RV, the picnic table outside, the back seat of the Suburban. On those days, a good internet connection is crucial. But the best days require zero internet, because who cares about connectivity when you’re snorkeling in the ocean These are my people. My wife and I homeschooled our two kids until at Dry Tortugas National Park (biology), hiking in the Grand Canyon this year, and I admire people who take big swings at life. So I sometimes (geology) or standing on a Civil War battlefield (history)? daydream about roadschooling. I’ll let the rental contract on my house in The kids aren’t the only ones learning. At Gettysburg, John Forsythe suburban St. Louis expire, buy a truck, a trailer and a goofy driving hat, reveled in awe at the size of it and the sacrifices made by soldiers there. and chase adventure. Those aspirations tempt me, now more than ever. He thought he knew Gettysburg from books, movies and documentaBut as enticing as that lifestyle appears, especially on social media, I ries, but seeing it firsthand was something else. know Instagram lies by omission. Budgeting is hard enough with fixed “Whether or not they won was a factor of whether or not guys decided costs like mortgages and home insurance. It’s harder when trucks break to stay there and fight to the death, instead of abandoning that line,” he down and trailers fall apart. If a family member isn’t handy with powsays. “You don’t get that until you stand there and go, whoa.” er tools, you’ll pay thousands to someone who is. And the day-to-day Like many roadschoolers, the Forsythes belong challenges? My family of four crowds one anothto Thousand Trails, a membership program that er in our 1,500-square-foot home. In a trailer, the allows them to stay at participating campgrounds bathroom is close and the walls are thin. Privacy? THE ALLURE for up to two weeks at a time. There isn’t any. GOES BEYOND The family plots its travels by following the Still, we’ve enjoyed small-batch roadschooling UNTETHERING FROM weather. Heading north last spring after spending over the last six years on separate trips to ColoraTHE DRUDGERY the winter in Florida, Chelsea led the way in their do, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Kansas and North OF MODERN LIFE. IT GIVES silver Suburban, calling back to John if there was a Carolina, little tastes of the smorgasbord the YOU A CHANCE TO low bridge or the GPS directions were wrong. John Forsythes and their fellow roadschooling devotees CREATE INDELIBLE followed in their blue Dodge 3500 pickup, pulling have devoured. MEMORIES AND the 44-foot trailer. They set out from South CarWe plotted our trips much like D’Anne Lawley, a START TAKING WHAT olina to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky roadschooler from Texas, did with her husband and YOU WANT OUT OF LIFE INSTEAD and North Carolina before, in early May, arriving three kids: “Not with the intent of cramming knowlOF LETTING LIFE in Virginia, where, there among the Appalachian edge down their throat, but experiences, and really TAKE WHAT IT WANTS Mountains, the family discovered a new addition to filling them up with what the world has to offer.” OUT OF YOU. their bucket list. One dreary December day in 2020, my then-14The New River Gorge hadn’t yet fallen under year-old and I hiked up a hill to Serpent Mound, a the purview of the National Park Service when the Native American burial site in Ohio. Gray clouds Forsythes drew up their itinerary, but it was now, and they were so close to hung low, and mist covered everything in a glistening sheen. The grounds our nation’s newly minted, 63rd national park, they had to see it. felt sacred, forbidden, as if we shouldn’t be there. They parked at the Endless Wall trailhead. Chelsea put Wyatt, two, We crested the summit. The grass rose in the shape of a snake eating in the carrier on her back and they all walked the hard-packed dirt trail. an egg. My daughter shuddered. I saw concern in her eyes that had not Skinny trees scratched the sky, their green tops shrouded in rainy haze. been there when we got out of the car. “It’s creepy,” she said. We walked a Bright pink rhododendron flowers cut through the mist. lap around the 1,348-foot-long snake and were at a coffee shop eight miles Suddenly the endless green gave way to a vast empty expanse. The earth away before the unsettled feeling left her. just stopped and dropped straight down, as if the West Virginia mounI will never have to teach her what “mystical” means. taintop were a cake missing a piece. Stunned by the beauty, the F orsythes Moments like that show the greatest value of roadschooling: It gives inched their way onto Diamond Point, an outcropping overlooking the parents control over their kids’ education. We were free to stay as long as New River Gorge. we wanted, take as many laps as we wanted and to follow whatever converJohn and Blake, 14, lay on the rock, their faces over the edge, long legs sation our visit prompted. With a class field trip, none of that is possible. splayed out behind them. Venice, 7, and Cassidy, 5, sat back from the edge, Cassidy with her knees to her chest, Venice with her legs crossed. Below, white foam on the river revealed the power of the rapids as the water rushed north. A rail line ran parallel to the river on the opposite side. “They sat there in silence, being quiet, and just looked,” Chelsea There are as many ways to teach while roadschooling as there are roadForsythe says. “There was no talking, there wasn’t all the chaos of the schoolers. The Forsythes build some of their coursework through My world. We just got to enjoy the beauty and the shock and awe of the unTech High, an online education company from which they customize a expected in that moment together.” schedule for each child. 12 DESERET MAGAZINE
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It will get brighter. OPTIMISM SEPTEMBER 2021 13
MODERN FAMILY
GOING THE DISTANCE MIDWIVES WHO TRAVEL COULD GIVE RURAL WOMEN A BETTER BIRTHING EXPERIENCE BY SO FIA JEREMIAS
K
since 2010, and of those that remain only about half have obstetric seraty rawlins is putting on her makeup as she sits at the vices as cost-cutting measures have resulted in the elimination of specialdrive-thru coffee stand. It’s only 7 a.m., but she’s already in a ty care. Today, 2.2 million women of childbearing age live in a county that rush — she has 263 miles to drive today. has no obstetric care providers and no birth centers. As a midwife who travels, Rawlins’ clients span a wide swath of territoWhile some research shows that midwives could help fill in the gaps ry — stretching across the Oregon border down to southwestern Idaho. in rural health care and the presence of nurse-midwives in hospitals Some seek her out because they cannot afford gas or child care to make has become more widely accepted, home birth does have higher risks regular prenatal visits, let alone the costs of giving birth, while others prethan hospital births. A study published in 2015 in fer the control and comfort of bringing their child The New England Journal of Medicine comparinto the world at home. ing planned out-of-hospital births with planned Rawlins became fascinated by birth in the 1980s in-hospital birth outcomes found that the perias a child growing up in a small town in Nebraska INCREASED natal death was higher for the former, although near the home of celebrated novelist Willa C ather. MIDWIFE SERVICES COULD RESULT IN the “the absolute risk of death was low in both When Rawlins became pregnant with her third 280,000 FEWER settings.” As Jeffrey Ecker, a doctor at Massadaughter at the age 23 in 2008, she knew she wantDEATHS IN MOTHERS, chusetts General Hospital, wrote in the Harvard ed to have the baby at home. At the time, midwifery TWO MILLION Health Blog, “Sometimes emergencies happen, occupied a legal gray zone in Idaho (midwives could FEWER DEATHS IN and having the tools, medicines, and facilities to practice if they didn’t administer medications) — so NEWBORNS, AND MORE THAN respond quickly can make a difference. But havshe tapped into a semiunderground network to find TWO MILLION FEWER ing all those things at hand means they will also be a midwife. She gave birth to her daughter at home STILLBIRTHS PER used in cases in which doing nothing would have with her husband and midwife by her side. “It was YEAR BY 2035. been just fine.” the most normal thing we had ever done,” she says. As obstetrics care becomes increasingly difficult Today, she is just one of a small number of midto access — financially and geographically — and wives serving rural families in the West. Midwives parents choose what they want their birth experiattend roughly 12% of births in the United States, ence to be, midwives may provide a level of care for families living in rural while in other Organization for Economic Cooperation and DevelopAmerica that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to at all. ment countries they attend somewhere between 50% to 75% of births. One study published in The Lancet Global Health found that increased midwife services could result in 280,000 fewer deaths in mothers, two million fewer deaths in newborns, and more than two million fewer stillbirths per year by 2035. Those numbers would be a huge shift for the U.S., which has the worst First up on Rawlins’ drive on a recent morning in July is a woman livmaternal mortality rates among developed countries (the number has ing in Ontario, Oregon, roughly 45 miles northwest of Rawlins’ home almost doubled in the last 20 years, and over 60% of these deaths are prenear Boise. Kaylee Gruendler, the expectant mother, is 32 weeks pregventable). The numbers are worse for those who aren’t near urban hubs nant. The family recently moved from Boise to Oregon so they could (there are 29.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 in rural areas compared to afford a more spacious house for their three children but found that the 18.2 in urban regions). Over 100 rural hospitals have closed in the U.S. midwifery services Gruendler could access in the city were no longer an
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IL LUST RAT IO N BY HANNAH DECKER
SEPTEMBER 2021 15
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midwifery in England, Mary Breckinridge returned to rural Kentucky (where midwifery was never illegal) in the 1920s and pioneered Frontier Nursing Services. The women Breckinridge trained “rode on horseback, crossing rivers during floods, riding up the mountains, to attend all the childbearing women and to provide health care for all families,” Davis-Floyd says. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that midwifery started to make a true comeback, when the social unrest of the time collided with women’s desires to take back control of their birth experience. In 1975, Carol Leonard, who helped found the Midwives Alliance of North America, gave birth to her only child in the Merrimack Valley, along the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. She recalls lying on her back with her arms and legs strapped down. And while the birth was a simple one, she says a doctor told her afterward, “Some women are meant to be breeders and some women are meant to be workers. You are definitely a breeder.” Leonard was infuriated by the demeaning comment. She packed up her bag and her baby and immediately left. After the experience, Leonard became interested in MIDWIVES midwifery, with hopes that she could make birth Midwifery is an ancient practice. The Bible MAY PROVIDE a more natural and positive experience for other makes numerous references to midwifery, as do A LEVEL OF CARE expecting mothers. She studied with a country early Greek and Roman texts. Many Indigenous FOR FAMILIES LIVING IN RURAL doctor in Henniker, New Hampshire, who taught cultures have their own traditional midwifeAMERICA THAT her how to perform each skill necessary for safe, ry practices. Up until the early 1950s and ’60s in THEY WOULDN’T natural births — everything from turning breech the South, Black midwives served rich and poor OTHERWISE HAVE babies to placing sutures. A local health center women alike and provided care to Black women ACCESS TO where she worked and studied started giving her who were not admitted to hospitals due to policies AT ALL. name out to women interested in home births. barring them, says Robbie Davis-Floyd, an anthroLeonard was worried about the potential threat pologist at Rice University who has been studying of arrest and lobbied for legislation that passed in the midwifery movement since 1991. Rather than 1981 that allowed lay (also called “direct entry”) integrating midwives into a medical system that midwives — those who did not go through formade risky births safer, they were sidelined in part mal schooling — to obtain voluntary licenses. In 1982, Leonard helped through campaigns that derided many of the immigrants and women of found the Midwives Alliance of North America. color who worked as midwives as uneducated and unclean. Lay midwives began to spring up in El Paso in Texas, Santa Cruz in Dr. Joseph DeLee, a prominent Chicago doctor and leader in obCalifornia, and in Tennessee. All the while, midwives were organizstetrics in the early 20th century, called midwives a “relic of barbarism” ing and advocating for laws legalizing and standardizing the practice in 1915 and considered them “a drag upon the progress of the science across the nation. Today, certified nurse-midwives are legal in all 50 and art of obstetrics.” State laws prohibiting the practice of lay midstates, while certified professional midwives (they do not have nurswives started going into effect in a falling dominoes-type fashion. In ing licenses but are certified through the North American Registry of 1894, Massachusetts passed an act that equated midwifery with the Midwives and are considered “direct-entry”) are able to legally pracunlicensed practice of obstetrics. In the 1910s, Alabama passed a law tice in 35 states. requiring midwives to pass an examination and register with the state Now, the practice of certified midwives and certified nurse-midwives health board, making it harder for midwives who had already been isn’t as much of a hot-button topic. But the location of where they pracpracticing for decades to continue. In 1917, California made uncertified tice and where mothers give birth is. The safety of home versus hospital midwifery a misdemeanor. The decimation of the midwifery profesbirth has been strongly debated for a century. The American Academy sion was essentially completed by the 1960s through a combination of of Pediatrics does not recommend a home birth at all, stating, “Hospichanging social norms that reclassified birth as a medical procedure and tals and accredited birth centers remain the safest settings for births state laws that sometimes prohibited midwives from using medications in the U.S.” Similarly, the American Medical Association has taken a or required those who had long careers as midwives to jump through firm stance against home births, noting that “the safest setting for labor, hoops to get certifications. delivery and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital. ...” At the same time, women in rural America — where few hospitals Today, out-of-hospital births account for under 2% of all births in the existed — still required care. After completing her education in nurse- option. So she contacted Rawlins, who has been making the drive to the one-story house ever since. When Rawlins walks in, she gives Gruendler a hug. During the visit, she asks about any ongoing discomfort, schedules future testing, makes sure blood work has been completed and talks about the list of items Gruendler will need to get for the home birth. Then, she pulls out a handheld Doppler ultrasound, puts a little gel on the tip and listens to the baby’s heartbeat. Once all the questions and checkups have been completed, they talk about diapers and potty training and the nurse-midwife who will also attend Gruendler’s birth to provide an extra set of hands and expertise (Rawlins likes to have at least one other licensed midwife at all the home births she attends). After an hour it’s time to go. Rawlins puts her laptop and other equipment away and texts her next client, in Midvale, Idaho. By 8:30 a.m., she’s back on the road.
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where I’ve worked,” Gonzales says. “I get to bring all my skill sets forU.S. That’s not a large portion, but it’s more than it was at the turn of the ward to try and address this problem of access.” 21st century. Home births have increased by nearly 80% since 2004, and the COVID-19 pandemic has caused even more parents-to-be to avoid hospital-based care. However, most of the births attended by nurse- midwives and certified midwives occur in hospitals (roughly 94%). Certified midwives and physicians alike tend to agree that high-risk births should remain in the hospital under specialized care. When asked why she chose home birth, Divinity Rasti explains that That’s in line with best practice, as studies show that the best birth half of her family is Mexican and the other half Black. “I got to see two outcomes are a result of “highly integrated” systems, where midwives different perspectives of how my Mexican side was treated in the medand physicians work closely together. “Midwives provide quality care, ical field versus how my Black side was treated in the medical field,” she especially those that are certified and trained,” says Dr. Sean Esplin, the says. She says her great-grandmother died during knee surgery because senior medical director for women’s health of Intermountain Healthcare, doctors didn’t elevate her knees. which has 23 labor and delivery units across Utah and Idaho. “The future Then, when Rasti was pregnant with her daughter, she went in for is to create a team where you have excellent midwifery care that’s also her first doctor’s appointment. She was nervous, and when her blood working together with physicians that are required pressure was taken it came back high. The nurses to provide backup services.” In the ideal situation, took it two more times, and it got higher in each Esplin would like to see certified nurse-midwives reading. They told her she had to take medication, delivering in hospitals, where physicians can quickly but she insisted, “No, I’m just scared. I’m terrified “THE FUTURE IS come in to deal with medical emergencies. to be here.” TO CREATE A TEAM WH ERE YOU “I just didn’t feel heard from the start of walking HAVE EXCELLENT in, and it wasn’t anything new. I was used to my famiMIDWIFERY ly’s experiences,” Rasti said. After that appointment, CARE THAT’S Rasti’s decision to employ a midwife was cemented. ALSO WORKING Katy Rawlins’ last appointment of the day is Seeing expecting mothers’ need for representaTOGETHER WITH PHYSICIANS with Rasti, who is now 12 weeks pregnant with her tion and better care in the hospital setting changed THAT ARE second child. Rasti’s home is spacious and modern. Nicolle L. Gonzales’ life. While working at Indian REQUIRED TO It’s her comfort zone, and when Rawlins takes her Health Services in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Gonzales PROVIDE BACKUP blood pressure the reading comes back normal. — a member of the Navajo Nation — was unhapSERVICES.” py with the way Native women were treated as patients — how little providers seemed to know about the birth and pregnancy experience, and the lack of power women had in the hospital setting. But what struck her most was the difference between the hospital How women choose to give birth is changing. Robbie Davis-Floyd in Santa Fe and a hospital in an affluent community she’d previously sees that there’s been a big shift since she first began studying midwifeworked in. “The women I took care of there were very authoritative, ry. But she says more needs to be done for expectant mothers. Better they knew what they wanted, they were bossy, and the nurses listened. relationships between midwives and physicians. Greater access to midThey had a lot of power. And I saw them having more enjoyable birthwifery for women who might not be able to afford it or have health ing experiences,” Gonzales says. So she returned to school to study insurance that will cover the costs. More training and funding for Black midwifery and founded the Changing Woman Initiative, a nonprofit and Indigenous midwives who want to serve their own communities. focused on serving Native women in New Mexico. Mothers choose to give birth at home for many reasons: from fiThe close relationships midwives like Gonzales build with their clients nancial (home births tend to cost between one-half to one-third less and the consistent contact both prior to and after birth allows midwives than hospital births), to fear of a medical system that consistently has to monitor problems that might arise. This could be especially crucial for worse outcomes for women of color, to cultures that do not view birth underserved communities. According to the Centers for Disease Control as a medical procedure. For some, home birth is simply the norm, and and Prevention, Black and Indigenous women have a pregnancy-related midwives like Rawlins and Gonzales make that choice safer. But all the mortality ratio roughly three times higher than that of white women. mothers in this story mentioned one common theme: They wanted The organization lists multiple factors from “underlying chronic contheir birth experience to be sacred, calm and in an environment where ditions” to “structural racism and implicit bias.” Or, as one obstetrician- they were surrounded by loved ones who listen to their wishes. gynecologist told a writer for the Harvard Public Health magazine, “The Rasti recalled the moment she had her daughter at home. Her husband common thread is that when Black women expressed concern about their climbed into the birthing tub and caught the baby. Then her midwife and symptoms, clinicians were more delayed and seemed to believe them less.” husband handed her daughter to her to hold for the first time. “It was “That’s the benefit of being a nurse-midwife for 10 years and working this little blissful moment, just sitting in the pool with us three.”
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MODERN FAMILY
HI, MY NAME IS … YOU SAY YOUR NAME THOUSANDS OF TIMES, BUT WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT YOU? BY FEN DI WA N G
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Nowadays, parents chase individuality, Suzanne says, but they’re not irthrates have been falling in America, with a particas adventurous as you’d imagine. Zany names celebrities pick for their ularly sharp downward spike in early 2021 — an event dechildren aren’t being copied. “The goal today is a familiar name that mographers dubbed a “historic baby bust.” But a July 2021 analysis by will not be shared with too many classmates,” she says. “A name that will demographer Lyman Stone and sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox for the help their child stand out while still fitting in.” Institute for Family Studies suggests that the baby bust is over. And Names can influence how people perceive us and how we are treatwith more births comes more newborns in need of a name. So who are ed in everyday encounters and business. In Germany and the United the babies being born in 2021, and what do their names say about them? States, studies have found that men with names with fewer letters I, with my own unique moniker, am invested in the special task of brought home more money, perhaps under the pretense that if his name investigating how and why we choose names for children. When asked is simple and easy to remember, he is approachable and friendly. Dirks for my name in a coffee shop or doctor’s office, I often recite the same and Klauses were found to excel in Germany, and Lynn, Dana, Tom spiel: “Fendi. F as in Frank-E-N-D-I as in igloo.” It’s odd to say the and Rob were among the most common names for word “igloo” to a stranger with no context, but afAmerican CEOs. Each additional letter in a name ter decades of being called Cindy or Sandy or, as correlates with a $3,600 drop in annual salary. one barista wrote in Sharpie, “Fungi,” it’s a handy Where there are minimalists, there are also maxdefault. “Oh, Fendi like the bag!” the person will imalists. In Utah, it would appear that more is, incomment as I smile at a riff I’ve endured too many AS SOCIETIES deed, more. Inventive names like Questin, Dezalin, times to count. HAVE EVOLVED, WE HAVE DRIFTED Makinly, and brazen spellings of usual names like Most of us move through life with a name we AWAY FROM Awstyn, Aeryn or Djaryd — all which would make didn’t choose. It was bestowed upon us at birth and ETYMOLOGY a killing in a game of Scrabble — go unquestioned. will survive us after death. It is cherished by loved OR FAMILY One Utah native and writer, Haley Swenson, theones and inked onto thousands of documents. It NAMESAKES AND orizes the state churns out funky names partly beis not impossible for a person to be nameless, but MOVED TOWARD PLEASING PHONETICS cause of its relatively homogenous demographics: to legally exist — with a Social Security number, WITH INTRINSIC largely white, largely Latter-day Saint and largely driver’s license or bank account — requires a VALUE. comprising a number of newborns needing a name string of letters to call your own. To that end, the (the state has the highest birthrate in the country). convention of naming is mandatory. But there are To stand out in a crowd of kids who look like you, greater reasons why parents name their children, come from a similar background and are of the owners name their pets, and Jeff Bezos named his same faith may require a name like Taeg. virtual assistant Alexa. Today’s trending names — Luna, Aria and Willow to name a few — Sherri Suzanne, founder of My Name for Life — a professional baby are less about gender, heritage or status. Phonetics are important and name consulting service — believes we name for two reasons. The first is spelling leaves room for creativity, but — above all — a name should identification and differentiation. The second is to create familiarity and simply feel right. “Great names are those that people can say with conintimacy. “Names are a special part of language,” she says. “Anthropolofidence throughout their lives, whether introducing themselves on the gists have not identified a society that does not use names in some form.” playground or in the boardroom,” Suzanne says. The earliest names derived from language and had lofty meanings. I didn’t always appreciate my name. It felt kitschy growing up, and Indigenous Native American names like Adsila and Galiahi mean “blosfinding my first name initial on a mug or a key chain has always been som” and “attractive” in Cherokee. Ancient Roman names Lucius and a losing battle (“F” is not a high-inventory letter). But as an adult I’ve Titus come from the Latin words for “light” and “honor.” As societies come to enjoy being the only Fendi in the room. It is uniquely me, have evolved, we have drifted away from etymology or family namewhich is the whole point. sakes and moved toward pleasing phonetics with intrinsic value. 18 DESERET MAGAZINE
IL LUST RATI ON BY MAX DALTON
SEPTEMBER 2021 19
LEADERSHIP
THE PARADOX OF OVERDOING IT AMID THE ‘GREAT RESIGNATION,’ SOME AMERICANS ARE ACCOMPLISHING MORE BY DOING LESS BY SO FIA JEREMIAS
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eleste headlee pushed her nose right through the grindstone. After years of putting in long hours as a journalist and public speaker, she decided it wasn’t worth it. Despite making good money, and having control of her schedule, she wasn’t enjoying the fruits of her labor. Headlee had become impatient and irritable, and she stopped enjoying activities that used to bring her joy. Simply put, she wasn’t happy. She wanted to enjoy spending time with friends and family again, to realign her life around the things that mattered most. She started researching the history of labor and work culture in hopes of healing herself. She realized it wasn’t going to be simple; the right app or a digital detox wouldn’t dissolve her malaise. After talking with friends and family members who also admitted to feeling more tired and stressed out than ever, she used her research to write “Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.” The pandemic has encouraged many people to reevaluate their professional lives. Call it burnout, languishing or simply the realization that life is too short, but many workers are not thrilled to return to the status quo. Four million people in the U.S. quit their jobs in April, while 40% of the global workforce was considering quitting this summer as some employers started mandating that they return to the office. Many have cited feeling exhausted from overextending themselves through lockdown and other implications of COVID-19. Economists have taken to calling this shift the “great resignation.” In an interview with Deseret, Headlee explains some of the key lessons of her book, how she’s been managing to take her own advice and how the global pandemic gave us an opportunity to recalibrate our values.
COVID-19 forced many people to work from home for the first time. Do you think the last year exacerbated the tendency to overwork? Or do you think it provided some folks the opportunity to slow down and reconsider their habits? When the pandemic hit, I was convinced that in order to cope with the incredible stress, trauma and anxiety of COVID we were going to make the wrong choices. I was right. People started working longer hours, taking more meetings and spending hours at a time at their computers without standing up. They allowed work to claim every part of their home. People also brought home their toxic productivity habits. They became someone who not only made sourdough bread, but baked the ultimate sourdough bread. But they also had a dawning realization that it was too much. There was a purpose to all the things our parents and grandparents used to do, from playing card games to stamp collecting to polishing rocks. The purpose was leisure.
I love how you mention cross-stitching as an activity that brings you joy but isn’t productive. Why is it so important to have hobbies that are simply for pleasure? One study showed that people felt even more impatient while listening to 20 DESERET MAGAZINE
beautiful music if you made them think about how much their hourly pay was. If you want to enjoy your life and what you do, stop thinking about whether it’s adding to your brand or making you money. In your book , you talk about the concept of “polluted time.” Can you explain what that is and why it’s harmful? “Polluted time” is when work creeps in on our free time. If you’re at dinner with a friend or a family member and a work notification comes in, even if you don’t check it, your focus is going to be pulled away and it will take about 15 minutes to fully refocus on that person. When you pollute your time you start to feel like you’re short on it. That’s going to make your empathy, compassion, patience, tolerance drop. When your brain has a sense of scarcity of any kind, your IQ declines by 13 or 14 points. This has a massive impact because you become more impulsive and make terrible decisions, resulting in an even greater sense of scarcity. Things become a crisis. You write about the “default mode network ,” an important mental state where we put past events into context, imagine the future and make moral evaluations, and you say it can only be accessed when we allow our minds to wander. How do you activate your default mode network? And what benefits have you seen? It’s simple. I leave my phone in another room, I move away from all screens and I sit down. And I just sit there until I start to feel bored, which happens pretty fast. I’ll let that feeling of boredom wash over me, and it’s not pleasant. But your brain basically turns into this manic librarian, racing through the stacks of your mind pulling stuff out and saying, “Hey what about this?” And that’s when you start to have these creative thoughts, when you start to surprise yourself with what you remember. You mentioned that you have one untouchable day every week where you don’t look at your email or phone. Have you been able to keep it up? I have not been able to keep it up on a weekday because people have been so anxious during the time of COVID, and if I don’t respond to somebody for a full 24 hours they start to worry. But I do on the weekend. I log off my social media Friday afternoon, and I won’t look at my email inbox until Monday, and it’s the best thing ever. I gotta tell you, it’s hard at first to let go like that. But at one point I was outside walking my dog, wandering down this forest path and thinking, “I haven’t even thought about email for hours.” Disconnecting to that degree seems impossible for a lot of people. The only way I’ve figured out how to do it is by backpacking in places where I am forced to live without cell service. What would you say to people who feel they need to stay connected or who work at companies where that’s the expectation? Pretend that every Saturday or Sunday you’re taking a backpacking trip P HOTO GRA PHY BY CAR OL GUZY
C eleste He ad lee w ith h er d og, S am us, le f t, a n d a n e i g h bo r ’s d o g at h e r h ome i n R o c kv i l l e , Ma ry l a n d, Au g u st 2 02 1
and on those days put an email notification on your inbox that says, “I’m away from the office today. If it’s urgent, call me. Otherwise I’ll get back to you tomorrow.” You’ll discover that nobody calls, which means nothing is urgent. It’s been about three years since I started doing untouchable days, and I’ve only gotten a couple calls during that time. All of my fears about what would go wrong never materialized. You write that humans can’t truly multitask , and that trying to do so is just slowing us down. What’s happening in the brain when we try to talk on the phone while checking our email? There’s maybe 1% or 2% of the world’s population that can truly multitask without seeing a massive loss of productivity and intellect, but over 70% of people think they’re in that group. Probably the worst effect is that it can cause real, lasting damage to your brain, and those who try to do it on a regular basis have a loss of brain density, specifically the area where you have self-control, empathy and compassion. And it’s not helping you get more things done. That’s an illusion. You argue that our brains weren’t designed to work long hours without interruption, that working in “pulses” can be more productive. What does your own schedule look like? The International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization just released a study showing people that work more than 55 hours a
week are more likely to die prematurely. It can’t get more stark than that. My schedule changes every single day, but I only have four and a half hours of focused work per day and that’s all I expect of myself. If I’m starting to lose focus I don’t try to push through it; I get up and take a break, taking time to do the dishes or walk my dog. You write that the “key to well-being is shared humanity.” What methods do you recommend for building a community now as we emerge from our homes and are maybe a little rusty at our spontaneous conversation skills? Keep the stakes low. Have that conversation with your grocery store clerk, wave to your neighbor as you’re walking down the street. We know that these low-risk, low-cost interactions have an outsized impact on your mood and your feeling of belonging. You don’t have to invest a lot to increase your sense of social connectedness or your feeling of belonging. Your book is called “Do Nothing”, but it seems like you’re advocating for being a little more thoughtful and purposeful about where we place our energy. By working less, I have become more productive. I can’t say it more plainly than that. Some people who interview me think it’s a gotcha question to point out that my resume shows I’ve done a lot, that because I’m doing stuff I’m not following my own advice. But by not forcing myself to rise and grind every single day, I get more done — because that’s how the human brain and body are designed to function. SEPTEMBER 2021 21
LEADERSHIP
JACK CANFIELD DISHES UP BLISS THE ‘CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL’ GUY SHARES HIS RECIPE FOR A HAPPY LIFE AS TO L D TO JEN N IFER GRA HA M
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ou may not know Jack Canfield, but you likely know his books. Collaborating with Mark Victor Hansen, Canfield compiled a collection of 101 inspirational anecdotes that the authors called “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” It was a title that had come to Canfield during his daily meditation when he was thinking about his grandmother and what she told him about her soup: It would cure anything. Canfield was sure the same was true of the inspirational vignettes he was collecting. Not everyone was immediately drawn to the title; in fact, one of Canfield’s assistants at the time quit because he thought writing such a silly book would hurt the company (then called Self-Esteem Seminars), which provided corporate training. And multiple publishers in New York would turn down “Chicken Soup” before it was picked up by a small Florida imprint in 1993. Hansen, however, saw the potential when Canfield told him about the project when the longtime friends met for breakfast one morning. Canfield had compiled 70 stories at that point; Hansen said the book should have 101 and offered to find another 31. “He did, and the rest is history,” Canfield said. That first “Chicken Soup for the Soul” sold 11 million copies and grew into a profitable brand that still publishes about a dozen new titles every year and has branched into other businesses, like pet food and entertainment. Why, then, did Canfield walk away from the thriving business in 2008? There was no conflict between the partners; Hansen and Canfield no longer work together, but they remain friends. And Canfield didn’t want to retire. At 77, he’s still coaching and writing; he is the author or co-author of more than 150 books, including “The Success Principles.” Instead, it was the combination of a good opportunity and Canfield’s personal policy of letting joy lead. Here, Canfield talks about how to know when it’s time to move on from a job or a business, the mindset that kept his business alive during the pandemic, and what he thought about Stephen R. Covey and the late Utah businessman’s famed seven habits. I’ve always followed my heart, in the sense that if something
starts to feel dead or flat to me I honor that, often at great risk. For example, shutting down a business and moving to California and selling “Chicken Soup for the Soul” to a company in Connecticut. Call it follow your bliss, follow your passion, follow your heart — however you want to say it — every time I’ve made that decision, it’s worked out really well for me. The other thing is, I take 100% responsibility for my life and my results. I had a mentor who drove that into my head when I was in my 20s.
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I used to live by the principle “If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.” Nobody else is responsible for my life. It doesn’t matter what else is going on — the environment, the economy, new technology, other people — whatever is happening is just happening, and it’s my job to respond in a way that allows us to be successful. It’s the same thing with the pandemic. When the pandemic came along, we had deposits of $800,000 for live trainings and all of a sudden we couldn’t do them. We had to pivot and start doing everything online, which was a big challenge. I told the staff I didn’t want to fire anyone, and the staff said, “We’ll take pay cuts, but nobody’s leaving, and we’re going to have to get really creative and develop new courses and put them online.” One of the big things we found was that when we do live trainings, we get 300 to 500 people, but when we do online programs, we get people from 47 countries. People from 47 countries were not going to get on a plane and fly to L.A. for a training. So we have a much bigger global reach now. The big principle here is something I always say: No matter what’s going on, it’s happening for you, not to you. During the pandemic, my wife and I started to play pingpong; we play every day for 30 minutes; she usually beats me by two or three points. And I’m writing three new books. My wife says, “Why don’t you retire?” and I say, “And do what?” I’m having too much fun. My personal purpose statement is to inspire and empower people to live their highest vision in the context of love and joy, in harmony with the highest good of all concerned. I love collecting stories of people who have overcome, people who have done the loving thing, taken the risk, contributed, made a difference. The kind of things that when you read them, you smile, you get inspired, you get goosebumps. There’s a science to that now: positive psychology. Everything we used to do intuitively is now backed up by neuroscience. I liked Stephen Covey a lot. And (like Covey) I don’t think you can think your way to success either. It’s a combination of mindset and skill set and action. When he talked about the seven habits — and later he came out with an eighth — I was saying, come on, there’s 64, Stephen, let’s go. I wrote a foreword to a book called “The Billion Dollar Secret,” and the author, a friend of mine, interviewed 21 billionaires about their habits. Every one of them, from age 39 to 81, had a routine which typically included reading, exercising and meditation. I say that success is like a combination lock; if you know the numbers and have them in the right order, anybody can open it. Someone once said don’t ask what the world needs; ask what makes you come alive. Then do that thing, because what the world needs is people who come alive. Your natural passions are a clue. I believe God put in each of us a purpose, and we’ve been given talents for that. Your joy is your feedback mechanism. It’s telling you if you’re on course or off. IL LUST RATI ON BY EDDI E GUY
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NATIONAL AFFAIRS
THE LOOMING THREAT TO RELIGIOUS COLLEGES CAN FAITH-BASED SCHOOLS SERVE LGBTQ STUDENTS AND HOLD ONTO THEIR CONSERVATIVE BELIEFS? BY K EL SEY DA L L AS
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s a student at Calvin University, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Claire Murashima was taught to ask big, scary questions and trust God would be present in the answer. She had that lesson in mind last fall when she took the largest leap of faith of her life. Murashima had just been elected student body president of the small, religious school and wanted to use her power to lead meaningful conversations about gay rights. She wrote an editorial for the student paper publicly coming out as bisexual, and then brought it to school leaders before it was published to prepare them for what she was going to do. “I didn’t want to go behind their backs in any way,” she said. What Murashima did want was the answer to a big, scary question. She wanted to know if Calvin could become a campus that served the needs of gay students while also celebrating religious values. “I wasn’t pushing for a specific political outcome. I wanted LGBTQ people to know my school is a place for them.” As support for gay rights grows across the country, religious schools of all shapes and sizes face the same question, and it’s not just students seeking a response. Policy makers, donors, professors and other stakeholders are all wondering whether faith-based colleges and universities can better care for members of the LGBTQ community without sacrificing the religion- related policies that help drive their success. So far, few institutions have fully engaged with the debate, but soon it will be impossible to avoid. Democrat-led policy proposals in Congress and a lawsuit filed this spring by dozens of former Christian college students are putting pressure on religious colleges and universities from the outside, as students like Murashima put pressure on them from within. 24 DESERET MAGAZINE
Religious schools will have to take a leap of their own and trust their faith to help them find a path forward in the near future. The whole world should be rooting for them to find their way, said Shirley V. Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, which serves more than 150 North American schools. “Christian higher education produces committed, compassionate, convicted citizens who
AS SUPPORT FOR GAY RIGHTS GROWS ACROSS THE COUNTRY, RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS OF ALL SHAPES AND SIZES FACE THE SAME QUESTION, AND IT’S NOT JUST STUDENTS SEEKING A RESPONSE.
want to engage deeply in this world, not in spite of their faith but because of their faith,” she said.
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colleges once dominated the American academic landscape. But, over time, they’ve lost ground to larger, secular institutions that don’t have to navigate faith- related restraints. “If you look at the history of higher education, the clear trend has been to start off as religiously affiliated and after some time, decades or centuries, look just like secular universities. We have to keep reminding our-
selves of our mission,” Brigham Young University President Kevin J Worthen told the Deseret News in 2019. Today, there are still hundreds of religious colleges and universities in the United States, but most are quite small. However, when it comes to responding to the needs of underserved communities, Christian schools punch above their weight, Hoogstra said. “Faith-based schools serve and graduate a diverse population of students, including DACA recipients, incarcerated students, low-income students, adult learners and first-generation students.” Partly because of the unique makeup of their student bodies, many faith-based schools would be forced to close if they lost access to federal aid. Daniel Bennett, who leads the political science department at John Brown University, a Christian school in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, estimates that at least 95% of faith-based schools depend on federal funding to stay open. For these institutions, alumni and denominational support is also crucial. School administrators must try to balance the needs and interests of students and faculty with the demands of these often much more conservative benefactors, said John Hawthorne, who recently retired from Spring Arbor University, a Methodist school in southern Michigan. “If you try to appease those conservative voices, it’s going to put you in a place that makes it hard to hold your students and faculty,” he said. Although religious colleges come in many forms, nearly all share the goal of helping students grow spiritually and academically at the same time. School leaders integrate faith with learning, whether they’re in the campus chapel or a lecture hall. “There’s this idea that we can prepare students to interact with the world through the lens of and totally IL LUST RAT IO N BY ALEX COCHR AN
c onsistent with their faith. There’s no compartmentalization,” Bennett said. As someone who grew up religious but attended public elementary and secondary schools, Bennett understands the pain that can come from feeling like you have to check your faith at the classroom door. To him and other advocates of faith-based higher education, the invitation to see religious values as an academic asset is a miracle of sorts. “Going to a Christian school for college was a breath of fresh air for me,” Bennett said.
However, the religious freedom offered by faith-based colleges comes with some notable strings attached. Students must often agree to abide by a moral code, which typically includes prohibitions on drinking, smoking and premarital sex. In recent years, these codes of conduct and related policies on sexuality and marriage have landed many schools in hot water. Former students, accrediting bodies and policymakers have questioned whether faith-based schools are using religion as an excuse to be cruel.
The “Christ-centered focus and Gospel lens used by our Christian institutions is becoming increasingly countercultural,” Hoogstra said. But she and other advocates of faith-based higher education object to the notion that religious schools are singling out LGBTQ students for mistreatment. “Our goal is that all students be treated with respect, dignity and love,” BYU officials said earlier this year. The school’s Office of Student Success and Inclusion manages individual outreach and social events for students who are SEPTEMBER 2021 25
NATIONAL AFFAIRS
part of the LGBTQ community, while LGBTQ students sit on many department committees and councils across campus. “These efforts and others will continue as we work to fulfill President Worthen’s vision that every student feel fully a part of the BYU community,” added Julie Franklin, BYU student life vice president. Under federal law, faith-based colleges can request a religious exemption to nondiscrimination rules. If granted, they can sidestep certain legal protections for the LGBTQ community and others and continue enforcing their most controversial policies, like bans on same-sex marriage. If successful, the current lawsuit brought by former students at religious schools would force the Department of Education to stop offering these exemptions. Faith-based colleges are also facing pressure from Democrats in Congress, many of whom believe LGBTQ rights protections outweigh religious freedom law. Any policy change, whether it originates in Congress or an executive order, would be challenged in court, where the hundreds of judges appointed by former President Donald Trump are unlikely to rule against religious schools, Bennett said. However, those judges won’t always dominate the legal system. In the near future, religious schools could be forced to make some very difficult decisions about LGBTQ rights. “That reckoning is coming — it’s just a matter of when,” Bennett said. Hoogstra hopes policymakers and judges will continue to respect the strong religious freedom protections offered by the Constitution. Religious schools “subscribe to a number of sincerely held biblical convictions, and the right of our institutions to teach and instill those convictions in the next generation of believers is protected by the First Amendment,” she said.
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up, Murashima didn’t know it was possible to be both Christian and queer. No one fit that description in her family or church and so, when she began questioning her own sexuality, she felt confused and
26 DESERET MAGAZINE
alone. “I didn’t tell people because I was too ashamed,” she said. That pain and fear was on her mind as she prepared to come out to her campus community. She felt like publishing the editorial on her sexuality was an act of love for her younger self. “My biggest desire was increasing representation,” said Murashima. “I just wanted to show students at Calvin and parents of students and kids growing up in the Christian Reformed Church that they’re not alone if they’re LGBTQ.” At other religious schools, a growing group of people are working toward similar goals. Students are increasingly speaking up in support of gay rights and calling on school leaders to do the same. Nationwide, half of white evangelicals and Latter-day Saints and more than three- quarters of white mainline Protestants and Catholics who were younger than 30 in 2017 support same-sex marriage, according to Public Religion Research Institute. Importantly, many would say they hold this position because of their faith, not in spite of it. “The most vocal, affirming allies or members of the LGBTQ community on my campus identify as Christians. They see supporting gay rights as a way to further realize their Christian identity,” Bennett said. Hawthorne came to a similar conclusion while leading a recent class discussion about the tension between the Catholic Church and its gay members. Among his students, opposition to LGBTQ rights was the exception, not the rule. “There were only a couple students who asked, ‘Why aren’t we saying (gay marriage) is a sin?’ The rest of them were saying, ‘How can you treat gay people like this?’ ” he said. Growing support for gay rights on Christian campuses is giving some LGBTQ students the courage to come out. As they do, many of these young people are asking school officials for help making the gay community on campus feel less anxious and alone. Murashima said that, when she came out, she wasn’t trying to scandalize her campus or “burn it down” with demands for political or theological change. Instead, she wanted to use
her preexisting relationships with school officials to ensure that hard but necessary conversations about what it was like to be gay at Calvin would finally take place. “I felt like they were on my team, and that I was on their team,” she said. “Some of them told me, ‘These are conversations that needed to be started. Thank you for speaking up.’ ” Other Christian college students advocate for a less measured approach. Those involved in the lawsuit on school funding, for example, demand nothing less than immediate policy change. Both types of students can make life difficult for leaders at Christian schools, Hawthorne said. To more conservative alumni and donors that also demand officials’ attention, even starting a conversation about religious support for LGBTQ rights feels like a dangerous act. “The mindset of students has changed dramatically. The mindset of the alumni and donors to Christian colleges has not,” he said.
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Some faith-based schools would choose clo-
sure over showing any level of support for LGBTQ rights, Bennett said. He and other advocates of faith-based education hope it won’t come to that. There’s still time for religious schools to regain their footing, Hawthorne said. “I think these things are possible, but not when one is operating out of such a negative view of the future,” he said. Murashima is among those hoping religious colleges and universities will be around for years to come. Being at a faith-based school made it hard for her to come out, she said, but it also made it hard for her to abandon her faith, which, for her, was a good thing. “I would not have had the confidence to come out publicly and be OK with my faith and still be so strong with my faith if it wasn’t for my Calvin education,” said Murashima, who graduated in May. She added, “I’m glad that it was a given. It was a given that all my mentors, professors, administrators and friends would all have the desire to help me keep my faith.”
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NEIGHBORHOOD, WATCHED THANKS TO SOCIAL MEDIA, WE KNOW MORE THAN EVER ABOUT LOCAL CRIME. BUT ARE WE ANY SAFER? BY ET HA N BAUER
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ngie jackson considers herself “neighborly.” She uses that word to describe an old-fashioned approach to community, where everyone knows everyone and everyone pitches in. It’s an attitude one might associate with small towns, but Jackson lives in Sandy, Utah, estimated population 96,380. The Salt Lake City suburb straddles the line between rural simplicity and metropolitan amenities, branding itself as a place “where mountain meets urban.” That juxtaposition is especially evident in the realm of neighborhood safety, and the profusion of smartphone apps that promise to foster it. Jackson, who at 59 sports a blond, choppy bob cut and dark, thickframed spectacles, installed one such app about a year ago. It’s called Nextdoor, a hyper-local social network that markets a digitized version of that warm, Mayberry-esque aesthetic Jackson and so many others crave. “When neighbors start talking, good things happen,” its slogan says. And in fact, Jackson joined at the behest of her real-life neighbor. Most interactions on Nextdoor are fairly innocent. People giving away vegetables from their garden, advertisements for a local adult softball league, lost pet bulletins. But Jackson joined for another reason: “I like to know what’s going on in the neighborhood crime-wise,” she says. And she’s not alone. Many Americans are gripped with a peculiar fear, a growing sense of danger in the streets that bears little resemblance to statistical reality. According to Pew Research Center, 47% of Americans surveyed in 2000 believed that crime in the United States was worse than the year before. By 2019, that number had swelled to 78%. While violent crime has risen recently in major metropolitan areas like New York City, overall data from the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics show crime has declined sharply since the early 1990s. Still, “Americans tend to believe crime is up,” Pew concludes, “even when the data shows it is down.” Perhaps another indicator of this concern is the popularity of apps that promise to help users feel safer, often through some sort of surveillance. As of 2020, Nextdoor reportedly had 10 million registered users; the company claims that about one in three U.S. households use it. Amazon’s Neighbors brands itself “the new neighborhood watch”; among other functions, it connects to Ring doorbell cameras, allowing users to share videos of package thieves and break-ins with their own social networks and police. The Washington Post reported earlier this year that over three million Ring cameras are operating in the U.S. Vivint’s Streety is similar; it creates a network of local security cameras. Citizen is more focused on news, offering users real-time crime alerts; it had over five million users in June 2020, according to Forbes. The gap between her perception of crime and the official data is one reason Jackson joined Nextdoor. The rate of violent crime in Sandy has 28 DESERET MAGAZINE
remained relatively steady since 2003, but she feels like it’s getting worse. And she worries that the traditional community institutions aren’t taking it seriously. Asked if she feels unsafe, Jackson pauses. “Honestly, I don’t know that I do yet,” she says. But the more she talks, the closer she comes to answering in the affirmative. “I feel unsafe,” she finally admits, “but not so unsafe that I would move. At least not yet.” The question is, what can she do about it? Sarah Lageson, a sociologist at Rutgers University, found in her research on digital neighborhood watch groups that the people behind them similarly felt law enforcement and media organizations were failing to respond adequately to local crime. Such groups are sometimes encouraged by police, but because they operate outside of legal authority, they can find themselves crossing the line from keeping their families safe into something else entirely. “Whenever there’s vigilantism on the rise, I am confident that you can find a ton of media reporting about some type of criminality that local people feel is out of control, and that the state agencies, particularly the police, are unable to help them with,” says Dara Byrne, associate provost at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “An important part of the story of vigilantism is that vigilantes do believe that they are bringing a much-needed solution to a gap in their community.” Traditional neighborhood watch groups started as a response to rising crime in the late 1960s and matured as outgrowths of community policing initiatives in the ’70s and ’80s. Their stated intention, too, was to bring neighbors together for the good of everyone. But defining who is a neighbor and who isn’t can be more complicated than it seems. It’s not just who lives in a particular area, but how lines between areas are drawn and who gets the benefit of the doubt as an assumed resident. “There are arguments from an evolutionary perspective that people naturally create groups,” Pamela Rutledge, a media psychologist, says. “The creation of a group implies some are in and some are out. Like many instinctive behaviors, however, that tendency was not designed for modern-day circumstances.” In theory, neighborhood watch programs are inclusive of anybody who’s willing to help out. “But that just doesn’t happen on the internet, because we just don’t let ourselves be in spaces where we feel that people disagree with us,” Lageson says. “We don’t behave on the internet the way we would ever behave in real life.” Even deciding who looks suspicious can be influenced by prejudices and subconscious biases. In a 2018 Medium post, Nisa Ahmad writes about moving to a gentrifying neighborhood and joining the Nextdoor app. Not long after, someone reported an African American neighbor as “suspicious” during his morning run. “He came on the app and asked IL LUST RAT IO N BY JOSEPH GOUGH
eople to be more mindful of the diversity of the neighborhood because p he should not be criminalized for jogging,” she writes. That was far from the only example of such occurrences on Nextdoor, and the company now has a section on its help center dedicated to preventing racial profiling. In other cases, the knowledge that somebody is watching may deter a would-be perpetrator, or at least encourage them to take their activities elsewhere. (This is the premise for the neighborhood watch street signs that still dot many residential areas.) Apps can be used to impose social consequences — like public shaming —on bad actors. Camera footage can be used as evidence, at least theoretically. But maybe none of that matters. Whether or not browsing grainy surveillance footage on Nextdoor makes us safer, it can make us feel like we are. Knowing that someone tried to break into a car up the street arms us with information that can make us feel like we’re making the best decisions to protect ourselves and our property. Indeed, it’s a common impulse to seek some semblance
of control amid an existence where crime and chaos often come down to luck and randomness. And that’s enough to keep users on the app. “The main thing these apps are for is making profit for the companies who make the apps,” says Larisa Kingston Mann, an assistant professor of media studies and production at Temple University. And they do that, for the most part, by collecting data. “The problem is that these apps profit from encouraging a sense of fear in a community.” In Jackson’s neighborhood of historic Sandy, where the buildings are plain and sturdy, where the population is relatively homogenous and where the crime rate is relatively low, the question is whether it’s good to keep watch. “We survived a long time in society without knowing everything, without having perfect information,” Lageson says. “And now we’ve convinced ourselves in the digital age that we must know everything, we can never forget anything and everything must be archived. And we really don’t ask why.” SEPTEMBER 2021 29
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SPEED AND BRINE THE UNLIKELY STORY OF LEGACY, LAND SPEED RECORDS AND CONSERVATION BY MA RY MCIN T YRE
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ouise ann noeth has been fascinated with automobiles since she was 10 years old. She had driven nearly every notable muscle car by age 18, and was thoroughly enjoying herself with piston engines until she discovered jet engines in the mid-1970s. Soon after, she was invited to race a jet dragster across the country. Eventually, Noeth decided to make racing a full-time commitment. She headed to Southern California, where she started writing and earned the nickname “Landspeed Louise,” (which she still uses every time she answers the phone — “Hello, it’s Landspeed Louise!”). It was during her job as a stringer for Sports Illustrated in 1998 that Louise traveled frequently to the Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway to cover land speed racing. To Noeth, the Bonneville Salt Flats are a dream come true. The terrain is ideal for racing: The moisture in the surface prevents tires from overheating at high speeds; plus, it’s barren and flat, allowing cars to drive straight without obstacles for miles on end and for a string of world records to be set. By the time Noeth arrived at the Salt Flats, generations of drivers had made memories and history on the seemingly endless veneer of white salt, earning the flats the nickname “Speed Capital of the World.” Utah native Ab Jenkins had set records in the 1930s in a car christened the “Mormon Meteor III,” which had a bizarrely long snout designed to fit an aircraft engine and a tiny cockpit (he also set a 68 mph record on the flats driving a tractor and once drove the same 10-mile track for 24 hours, and yet emerged from the car clean30 DESERET MAGAZINE
shaven, having used a razor while driving the last loop at 125 mph without a windshield). By 1949, the Salt Flats had become the premier place for racers to see if their vehicles were truly the fastest in the world. The 300, 400, 500 and eventually 600 mph records were all set and broken there. In 1970, Gary Gabelich — a handsome Californian who had worked as an Apollo test astronaut — drove the Blue Flame, a rocket-powered car that
“It’s a family of sorts,” Noeth says. “A family of speed.” With a wide smile and blond ringlets, Louise continues, “That’s my favorite part about it. These are regular people. They aren’t fancy, wealthy or anything. They have an idea and they execute it.” Friends were made. Records were set and reset. But all that while, the salt was disappearing.
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The Salt Flats began forming thousands of THE SALT FLATS AS WE KNOW THEM MAY NOT EXIST FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS.
looked like an outsized missile, setting a world land speed record of 622 mph. Noeth came along shortly after that. In 2001, she was part of “Team Vesco’’ when the Turbinator, a glittering blue 31-foot fuselage adorned with an eagle and American flag, set a record for the world’s fastest wheel-driven car. The record, 458 mph, stood until 2018. The driver, Don Vesco, crossed the finish line in his matching blue racing jacket with an American flag emblem covering his chest, his wavy white hair framing his aviator glasses.
years ago when Lake Bonneville dried up, leaving behind the Great Salt Lake and a vast expanse of seasonal marshes filled with salts and minerals such as potassium chloride (potash), gypsum and sodium chloride (table salt). These salts are suspended in a brine aquifer that rises during wet winter months and subsequently evaporates in warming temperatures, leaving a fresh layer of snow-white crystals every spring and summer. Originally 96,000 acres in size, the Salt Flats have now withered to about 30,000 acres. At least a third of the loss came from mineral extraction — mainly potash mining. If this rate of shrinking continues, the Salt Flats as we know them may not exist for future generations. The extraction of potash — potassium- rich salts that are used as fertilizer — began on the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1917, when World War I suspended importation of the salts that had previously come from Germany. However, production didn’t ramp up u ntil 1963, when the Bureau of Land Management Continued on page 35 P HOTO GRA P HY BY LOUI SE ANN NOETH
The Bonneville Wor ld F inals, w h ic h be g i n S e p t e mbe r 2 8 , i s o n e o f t h r e e a n n ua l r ac i n g ev e n ts on the fl ats
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© GE TTY IM AGES
Ni c knamed th e “ Th e Fastest S p eedway o n E a rt h ,” Bo n n ev i l l e S a lt F l ats i s t h e s i t e o f 3 8 l a n d s p e e d records
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the S alt Lay d ow n P r ojec t is now a r e q u i r e d e l e me n t o f I n t r e p i d P ota s h ’s mi n i n g o p e r at i o n pl a n
© G ETTY IMAG ES
A land speed rac er f inds s h ad e d ur ing S p eed W e e k i n 1 9 74 . T e mp e r at u r e s c a n r e ac h u p to 1 2 0 d e g r e e s o n the s a lt fl ats.
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“Landspeed” Louis e Ann Noeth ( r igh t) , au t h o r o f “ T h e H i sto ry o f t h e Bo n n ev i l l e S a lt F l ats,” w i t h L es S hockl ey
Continued from page 30 leased 25,000 acres to Bonneville Ltd., a private mining company. By 1979, the Utah Geological and Mineral Survey’s salt drilling measurements indicated that the flats were shrinking. The salt crust became thin and easy to puncture. In 1960, the salt on the International Speedway was multiple feet deep. In May 2021, it was a quarter of an inch thick. Recently, severe crashes have occurred due in part to the poor salt quality. Today, the largest regional source of dust is the Bonneville basin, which impacts local air quality and speeds up spring snowmelt in the Wasatch Mountains — the main source of water for nearly two million people living along the Wasatch Front. Without a salt crust to contain the dirt beneath, more dust is on its way to becoming windblown particles.
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University of Utah geoscientist Dr. B renda Bowen works in collaboration with the flats’ many stakeholders — land managers, the land speed racing community and the general public — to enable data-informed decision-making concerning the flats’ future. As she explains, potash mining is “actively extracting salt
much faster than it naturally accumulates.” Currently, Intrepid Potash extracts more than five billion gallons of brine from collection ditches annually, which in turn becomes an economic boon for the region. In 2020, Intrepid’s records show sales of $108 million, and, as of 2016, five companies were extracting various minerals from the Great Salt Lake and Salt Flats, contributing $1 billion annually to the Utah economy. But it’s a losing game. As the brine is removed, surrounding groundwater flows in. Research suggests this decreases the salinity of the brine. New salt can’t form. This is what the land speed racing community has been warning about for years. The Salt Laydown Program — a collaboration between the mining company Reilly Industries (which bought the leases from Kaiser) and the Bureau of Land Management — attempted to refresh the salt by pumping brine made from the salt waste byproduct onto the flats during winter months. In the late ’90s, R eilly opted to empty one of its evaporation beds and pumped 1.5 million tons of salt per year onto the flats. During that time, NASA imagery shows the Salt Flats growing. Following five years of salt laydown, the International Speedway, which had shrunk, expanded in length. This is when Don Vesco’s record-setting speed runs occurred, as
his team had been waiting several years for the salt to recover for the attempt. When Intrepid Potash acquired the mining leases in 2004, it drastically cut back the ongoing program. Once again, aerial imagery shows that the Salt Flats are contracting. In 2019, the Utah Legislature approved $5 million for Bonneville Salt Flats Restoration. Additionally, the BLM is currently funding research and collaborating on the future of the Salt Laydown Program while also exploring other options, such as buying the mining leases north of the highway from Intrepid to end brine collection near the publicly accessible parts of the Salt Flats and the International Speedway. But over the decades, mines have extracted tens of millions of tons of salt, so even when replacing 1.5 million tons of salt a year, it would take many years of laydown with no additional mining to restore the Salt Flats. That is, if the experiment works. Currently, there is no data showing that salt laydown will actually work. Some fear the best days of Bonneville are behind us. “Bonneville is in trouble,” Noeth says. “I predict that land speed racing at the Bonneville Salt Flats will be done in five years. People do not think the Bonneville Salt Flats could disappear. But if you want to see them, you better go fast!” SEPTEMBER 2021 35
SECTION
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THE BEST WORST PLACE WHAT ONE WESTERN TOWN HAS LEARNED FROM AN EXPERIMENTAL TENT CITY BY SO FIA JEREMIAS
I
in the small mountain city of Missoula, Montana, it’s rare to encounter a sleeping bag or tent on the sidewalk. Unlike major cities in the West, Missoula’s homeless population is, for the most part, hidden away. But as the pandemic spread and the economy suffered, 120 tents popped up under the Reserve Street Bridge by the banks of the Clark Fork River. In cities large and small across the West, the number of people living on streets is impossible to ignore. In San Francisco, one neighborhood placed giant boulders on the sidewalks in 2019 to deter some of the 8,000 people who sleep on the streets each night. Meanwhile in Los Angeles there are now over 40,000 unhoused individuals, and the city is attempting to ban sleeping, camping or sitting around parks, libraries and other public spaces. And even driving around midsize cities like Salt Lake City, which once seemed on the verge of solving the issue, there are plenty of people living under tarps and makeshift tents in the blistering heat of a historically dry summer. Then there are places like Missoula and Durango, Colorado, towns with smaller populations that never had to contend with largescale problems of public homelessness, but are now also facing the rise of people sleeping on the streets. These cities are pursuing a different solution: Set aside land for people to camp, making it legal and potentially safer. While Portland and Seattle experimented with sanctioned encampments years ago, the number of cities considering this potential solution has increased since the rise of COVID-19, when reduced shelter capacity forced people back onto the street and the 38 DESERET MAGAZINE
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautioned against razing existing camps. When I meet April Seat in July, it’s a temperate, blue-sky day in Missoula. Standing on the valley floor and gazing up at the green mountains that surround the town, I feel a little like I’m inside a postcard. Seat leads me across a sun-battered dirt lot where 20 tents are pitched on wooden platforms. Some of the camp’s residents have set up umbrellas
ACCORDING TO THE CAMP’S DIRECTOR, THE STAFF HAS MANAGED TO GET MORE PEOPLE HOUSED IN SIX MONTHS THAN THEY HAD IN THE PRIOR TWO YEARS.
and plastic beach chairs to escape the sun. The security that allows them to do so makes this place unique, if not desirable. “This space is the best worst place,” she says. Between 20 and 40 people without homes now live at the Temporary Safe Outdoor Space, a city-sanctioned encampment and one example of a broader experiment taking shape in cities across the West. Seat is its director and champion. Once a resident of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, she dreams of creating a
place where others can also find safety and enough peace to start anew. Missoula, a town of roughly 75,000, doesn’t look, at first glance, like a place where people struggle financially. Modest homes sell for half a million dollars, and signs of wealth abound — for example, boutiques selling shapeless gray dresses and woven basket purses or women sporting Peloton T-shirts. Yet the city’s main brick-and-mortar shelter is at capacity, and some homeless people seek refuge at unauthorized camps like the one under the Reserve Street Bridge. The Temporary Safe Outdoor Space was launched at the height of the pandemic to provide a safer alternative. Seat wants the city to make this program permanent, pointing to its success as a foothold for residents who need help getting into housing or taking other meaningful steps such as getting an ID or finding work. But camps like these have many opponents: activists who want solutions to be focused on building affordable housing to businesses, homeowners who don’t want to see tents popping up in their neighborhood. The camp’s success — or failure — could serve as a model or warning to other cities attempting to grapple with growing numbers of people without a place of their own.
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Sanctioned encampments have sprouted up across the West as cities large and small contend with growing populations of unhoused people. Many are in the early stages of development and there’s not yet definitive data P HOTO GRA P HY BY PASCAL SHI R LEY
Apri l S eat is th e d ir ec tor and c h amp i o n o f t h e e x p e r i me n ta l T e mp o r a ry S a f e O u t d o o r S pac e i n Mi s s ou l a
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on how many exist. For instance, in Salt Lake City, a tiny-home village is in the works, while Denver has set up several sanctioned encampments and a similar encampment went up in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 2011. And when COVID-19 hit, Los Angeles rented out hotel rooms where its homeless population could seek shelter. In Missoula, there are a fair amount of services and options for a relatively small city. Beyond the local shelter, the city purchased a hotel to temporarily house the homeless and two affordable housing projects are in the works, although they’re still several years away from completion. When COVID-19 hit, the shelter had to drastically reduce capacity and started turning people away — more than 50 on one chilly night. Meanwhile, the city’s unsanctioned encampment on Reserve Street tripled in size. A new encampment formed, but law enforcement cleared it. Tents started popping up in neighborhoods. The sanctioned camp went up as COVID-19 infections peaked to alleviate some of the pressures on the existing system. The county asked two nonprofits — United Way and Hope Rescue Mission — to start an alternative to the shelter; it had heard about cities in New Mexico and Colorado setting up small tent villages with greater access to services. There’s been plenty of resistance in the community, Josh Slotnick, a county commissioner, told me, and he’s gotten his fair share of angry emails from those who say the sanctioned camp is making Missoula an attractive place for people seeking shelter. But he believes in the project. So far, the proponents of the camp are succeeding in keeping the operation running — the county has approved its continuation and is looking for land to potentially set up a second location. Slotnick says he’s willing to accept getting voted out due to his support for the sanctioned camp. “I feel like this could be a new response to this crisis that’s crushing the West right now.”
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Driving down Highway 93, I turn off onto a
dirt road with half a dozen or so parked cars. The two-and-a-half-acre plot sits among open fields, with a small pond and one lone tree for shade. At the Temporary Safe Out-
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door Space, the sound of a generator is constant, powering a portable air-conditioning unit and several computers inside (there’s no electricity on the land). Inside a yurt, a round domed tent that serves as camp headquarters, a volunteer dentist is finishing a checkup with a resident, and another man uses one of the computers to search for jobs. Outside there are garden boxes built with salvaged wood, where people have planted lettuce and strawberries. There’s also no running water on the lot, so five-gallon jugs are brought in each week. In the direct sunlight, I feel small droplets of sweat start to form on my forehead, and bright light bounces off the dirt. According to Seat, her staff has managed to get more people housed in six months than they had in the prior two years. One employee tells me that he’ll make calls on their behalf, telling landlords he’s looking for an apartment for a friend, which has been a little easier than working through caseworkers. They can also act as a reference, vouching for the care residents take of their tents. Seat calls it a “service-rich environment” (there are resume-building workshops, access to caseworkers and art classes), but the most important service they’ve been able to provide is safety and peace of mind. On the street, people have to deal with police forcing them to move or confiscating their possessions, with other people stealing their things and the potential of violence. Meeting the most basic of human needs, namely a place to sleep, becomes impossible. At the Temporary Safe Outdoor Space, there’s constant staffing, which is funded by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act and donations, and residents don’t need to worry about law enforcement waking them in the middle of the night. Lockboxes stand guard at each tent so people can leave their possessions and meet with caseworkers or go to job interviews. Seat says another reason their program has been so successful is that she, and most staffers, have all experienced homelessness at one point in their lives. She was an addict for 25 years. She says, “I don’t fully get where you’re at, because our situations were different. But I understand the brokenness, I understand that addiction, and I understand the loneliness of all of it.” Seat, who grew up in California, started using drugs when she was just 12 years old and eventually became addicted to meth. “I chose
the world, and the world chose me really,” she says. Her life crumbled when two sheriffs showed up at her door in 2009: one with an order to take away her five-year-old son and another serving an eviction notice. She became homeless, bouncing between friends’ couches and abandoned hotel rooms, and at one point she lived in a tent on Los Angeles’ Skid Row. Eventually she made her way to Missoula, after her husband gave her a one way ticket, where she began to detox. They were the worst four weeks of her life, she said. She struggled with sobriety, but in 2013 she got invited to a faith-based meeting and started attending the River of Life, a Christian church focused on ministry, a self-described “hospital for the hurting.” At the end of one sermon the pastor walked up to her and shook her hand. She heard a voice inside her say, “You’re home.” Through her church she got involved with Hope Rescue Mission, a nonprofit that does outreach with people who are unhoused. The camp is just the beginning for Seat — she hopes to continue and expand the operation and one day open a ranch where people can come to heal, get back on their feet like she did, and hear a voice telling them that they’re safe and at home. But for now, this little patch of gravel is enough. It’s a better alternative for those who feel unsafe on the streets, who need an opportunity to be treated as human again.
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Later that day, I go to Reserve Street, a sprawling community that exists under the Reserve Street Bridge by the Clark Fork River on land owned by the Montana Department of Transportation. I’m told I’ll need a guide (many people caution me not to go alone), and Robert O’Masters, another Temporary Safe Outdoor Space employee who used to live on the streets of Missoula, says he’ll take me. To get to the encampment, we hop over the bridge and slide down a dirt embankment. Trails wind through the tall grasses growing on the side of the river. Tarps and tents are everywhere. Trash has been smashed into the ground. Some people have built small yards. There are a few port-a-potties on the far side of the camp. The shade and water make it a more desirable place to live, but it’s also in a floodplain. Continued on page 45
D ow ntow n Mi s s o u l a a n d t h e C l a r k Fo r k R i v e r
Kay la and S h e i l a , r e s i d e n ts o f t h e e x p e r i me n ta l c a mp
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und er th e R es e rv e St r e et Br i d g e by t h e C l a r k Fo r k R i v e r 42 DESERET MAGAZINE
a R e s e rv e St r e et Br i d g e c a mps i t e
Tem p or ary S af e Outd oo r S pac e R e s i d e n ts p r e pa r e p l a n t i n g s f o r g a r d e n box e s SEPTEMBER 2021 43
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A c am p stove ( top ) a n d t e n ts ( be low ) i n t h e au t h o r i ze d e n c a mp me n t
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D ow ntow n M is s oula’s home l e s s p o pu l at i o n i s, fo r t h e mo st pa rt, h i d d e n away
Continued from page 40 “Even where people have no option but to attempt to survive in public spaces, they still can be subject and increasingly are subject to criminal and civil penalties for that,” Tristia Bauman, an attorney for the National Homelessness Law Center, says. Some worry that sanctioned encampments provide cover for cities to continue conducting sweeps — if they can claim that there are other places for those experiencing homelessness to sleep, there’s more legal standing to force them to move. Or at least that’s the concern of Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project. Boden became homeless when he was 16, in the 1980s. He knows all the ins and outs of shelter systems and has seen many programs fail to make substantial change in the lives of people experiencing homelessness. It all comes down to housing, Boden says, and as the affordable housing system is decimated the homeless system is growing in turn. “You have the audacity to turn around and blame us and say, ‘We need life skills training,
we need case management. We all need mental health services.’ ” Substance abuse and mental health issues are widespread problems, and focusing on those things doesn’t address the root problem, he says. “Without a home it’s gonna exist.” The sanctioned encampment also still has some of the problems that anyone sleeping in a tent faces — they are vulnerable to the elements. One month a windstorm tore apart many of the tents, and residents were moved to a hotel room for the night. The tents were quickly replaced, but a particularly cold night or a blistering hot day can make the sanctioned encampment unlivable.
• Housing
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is the ultimate solution, and it’s also the desire of everyone I talk to at the sanctioned encampment, and on the streets of Missoula. At the encampment I meet Kayla, an 18-year-old resident with long blond hair, under the shade of a big tree. She grew up in
Salem, Oregon, and landed in Missoula after her mother, who she had recently reconnected with, dropped her off here a few months ago and then immediately left without telling Kayla. She has been in the foster care system for most of her life. So far her life in Montana, and at the Temporary Safe Outdoor Space, has been a bit better. Staff have helped her get out of the foster system and, in a few days, she will meet with a caseworker who’s helping her get an apartment. She wants to finish high school (she’s only three credits away from graduating), and go to college for music (her favorite singers are Dolly Parton and Carrie Underwood) or interior design. “It’s really peaceful here. There are days where there’s a lot of yelling and stuff, but then there’s days like today, when it’s just quiet and it’s peaceful and it’s the best place to be,” Kayla says. Before leaving the encampment I say goodbye to Seat, who gives me a hug, a startlingly human motion after a year of distancing. Seat’s message follows in that simplicity. “We go out and see who we can touch.” SEPTEMBER 2021 45
LETTER FROM THE FIELD
THE RIVER IS ROUND THE KEY TO CONFRONTING OUR WORLD’S WOES? RECOGNIZING OUR INTERCONNECTEDNESS. BY SCOTT CA R R IER
M
y grandfather and i are in a small fishing boat on the Lake of the Ozarks. It’s early morning, the fog is lifting off the water. I am five years old. He is 65 years old, a short man with a cigar in his mouth. He’s teaching me how to fish. For bait he uses dog chow soaked in a bucket of coagulated cow’s blood. The unspoken agreement is I can hang out with him, follow him around as long as I don’t ask any questions because he doesn’t like to talk. He likes to keep the cigar in his mouth. Talking involves taking the cigar away from the mouth, holding it in a hand, rendering that hand useless. His hands make things. His hands do things, like when he catches a catfish he kills it by running a coat hanger up its spine to the brain. He doesn’t need to talk. I can figure it out. The hands must go into the bucket of blood and be covered in blood. The bait must go on the hook. The hook must go in the water. The cigar must stay in the mouth. This is how you become a fisherman. Or so I thought when I was five. Later, as a Boy Scout, I learned to fish in another way — no cigar, no bucket of blood. Our scoutmaster taught us how to cast a fly line. He showed us how to tie our own flies and build our own fly rods, and in the summer he took us to the mountains in Wyoming to catch big trout. I don’t want to say the name of the mountains (my fishing hole is a secret), but I’ve been going back there pretty much every summer of my life. Like last summer, at the height of the pandemic. Without looking at a map, I want to show you where I went fishing. Then I will tell you what I learned, leaving out all the parts about fishing.
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There’s a mountain about 250 miles north of my house in Salt Lake City, near the Yellowstone Plateau, an area with a lot of mountains and mountain ranges. There’s one peak, not as tall as some of the others and somewhat hidden from view. Most people have never heard of it. It’s a mountain with three sides or three faces, like a pyramid only with three sides instead of four, almost 11,700 feet above sea level.
YOU’VE HEARD OF THE ROUND RIVER. IT’S A MYTH FROM PAUL BUNYAN FOLKLORE ABOUT A RIVER THAT RUNS BACK INTO ITSELF. THE MYTH IS A METAPHOR FOR THE CIRCLE OF LIFE.
Most of the year the faces are covered with snow, but in the summer the snow melts and the water runs downhill in three directions. One side slopes to the east and the water finds the Missouri River, which finds the Mississippi, which finds the Gulf of Mexico. One side goes to the Snake, to the west, to the Columbia, which empties into the Pacific Ocean. And the other side runs south to the Green, which becomes the Colorado, which used to run into the Sea of Cortez but now gets sucked dry, pretty much, before it gets there.
So water that falls as snow on this one mountain ends up in the bodies of people in New Orleans, Portland and Yuma. That’s an enormous area to hold in your head without looking at a map — most of the western half of the United States. So here’s another way to think about it, using a tree as a basic shape. A river system or watershed is shaped like a tree with its trunk in the ocean and the upper branches reaching to the highest ridge lines and peaks in the mountains far away. There’s the tree of the Mississippi watershed — one side of its canopy is in upstate New York and the other side reaches western Montana, the Yellowstone Plateau. Then there’s the tree of the Columbia, spreading out mostly in British Columbia but reaching south to Yellowstone. And the tree of the Colorado, skinny and tall in comparison, squeezing through the southwestern deserts to reach up almost to Yellowstone — where the upper branches of the three trees nearly come together, almost touching on top of the three-sided mountain. And so I went fishing there, in the top branches of these three trees, circumnavigating the mountain with my friend and my dog and a canoe tied on top of the car. The first thing I want to report is flowers, wildflowers, lots of them in green alpine meadows at 7,000 to 8,000 feet above sea level. They were small flowers, but their colors spoke loudly in the grass. They were making a statement, mainly for the bees, or maybe for the birds and the bees — it’s OK to fall in love. But seriously now: High alpine meadows have rivers flowing through them, and in the rivers there are fish. I was in the meadow and I got down on my hands and knees and crawled through the grass to approach the water. Fish P HOTO GRA P HY BY PASCAL SHI R LEY
Th e C lar k F or k in Mo n ta n a i s pa rt o f t h e C o lu mbi a R i v e r wat e r s h e d
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LETTER FROM THE FIELD
in these rivers are skittish by nature, sitting in clear shallow water for all the ospreys to see, so they’ve got to be always looking up and quick as lightning. And then these fish are extra anxious these days because the water is getting warmer every year and new species are moving in, old species are disappearing. The water is warmer and there is less of it. The glaciers up high are shrinking and snowfields that used to stay all summer are now gone by the end of June. Lakes are drying up. They’re on the map but they no longer exist on the ground. So the fish here are somewhat traumatized, and if they see you they just freak out. I crawled to the bank of the river and stared down into the water. The coloring of the fish makes them nearly invisible among the sand and pebbles and rocks along the river bottom, so I looked for a shadow, a shape that moves, and I saw them, little ones, five to six inches, in the shallow water. Usually this means there are bigger fish, much bigger fish, lying low in the deeper pools where the current is not strong and the food comes by like on a conveyor belt. I would come back later and catch them, for sure. I stood up and looked around across the meadow to the mountains beyond and had a Hemingway moment when I thought, “This is good.” There were sandhill cranes in the distance trumpeting in agreement. Sandhill cranes stand four feet tall and have seven-foot wingspans. Every year they travel round trip between Mexico and Siberia. Many of them stop along the Platte River in Nebraska, but some prefer these meadows and marshes around the three-sided mountain, and I think they have the more discriminating taste. They are artists, modern dance magicians. I saw two of them perform once at a spring. I had a frontrow seat, and it was like they were tying knots in the air using explosives. It scared me. We went higher, moving closer to the top of the three-sided mountain, and the rivers became loud and white, falling through rapids and waterfalls, bending around house-sized boulders that had fallen from thousand-foot walls of white granite. There were no trails. We walked on rock, climbed on rock, up canyons carved by glaciers. This elevation — 9,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level — is the home, or the biome, of my favorite tree, the whitebark pine, which sometimes grows straight out of the rock. 48 DESERET MAGAZINE
These trees are shaped more like tall bushes than the stereotypical pointed pine tree. They have multiple trunks and grow up to 60 feet. Their skin is white, or silver in the bright daylight and golden as the sun goes down. And their pine boughs throw off rainbows in the shape of fireballs, or so it seemed to me in a certain state of mind. Whitebark pine trees came to America from Siberia, their seeds carried by birds, corvids, crossing the Bering Strait, following the icefree corridor to the south. The trees were followed by grizzly bears who feasted on the seeds or pine nuts before hibernating. And the bears were followed by humans. The whitebark pines live in the finest locations on the mountain, places with the best views of the clouds coming in over the Yellowstone Plateau, like a soft quilt of alto cumulus, or a thunderhead loaded with lightning that tries to break the canyon walls and scares the living heck out of you. The white pines like it on top of the high ridgelines where the wind and the weather are most harsh, their branches like cilia or nerve fibers reaching up and touching the clouds, telling them to drop their water here. Now, unfortunately, more than half of the white pines are dead, a devastation brought on by an infestation of pine beetles. The winter temperatures are no longer cold enough to kill the beetles, so they hole up in the pine trees, boring into the trunks where they release hitchhiking fungus that blocks the trees’ veins and arteries, killing the trees so the beetles can safely hatch their babies ... which fly off with hitchhiking fungus to kill other trees, especially the old ones, born long before any European stepped on the continent. When whitebark pines die like this, they don’t fall down; they keep standing. Their bark falls off in sheets and their limbs turn into skeletons. Now the clouds passing by hold their water tight rather than drop it on a ghost forest. Or that’s the way it felt up there. In the evening I used some of the dead limbs to build a fire and cook the fish I caught. Then we watched the full moon come up with Jupiter and Saturn, and a comet flaring above the western horizon. Maybe you’ve heard of the Round River. It’s a myth from Paul Bunyan folklore about a
river that runs back into itself. Aldo Leopold wrote that the myth is a metaphor for the circle of life. But the Round River is also a real thing, not just a myth or a metaphor. Water runs down the three-sided mountain in rivers that carry it to the ocean, where water evaporates into clouds that carry it back to the mountain. In this way, all rivers are round rivers. We live on the third rock from the sun, the only rock in the universe that we know of that’s wrapped in a living skin, a biosphere, where everything is interconnected — rocks, trees, fish, birds, clouds, people — it’s one big room, or simmering pot, and we’re all in it together. Think about the coronavirus. It’s microscopic, maybe not even alive. It has no legs or wings, and yet it spread around the world in a couple of months, crossing international borders, ignoring the lines between race and class and religion. We tried to stop it by self-isolating, becoming biospheres unto ourselves, which at least in the United States only made us hate and fear one another all the more. For sure there’s a strong scientific argument for social distancing and wearing face masks, but the only way we are going to beat the virus or get a grip on climate change is to start caring about one another as if we are all part of the same family — rocks, trees, fish, birds, clouds and people. The borders and lines we draw exist only in our minds. That was easy to see and believe in when we were up on the mountain. We had hope that things could change for the better. But when we came home, back down to the city, the news was full of horrors and unspeakable things, everybody at each other’s throats and scared about what’s going to happen next. I’m standing in my yard, watering the grass by hand, holding the hose in full command. I can see the mountains where the water comes from and I can see the lake, the Great Salt Lake, where the water ends up with nowhere to go but back into the air as clouds that carry it back up to the mountains. I don’t know what’s going to happen — nobody does — and I’m not sure what I’m going to do today, or tomorrow. For now I just want to hold the hose and say hello to my neighbors and not be the old man who says get off my lawn. So, hello neighbor. I hope you’re doing well.
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ZACH THE EDUCATION OF
WILSON FOR A FRESH-FACED KID FROM SUBURBAN UTAH TO WIN ON THE NFL’S BIGGEST STAGE, HE’LL NEED TO DRAW ON A LIFETIME OF LESSONS — AND AN ARM THAT MAKES TALENT EVALUATORS DROOL BY ETHAN BAUER ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE MCQUADE SEPTEMBER 2021 51
Z
ach wilson is a long way from home. Across the practice field, 11 defenders in green helmets ache for a chance to teach the peach-fuzzed rookie from Utah a gritty New York lesson. Sweat trickles down his back. Zach fakes a handoff to his right and peeks left, looking for an open man. Even at six-foot-two-inches tall and 215 pounds, he looks small as the defense swarms around him. Lurching forward he jerks the ball up and over a defender, holding onto it with both hands. A fumble would be disastrous, even embarrassing. Now chased from behind, he spots a receiver streaking downfield and, without hesitation, heaves the ball. It’s more of a flick, really; he throws it on the run, without the weight of his body or the force of fundamentals behind it. It’s even a little reckless, a throw his father might have scolded him for as a child back home in Draper, Utah. A throw that might have unnerved his coaches at Brigham Young University no matter how many times they’d seen him pull it off. But it’s also reminiscent of a throw he made at his pro day last March: an off-platform missile that became an instant sensation and helped get him picked second overall in the 2021 NFL draft. Few men can throw the ball this far, this fast, this powerfully; hardly any can do it off their front foot. And it’s beautiful. Even Zach admires the ball’s path across a sky dotted with fluffy clouds. A silence falls over the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center in Florham Park, New Jersey, among leafy suburban hills 35 miles west of Manhattan. Coaches, teammates, beat writers and fans spilling out of the bleachers pause to watch as a Saturday perfume of propane, burgers and dogs wafts across the field. They’ve waited a lifetime for a face of the franchise, a quarterback who can lead the Jets back to the Super Bowl and make them all proud. Now Zach’s boyish, straight-jawed visage welcomes them to the facility, and replicas of his No. 2 jersey are everywhere. One fan even wears a Cougar blue throwback. Their hopes rest on Zach’s square shoulders. Fear lingers in the background, fed by so many prior disappointments. Is Zach built for all this pressure? Can a sheltered suburban kid survive the league’s toughest fans, thrive under the heat of the media’s brightest lights, win on the country’s biggest stage and lead one of the NFL’s most storied but hapless franchises? And not just win, but own this town? To do so, he’ll have to marshal every resource that got him this far, from the hard-work lessons of childhood to the wise advice of those who’ve gone before — and of course that golden right arm. And he’ll have to embrace the spotlight. Scattered oohs punctuate the moment as Elijah Moore, the speedy rookie receiver, gets 10 yards of separation from his nearest defender and the ball descends like a space capsule. It’s a sublime moment in the uneven early days of camp. Yesterday was rough; tomorrow will be just another grind. But as the ball settles into Moore’s outstretched hands, 55 yards downfield, the crowd erupts. “Zach! Zach!” They keep chanting, even when he doesn’t react, too focused to appreciate the moment.
An hour away, Times Square still isn’t sold. You won’t find a Zach ilson jersey at the 11-floor flagship Macy’s. There are two racks of W Donovan Mitchell Utah Jazz jerseys at Grand Slam New York, but ask about Zach Wilson and the guy behind the counter steps back, raises a bushy eyebrow and asks, “Who?” In this city of constant motion, it takes a major accomplishment to get noticed — or any kind of failure. Suited 52 DESERET MAGAZINE
stock traders to rough-talking construction workers, from the middle- aged couple kissing on the steps at Columbus Circle to the teenagers chattering in Spanish on the uptown train to the Bronx, New Yorkers can all smell failure, and they won’t tolerate it. Zach may practice and play in the suburbs, but the city will dictate his fame and his fate. Enter Zach, whose cleanshaven good looks and aw-shucks demeanor could’ve won him a part in a boy band. Back home in Utah, his talent and easy confidence made him the king of Draper, a titan in Provo, a legend among his people. He mounted eye-popping statistics and revived BYU’s reputation as an offensive powerhouse. He made the Cougars his own and led the team to the cusp of a playoff spot, the first time in decades that BYU was in play for a national title, to any degree. But when the Jets picked him second overall in the 2021 NFL draft — where he looked famously uncomfortable as his fellow prospects mugged and flashed hand gestures for the TV cameras — they set him on a new and onerous path. Whatever he did at BYU means nothing here, despite the school’s erstwhile reputation as a quarterback factory. Jim McMahon won a Super Bowl with the Chicago Bears in 1986, but most of the Cougar greats faltered in the NFL. After winning a Heisman Trophy, Ty Detmer spent 14 years in the league as a career backup. John Beck was drafted in the second round but got dumped by a new coach after just two seasons. Robbie Bosco, who led BYU to a national championship in 1984, was felled by a shoulder injury he suffered in college. Even Steve Young had to survive a hellish, injury-ridden tenure on a woeful Tampa Bay squad, sacked 68 times in two years, before eventually winning three Super Bowls and two MVP awards in San Francisco. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005. Bosco admits, “There’s a lot of luck with these kinds of dreams.” Any young quarterback must walk a delicate line to make it in the NFL, perfecting their craft and winning over a locker room of grown men while navigating a parade of off-field obstacles and distractions. But few teams have had such poor fortunes at the position as the Jets in the past decade. Time and again, the team has ushered in a new era with an overhyped draft pick who leaves by the back door a few years later, their talent undermined by toxic expectations, poor coaching, their own egos or an utter lack of talent on the roster. Earlier this year, they traded Sam Darnold, the third overall pick in 2018, to make room for Zach. Still, there are reasons to believe Zach could be different. He has one of the strongest arms in the NFL, complemented by a natural athleticism that fuels his improvisational, backyard-football playing style. BYU fans might see echoes of Young’s pinballing, gun-slinging ways, but league experts also compare him to Patrick Mahomes, voted the NFL’s Most Valuable Player in 2018. Both are accurate passers who can also make the spectacular throws, on the run or off-balance, that can eke out a win. Zach is a known student of the game, a film study maven who has lived and breathed the sport from childhood, taught by his father to work hard and train conscientiously. And at BYU, he gained access to one of the best living libraries of quarterback greats to lean on for advice. He’ll need all that and a few lucky breaks.
Even the biggest moments start small. A Saturday morning game
ball, a boy’s first spiral. But in Zach’s childhood they didn’t happen by
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a ccident. Under his father’s watchful eye, he started playing organized football when he was seven years old. “Even then he pushed me,” Zach told the Deseret News. “But not in a bad way.” Imagine a fall afternoon in the Salt Lake Valley, sometime in the lateaughts. The air is crisp and a leaf blower hums in the distance. In a typical suburban neighborhood along the Wasatch Front, big stucco houses face a quiet street lined with minivans and Ford pickups. On a backyard lawn, a skinny little boy steps into a throw, zipping the football past his ear and flicking it to his father, a giant by comparison at six-foot-three. If the scene seems idyllic, you haven’t been counting the reps. Palming the ball, Mike Wilson lobs it back to his son, nudging young Zach to watch his form. “My childhood,” Zach says, “was different than my friends’.” Mike knew better than most dads what it takes to compete on the highest level. He was an all-state defensive tackle back home in Hawaii and brought his own dreams to the University of Utah in 1992. But he played only sporadically for the Utes — who competed in three bowl games and shared a Western Athletic Conference title over the next four years — even after bulking up to 295 pounds. Four years later, Zach was born, and Mike joined the ranks of former college athletes who groom their children to exceed their own success. Zach’s upbringing was built around athletics, his exercise regimented, his participation in sports designed to challenge him and hone his skills. He played against older kids in both basketball and football — and often tore them up. At his peak, that translated to seven or eight games a week. “Every weekend was crazy,” Zach says. “It was hard on a kid to be playing that much. I wanted to be a kid.” Like any modern teenager, he wanted to go to the movies with his friends or just hang out. But first, he had to train, lifting weights or going to the gym. “Dad pushed me to work hard,” Zach says. “If I didn’t want to, he made me.” At the same time, Zach wanted to win, no matter the circumstances. His father, an entrepreneur who owns a number of gas stations and convenience stores in the Salt Lake City area, just showed him how to do it. Mike hardly knew his own father. His parents divorced when he was small. His father was an alcoholic, and his mother struggled to pay the bills on her own. At 17, Mike couldn’t even afford a driver’s license. He refused to pass those shortcomings on to his children. So for all the times his own father wasn’t there, he would be there for his kids and teach them what he had to learn on his own. “I learned everything from him,” Zach says. By the time he became a star at Corner Canyon High School, Zach had made that work ethic his own. All those long hours had formed his body, shaping a natural throwing motion that impressed his head coach and — soon — college recruiters. But after his junior season, he set out to build muscle on his 180-pound frame. His father fed him mounds of white rice and protein shakes, while Zach did bulking reps in the gym. By summer, he was up to 205 pounds, and he could bench press over 300. “He’s a driven kid,” says Corner Canyon head coach Eric Kjar. “When he has his eyes on something, he gets it done.” That fall, Zach showed the fruits of his labor on the artificial turf of Charger Stadium — tucked into a classic suburban campus with red brick buildings and a bell tower, nestled among white steeples in the Wasatch foothills. Playing against Timpview High, he lowered his shoulder on a
designed run and knocked a defender right out of the game. Kjar was furious, chiding his star for not protecting himself. “That felt good,” Zach told him, with an impish grin.
Zach can be a little obsessive. So his college roommates know where to find him. Past the pingpong table in the dining room, down the hall of the upscale town house in the Provo hills, owned by Zach’s dad, BYU wide receiver Gunner Romney finds his quarterback seated on a perfectly made bed, above a freshly vacuumed carpet, staring at a screen. The room is always immaculate, and as usual Zach is watching game tape. T oday, the
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“DAD PUSHED ME TO WORK HARD,” ZACH SAYS. “IF I DIDN’T WANT TO, HE MADE ME.” BUT IN TIME, ZACH MADE THAT ETHIC HIS OWN.
subject is Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers. “Zach studies more film than anybody I’ve ever met in my entire life,” Romney says. He’s been this way since he sauntered onto campus in January 2018, skipping his last semester of high school to join the Cougars for spring practice. “He carried himself with this swagger that probably rubbed people the wrong way,” says Fesi Sitake, the assistant coach who recruited Zach with the promise he could play in front of his hometown fans as soon as he earned it. So Zach came in ready to compete. “He knew the offense better than anyone else on the team,” says Aaron Roderick, then quarterbacks coach. Around that time, a relative referred Zach to John Beck. The BYU alum and NFL retiree has become one of the nation’s top private coaches for quarterbacks, with clients like Matt Ryan and Drew Brees. Even in their first conversation, as he and Zach talked through defensive coverages, Beck could see how much time his younger counterpart spent practicing, studying and thinking about football. “You can always tell,” he says. After Zach lost the starting job to Tanner Mangum, a senior, he kept studying film, averaging four or five hours per day. So he was ready to step in as Mangum struggled midway through the season. He came on in relief and led the Cougars to the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, where he played like a master. That afternoon he completed all 18 of his passes for 317 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions — an unusual feat for anybody, much less a true freshman. Head coach Kalani Sitake credits Zach’s study habits. “His work ethic is unique,” he says. “A lot of people work hard. But I don’t know how many people really think about football like Zach does.” One night after a game, Beck sends Zach a text with some generic congratulations for a job well done. Zach answers right away. “Have you watched the game yet?” he asks. “I’m watching it now,” Beck answers. “Me too,” Zach writes. It’s well past midnight, but there he is, studying his own tape. For Beck, that devotion is heartening. “It’s the common thread that is found in almost all the guys that are successful,” he says. “Outside of his physical ability, those were the types of things that made me say, ‘I believe in this kid.’ ”
Sometimes, it’s not enough. Because sometimes, it’s out of your control.
It doesn’t feel that way when Zach drops back into his own end zone, with 35 seconds on the game clock. The ball is in his hands, his team’s fate on his back. He is 92 yards from a touchdown, six points that will give BYU the narrowest lead and the win. He is the perfect player to save the Cougars’ perfect season, keeping them undefeated for the first time since 1984. And he knows it. Stepping up, he launches a familiar heave down the right sideline, where Romney jumps up between two defenders to haul it in. The Cougars are still alive. Barely. The 2020 season wasn’t even supposed to happen once the pandemic hit. But some innovative scheduling made BYU the only team on the field west of the Rocky Mountains, at least for a few weeks. After losing
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his sophomore season to a nagging shoulder injury, Zach won the starting job in training camp and set out to court the hype. Borrowing from Jim McMahon, he wore a headband on game day, reading, “Any team, time, place.” Nobody expected greatness from these Cougars. But sometimes, a team comes together. Zach’s play elevated the offense, and they feasted on a schedule put together with duct tape and baling wire. They won the opener against Navy. They beat Troy. And Louisiana Tech. And they kept winning, their first nine games. So it made sense to accept the challenge when undefeated Coastal Carolina came calling, looking to fill a last-minute hole on the schedule after an opponent was ruled out over COVID-19 protocols. In December, on just a few days’ notice, the Cougars traveled across the country to play the Chanticleers in the biggest game in recent BYU history. E SPN’s “College Gameday” even came to chronicle the battle of Cinderella squads. It was Zach’s biggest chance yet to shine in front of a national audience. Now all he has to do is get 58 more yards in 24 seconds, with no time outs. He moves in the pocket, he scrambles, he zips quick passes, efficiently moving the ball down to the 18-yard line and stopping the clock at three seconds. With his legacy on the line, he steps back for one last play. His blockers hold up. Dax Milne comes open over the middle. He darts it. Milne catches the pass a mere two yards from the goal line, at full sprint. He’s about to score. Until he’s not. A defender wraps Milne’s waist and throws him backward. Just like that, it’s over. The game, the magic. All of it. Later, reporters wait to get Zach’s reaction at the postgame press conference. He isn’t made available, and he’s silent about the game on social media.
Zach gnaws on blue chewing gum. His thick brown hair is still walled up
in front, without a bead of sweat to weigh it down. TV cameras broadcast his calm across the nation as he trots around BYU’s indoor practice facility in a long-sleeved blue T-shirt, gray leggings and white cleats, looking like a racehorse ready to rumble. A horde of scouts, coaches and executives from all but one NFL team have descended on Provo to see him throw and assess his value in the upcoming draft, with millions of dollars and a future at stake. But if Zach is nervous, he doesn’t show it. On BYUtv, the announcer makes a prediction: No BYU pro day will ever be this big again. “This is the top of the mountain,” he says. For prospective NFL players, pro day is their chance to show off. They choose which events will highlight their strengths, and a great performance can launch them up draft boards. Zach is already a projected top-three pick, and he can erase any doubts with a strong showing. But he can also generate unwanted questions if he comes up short, though that seems unlikely. Just look around. After three decades of mediocrity, BYU is back at the center of the football universe, at least for these few hours. Mark Pope, the men’s basketball coach, chats with Kalani Sitake near the 50-yard line. Vai Sikahema, the beloved former Cougar and two-time Pro Bowler
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in the NFL, chats with Zach under the aggressive hum of fluorescent lights. Anyone with a stake in BYU wants to be here. Zach and Beck have choreographed every attempt, starting with something simple: a 10-yard out route. Zach pops the ball right into his receiver’s hands. Easy. On social media, as the throws grow increasingly difficult, would-be experts dissect every attempt, every interaction, looking for validation of their opinions, positive or negative. But don’t you dare bring up the past, as the NFL Network announcers do. “How could you take the guy in the top five when he couldn’t even beat Coastal Carolina?” He trails off as Zach — as if in direct response — fakes a handoff to his right and scrambles to his left. His receiver fakes left to the outside, then slants right across the middle of the field toward the end zone. Even if this is all a sort of illusion, a manufactured reality with nobody playing defense, the pressure is real, and Zach needs to nail this throw. Falling back toward his left, he flings the ball to his right, some 60 yards downfield. “Oh my goodness,” the announcer says. “That is just a silly throw.” Within minutes, a clip of the pass goes viral. Chris Simms, a former NFL quarterback and current draft analyst
for NBC Sports, has trumpeted Zach longer than anyone. “I’m blown away by Zach Wilson,” he said on his podcast back in March. “This is an Aaron Rodgers, a Patrick Mahomes, Brett Favre-ish type guy.” If it were up to Simms, he would’ve made Zach the top pick in the draft. He can throw a football in a way that few other living humans can — even humans who dedicate their lives to throwing footballs.
After his fourth practice in New Jersey, Zach approaches the press conference lectern in sneakers, a white tee and a gray Jets ball cap. He leans with his left elbow on the dais, his frost-blue eyes panning across the assembled reporters. He answers questions about his first day in pads; about his offensive line; about sharing a birthday with Tom Brady, who played his first NFL season, Zach points out, when Zach was a year old. For now, it’s friendly banter. Even for jaded reporters, it’s nice to have something hopeful to write about for a change. Especially now that Zach looks comfortable.
ZACH WALKS THE SIDELINE AT THE JETS’ TRAINING CAMP. HE’LL BE THE TEAM’S PRESUMPTIVE STARTER IN 2021, BARRING UNFORESEEN SETBACKS.
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THE SCRUTINY WILL BE RUTHLESS. THE REASONS WON’T MATTER. IF HE CAN’T WIN, THIS CITY WILL TEAR HIM APART.
That wasn’t the case on draft night, when he couldn’t seem to figure out his place in the moment. Watching from couches across America, viewers doubted he could make it in New York. “NY is gonna chew this kid up and spit him out,” one wrote on Twitter. “When (you’re) trying really hard to fit in and (it’s) just not working,” another tweeted, borrowing the language of a meme. “Not sure how he’s going to lead a bunch of teammates who aren’t the BYU-type in the biggest (media) market in the world under a new head coach,” somebody added. New York, itself, has been an adjustment. “There are some aggressive drivers here,” Zach said during a conference call in May. “Getting used to that, getting cut off everywhere you go. But really, I feel like I’m at home.” Where that is exactly remains confidential, but for now Zach is safe and isolated in small-town New Jersey. “One thing I love about being out here is the distance away from the city,” he says after a recent practice. “We’re all here to focus on ball.” The implicit jab at New York doesn’t go unnoticed, but for now, Zach gets a pass. After all, he’s new here. And he’s got that arm. But eventually, there will be no hiding. If football players are modern gladiators, New York is Rome. It sure isn’t Provo. Keen as he is on that familiar quiet lifestyle, Zach says it’s cool to be just close enough to explore the bright lights. And he’s made the rounds. Video from a New York Islanders hockey game shows him shouting “woo” at the ice alongside some of his offensive linemen, while one of them chugs a cold beverage and smashes the can against his own head. An Instagram post shows Zach enjoying a Knicks playoff game at Madison Square Garden. And for now, he can take this approach, stick his toes in the water without immersing himself. It’s the honeymoon period, after all, and the people want to see their great new hope. But will he still go to those games after he throws three picks and loses to the Miami Dolphins? One can imagine a world where everything goes right. Where a few years from now Zach pulls up on Broadway in a chauffeured car and emerges to the sights and sounds of a Manhattan night. In the country’s unofficial cultural and financial capital, arguably the nexus of the world, he blends into the unceasing honking and the passersby flowing like rivers over the sidewalks, savoring the aroma of street-side falafel or roasted nuts. Until someone recognizes him, and the crowd mobs him asking for photos and autographs, because New York loves a winner. He looks up at the Jolly Green Giant ads in Times Square smiling down on him. And he can’t help but smile back. That will all change quickly if he can’t deliver. The scrutiny will be ruthless. It won’t matter why, whether Jets fail to build talent around him or his backyard style gets him injured beyond repair. If he can’t win, this city will tear him apart. Not that his home crowd will care.
Back in Utah County, a white Amazon bag crinkles onto the porch in Spanish Fork just before noon. Despite the triple-digit heat of a high-desert summer, seven-year-old Cooper Russell charges from the
comfort of his air-conditioned home. He’s been waiting for this package for a long time. His wait, in the overarching sense, started in the 1940s, when his great-grandparents met at BYU. Later, they became student body president and vice president, they established the Cougarettes dance team, and before long, started a family. Three generations and 80 years later, that family still proudly supports its school. His wait, in the more personal sense, started at a BYU men’s basketball game in 2019, where he happened to meet a young football player just off his triumphant freshman season. “I met the quarterback. His name is Zach,” he told his mom, Heather, when he came home. “He fist-bumped me and made me feel like I was so cool.” He was Zach’s biggest fan for the next two years. And his wait, in the most literal sense, began on the opening night of the 2021 NFL draft. He’d tried to convince his parents to let him stay home from school that day for fear of missing Zach’s selection. “Buddy, it’s not until later tonight,” Heather told him. “I promise you’re not gonna miss anything.” When the moment finally arrived, and the Jets took Zach second overall, Cooper knew he only wanted one thing for his approaching birthday. Cooper’s feelings are perhaps the purest distillation of something many BYU fans share. And there are indeed many. “Our fan base isn’t just Utah or the surrounding states — our fan base is around the world,” Bosco says. And considering what Zach gave those fans, they adore him. Just look at some snapshots from his final game as a Cougar, the RoofClaim. com Boca Raton Bowl. In one, Zach holds a purple iPhone, flanked by fans, smiling for a selfie on a balmy winter night in South Florida. Both fans wear masks, but one has gray hair and another is clearly a child. In another, Zach holds a Sharpie in hand and grabs at a pair of gloves from a fan, but his eyes gaze past the blond kid, up into the stands and on to the totality of the moment, at the people who have stayed to meet him, and his expression says, I am lucky. One more. Now look into their eyes. A whole row of fans, leaning against the edge of the metal bleachers, creasing their blue sweaters and jerseys, craning their necks to get a good look at their hero. It’s a climax of correctness, of what it looks like when things go right, a portrait of “making it.” Whatever New York may think, the Cougar faithful will be watching. Just ask Steve Young. He grew up as the only Latter-day Saint in a high school of 3,000. When he saw one of his own doing anything well, he noticed. “There’s a sense of community, and that’s very positive,” he says. “But I could see where if you don’t have the right way to see it, or a healthy way to see it, it could become something not so positive.” Zach has said he doesn’t want to be the face of anything; he just wants to play ball. But for fans like Cooper, that is enough. Sporting a heavy gel comb-over and flashing a gap-toothed smile, the boy shreds the packaging. Soon, Heather, at work, receives a snapshot blurred by excitement. Cooper might as well be holding up Superman’s cape, but it’s a green No. 2 New York Jets jersey, “Wilson” stitched across the back. “Well,” he says, “I guess I’m a Jets fan now.” SEPTEMBER 2021 57
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hen I experienced my first quickening — the goldfish flop of a daughter deep in my belly — I was about 16 weeks pregnant and on a trip with my mom and sister in rural Ireland, home of many of my mother’s ancestors. We had just wandered the rocky ruins of a great-grandmother’s thatch-roofed seaside hut. I felt that first fetal tumble in my stomach afterward in a Galway pub, spooning up a bowl of piping-hot potato leek soup. It’s a bit unnerving to think that what all those unnamed mothers did centuries ago — in a world of strained sunshine and wet gray stone — might have somehow trickled down to make the modern me. What lullabies did they sing, between reviving the fire and boiling seaweed pudding for dinner? Could their actions help steer mine today, as I prance with my expensive stroller to grab falafel for lunch? Every new mother, it seems, is many generations in the making. A female fetus already has her full complement of several million eggs when she’s in the womb, and thus I may have already gestated part of my own future granddaughters, just as my own maternal grandmother once carried part of me. But the more I researched the science of motherhood, I came to learn that our collective story is still more mysterious, with intangible traits like maternal warmth also getting passed through bloodlines and across family trees — like a lit candle, or a whispered recipe, down from one woman to the next.
XOX
When I first started investigating the genetic influence on modern motherhood, I expected to be at once dazzled and depressed. That our genetic inheritance has power over us seems obvious: After all, maternal behavior is mediated by genes that have emerged and diverged over a million generations, with new variations constantly surfacing and getting spread or scrapped. Part of me craved clear-cut answers about how this evolution shaped my own mothering, almost as if I were back at the sleepover parties of yore, quizzing the Magic Eight Ball. Even though there would be nothing I could do about the results, what mom doesn’t want to know who she is meant to be? But to learn too much about the power of my own genes — whose blueprint is available from a simple cheek swab test — also 60 DESERET MAGAZINE
seemed like a way to lose my already tenuous sense of maternal agency. If invisible genetic units with inscrutable names, like, say, OXTR rs53576, explain all the wide variety of maternal behavior, where does that leave our own individual efforts and dreams for our families? Could all of the hours spent reading how-to parenting books be revealed as wasted, our best efforts overwritten in advance by some twist of DNA? A decade ago, science seemed ready to explain all kinds of human qualities and capabilities with a simple “There’s a gene for that.” In 2008, geneticists claimed to have identified a faithfulness gene that supposedly predisposed men to be sexually loyal (or not). Others chased down the “wanderlust gene” that allegedly drove globetrotting impulses and human migration patterns. Perhaps most famous was the “warrior gene,” which allegedly triggered aggression and risk-taking. I assumed that a good mom gene — call it the I-Can-Tell-a-Mile-Off-That-You-Have-aFever-and-Also-Scrape-the-Last-Bits-ofBarf-Out-of-Your-Car-Seat-Crevices Gene — would be in this same vein. And scientists have indeed crafted dozens of studies seeking to isolate these telltale variants, which are often linked to how moms’ brains process neurochemicals like oxytocin, associated with childbirth and social bonding. They’ve sought them in barnyards, where livestock scientists apparently yearn to breed pig supermoms, and in our own living rooms, where researchers try to match sensitive human mothering behaviors with particular genetic variants parsed from our spit samples. But in the course of writing my book about the maternal instinct — titled, yes, “Mom Genes” — I realized that a growing number of genetic researchers have moved past the idea of pinning a human behavior as complex as mothering on a few crucial strips of code. The more I talked to them, the more I discovered that the presence of any one subpar mom gene variant in the nuclei of my cells probably wasn’t going to scuttle my parenting. “These genes may be involved,” says Andrew Smolen, a geneticist at University of Colorado Boulder’s lab, speaking about the gene candidates his own research has identified as plausible influencers for maternal impulses. “But it’s kind of hard to believe that a single gene is going to be responsible for such a complex behavior, even though it has consequences down the line. Our ability to look at specific genes in-
volved in behavior is surprisingly not as robust as we once thought.” “I see many things working together, interacting with so many other things,” says maternal behavior researcher Stephen Gammie of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The transition into motherhood is not a one-note affair but a whole genetic symphony, “a score sheet with some things going up and others going down.” Meanwhile, as the hope of swiftly pinpointing moms’ make-or-break genetic markers recedes, scientists are increasingly sure that at least some of the apparent heritability of mothering is actually a somewhat different biological phenomenon: not a genetic inheritance, but a chemical story inscribed atop the genes we carry — one that our personal choices help write.
XOX
The story itself is obvious to anyone who’s watched a family. In a sort of Russian nesting doll effect, moms and daughters especially (but also granddaughters and great-granddaughters) tend to repeat caregiving patterns, sometimes in obvious ways — like giving birth to their first babies at equivalent ages — but also in more subtle, textured mannerisms, like how they exude warmth or hostility toward their children. The reality of these patterns hits me at random, eerie moments, like when I once realized that I was tightening my daughter’s ice skate laces with exactly my mom’s harried expression on my face, or looping the leather strap of my wristwatch through the handle of the pool bag just like how she used to. It happens especially when a kid is sick and I’m doling out earache medicine while speaking in her particular patient tone of voice, like a ventriloquist’s doll. I have such vivid flashbacks of my mom tenderly bathing seven-year-old me in a baking soda bath that sometimes I almost think it’s a shame that children don’t get chickenpox anymore. Perhaps the weirdest epiphany came when my mother pointed out that I had decorated my first daughter’s nursery in primary colors, rich red and blue and yellow, instead of the default pastel pink. This scheme, she reminded me, was identical to the colors of my own childhood nursery — even though I have no conscious memory of that room. In psychoanalytic circles, the notion of invisible third parties putting their oars into our parenting is literally called “ghosts in the
ursery,” and your own mother is typically the n most powerful spook. Figuring out just how and why we human mothers resemble our own moms is a very tall order indeed. And yet the fact remains that your feelings about your own mother are a major predictor of your relationship with your child. One team of scientists found that, in about 75% of cases, they could use a woman’s childhood-care recollections to forecast her relationship with her one-year-old. Scientists have tried to understand repeating mothering patterns via longitudinal studies, arduous undertakings that follow families for 30 years or more, as subjects who started out as children under their own parents’ rule become parents themselves. In the late 1980s, Rand Conger, now a University of California, Davis, professor emeritus, started studying Iowa farm families during a dire agricultural depression. He was initially interested in the crisis’ effect on the upbringings of several hundred seventh grade children, but ended up sticking around for a few extra decades until those seventh graders were moms and dads in their own right. “We saw intergenerational continuities within the families,” he says. “Kids who were treated harshly by their own parents were more likely to become harsh parents.” Human lives are never foregone conclusions, but the recurring themes were hard to ignore. Similar studies have since been carried out everywhere from England to Indonesia, in both highly educated populations and among the urban poor. In a New Zealand study, three-year-olds were followed until they had three-year-olds of their own. As adults, the original three-year-olds uncannily resembled their parents in their displays of warmth and sensitivity. Obviously, some aspects of this repetitive mothering simply reflect shared mother- daughter genetics, even if the specific genes remain MIA. Presumably at least a few are the result of copycat behavior, a simple matter of learning and imitation. But others are more mysterious, with nurture and nature intertwined.
XOX
Animal models offer evidence of this complexity. You can see that vervet monkeys, for instance, spend almost identical amounts of time with their babies as their mothers spent
with them. And in rhesus monkeys, abusive mothering stretches back along matrilines for half a dozen generations or more. In one watershed study from 2005, Dario Maestripieri, a scientist at Georgia’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center, recorded which infant female monkeys were abused — that is to say, dragged around, hit or stomped on by their moms. Then he watched as those baby girl monkeys grew up to slap around their own firstborns. Not surprisingly, more than half of the maltreated monkeys became abusive mothers. All the well-tended infants matured as competent mothers. There was a catch, though. In the first phase of the experiment, Maestripieri had pulled a switcheroo. He’d swapped some of the dayold babies, so that the abusive monkey moms ended up taking charge of the offspring of outstanding monkey moms, and vice versa. The monkeys grew up to match the behaviors of their adoptive mothers, not their biological mothers, from whom they’d inherited their genes. This suggests that the mothers’ abusive behavior is not passed down family bloodlines in any kind of straightforward genetic manner. Similarly, in a McGill University lab in Canada some 15 years ago, Frances Champagne (whose fabulous name reminds us how parents can shape their children in ways that transcend genes) noticed that even though all the rat families she was studying were from the same genetic strain, living under identical laboratory conditions, the mothers behaved slightly differently, especially in how often they licked their babies (of which they had up to 20 at a time, poor things). The top 5% of moms licked and groomed their young with extra diligence, and the bottom 5% licked less than average. “Why would these mothers behave differently?” Champagne asked herself. “Why would you get natural variation when there are no environmental cues that are changing?” It turned out that the licking styles were passed down like the maternal habits of Maestripieri’s monkeys. When Champagne cross-fostered the rat pups, so that the high-licking moms raised the babies of low-licking moms, the babies of the below- average lickers grew up into prodigious tongue bathers — following in their adoptive moms’ footsteps, just as Maestripieri’s primates did. Her collaborators even found they could tailor a baby rat’s maternal destiny by stroking it with a tiny paintbrush in lieu of its mom’s
tongue, programming the future mom to be a diligent groomer. But genetics may still play a role. Note that word: “programming.” Nobody imagines that the baby rats were consciously memorizing how to mother via practice and imitation, in the way that a human mother might learn how to change a diaper or pilot a stroller. Rather, the physicality of getting licked somehow shaped the infant females’ instincts and behavior beneath the skin, as if their maternal nature was some kind of drippy ice cream cone that could be contoured with the tongue. “So then I focused on drilling down into what was behind that,” Champagne recalls. “I wanted to show that the care you receive leads to epigenetic changes in infancy, and that this could replicate.” “Epigenetic” means “on top of the genes.” This newish field focuses on how and why and when certain bits of our (mostly) rigid genetic code get expressed or not. Every person has 37 trillion or so cells, far more cells than there are stars in the Milky Way. Each cell has the exact same DNA at its core. Yet some become liver cells, and others skin cells. And those that become a female’s brain cells will likewise function quite differently during her infancy versus after pregnancy. The genes themselves are more or less set in stone in all of these cases. The changes are typically epigenetic ones, evoked by the female’s environment and life experiences, which somehow turn certain genes on and off. The experience of pregnancy, with its hormonal deluge, can kick off certain domino effects in the brain. But so might earlier and subtler experiences, like how the female was treated in her first days or weeks of life — in the rat’s case, via her experience of her own mother’s tongue. A process called “methylation,” for instance, silences particular genes by chemically coating them, so their recipes can’t be read. In the less-licked rats, Champagne’s team discovered that certain DNA regions related to maternal chemistry seemed to shut down. With more of their stress-hormone receptor genes silenced, the underlicked rats were inefficient at processing stress in ways that seemed to make them less engaged, less lick-happy, when they became mothers in their turn. The well-licked baby rats, meanwhile, were more likely to express their genes for certain estrogen receptors, which made them more sensitive to the key maternal hormone when they went on to have pups of their own. They SEPTEMBER 2021 61
were also more likely to express genes for oxytocin receptors, and to grow more oxytocin neurons in their brains. Which means, in turn, that when they had daughters of their own, the licking behavior was passed down — not through some be-all and end-all “licking gene,” and not through learned behavior, but through the complicated interaction between a soft rat tongue and the expression of her daughter’s genes.
XOX
Licking studies don’t apply directly to human
mothers. Well, not usually, anyhow, although I can imagine how the “baby as lollipop” concept might tempt a particularly zealous back-to- nature mom group. But this would be, in the truest sense, a gross misinterpretation. However, some promising parallel research suggests that touching or stroking human babies may be our equivalent of licking. “Infants need to be touched,” explains Lane Strathearn of the University of Iowa. “If you don’t touch your teenagers, they will thank you for it. If you don’t touch your baby, that baby will die.” One striking study from the British Columbia Children’s Hospital asked parents to keep what’s been described as a “cuddle diary” of daily physical interactions with their newborns. DNA swabs taken years later, when the kids were four, showed that epigenetic differences arose between “high-contact” and “low-contact” kids, just as they did between the licked and unlicked rats. These epigenetic changes may help explain not just patterns of observed maternal behavior through families, but some of the physical differences between our brains as well. One Baylor College-led study of 30 first-time mothers showed, via fMRI scans, that women who reported healthy childhood relationships with their own mothers had more powerful reactions in the reward-focused areas of their brains when shown pictures of their own kids. They also had more oxytocin in their systems when they frolicked with their seven-monthold infants. Another study, from Yale University, showed that young mothers who had better childhood memories of their own moms had more gray matter in brain regions related to emotion processing, and had more pronounced responses to infant cries.
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Women treated poorly by their own mothers, on the other hand, tend to pay less attention to baby faces even if they’ve gone on to have children of their own. They seem to be more upset by the sounds of babies’ cries. One British research group identified 18-monthold children who had insecure relationships with their mothers, and then ran brain scans on the same kids more than 20 years later. Their adult brains looked different, with larger amygdalae — the part associated with fear and aggression. Fascinatingly, the same types of findings seem to apply in foster families. Researchers wondered whether the best predictor of an infant’s relationship with a foster parent was the age at which the baby was taken into the family. Instead, it turns out to be the quality of the foster parent’s own childhood relationship with his or her own past caretakers. Even in the absence of blood relationships, family history repeats itself.
XOX
But for mothers, isn’t being ruled by our environments, particularly our barely remembered upbringings and our own parents’ inherited patterns, just as limiting as the tyranny of genes? Not at all. Scientists increasingly see mothers as developing organisms, much like children are: Our brains are sponges for experiences, and we remain supersensitive to environmental cues. We continue to be shaped not just by our social pasts, but by the choices and surroundings we create here and now, and by the relationships we build for ourselves and for each other every day. For instance, researchers who study patterns of intergenerational abuse have shown that the presence of a loving romantic partner in a new mother’s life can disrupt the vicious cycle, leading to healthier parenting behavior in the next generation. Moms who’ve selected a supportive partner tend to be more sensitive to their children’s cues and less stressed. Close-knit support networks of family members and friends can also make a measurable difference in how our maternal brains and bodies function. Scientists are still discovering why exactly moms who feel “socially supported” thrive, but these women have lower rates of postpartum depression, maybe related to a
modulated increase in a pregnancy chemical called placental corticotropin-releasing hormone. They also have fewer C-sections, more energy after birth and improved breastfeeding outcomes. They tend to deliver heftier babies who settle more easily into routines. Fascinatingly, emotionally supported women also seem to be slightly more likely to bear sons. Meanwhile, isolated new mothers exposed to toxic social environments and other stressors often have opposite experiences, and are prone to depression and poor birth outcomes — which in turn only heighten their feelings of stress and loneliness. Studies in rats and monkeys show how chronic daily stress and isolation can alter the maternal brain’s typical development. Scientists are figuring out how we might offer stronger emotional support to mothers who don’t have healthy networks of loved ones. Preliminary research involving before and after brain scans suggests that tools like talk therapy, which involve a close relationship with a therapist, can change mothers’ neural functioning. Governments are now experimenting with deploying low-cost baby nurses and other supportive presences that might act as a psychological balm for struggling moms and shore up their behavior in the long run. And we mothers can also help ourselves. We can’t choose how we were raised, but we have more agency than rats or vervets when it comes time to mother in our own right. The simple desire to be a good parent might be enough to snap intergenerational chains. You can forge a new inheritance for your descendants — or for somebody else’s, because there are all kinds of ways for mothers to aid other mothers escaping a toxic cycle. A homemade meal or a few kind words for a struggling pregnant stranger are more than niceties — they are a type of medicine. You can also make the decision to care for a baby who is not biologically your own, a deliberate form of love that can echo down generations. What our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did to shape us can be matched by what we do for our children and for each other — because every one of us has many mothers. Adapted from “Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct,” from Simon and Schuster. Abigail Tucker is The New York Times bestselling author of “The Lion in the Living Room.”
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efore 2020 began and life came to a screeching halt, it had grown obvious to observers of higher education trends that something very strange, even dangerous, was unfolding at universities across the country. Perhaps the peculiar situation first became evident in the fall of 2015, when a group of Yale University students surrounded one of their professors and berated him for failing to protect them from offensive ideas, screaming, “You have created space for violence” and “I am sick looking at you.” Maybe matters became clear, when in early 2017 students at Middlebury College in Vermont attacked two speakers — the conservative scholar Charles Murray and Middlebury’s own liberal political scientist Allison Stanger — to prevent them from engaging in unsafe discussion. (Stanger left the incident in a neck brace.) Or maybe the clarifying incident actually unfolded some weeks later on the other side of the country, in Washington state, when progressive student activists at Evergreen College chased a liberal professor named Bret Weinstein off campus for the crime of being the only white professor to remain at work during the campus’ racial justice “Day of Absence”— a day during which white people were asked to remain at home. A wave of purportedly liberal but decidedly illiberal activism — unleashed during the insufficiently progressive second term of President Barack Obama and cresting as the election of Donald Trump turned those disappointed progressives toward blind panic — consumed elite liberal arts colleges, the Ivy League and many large state schools. Protesters shouted down speakers with which they disagreed, or prevented them from coming to campus in the first place. Students routinely exerted pressure on school leaders to cancel events featuring nonliberal thinkers and figures. They learned to weaponize the university’s vast administrative bureaucracy against dissenters, filing formal complaints against other students and professors. Just as often as not, these complaints’ targets — which then faced lengthy and Kafka-esque investigations — were otherwise left-wing, but had used language in a manner contrary to the new dictates of modern progressivism. Buzzwords within the world of college activism such as safe space, trigger warning and microaggression have entered the cultural lexicon. They did not remain campus-exclusive expressions; rather, like the student-activists themselves, they graduated and joined the broader world. But contrary to the expectations of those who thought real life would disabuse progressive young people of their more militant notions about the dangers of problematic speech, it was the activist mindset that triumphed. The collective set of millennial progressive values with respect to racism, gender, speech and violence — derisively branded “woke-ism” by its critics, an appropriation of the progressive word for the idea that people need to wake up to the injustices around them — have come to influence every sector where elite opinion holds any sway: from the media to the corporate boardroom to the armed forces of the U.S. military. “We all live on campus now,” observed the writer Andrew Sullivan in 2018. Three years later, it’s as if we live within the Oberlin College gender and sexuality department. This means that we should look to the campus activist culture of the present to discover what our broader culture might resemble a few
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years from now. But of course, 2020 was a very, very strange year for students — and 2021 might be even stranger.
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The pandemic did not put an end to student activism, but it certainly
focused the national media’s attention elsewhere. This may have given the public the false impression that 2020 was a quiet year for students, when in reality they were just as exercised as previous years. “Campus activism is in full swing,” says Jennifer Kabbany, editor of The College Fix, a conservative higher education news website. “The pandemic didn’t even put a dent in it.” Opposition to racism was the dominant theme of progressive activism last year, and is likely to remain in vogue for the time being. The keystone event, of course, was the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, which prompted national protests over police violence and racial justice in city after city. Campuses were much the same. Activists at a handful of universities, including the University of Minnesota, successfully pressured their administrations to cut ties with the police while others wrested promises that the campuses would grapple with more nebulous concerns about the racial climate. To take just one example, Foothill College in California crafted a Black Lives Matter action statement at the behest of student demonstrators. This plan called for the college to hire both an African American “mental health ambassador” and also an expert “on racial trauma in the Black community to conduct a series of workshops, dialogue sessions and a student conference.” Indeed, mandates that administrators fix the ill-defined emotional and mental traumas of students of color have become perhaps the most common entry on activists’ lists of demands. “Universities bent over backward to prove their dedication to being actively anti-racist in the wake of George Floyd,” says Kabbany. “Names were stripped from buildings, statues were yanked from the quad and mascots were retired.” Much campus activism in the last decade has focused on the assumption that so-called problematic ideas — typically conservative ones, from the standpoint of the average young person — are not merely offensive but actively traumatizing. This theory was first popularized by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, in their book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” which explores how the pursuit of “safetyism” has undermined classical liberal values like free speech and due process on campus. Offensive ideas, according to some student activists, harm their emotional well-being, which is an aspect of their overall health and safety. The university has an obligation to protect students’ safety, and thus it has an obligation to shield them from speech and expression that might hurt them. Efforts to de-platform conservative speakers like Christina Hoff Sommers, Heather Mac Donald and Ben Shapiro proceed straightforwardly from such logic. This means that activist-led campaigns for a kind of censorship are likely to increase as the university grows more determined to meet Continued on page 69
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Continued from page 66 unrealistic demands for safety. And of course campuses are very exercised about safety these days. Hundreds of institutions of higher education are expected to require students to be vaccinated — including the entire University of California system — but many will also require masks and social distancing, regardless of vaccination status. Duke University, for instance, has mandated COVID-19 vaccination — or valid proof of medical or religious exemption — as well as weekly testing for its student population. The idea that campuses are uniquely unsafe places doesn’t make much sense, regardless of the kind of threat being considered: They are not particularly crime prone; the young people who disproportionately make up the campus are far less at risk of a negative COVID-19 health outcome; if encountering conservative ideas is truly emotionally traumatizing, there is no place where one is less likely to encounter such a thing. Yet the perception that safety is in short supply and it’s the university’s job to do better has been quite the toxic mix. There’s every reason to expect it to be worse as pandemic restrictions extend themselves into the 2021-22 school year.
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Indeed, it certainly appears as if the powers that be are trying to re- create the exact conditions of the late Obama-era campus experience. The person most directly responsible for the witch hunts that became commonplace on campus in the 2010s is likely to return to prominence: Catherine Lhamon, Obama’s assistant secretary for civil rights within the Education Department. During her tenure, Lhamon enforced a set of arbitrary rules relating to Title IX, the federal statute that mandates sex- and gender-based equality in education. The Obama Education Department took the view that Title IX did not require mere nondiscrimination, but also obligated the federal government to take decisive action against problematic words and deeds of a sexual nature. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights advised public universities and colleges that they could lose federal funding unless they proactively investigated all accusations of sexual misconduct, and instructed school administrators to adjudicate these cases in a manner that fundamentally deprived the accused of any opportunity to defend themselves. What resulted were trials without defense attorneys, witnesses, and in some cases, judges: The government strongly recommended a single-investigator model, empowering a lone official to decide the merit of the charges and rule accordingly. These procedures were so brazenly unfair that hundreds of wrongfully expelled students eventually filed suit, with the majority prevailing in court. Regardless of the outcome of individual cases, the mere presence of such a powerful weapon — trial by Title IX — became a vital tool for activists. It was not just actions that triggered Title IX: Mere speech could be just as problematic. At Northwestern University, in spring 2015, a feminist professor was investigated under the auspices of Title IX because she wrote an article that criticized student-activists on her campus for using Title IX to settle scores. “My point in citing this legal morass,” wrote the professor, Laura Kipnis, “was that students’ expanding sense of vulnerability, and new campus policies that fostered it, was actually impeding their educations as well as their chances of faring well in post- collegiate life, where a certain amount of resilience is required of us all.” But according to federal education bureaucrats, Title IX forbade re-
taliation, and thus any criticism of the activists was illegal. Kipnis was eventually cleared of wrongdoing by her university, but as far back as 2013, campus victims’ rights activists have rallied under the banner Know Your IX to spread awareness of the power of this statute. Some within the group have even had the Roman numeral IX tattooed on their ankles. Lhamon left her post as Donald Trump became president, and the new education secretary, Betsy DeVos, put her best efforts toward reforming the Obama-era Title IX guidance. By the end of Trump’s presidency, DeVos had crafted much narrower guidance that guaranteed basic due process rights for anyone who had to undergo the proceedings. Importantly, her revised guidance mandated that accused students and professors would have the right to an attorney, to know the charges against them and to confront the person leveling the charge. These commonsense practices — which are foundational to the very concept of justice in the Western world — were sadly absent during her predecessor’s regime, but DeVos took important steps to remedy the situation. Well, everything old is new again: In May 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Lhamon to the same job she held during the Obama years. Lest anyone worry that Lhamon had gone soft, she reiterated during her July confirmation hearings that she did not believe innocent-untilproven-guilty was a necessary component of Title IX adjudication. Assuming that she does indeed return to her old post — and given the Senate’s slim Democratic majority, her nomination seems unlikely to fail — she will be well-positioned to reequip campus activists with their favorite weapon.
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Speak with progressive activists — as I did for my 2019 book, “Panic At-
tack,” a chronicle of modern campus protest tactics — and they will mostly tell you they feel frustrated that so few of their goals have been met. But in reality, their activism has racked an impressive number of victories. Indeed, it’s conquered the culture and infiltrated countless American institutions. Corporations now engage in competition to flatter the activist mindset: Consider Coca-Cola coming out swinging against Georgia’s voting restrictions, or Ben and Jerry’s deciding not to serve ice cream in occupied Palestine. The latter is hard not to read as a straightforward endorsement of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a protest movement on many campuses against the state of Israel. The pandemic has not diminished the zeal of the student activist, nor provided much reason to expect that norms of free speech and due process are poised to reassert themselves on college campuses. In theory, now would be an ideal time for administrators to reset students’ expectations for what healthy participation in campus life looks like. In practice, they will probably continue giving the loudest and most aggrieved members of their community exactly what they want. Why stop asking for it now? It’s worth keeping in mind there was just one group that earned a pass from enforcers of pandemic restrictions in the government and medical community: last summer’s anti-racism protesters. According to the expert consensus, fighting for progressive justice is good for one’s health. Expect more of this prescription.
Robby Soave is a senior editor of Reason magazine and author of the forthcoming book “Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn’t Fear Facebook and the Future.” SEPTEMBER 2021 69
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COUNTERING MISEDUCATION RACISM AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY BY L AGA RRET T K IN G
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By the time I got to high school, I knew I wanted to be a history love history, but I LOVE Black history. I am not sure when I fell educator. During my junior year, I took an honors U.S. history course in love with Black history, but I know it was not based on my K-12 taught by Mrs. Linda Pendergrass. Mrs. Pendergrass quickly became educational experiences. As an elementary student, I distinctly rememmy favorite teacher. For the first time, I felt that a teacher taught hisber sitting through history lessons thinking, “Some of this history stuff tory through multiple perspectives. Still, there were significant gaps does not make sense.” My schooling rarely taught about Black people in her methods, but at the time, I was impressed with her sincerity. A and events. Still, when my teachers did, I learned that slavery was a pateacher finally cared about my historical perspective, given the evidence ternalistic system, and that Black people were content as slaves — or provided. Although I don’t think my classmates were amused, she even at least accepted their oppressed conditions because slaves were well entertained me when I questioned history. I believe Mrs. Pendergrass taken care of by their masters. I learned that the Civil War was about sensed that I was a serious history student and recommended that I states’ rights — not slavery — and I was taught to have compassion read the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” by James Loewen. This for white Southerners and their way of life. I learned Rosa Parks was book, along with “The Mis-Education of the Nejust tired, Black folks had to achieve equity only gro,” by Carter G. Woodson, was the genesis of my through nonviolence, and racism was over after understanding how our educational system treats the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I give my history — especially Black history. K-12 educational experiences credit as these hisOUR BIGGEST Woodson’s “Mis-Education of the Negro” was tory narratives — which were disconnected from MISTAKE IN K-12 HISTORY IS published in 1933 as a collection of essays critiquing me, my conversations with Black folks about their THAT WE BELIEVE how the education system failed to educate Black life and my experiences living in the Deep South THERE IS ONE people. The essays include a broad range of topics — influenced me to be curious about the histories COLLECTIVE focusing on Black colleges, vocational education, of people who looked like me. HISTORICAL Black churches, electoral politics and economic Growing up, I attended schools in the 1980s NARRATIVE WITH NO NEED policies. One critical argument made in the book and ’90s in Louisiana. I was the kid who liked to FOR DIFFERENT was the lackluster way Negro history was presentlearn history on my own, so I read about historiHISTORICAL ed (or not presented) in schools. History educacal figures from the encyclopedia book sets from EXPERIENCES, tion primarily focused on European history and our living room, scouring our Ebony magazine colINTERPRETATIONS excluded or minimized Black history. When Black lections for historical articles written by Lerone AND PERSPECTIVES. history was presented, rarely were African and AfBennett and going to the local library to learn rican American people’s skills, abilities or contriabout Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and butions featured. Instead, narratives stressed their Booker T. Washington. My parents were not hissubordinate roles in society and depicted them as subhuman and heatorians, not Afrocentric, not overly pro-Black, were not liberals, nor thens. These textbooks often emphasized Black peoples’ good fortune were they overly political, but they were supportive in my endeavors. at having been exposed, through slavery, to the white man’s civilization. As children of the 1950s and ’60s from rural East Texas and central LouMiseducation, defined, is the communication of knowledge that harms isiana, they experienced systemic and individual racism and discriminastudents and society’s perception of Black people and Blackness. It’s a tion. Because of their experiences, they instilled in me the importance system of control to oppress students’ critical thinking about the world of loving myself as a Black person, as well as pride for Black people and around them. Miseducation seeks to transmit the racial status quo and being an educated person. To them, my knowledge of history — espenot transform knowledge that enhances equitable and democratic learncially Black history — was important because they knew that the K-12 ing. This knowledge is shared through an improper education — both educational system would fail to teach me, and that U.S. society has formal and informal. And whether the knowledge is innocuous or not, it never loved Black folks. They wanted me to know history not to hinder transmits white superiority and Black inferiority messages. or gripe about the past, but to give me the strength to be a liberated Miseducation has continued to define our K-12 history education Black person who can stand on my own, be able to recognize racial inpolicy. While we may not see outwardly racist words describing Black justice and be confident in knowing that Black folks are more than what people, we continue to see narratives that dehumanize the historical they tell us we are in those history books. 70 DESERET MAGAZINE
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“BLACK WALL STREET” BEFORE THE 1921 TULSA RACE MASSACRE (BELOW) AND AFTER (RIGHT). ATTACKS LIKE THIS ONE BY WHITE MOBS ON BLACK COMMUNITIES HAVE GAINED NEW PERSPECTIVES RECENTLY, WITH BLACK SURVIVOR NARRATIVES REPLACING WHITEWASHED ONES.
experiences of Black people. Take, for instance, how Black histories are covered in a typical K-12 history classroom. First, schoolchildren learn about Black history through European contact or colonization, erasing thousands of years of Black history and leaving the impression that Black history is not important unless it is connected to Europeans. Second, Black history is largely defined through three eras: the enslavement period, Civil War/Reconstruction and the civil rights movement. This leaves major gaps and disjointed learning and implies that Black history is simply oppression, suffering, trauma and liberation. Third, Black history is taught mainly through a few messiahs who serve as charismatic and respectable saviors of the Black race who hold few personal struggles or shortcomings. These persons are usually taught to be the quintessential Black person who Black people should aspire to be. Fourth, Black history centers Black historical firsts — Black people who are considered the first to do something in history. These historical firsts are typically those who have broken down barriers into white society, given the impression that white society is the standard for historical importance. Fifth, Black history is primarily centered on
Black males who are Christian, middle class, able-bodied and heterosexual. We leave out a collection of Black identities that will help us understand Black history fully. Lastly, throughout history, miseducation centers Black persons as passive noncontributors of their freedom and U.S. democracy. Miseducation notes that white people are Black people’s saviors with moral compasses who eventually fought against what scholars Anthony Brown and Keffrelyn Brown have noted as a few “bad men doing bad things,” instead of systemic policies aiding society’s quest to keep Black people as second-class citizens. Through miseducation, Black people are forever subhuman and anti-Blackness is warranted. It humanizes oppressors and dehumanizes those who have been oppressed. It manufactures Black history narratives that are palatable and do not offend white people’s historical sensibilities and worldviews. Therefore, Black histories are selected as o fficial histories, not because of their historical influence or importance, but because their narrative is aligned to appease Eurocentric worldviews and epistemological concerns. Black histories that are deemed or can be manufactured into safe, sanitized and pleasant narratives are favored
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over Black histories that challenge whiteness, racism and anti-Blackness. Miseducation is also a paternalistic history and implies that Black people are problems to be solved. Its project is to align Black people’s humanity through Black history’s proximity to Eurocentric histories. Today, miseducation is the driving force of our new, manufactured crisis concerning patriotic education and critical race theory. The United States political culture has a history of attacking school-based histories that do not align with the authoritarian patriotism history arc that ensures the United States is seen as exceptional — and any evidence of inequitable transgressions are seen as aberrations but have been largely solved at the institution level because of the democratic and moral ethos of the United States. It is believed that students and society should have an unquestioned loyalty to these histories; if not, you are unpatriotic and a danger to U.S. ideas and principles. It seems like every two decades or so, the old, racialized terminology that certain types of education are destroying the values of this country comes forth. Similar to the banning of Harold Rugg’s textbook in the 1930s and ’40s, the K-12 Black history and studies movement in the 1960s, and the wars against multicultural and Afrocentric education in the 1980s and 1990s, critical race theory is the new buzzword — just like “multi culturalism” was three decades ago. The problem is not critical race theory; the fight is over identity and power. James Baldwin’s 1963 article “A Talk to Teachers” provides a good understanding of miseducation’s influence over identity and power. “If … one managed to change the curriculum in all the schools so that Negroes learned more about themselves and their real contributions to this culture, you would be liberating not only Negroes, you’d be liberating white
people who know nothing about their own history,” Baldwin writes. “And the reason is that if you are compelled to lie about one aspect of anybody’s history, you must lie about it all. If you have to lie about my real role here, if you have to pretend that I hoed all that cotton just because I loved you, then you have done something to yourself. You are mad.” As Baldwin explains, miseducation creates a cognitive dissonance about identity and reality. History helps shape identity that informs how we understand our, as well as others’, humanity. To effectively teach, white people, teachers and those who have accepted miseducation will have to rethink and question their entire existence. Miseducation teaches us that white people are the most historically influential people in the world — that whiteness is the apex of humanity. Therefore, your value, no matter your racialized category, is tied to whiteness. Dissonance occurs when teachers and others accept that the history curriculum is filled with many untruths. When dealing with a multicultural and multiethnic society, unraveling miseducation becomes an identity project where white people and others realize that white people and a proximity to whiteness should not drive history. When combined with world histories, white people are not that historically important. To be clear, that statement does not infer that there are not white people who have made a tremendous historical impact. I am saying that throughout the totality of histories that we should learn, white people’s ideas are not that intellectually salient. White people’s epistemologies are not that structurally important. White people’s moral values systems are not the standard in society. In other words, miseducation has devised a racist belief system that humanity — and therefore history — is supposed to be in the lens of whiteness. SEPTEMBER 2021 73
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Some may say that we have made great strides in our history curriculum, and I would agree somewhat. We are no longer asking whether Black people have a history worth studying, but we are struggling with what type of Black history we should teach in K-12 schools. Our gains have largely been quantitative in nature, based on the number of times Black people are mentioned in the curriculum. While gains in mentions of Black people in the curriculum are a goal, we should also focus on qualitative approaches to Black history, where we understand Black history from Black perspectives. Our biggest mistake in K-12 history is that we believe in historical uniformity — that there is one collective historical narrative with no need for different historical experiences, interpretations and perspectives. We should focus more on historical contentiousness in the history curriculum because that approach is more accurate when dealing with multiple histories. By contentious, I mean that historical experiences of different racialized groups — even when historical encounters happen simultaneously — will be different, even total opposites. Historical contentiousness differs from uniformity because contentiousness helps educators understand the importance of teaching through Black history instead of teaching about Black history. Teaching through Black history indicates that Black histories are narratives that center the Black experience. It is a unique history that diverges from white interests. Black histories are their own historical entity where narratives are focused on Black historical perspectives and ideas. Historical contentiousness reminds educators that Black history has its own timelines, perspectives, voices and people — allowing educators to understand that what is historically important to white people may not be historically important to Black people. Black histories are contentious histories because often, those narratives do not align with how the official historical narratives are constructed. Even though many white and Black Americans may have spoken a common language, lived in close proximity and lived in similar historical eras, they experience and interpret histories differently because of their lived realities. Therefore histories are different. When we teach through Black people instead of about Black people, the historical narratives look different. Sometimes, the histories do not add up because we see histories from different viewpoints. Famed historian Manning Marable provides a useful example comparing how white and Black Southerners remembered slavery in his book “Living Black History.” White Southerners “emphasized the close personal relationships between the slaves and owners while downplaying the violence and exploitations on which slavery rested,” Marable writes. “They glorified the docile ‘darkies’ who had served so faithfully, the loyal mammies who had nursed both white and Black children, and the trusted servants who protected the plantation against the hated Yankees.” The historical voices of formerly enslaved African Americans and their children had a different memory; they “described the endless indignities of chattel bondage; its numerous perils to family life; the trauma that accompanied beatings, mutilations, and murders; the prohibitions against education and religious worship; the denial of the basic civil rights they would claim as their own during Reconstruction,” Marable writes. For a long time, we taught about Black people through slavery, meaning that the enslavers’ historical point of view was the history. Rarely was violence against the enslaved taught within school spaces because teaching violence was to indirectly teach resistance. That was the narrative that I was taught. When teaching through Black history, we get a totally different version of history — a more accurate experience from Black people. 74 DESERET MAGAZINE
In an effort to provide a more humane Black history, I have proposed the Black historical consciousness framework for schools and society. Black historical consciousness is an effort to understand, develop and teach Black histories that recognize Black people’s humanity and emphasizes pedagogical practices that seek to reimagine the legitimacy, selection and interpretation of historical sources. To describe Black historical consciousness is to alter our ideology about history and transform the way we think about Black history. Black historical consciousness seeks to counter miseducation through principles that dismantle the white epistemic historical logic that has long dominated much of K-12 history. For detailed information on the Black historical consciousness framework, I encourage readers to read my Social Education article, “Black History Is Not American History.” Miseducation is a form of violence, both physical and intellectual. It’s a vicious cycle that is not simply about history curriculum; it is about citizenship and how society treats its Black citizens. Students who are miseducated by educational systems become citizens who then miseducate society. In effect, miseducation is one of the many reasons racism continues in our society. What these new censorship laws are doing in our society is proving what Black folks and other people of color have been saying for centuries: You do not care about us, our voices, our perspectives, our joy, our culture and how Black people have fought against oppression. In essence, you do not care about Black people’s humanity. Teaching through Black people or their historical consciousness is not anti-American or unpatriotic. In many ways, Black history is a story of holding the United States accountable for its own mission. If you are against that, you are not for democracy or any of the ideas that the country says it stands for. Arguments over what teaching about race does to schoolchildren are not about Black children learning history. The subject is always white children and the fear of what they can do to make this world more equitable if they simply learn their history. Teaching through Black history does not make Black children — or any other child — hate white people. Teaching about race and racism should not make white students feel guilt for being white. It should allow white children to appreciate others more and to help them understand themselves better in the process. It shows Black children and others that their historical narratives matter. It has been said that the summer of 2020 — with the killing of George Floyd — was a racial reckoning. We have had these moments before, but I say that we are not close to a racial reckoning — we can’t even get our history in schools right. This era should be a space for reflection. I would echo James Baldwin in my own way and ask, “Why are you mad?” Why do you feel guilty learning about your history? Maybe your anger and guilt stems from you understanding that the U.S. has done some despicable things to Black folks and others, and we recognize that as a country, you have not done enough to make our society more equitable. Maybe it is because you understand that Black histories and other racialized histories are just as valuable as the histories we teach now, and you are upset that the histories you learned have been a lie. Maybe it is because with Black history knowledge, you cannot dehumanize Black folks in your minds because you realize how creative, resourceful and powerful they are. I do not know the answers, but I do know that Black history does not assign blame and should not make you feel guilty. That is a “you” problem, an identity issue, and the projection of something deeper. LaGarrett King is an associate professor at the University of Missouri.
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ROSA PARKS WAS NOT JUST TIRED WHEN SHE REFUSED TO GIVE UP HER BUS SEAT. THE ARDENT ACTIVIST INVESTIGATED SEX CRIMES FOR THE NAACP FOR YEARS AND RALLIED SUPPORT FOR WOMEN’S SAFETY.
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BRAIN MECHANICS COMPANIES ARE INVENTING WAYS TO MEASURE AND ENHANCE THE BRAIN. IS IT A GOOD IDEA? BY ERIN B ERGER
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big exaggeration (and most experts believe it’s a very big exaggeration), t the age of 21, Bryan Johnson arrived at a decision: to make it’s true that neurotechnology is in a particularly interesting place in 2021. a lot of money. And he did. In 2007, at age 30, he founded BrainAs more investment than ever goes toward BCI technology and it betree, a web payment system for e-commerce companies. In 2012, comes available to more people, we may soon be confronting questions Braintree acquired Venmo, and in 2013, Johnson sold his company to of how much we want to understand about our own brains — and the eBay for $800 million. lengths we’d be willing to go to change our own minds. Before he sold Braintree, Johnson was already thinking about his next step. If he could throw millions at one thing, what would it be? He imagined humans evolving into an “entirely novel form” by enhancing cognition. This is how Johnson entered the world of neurotechnology, a field that uses technology to better understand, and even repair or enhance, Your reaction to the idea of measuring and eventually enhancing the the brain. More specifically, he’s interested in brain-computer interbrain might depend on how familiar you are with neurotechnology. face (BCI) technology that links communication Those who study it will be the first to tell you that between the brain and a device. In 2016, J ohnson mainstream tinkering with the brain is likely a long founded his own neurotechnology company, way off. “I always say we’re a little bit like the Wright Kernel. While his ultimate dream of cognitive brothers at Kitty Hawk, saying, ‘Look! It can fly … evolution sounds pie in the sky, Kernel’s current for 200 yards,’ ” Florian Solzbacher, co-founder of goal is more contained: to explore and measure the BCI company Blackrock Neurotech and a profesbrain by making the tools to do so more accessible sor at the University of Utah, says. “We’re not in the A GROWING BATCH OF WELLNESSand capable. After a few years of development and golden age of jetliners or going into space.” ORIENTED CONSUMER a pivot or two, the company developed helmets Much of the neurotechnology that exists today is PRODUCTS MAKE that gather information about the brain’s blood not as newfangled as you may think. You’ve probably DUBIOUS CLAIMS flow and electrical impulses. In July, Kernel started heard of one of the earliest BCIs authorized for use THAT THEY CAN READ shipping out its $50,000 Flow helmet to partners, in the United States in 1984: the cochlear implant, a BRAIN WAVES. including research organizations, a pharmaceutical device that picks up external sound and stimulates a company developing psychedelic mental health nerve in the brain to restore some sounds to those treatments and an e sports training platform. with hearing loss. It falls under the category of neuKernel is part of a decadeslong history of peoroprosthesis, or instruments that can stand in for or ple trying to get closer to the human brain through enhance what parts of the nervous system do — intechnology. Dozens of people around the world alcluding sensory systems like vision and hearing, or ready live with implanted technology in their brains — allowing people motor systems like speaking and moving. with epilepsy to predict seizures, or people with paralysis of facial musIn the 1990s, Solzbacher’s colleague at the University of Utah, Richard cles to communicate through a computer. Meanwhile, a growing batch of A. Normann, developed a small device called the Utah Electrode Array wellness-oriented consumer products make dubious claims that they can that could be implanted in the brain to receive signals from sensory and read brain waves or provide direct stimulation to the brain through the motor neurons. The Utah Array is now one of the most common implantscalp. These claims present a problem for consumers: Is it all just hype or ed neural interface devices. It’s often used in the types of BCIs you’ve likeare there impending repercussions warranting fear? ly seen in the news, like prosthetic hands that can be controlled mentally. If Silicon Valley hype men like Elon Musk are to be believed, technolIt’s estimated there are about 30 people in the world with a brain imogy being developed today will soon be able to cure diseases and allow us plant, most of which were developed at Blackrock Neurotech. In fact, to control our intelligence, emotions and more. But even if that’s a pretty the first patient to ever use a BCI implant to restore functionality after
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learned was now fair game to be analyzed with a different set of eyes.” paralysis, Matthew Nagle, used a Utah Array by Blackrock. Nagle, whose Johnson’s lifestyle is now optimized to Silicon Valley standards; as spinal cord was severed in a stabbing in Massachusetts in 2001, was able to Ashlee Vance wrote in a Bloomberg profile of Johnson in June, he eats essentially control basic computer functions like moving a cursor, pressone 2,250-calorie meal at 4 a.m. and regularly undergoes tests in case ing buttons, typing and drawing using his thoughts. He used the BCI recalibration is needed. He blogs often about treating his thoughts from when it was implanted in 2004 until his death in 2007. like an erratic co-worker whose impulses cannot be trusted. “I fired Now, some prosthetic arms can even relay sensory information to the my conscious mind from deciding what foods to eat. I asked my livuser so they can feel again, and BCIs exist to treat a range of illnesses. The er and my heart and my DNA methylation, ‘What does everybody number and frequency of technological advances and first-in-human need?’ And then they generate the shopping list,” he tells me of his demonstrations (as opposed to testing in animals) has accelerated in diet. “Now I’ve never experienced more pleasure eating, but a lot of the last five or so years. “It’s quicker and quicker almost every month,” people make the wrong conclusion that I’m somehow depriving mySolzbacher says. As neurotechnology improves, BCI devices (especialself or that I’ve lost all joy.” ly the noninvasive kind that don’t require surgery, The assumption that his mind is probably irralike Kernel’s helmet) will become less expensive and tional or wrong about everything, and he just has to more compact. Whether it will target general configure out how to correct it, is central to Johnson’s sumers is an ethical discussion and will depend on life. He has a process of running his own thoughts what societal consensus is, Solzbacher says. “Blackback through so that he can be hyperaware of his rock has created an ethics supervisory board to PLENTY OF own biases. But the idea seems to have much deepmake sure that we are consciously addressing these PEOPLE WILL BALK AT THE IDEA er roots than a run-of-the-mill occupation with questions early.” OF BECOMING optimization and rationality. During his worst Anders Sandberg, a senior research fellow at the PART MACHINE. years of chronic depression, “my brain was telling University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity InstiBUT TO SOME me things every day, all day, that weren’t correct,” tute, likens this moment less to the tech-frenzied DEGREE, WE’RE he says. “It was filling my head full of things like, dystopia of the “Black Mirror” TV show and more CYBORGS ALREADY. ‘Life is not worth living,’ and ‘Everything is awful,’ to the advent of desktop computers that people and ‘You’ll never feel joy again.’ ” could purchase, instead of the early mainframe comIt makes sense, then, that the driving obsession puters that filled rooms. “Maybe the 2020s are going at Kernel is getting to know the mind in concrete to be like the 1980s,” he says. “There was this enorterms. “We get tricked into thinking that our self- mous explosion of computers, programming, hackawareness is a complete sentence for what is going on ing and computer games.” As Sandberg and other in our brain or our minds,” Johnson says. But he compares that to a doctor ethicists see it, neurotechnology is likely to be like any other technology asking a patient how their heart feels. “You’d say, ‘Thanks, doc, for asking, in one major way: The people who create it probably have no idea how but please could you do an EKG, a blood panel’ ... . You’d want measurepeople will actually use it. Much like the internet, “It’s curious; once you ment.” He imagines finding out, in concrete terms, how social media or reached that point of affordable computation, they did the cat pictures. sugar affect the brain. We have baseline measurements for blood alcohol Nobody was envisioning that cat pictures had anything to do with it.” levels that help us know if someone is unsafe to drive, for example; Johnson reasons, why wouldn’t we want similar measurements for the brain? The Flow helmet works by observing blood flow in the brain. The brain responds to stimuli and changes like physical activity or temperaBryan Johnson grew up in a Latter-day Saint family in Springville, ture by adjusting blood flow, so observing it over time can show which regions the brain sends blood to when it experiences certain changes. Utah, playing in open fields and reservoirs or weaving in and out of This information reveals just a portion of how the brain works — but the traffic on a bike, racing friends to school. “I guess that’s maybe only usual method of observing blood flow in the brain takes much longer and comfortably done in a small community,” he says. “We just had a blast.” requires the subject to lie perfectly still in an fMRI machine rather than His first time leaving Utah was a two-year mission trip to Ecuador; he wear a helmet. remembers coming back with a desire to be useful and improve other Kernel’s other product, Flux, is meant to complement Flow’s data by people’s lives. He pursued entrepreneurship because he “wasn’t really sensing and tracking the activity of brain cells that communicate with skilled at any one thing,” but knew how to be resourceful and tenacious. other cells through electric currents. Flux’s magnetometers sense magBy the time Johnson sold his company, he’d had three kids, been marnetic fields produced by those currents; this, Johnson says, is like seeing ried for 13 years, and had struggled with chronic depression for 10 years. activity from the brain’s outer area, or the cortex, in 1080p r esolution. “I was questioning everything,” he says. “Literally everything I’d ever
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Dubljević say guardrails like stronger regulations and privacy policies (Again, this technology already exists, but in the form of bulky mashould be put up now. “The idea is that we should have the rules of the chines.) For now, that product will remain in-house; chosen partners game clear,” he says. “Make it so that this technology is for the public will participate in studies to gather data through Flux, which requires good, and not just for one set of actors to make a lot of money quickly.” the wearer to sit in a room with a large helmet on their head. Johnson says that Kernel has drawn up acceptable use guidelines and The value of Flow lies in how many more people’s brain activity could privacy standards for researchers using the Flow helmets, and will continbe tracked while they do a wider range of activities that require moveue building on that as the products develop. But he doesn’t believe that ment, or for an extended period of time. Johnson himself has particiKernel’s products in their current form raise many of these speculative pated in a study where he slept in the Flow helmet; he says he learned red flags because they don’t fit into the same categories as many of the that deep sleep positively affected his self-discipline. He believes that it BCIs we imagine. On the other side of the spectrum from medical BCIs, would take a reasonably low number of voluntary participants to start he says, “people are familiar with ‘The Matrix’ scene of downloading getting interesting insights and information to establish baselines. For kung fu, or ‘Black Mirror,’ imagining these dystopic now, the only people using Flow will be organizaoutcomes. There aren’t really a lot of other imaginations and companies doing brain-related work. “I tion sets in between.” Because Kernel’s products are built the technology because I believe that it needs currently only used for research and measurement, to exist, not because there’s an active market out “WE SHOULD HAVE THE RULES Johnson leans on an overall agnostic stance when it there,” he says. OF THE GAME comes to speculation. “The inventor of a technology CLEAR. MAKE IT is always wrong on how the technology will be used,” SO THAT THIS he says. On this, ethicists agree. TECHNOLOGY
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The growing number of people getting in on
IS FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD, AND NOT JUST FOR ONE SET OF ACTORS TO MAKE A LOT OF MONEY QUICKLY.”
neurotechnology presents conflicting problems: Companies — attempting to appeal to consumers — are exaggerating the capabilities of existing technology, while consumers are left to wonder if scary brain-enhancing and brain-zapping implements are nigh. “It is way too easy to transition from sort of overhyping of technology to fear on the other hand,” says Blackrock’s Solzbacher. Implanted BCIs introduce a whole set of questions around patient experience: Researchers have found that patients can start to see their devices as part of them or feel that it changes their personality. Things get even trickier when it comes to noninvasive BCIs — after all, most people who are willing to undergo surgery for an implant really need it to make their lives easier, so they weigh their options differently and more carefully. As neurotechnology becomes more of a consumer product, it will likely be harder for customers to know what they can actually expect from a BCI. And loopholes are being created: Claiming that a device is “nonmedical” has been used to avoid closer scrutiny. Veljko Dubljević, an associate professor of philosophy, science technology and society at North Carolina State University, calls the world of noninvasive devices “the Wild West.” Further out, it’s worth considering what it would mean to be able to augment our intelligence. If we could offload certain thinking activities, like doing math, to a device that interacts directly with our brain, we’d need to think hard about why we value education. “I’m pretty sure that currently, as things stand, we still want people to learn,” Dubljević says dryly. The technology has yet to catch up with worries about how BCIs could promote inequality and change our identity, but ethicists like
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While it may be an easy answer for people like J ohnson, not everyone will want to know everything about their brain. (Have you really never felt that ignorance was bliss? I asked him. “No, I’ve had universally positive experiences with measurement.”) And plenty of people will balk at the idea of becoming part machine. But to some degree, Sandberg points out, we’re cyborgs already — we all use technology and rely on it almost as if it were part of our own bodies, whether it’s eyeglasses or our phones. “Even though most of the time technology doesn’t go inside our bodies, it affects us.” At the end of the day, the ironic thing about neurotechnology is that it will inevitably come to be influenced by the quirks of humanity. We’ll want to manage neurotechnology, so people don’t mess around with it in ethically questionable ways. “But as if that ever stopped people,” Sandberg says. “I think we are going to do a lot of very stupid things. We’re going to hype a lot of technologies to death. But I do think we can learn quite a lot from it.” Johnson’s view, as he sees the first version of his concept make its way into the world, is perhaps necessarily vague — and hopeful. He’d like people to push back against the most common reaction to neurotechnology: a fear of the unknown. He sees a need for what he calls future literacy, the ability to deal with emerging technologies and developments without having all the answers. “It requires us to be able to deal with uncertainty in novel ways,” he says, “and to start finding ourselves being motivated by that which we can’t describe.” One of the greatest uncertainties may be just how many people will be motivated by the same desire to change our relationship with our minds. SEPTEMBER 2021 79
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THE CHAIRMAN OF TRUST ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS ON TAKING A STAND BY LO IS M. CO L L IN S
J
oel peterson doesn’t shy away from publicly taking hard stances, even when the impact might be personal. Knowing it’s sometimes hard to get board members to relinquish their role, he proposed an age limit (72) when he was JetBlue’s chairman of the board. Then he sold the idea by pointing out he’d be the first one who’d face mandatory retirement. Two years ago, when he turned 72, he stepped down from the board after 12 years as chairman. He’s also tackled challenging situations in vastly different settings. He’s been teaching at Stanford University for 29 years, and that’s where he first met “cancel culture.” He got a close-up look when he became the target, but he didn’t back down. A graduate of Brigham Young University and Harvard, where he earned an MBA, Peterson’s familial and entrepreneurial resumes both go back a half-century. He’s been married to his wife, Diana, for 49 years, and they’ve raised seven children together. In the course of those decades, he’s carved out an impressive career and held noteworthy professional titles, including serving as a managing partner at Trammell Crow Co., one of the nation’s oldest and largest commercial real estate developers, and chairman of the board of overseers at Stanford’s Hoover Institution for three years. He is also the founder of Peterson Partners, which sponsors private equity, venture and real estate investment throughout the world. Peterson’s also a prolific writer, author of articles and several business books, including most recently “Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Art of Launching New Ventures, Inspiring Others, and Running Stuff.” Here, we talk to Peterson about building trust. 82 DESERET MAGAZINE
In your writings and lectures, “build trust” is a core value. What does that mean and can it be done in a politically fractured world? A lot of people have the mistaken belief that trust is this fuzzy, feel-good impression that we have, and that it’s by instinct that we trust or not. My view is that you can actually be intentional about building trust. I wrote a book called “The 10 Laws of Trust,” where organizations can actually decide to be trustworthy and to build high-trust relationships between various members. They have to communicate regularly, they have to be transparent, they have to admit mistakes. You can’t build trust overnight. It builds slowly and it can be destroyed quickly. I regard trust as a kind of magical potion that allows organizations to move quickly, to be flexible, to be innovative; the gears mesh. Everything works better in a high-trust organization. I think in society, we’ve so fractured trust that it will take some time to rebuild. It will take leadership that is trustworthy, that communicates effectively and clearly and transparently. I was interviewed by Adam Bryant, a columnist for The New York Times, who spent 90 minutes with me and at the end of the interview I had no idea how he’d organize it to make sense out of it. He titled the article “Joel Peterson of JetBlue on Listening Without an Agenda.” To me, that is how you start to rebuild trust. You can’t have an agenda. If you’ve ever felt somebody heard you, you trust that person. You draw parallels between leading a business, teaching a class and raising a family. Why? They’re all about effectively dealing with people, leading people, helping IL LUST RAT ION BY R ANDY GLASS
people to a better place. It’s at the center of everything. I was talking to a major executive — he runs maybe the 150th-largest company in the world — and I quoted Peter Drucker, who said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” And (the executive) said it’s more than that. Culture is everything. Anybody can copy every other thing that you do, but they can’t replicate your culture. You build it a conversation at a time, a decision at a time and an act at a time. That’s how you build a great family, how you build a great business, how you teach students. What does good culture look like and how do you build it? I think a good culture is built on trust. And then I think you break apart trust and say people that I trust are transparent. They don’t fool me. They don’t tell me one thing and mean another, they don’t hide facts from me. They admit mistakes. They’re vulnerable. People admit they don’t know things. “I don’t know” is not a terrible answer in a high-trust culture. We have certain behaviors that you find in high-trust cultures that are really very different from low-trust cultures. Low-trust cultures, you see people doing sneaky things. Not telling the truth. Think about Congress and how it behaves and how dysfunctional it is. It is a power-based culture: who has the most power, and then they force their views on others. A high-trust culture is who has the best idea, who has the best decision, and we all celebrate that. You can feel it when you’re in a high-trust culture. People smile more, they forgive more, they like each other better. They move on more gracefully. That doesn’t mean you don’t do hard things. If you’re leading one of those businesses, you always have to make sure you’ve got the best possible team on the field. That means sitting some people down from time to time. That means trading some from time to time. The winning culture understands that. In great businesses, all you need to know are three things: People want to be a respected member of a winning team that’s doing something meaningful. You wrote a piece for the Deseret News on your experience with some students at Stanford University trying to “cancel” you. Did that experience surprise you? I don’t think I could say I was surprised that it was developing. In 30 years — and I watched class after class come in — I could see an increasing sense of almost indoctrination among the students. They came in with baggage. They came in sensing that they were social justice warriors, that things were unfrayed, that they were going to change the world because they had the answers. And they were going to correct those of us who had been around for a long time; we’d obviously done it wrong. They were less open to things. I saw that develop and kind of absorbed it for several years thinking, “Well, these are young people, and they certainly don’t all feel that way.” Then I had a few students say various things that were kind of surprising. And the administration didn’t say (Peterson’s) been around here, he’s won every award, he’s run big companies, you need to listen to what he has to say or at least show him respect. I had a student who was afraid to say anything about the Israel- Palestine conflict for fear of being called racist. And I thought, “Oh, my gosh, this is Stanford, one of the most liberal, open, wonderful universities in the world.” I just felt like somebody has to stand up. And people are worried about becoming canceled. It’s a real thing. And it really matters to a lot of people. I’m now old enough and I’ve done enough things in life that I figure I don’t want it, but I’m just not that worried about it. And I do believe that courage begets courage. If people like me will stand up and say, “This is not right,” other people will, too. There will be a backlash and we can stop this nonsense.
What was the response to the article? For me, it was overwhelmingly positive. I had notes from university presidents, from trustees, from deans, from faculty, from non-tenureline faculty, and from a bunch of students. Many called me. Many dropped notes and said thank you for speaking out. On the other hand, on the internet, whether it’s bots or the mob or how these things are nurtured, there was a fair amount of blowback, saying, “Another spoiled white male, feeling canceled. Too bad for him. These are the people we want to cancel.” I knew that would come. ... I would have been disappointed had there not been some blowback, I just think this is an important thing to do at this stage. A lot of people will stop short and say that putting cancellation and that value into our culture is toxic, is un-American and it will destroy the university. We’ve got to stop it. Are boycotts and cancel culture similar? Cancel culture is way more harmful. I think it emanates from the same source of anger, jealousy and the desire to harm, an ability to show power. Those things are similar motivators. But actually, if you don’t feel empowered, and you can organize people to do what you want to do, then all of a sudden you do have power. Social media has given everybody a voice. But unfortunately, not everybody has done the research and thought about it deeply enough to really have a meaningful voice to add to the conversation. When you have social media, with everybody having a voice, and then the oligarchy is saying, “We’re going to cut off the voices of certain people,” then you get this one-sided kind of dialogue among the believers. I don’t think that’s healthy. I think the healthiest thing is for people to state a point of view and then have to defend it — have to debate it in front of everybody. The rest of us can decide what to believe. You said you have three operating principles: It’s not about me. I have all I need. And I’m not my emotions. Tell us about them. They tell you a lot about what I needed to work on — where my flaws were. I came to recognize a self-centeredness and to remind myself several times a day, “This is not about me, I’m not at the center of this.” It’s about the mission. To remove yourself from the center, at least for me, was an important lesson. It took years to root out. “I have all I need” came from blaming others: (A co-worker) never finished her part of the project so I couldn’t get mine done. I remind myself I have everything I need, which tells me I’m responsible for it all. I can make it all happen. Just relax, don’t blame others and move on. Finally, emotions are powerful and as every human knows, we act on our emotions. A lot of our decisions are made on impulse, made quickly on feelings. I’m not discounting instinct as an element; it actually becomes better and better over a lifetime of making decisions. But the idea that you must respond to your emotion was one that I had to overcome, because I always felt something. I really learned by not acting on emotions, by sleeping on it that the next day I understood things differently. So I became less impulsive, I became more intentional. Any last words? These ideas, the power of trust, the power of caring and being a fiduciary, I think that’s a really important message. I’ve been an entrepreneur, and I’ve taught entrepreneurs, thousands of them and invested in hundreds of them for 50 years now. And they have a way of going about making decisions, taking risks, analyzing the risk-reward and making wise judgments that they’re accountable for. We’re now at a place in our country where we need our entrepreneurial class to arise and help us all find these wise decisions and rebuild trust. Helping this entrepreneurial spirit is what I want to do for the rest of my life. SEPTEMBER 2021 83
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