�鶹��Ƶ

Carmen Twillie Ambar: I am Carmen Twillie Ambar, president of �鶹��Ƶ. Welcome to Running to the Noise, where I speak with all sorts of folks who are tackling our toughest problems and working to spark positive change around the world. Because here at �鶹��Ƶ, we don’t shy away from the challenging situations that threaten to divide us.

We run toward them.

Every spring, students interested in attending �鶹��Ƶ come to campus with their families, and I never miss a chance to meet them and tell them why I believe �鶹��Ƶ is the best institution in the country. I may be biased, but I think I’m right. My triplets are here in their first year, so now I’m not just �鶹��Ƶ’s president, I’m also an Obie mom.

So yes, I absolutely think �鶹��Ƶ is the best. At �鶹��Ƶ, we have a world-class conservatory and a top-tier liberal arts college on the same campus, seamlessly intertwined. There’s something about what happens to students here. You see, when you talk to our Obies, that’s what we call them, they combine majors and minors that you might not expect.

Neuroscience and dance, politics and music. And when you ask how it fits together, they just give you this clear and compelling answer, and you think to yourself, of course, that’s the right way to think about it.

The next big reason why I think �鶹��Ƶ is the best is because our students err on the side of doing. They err on the side of doing, and here’s what that looks like.

Students were sitting around a couple of years ago thinking about immigration issues in the region, and so they decided to act. They created their own curriculum to help prepare people for the citizenship exam, and they brought other students together, trained them, organized workshops, and they showed up week after week after week to help people prepare for this exam.

They treated it like a job. They even set up childcare so people could study, and after two years they had helped 80 people pass the citizenship exam. That’s what I mean. Obies err on the side of doing.

If you want to know why I think �鶹��Ƶ is the best institution in the country, it’s because our students don’t just talk about change. They make it. And they literally go out and change the world for good.

But don’t take my word for it. Over the last three seasons of Running to the Noise, I’ve spoken with �鶹��Ƶ alumni who have shaped our culture in countless ways. Authors and journalists, innovators and scientists, musicians and actors, public servants and advocates.

Every one of them talked about the power of an �鶹��Ƶ education, how it shaped their path, and how it changed the way they think. They remember a moment, a class, a conversation, a classmate that sparked them to think about things differently. A moment that pushed them not to sit on the sidelines, but to run toward the challenge.

Dare I say, to run toward the noise.

In this special spring episode of our podcast, we’ve gathered some of those stories in a season when everything feels possible.

Carmen: For LaTanya Hall, associate professor of jazz voice at �鶹��Ƶ Conservatory, mentorship isn’t just part of the job. It is the job. It means showing up for students in practice rooms and in life. It means guiding them through failure and doubt and helping them grow as musicians and as people.

One of LaTanya’s most successful mentees in recent years is Georgia Heers, a graduate in the class of 2021. Just four years ago, Georgia was a jazz studies major in LaTanya’s studio. She recently made her Broadway debut in Good Night, and Good Luck, a new play starring George Clooney. The production has already broken records, netting nearly 3.8 million in one week, making it the highest-grossing non-musical play in Broadway history.

Georgia Heers: I was set to be doing opera at �鶹��Ƶ. But my mom, she said there’s a jazz program too, and it’s very young, and there’s this beautiful Black teacher. And she printed out this article of you, LaTanya, talking about your first couple years at �鶹��Ƶ. And she’s like, look at this. This is interesting.

And you know, I was like, okay, this is interesting. I had no idea about jazz, so I was hesitant about that because I’m a very proud person, so it’s hard for me to do something that I don’t know anything about and to humble myself to learn. But it’s always the most rewarding experience.

So it ended up being that I went to �鶹��Ƶ and found you, LaTanya, and honestly, that changed my life. It changed the whole trajectory of the music that I make and that I love. So it was definitely my mom who made that connection.

LaTanya Hall: Well, tell your mama thank you. I was telling President Ambar yesterday, you were the kind of student that comes along rarely in a teacher’s lifespan. From the first time hearing you, even though you had very little exposure to jazz, the talent was overwhelmingly there.

You came in and you did the work, and you have turned into an incredible artist and musician, and I’m very proud to see all of the things that you’ve been doing.

What I look for in my students is understanding when they come in that they’re not coming in fully developed. They’re not coming in as a jazz artist. They’re coming in as a musician who has a desire to learn about the genre.

So I’m looking for the seeds of what could be great artistry. And Georgia came in with all of that. Great musicality, great pitch, a good understanding of her instrument, and a good understanding of technique. An amazing ear. She could hear anything, and it made it very easy to teach her because she had never improvised before. She’d never done any of that.

Carmen: Kind of the jazz...

LaTanya: It’s the root of it.

Carmen: It’s the root of it, right.

LaTanya: And there’s something that I always say to my students. This music, like blues and jazz, is the mother of all the music that they’re listening to and loving anyway. It’s the mother of rock and roll. It’s the mother of R&B. It’s the mother of neo soul and the mother of gospel, which is also rooted in improvisation.

Rooted in taking the basic shape and architecture of a song and really making it your own. And so we were taking some of the skills that she innately already had and just honing them.

Carmen: So maybe you can help the audience understand how the studio process works and just walk us through what a session is like so we can understand how this mentorship relationship develops over time.

Georgia: Yeah. I remember some of our first lessons, to my surprise, were spent talking just on a personal level, who each of us were. I was very curious about who she was and what her story was and her trajectory.

And I think that is one of the most inspiring things about you, LaTanya, is that you’re a working, touring musician as well as an educator. That does so much to a student when they’re taught by someone that they can literally see themselves becoming in their profession.

A lot of the lessons were just spent talking, hanging out, getting to know each other so that that mentorship could be built. Because I think a lot of times in the education system, there’s not that personal element that allows you to establish trust.

And I think if you’re someone who is afraid of making mistakes or looking dumb, that’s going to be a huge roadblock to learning. Because that’s all that getting better is, just failing over and over again.

Initially we just established trust, and then we got to the nitty gritty, which was the best thing for me. I’ve always struggled with my work ethic.

Carmen: I bet you that’s changed. Georgia, if you’re doing eight shows, I bet you that work ethic is ready and going exactly where it needs to be.

Georgia: Hello. That woke me up. It was also two years after being in any type of school, and so the schedule kind of was a cold plunge. Getting up, getting to the place, being on time.

LaTanya: Welcome to the real world, honey. Welcome.

Georgia: It’s scary out here. But yeah, we did a lot of hard work because I didn’t come from really any formal experience of learning how to improvise. So we started from the beginning, and there was a big learning curve.

And she really instilled in me doing the work on your own. So she would give me the tools, a worksheet, a tune, or a set of music to learn, or scales to learn, and then I’d have to go and do it on my own, or else the next lesson was not going to be very fun.

LaTanya: Georgia, you said something really important. The conservatory model is such a wonderful model because you study with the same teacher for four years. I know Georgia’s voice intimately.

Because we spent so much time together, and I know the things that we really have an opportunity to fine tune what’s happening and fine tune the way that we work with each other, which is a gift.

But it’s super important. We have to establish that sense of trust with each other, because this relationship with your private instructor is probably the most intimate relationship that you will have with a professor across the campus.

So I want to make sure that my office and our time together is a safe landing place. That they can come in here, they can make mistakes, they can fall on the ground, they can break down in tears, and it’s a place where I can help to guide and to nurture, as well as educate.

Georgia: I still remember our first lesson, LaTanya, and we did an aria because I had told her I was a classical singer and I wanted to work on technique. So we did an aria. I think I have the lesson recorded actually, and sometimes I go back to it.

Georgia: I just remember being very uncertain at that point in my life. That’s pretty common. But I think I was just so uncertain about myself and my own abilities. And throughout the four years I spent with LaTanya, I learned to really believe in my abilities and to back up that belief with work.

Carmen: I hope all the students heard that.

Georgia: It’s a call-in.

Carmen: Yeah. I hate to point it out. Students, I’d be snapping like y’all do when you’re in meetings with me, but I won’t do that. So that’s so good. Confidence backed by work. Learn to believe in yourself, backed up by the work that you put in.

Georgia: Yeah, because it really, I’ve learned now in the professional world, it makes other people respect you more. You just learn to respect yourself more as well. So I think that’s the biggest thing that I’ve taken away.

Of course, my instrument has changed. It’s just matured and developed with the help of LaTanya’s leadership. And I think also my palette, like my musical palette. I was shown so much music by you, LaTanya. So many great artists that I really strive to sing like.

Georgia: And albums that I go back to that I think I’ll go back to for the rest of my life, to have that frame of reference for the level of singing that I want to achieve. Like I remember you showed me this album, Swinging Easy by Sarah Vaughan, and that’s one of Sarah V’s most tried and true albums. But if I hadn’t been exposed to that, I would not be singing the way I’m singing now, and I would not have the goals that I have.

Carmen: When Tom Dietterich earned his math degree from �鶹��Ƶ in 1977, artificial intelligence systems couldn’t learn or adapt. They simply followed rules. Over the next few decades, Tom helped change that. He became one of the pioneers of machine learning, the technology that allows AI to make sense of data, spot patterns, and make decisions.

Tom’s work has made him a sought-after authority. He advises the U.S. government on AI technologies and has earned some of the field’s top honors. His research has shown how data and algorithms can solve real-world problems, improving wildfire management, protecting endangered species, enhancing agricultural productivity, and advancing drug development.

I’m so excited to have Tom Dietterich here today because we rolled out a year of AI exploration at �鶹��Ƶ this year as a campus-wide initiative that will include lots of speakers, workshops, opportunities for people to think about the impact of AI and all the work that they do.

Obviously thinking about environmental impact and privacy impact, but also thinking about how this technology might reshape higher education. Things we can take from it that we feel really positive about and what things we should be concerned about.

One of the things that I really appreciate that you’ve said about your own experience being here at �鶹��Ƶ is how few computer scientists have a particularly liberal arts college background, and how that has informed the way you have thought about this technology. It has impressed upon you thinking about its ethical impacts in ways that I assume you suggest might not have been there as clearly for you if you didn’t have the type of background you had at �鶹��Ƶ.

Tom Dietterich: The most important class I took at �鶹��Ƶ was on political philosophy by Harlan Wilson. It was an extremely popular class, but for the more scientifically oriented students, in his class he said, Karl Marx claimed to be a scientist. Read Marx and critique his thinking.

And also go read Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions for a glimpse at what was then contemporary philosophy of science. And it was really that introduction to philosophy of science that led me then in graduate school to think about machine learning.

Tom: The goal of machine learning is, in some sense, to automate scientific inquiry. The central question of philosophy of science, or one of them, is how do we acquire new knowledge, learn new things about the world in a systematic and rational way?

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom: And that I thought was a fascinating question worthy of study. And so that really motivated me to do more reading of philosophy of science after I left.

But the other thing, of course, is that one of the things you’re taught at �鶹��Ƶ is it’s complicated. Basically everything is complicated.

Carmen: That’s right.

Tom: So you take classes in history, in economics, in sociology, and it’s just drummed into you that if anybody proposes a simple answer, it’s got to be wrong.

Carmen: One of the ways I describe the experience here is that students learn how to analyze complexity.

Tom: Well, or at least you know it’s there.

Carmen: Yeah, that’s right.

Tom: You may run away from it if you can, but engineering often emphasizes seeking out the part of the problem that can be solved by engineering methods, by applying physics and chemistry and so on, and focusing on that, trying to ignore the larger sociotechnical concerns.

That was the world I lived in, I would say, for the first 10 years of my career. I was having a good time solving little mathematical puzzles in my field, doing normal science. But I was a little disappointed that they weren’t leading to any real-world impact.

Right around 1996, I think, when I was first promoted to full professor, I thought, you know, it’s time to branch out. Collaborating with ecologists here at Oregon State University.

Carmen: Was that when you were modeling migrations? Is that that early work?

Tom: I didn’t get to migration, bird migration, for another five or six years. I was first working on global vegetation models, because the global climate models at that time only modeled the atmosphere and the earth was just considered a flat surface.

The question was, how about if we bring all of plant life into these models? Would that help? And so I worked with collaborators here that were doing that, and then I moved on to some other things.

Eventually got connected up with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. They have a big citizen science project called eBird.

Carmen: Okay.

Tom: One of the oldest, where bird watchers fill out checklists every time they go birdwatching. And the question was, could we actually do any science with this so-called citizen science data?

And one of the things we attempted was can we predict bird migration and forecast when it’s going to happen? Because then we might be able to make some interventions, particularly turning off lights in skyscrapers, maybe other sources of artificial light, because that really confuses the birds.

Carmen: So I’m wondering if maybe you could talk a little bit about something your colleagues call computing for a better world and sustainable future.

Tom: I co-led two very big grants on what we call computational sustainability, and I’ve been involved in some other AI for social good efforts.

Carmen: We haven’t heard people talk much about computational sustainability, AI for a better future. It seems like it’s a little lost in these conversations about AI. So I’m wondering if maybe you could help our audience understand what those conferences have been about and what’s been the purpose of them.

Tom: This area of computational sustainability was developed by Carla Gomes and myself. She was the head of this project. She’s a faculty member at Cornell.

And our vision is how can we develop the methods in computer science to promote sustainability in the natural environment, in our economic and social systems within the sustainable development goals framework of the United Nations.

We’ve funded a wide variety of different projects under this umbrella. Some of them have been like the bird migration or invasive species management type problems. There’s been work on law enforcement for anti-poaching efforts.

How do you model where the poachers are going and predict where they’ll be using machine learning? How do you design the routes the forest wardens should take so that they’re very unpredictable and have a higher probability of catching the bad guys?

But we’ve also looked at things like material science. Some of the biggest potential benefits of AI are going to come in their applications in new drugs and new materials. For example, more efficient batteries, better energy transmission, all the things we need to decarbonize the economy.

One project that I’m currently involved with is in weather networks. If you look at a map of the weather stations around the world, these are ground stations that record things like temperature and rainfall and wind speeds, those maps have huge empty spaces in South America and Africa.

At the same time, through the wonders of miniaturization and electronics, we can now build weather stations that are maybe twice the size of a Coke can, but are 10 to maybe 100 times cheaper than traditional weather stations.

And we have cellular data networks. I’m involved in a project called TAMO, the Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory, which hopes to be operating a network of, our dream is 20,000 ground weather stations across all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

We have 750 weather stations right now across 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it’s a nonprofit that’s headquartered in Nairobi, but we have field technicians throughout those countries.

My role, which is relatively minor in this, is to try to detect when a weather station needs to have a technician visit it and clean it and replace broken components. So it’s kind of a statistical maintenance problem, but surprisingly difficult to solve.

Carmen: No, that is fantastic. For those of you regular podcast listeners, you know that this podcast was named after that statement, as Michelle Obama described Obies and �鶹��Ƶ graduates and �鶹��Ƶ students as people who run to the noise.

Tom, I guess I’m wondering what you would say to that statement. How do you, in your work, personal life, however you want to answer the question, run to the noise?

Tom: I’m always looking for ways that I can make a difference in the world that go beyond just publishing papers and solving lovely technical problems that are fun.

Carmen: In Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel Leave the World Behind, a white family rents a swanky Airbnb in the Hamptons on Long Island for vacation when the Black couple who owns the house unexpectedly turns up.

You might think you’re in for a social satire about race, until the story morphs into an apocalyptic thriller. An unknown global disaster is knocking out cell phones and causing weird happenings like deer stampedes and flamingos gathering in swimming pools.

Written before the COVID-19 lockdown, Leave the World Behind eerily anticipates our feelings of isolation, dread, and denial in the face of an invisible threat.

The 2023 Netflix adaptation starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke captures the novel’s creepy atmosphere and currently ranks among the top 10 most popular English-language films on the streaming service.

So Rumaan, welcome to Running to the Noise. Thank you so much for doing this podcast.

Rumaan Alam: �鶹��Ƶ alumni cannot say no when �鶹��Ƶ College comes calling. So it’s a great pleasure.

Carmen: You know what, I’m going to take that and put it on a loop. So before I call anybody, or right before I call, let me just say what mine said. I love that.

So I know that �鶹��Ƶ is special to you. Maybe you can tell the audience a little bit about why this institution has been so important to you.

Rumaan: There was a feeling for me at �鶹��Ƶ that the sky was the limit because I was a kid with a plan.

Carmen: Mm.

Rumaan: �鶹��Ƶ at the time, again, I started in 1995, it was rarer than for undergraduate institutions to have a creative writing major. But �鶹��Ƶ did have one.

Carmen: That’s right.

Rumaan: I knew that I was going to major in creative writing, even though it was competitive. I felt very confident about my ability to do that.

I have this notion that the department at the time, the language that they used to describe the major was that it was for writers of serious purpose. The institution respected its members.

Rumaan: So these are 17 and 18-year-old kids.

Rumaan: But the school was saying, okay, you are writers of serious purpose. And in fact, they were. Yes, I was in these very rigorous workshops led by rigorous writers, much older than me, who respected me and treated me seriously, took me seriously, and took my work seriously.

And that was always my plan going to �鶹��Ƶ. That was my vision, that I was going to do that. And I had a more kind of responsible part B, that I was also going to major in English.

Which is funny now, it sounds like, oh, that’s the reasonable major.

Carmen: Yes.

Rumaan: The marketable major. And that I would find a way forward, I would find a way to work in publishing, which is in fact exactly what I did.

Carmen: Lots of the topics that you have pursued, race, class, power, how it divides us, it feels that maybe in this moment those topics are riskier. And I’m wondering what’s your perspective on kind of the risk you take in your work? Do you think about it that way? What should we know about when you’re pursuing these topics, whether you view them as risky?

Rumaan: You know what’s funny is that I would say that I don’t, even though I’m aware that they are. And I suppose that is probably also down to �鶹��Ƶ, which is not a place known for its risk-averse population, right.

It’s an institution that in fact encourages, if not rewards, a willingness to push artistically, intellectually, just in terms of pure intellectual stamina even.

Carmen: Right, right.

Rumaan: That sets your expectations for everything that comes after. So if you are having an undergraduate experience where your professors were, as mine were, saying to me, oh, what you’re writing is clearly a novel, keep going. You’re not hearing anyone say, oh, be careful when writing about race because that’s sensitive. Be careful when writing across differences of sex because that’s sensitive in the contemporary culture.

I never heard a message like that from any of the people who guided my education. And I never really heard them from my peers and my fellow students. And so in a way it doesn’t come into play when I’m working. I don’t have that nagging voice.

Carmen: Right. Even though you know that the work may be received that way or perceived that way, it’s not what’s driving or animating you. You’re just pursuing the art as you see it.

Rumaan: I also think, I hope that I have a sense that I could get it wrong.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Rumaan: And that is okay. My new book Entitlement, the protagonist of the book is a Black woman. Well, I’m not a Black woman.

Carmen: Although people have given you lots of praise for being able to write in the voice of women in particular.

Rumaan: I find that very gratifying. It makes me happy. It makes me feel like, okay, I’ve accomplished the task I set for myself. But I know that I have to accept the judgment of a reader who feels that I didn’t accomplish that.

And that is also okay. I think that is also something that you have to learn in your education, that you can try and you will succeed. No one’s going to succeed at 100 percent. This isn’t like a third grade spelling test. It doesn’t work that way. And that’s okay.

Carmen: Yeah.

Rumaan: You know.

Carmen: How do you get in that voice that’s not your own and that’s not your background?

Rumaan: It certainly helps to have an experience of life where you are with people who are different.

Carmen: Yeah.

Rumaan: And you see the fundamental humanity that is shared among all people, no matter what their demographic differences might be. If you’ve spent your life in the hothouse of your own identity and are unaware of the fact that other people feel exactly the same way you do, I feel like saying—

Carmen: Preach. Preach.

Rumaan: Right. I mean, everybody looks at the sky and sees it the same way, right? Everybody wants to eat one meal that their mother makes. Everybody wants to go home and take their shoes off.

There are fundamental human experiences that are shared. If you are working in good faith, you can try anything. If you’re working in bad faith, Godspeed.

But if I were writing a novel starring, so to speak, a Black woman to prosecute the case that I hate Black women, then that’s doomed to failure.

Carmen: Yeah.

Rumaan: I have to just trust that I have a reader who will see that I’m working in good faith and hope that I get it mostly right.

Carmen: Well, it reminds me of one of the things I say about what we’re trying to accomplish here at �鶹��Ƶ. It’s why we do things like meet full need and other things that try to bring a diverse set of voices to campus.

It’s that we have this tagline here: you think one person can change the world? So do we.

And I oftentimes say to our prospective students, if you’re going to go change the world for good, you better have met somebody who has a different perspective than you do so you can get it right.

And so I appreciate your willingness to kind of get into a zone with people who are different than you, have different perspectives than you do. It’s the only way to remotely get those voices right.

Rumaan: That fundamental respect for difference, you have to possess that. And you have to be in places where that is a given.

Carmen: Meet Tamara Jade, a semifinalist on The Voice who toured with Doja Cat, performed with Lizzo, and can move effortlessly from taking our breath away singing opera at Lincoln Center to cracking us up on HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show.

So Miss Tamara, who, just so you all know, I know her lots of ways, but I follow her on Instagram, and if you don’t follow her on Instagram, you are missing out on some fun, fun times of watching her growth and career.

So if you want to let us know your major and your year of graduation, and then your pivotal moment while you were here at �鶹��Ƶ creatively.

Tamara Jade: Yes, I am class of 2012. I was a double degree student in vocal performance and sociology. I attempted religion and African American studies minors, and then I did four out of the five requirements, and that last year I was like, ah, why am I doing this to myself? Nobody cares about this after this except for me.

Those aren’t degrees, but I did do a lot of coursework in those two departments as well.

And I have so many, just you asking the question, a bunch of different things came up. But if I could pick one, it would be a winter term project. And it was still to this day one of the top five hardest musical endeavors I have ever taken on.

God rest Miss Rosen’s soul, Marlene Rosen passed last year.

Tamara: But she chose me because she knew that I could do hard things, and she saw the skills that I came to �鶹��Ƶ with, having a strong ear and all those things, and thought that I would be appropriate to sing a George Crumb song cycle with five percussionists and one vocalist.

Carmen: Oh, wow.

Tamara: So I had to find my pitches from thin air, from marimbas and xylophones, from percussion instruments that you don’t usually look for tones from.

But we spent that entire winter term, every single day, hammering it out. It was a song cycle of spirituals, and so that’s why she knew it was appropriate for me as a church kid and everything. But it was also like, hey girl, this about to be real hard.

And it absolutely was, to this day one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done.

And so in November, I made my Lincoln Center debut. Yes. And I was invited. I did not audition for that show, but I was able to be in that room in a two week rehearsal period with an entire 300 page opera that is contemporary.

And I still say, this is not the hardest thing that I’ve ever done.

Tamara: And so I was not at all shaken in my boots. I knew exactly what to do. I knew how to find the destination my way. Also fully be myself. I was actually asked, hey, can you do a gospel run right there?

I’m like, is someone going to drop out the sky? Is Mozart going to kill me for that?

So yeah, I would say that that is coming up right now because it’s such a full circle moment for me, reentering opera and having not done it pretty much since I did �鶹��Ƶ in Italy when I left, 15 years later.

Carmen: That’s awesome.

Tamara: I remember the day that I met Miss Rosen. I told her I don’t want to sing opera. And she looked at me like I had 10 heads and said, well, why are you here?

I said, because I want to learn how to sing. I know how to sing, but I want to learn how to make sure I’m not hoarse every time I leave church or whatever it is that I want to do.

And so I think in my mind, being multiple things was always the goal. But that’s because I grew up on Carol Burnett and Debbie Allen was teaching, yeah, it’s okay, you can dance, but can you act? Yeah, you can act, but can you sing?

I know eventually I’m going to have to touch all of these things, and I want to act. I want to do all these things.

And so for me, that was always a goal because it’s what I wanted.

I came to LA on a comedy contract, on a television, a six-figure-a-year television contract. And then before a year could pass, writer strike, actor strike, on the part of my second year, the whole second year here on unemployment, twiddling my thumbs, hoping for something to come along, hoping for things to change.

And when it came back, I had to go back to music. I did not have a choice. I’m not sad about that. I’m not sad that I could text John Legend and say, hey, I see that you’re doing a concert with a choir, can I be in the choir?

Carmen: Tamara, running to the noise in your work or your life, what does that look like for you?

Tamara: That looks like disruption. I am a disruptor. I came to shake the tables.

Why is this right here? Move it. Why are they talking like that? Why are we allowing this? How much are you getting paid? Well, how much are you getting paid? Y’all not getting paid the same thing, what you going to do about it?

For me, I am the noise. I’ve always been loud. I had friends have an intervention with me one time and tell me I’m just too loud and unpredictable and wild. And I’m like, that’s crazy, because Doja Cat really needed that from me last year, huh?

So for me it means disrupting. It means coming to LA and yes, I’m here on a television contract, but where do y’all go to just hang? Do y’all like each other? Where do people go to love on each other? Where do people go to break bread?

Oh, you don’t have it? You don’t have it. So now I’m going to create it.

And I’m going to constantly challenge this status quo of what y’all have going on because it could be better. This world could always be better.

And I feel like especially Obies, we had a different slogan when I was there. It was like, think one person could change the world.

Carmen: No, we still have that.

Tamara: Oh, okay, cool.

Carmen: Yeah. One person can change the world, so do we.

Tamara: But I believe that until the air is left in my body.

Again, God rest Rosen’s soul, I know I keep talking about her, but she really was like, wow, that’s the type of life I want to live. Like when all the air is out of my lungs, the stories are countless, the generosity, the love, the joy, people will never run out of things to say about her.

But they’ll also be like, but yeah girl, she didn’t play though. But she didn’t play though.

I love that woman. That’s the type of life that I want to live.

I want people to sit up straight when I come in the room. I want people to, if you are being slimy and underhanded, I want you to be afraid of me. If you are somebody who likes to take advantage of people, I want you to feel so uncomfortable around me that you don’t even want to talk to me.

That’s to me what running to the noise is.

It’s okay to run to the noise. Run to New York, run to London, run to these loud places. Run to LA like we’re doing. Go in there and shake some tables up while you’re there.

I love it because it needs to happen. And I think uniquely that’s something that Obies can do.

So disrupt.

Carmen: I love it.

Carmen: I am joined by Benjamin Wittes, �鶹��Ƶ class of 1991, the senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Lawfare, a publication and podcast devoted to clear-eyed, nonpartisan analysis of some of the thorniest legal and policy questions facing this country.

Ben, welcome to Running to the Noise podcast. We are so excited to have you here.

Benjamin Wittes: Pleasure to be here.

Carmen: I thought it might help the audience to sort of get a little bit of history. You’re an English major here at �鶹��Ƶ, and somehow, in a wonderful way, you’ve become one of the court watchers that I pay attention to and that lots of people pay attention to.

And I’m wondering if maybe you can give the audience a sense of that arc, like how you got to this moment as you leave �鶹��Ƶ, this eager English major, I’m sure, but into this space that we now know you for.

Benjamin: It’s an interesting journey. And I left �鶹��Ƶ in the winter of 1990 knowing nothing about what I wanted to do, except that I wanted to write.

I thought that that meant that I wanted to write fiction. And I spent much of the next couple of years trying to write fiction, and I found that I was just terrible at it.

Because it turns out that writing fiction does not actually involve just the skills of writing.

Tamara: Hmm.

Benjamin: Which I knew I was very good at. It involves skills like imagination and being able to make up stories, being able to get inside imaginary people’s heads.

And you don’t know how uncreative you are until you try something like that and realize that I have actually no narrative imagination at all.

And it was kind of a painful process. I’m joking about it now, but it was—

Carmen: Tough.

Benjamin: It was like, I’m not used to being bad at things. And just spending a couple years realizing, oh, this isn’t working, and the reason it’s not working is that I’m not good at it.

Carmen: Wow. What a great lesson for our students. So good. About how you pivot. How you pivot when it’s not quite working.

Benjamin: All of the technical skills are there, right? And so then I started freelance journalism.

Carmen: Okay.

Benjamin: Everybody wanted to publish me. The thing that was missing was that I couldn’t make up stories.

And if I just didn’t bother to try, and I talked to real people, and I went into document records rooms, this was before the internet.

And so if you wanted government documents, you would go into the Federal Election Commission and go through their public records room.

Carmen: Yeah. Plant yourself down at the Federal Records Commission and go and look at the archives.

Benjamin: Right. Yeah. And I found that I had this skill, that I could walk into a public records room and walk out with a story.

And then all these skills that I was trying to apply to something that I wasn’t good at, I was trying to apply to something that I was very good at, which was telling stories that were actually true.

All of a sudden, people started publishing me.

Carmen: Do you think that you are better served by not having a law degree, and the way you approach your work is better served by not having that grounding, or maybe that albatross? I don’t know which way to describe it.

Benjamin: So I’m going to give you a completely honest answer, which is that there are people who do what I do who have law degrees. There are people who do what I do who don’t have law degrees.

I think at the point at which you’ve been doing it for 20 or 30 years, your educational background is not the most important thing.

The most important thing in my experience is related to that English major. Do you know how to read a poem? Do you know how to do a deep read of something? Do you come out of one of those traditions that actually takes a text and mines it for meaning?

And that can be the sort of Jesuitical canon law debates. People who grow up in Orthodox Jewish environments are really, really good at this often. And people who are English majors.

There’s something not very different about the problem of reading a sonnet and the problem of reading a statute.

Carmen: Oh my gosh. Okay. So, you know, you’re making the liberal arts college president like die with joy here.

Benjamin: I get it on purpose, but it happens to be true.

Carmen: I love it. At the end of our podcast, we oftentimes ask what it means to run to the noise, given the name of this podcast.

What does it mean to you to run to the noise?

Benjamin: So it’s such a wonderful name of a podcast. I was actually thinking about it this morning before we were talking.

In many ways over the last 30 years, I have lost touch with the most �鶹��Ƶ sides of me. And the last two or three years, I have gotten back in touch with my inner disruptive troublemaker, and I found that I had missed him quite a bit.

Carmen: Oh, that’s fantastic. That is fantastic.

Benjamin: The other day I was down at the No Kings protest, and I was in back of these two inflatable Tyrannosauruses, and I did not feel like they weren’t my people.

Carmen: Oh, I love it.

Benjamin: There’s a picture of me in my office briefing President Obama, and I hung next to it a picture of me from my freshman year with my hair down to here, climbing out of the reflecting pool in front of the Capitol, which I had just waded across, dripping with a big grin on my face.

And there was a time when I separated those two people, and now I’m just like, they are one. We live in ridiculous times, and I would still walk into the reflecting pool, and I would want President Obama to know that.

Carmen: I love it. I love it.

Benjamin: For many years I was the model think tank scholar in Washington. I did not register to vote on the basis of a party in Washington, because even though not being registered as a Democrat effectively deprives you of the right to vote, I didn’t want to be associated with, to have a political valence.

I’ve never given a political contribution. I religiously stayed away from demonstrations. And my job was to give nonpartisan expertise and guidance to administrations and members of Congress and other policymakers irrespective of party.

And I took that, I still take that, very seriously.

And then one day it stopped working for me for two reasons.

One was the whole premise of that way of being was that there were two great political movements in this country, one of the center right, one of the center left. Both were going to be in power at different times. Both were recognizably democratic actors, in the small d sense, and both would need assistance.

And so my job was to be the assistant.

And yeah, I would agree with one politician more than others about all kinds of things, but I just don’t believe that anymore.

Now there is one movement in the country that is solidly democratic.

Carmen: The pro-democracy movement.

Benjamin: Pro-democracy. And it, by the way, includes conservatives and includes liberals.

And there’s another movement that is frankly authoritarian. And I never signed up to be nonpartisan between authoritarianism and democracy. That was not the game.

My tent covers a huge range, but authoritarianism isn’t it.

And so once it occurred to me that that was the environment that we were living in, and that was in 2016, 2017, it started really breaking down my sense that I wasn’t allowed to be politically involved.

And so the second thing that happened was that Russia invaded Ukraine.

And in a way that is an entirely different conversation, I came to care about that very deeply, partly because I mentor a bunch of Ukrainians, ranging from teenagers to young adults and activists.

And I’ve spent a lot of time with the Ukrainian community.

And one day I was going by the Russian embassy, which is just a prominent building on Wisconsin Avenue, and I saw it. It’s big and white and looks like a movie screen.

And I tweeted that somebody needed to project a Ukrainian flag on that building, and it got a lot of retweets. Everybody seemed to think it was a good idea, and nobody did it.

A few weeks later, it just occurred to me, if someone was going to do this, it was going to be me.

So I did.

And I have been ever since then doing projection operations in support of mostly Ukraine, in different parts of Washington and in 11 capitals around the world where there are Russian embassies that I don’t think I’m going to get arrested for projecting on, although I’ve gotten close a few times.

Back when I was an �鶹��Ƶ student, the idea of not getting involved would have been unthinkable to me.

And then I let myself be convinced, by the way Washington worked, for many years that it was better for me to make a point of being uninvolved.

And I have learned to unlearn that.

If people want to think less of my think tank scholarship for that, that is fine. They’re entitled to do that.

But I am not interested anymore in not being involved in both the domestic and international struggles of democratic polities against authoritarianism.

Carmen: And if we take your admonition to be the truth, which I agree that it is, this is what is going to be required.

Benjamin: If I didn’t think so, I would be doing something else.

Everybody’s got to get a little bit out of their comfort zone. I don’t believe in political violence, of course, but I do think we all need to be thinking about what is the thing that I would admire somebody else for doing, but that I would never dream of doing.

And then ask yourself, why is it that you would never dream of doing that?

Carmen: That’s Limmie Pulliam making his Carnegie Hall debut, singing the title role in The Ordering of Moses. He trained with the legendary Richard Miller at the �鶹��Ƶ Conservatory of Music in the late 1990s, and expectations for Pulliam were high.

But the rising young tenor with such promise quit singing in his early twenties, disheartened by an industry that he says denied him roles because of his weight.

For nearly a decade, he paid his rent as a debt collector and security guard, and rarely sang at all, not even in the car along with the radio.

The story of how Limmie rebuilt his career and voice against all odds moved me. I wanted to know how he overcame those doubts to reclaim a career on center stage, a place he so clearly belongs.

So Limmie, I’m so excited to see you. Last time I saw you, you were making your Carnegie Hall debut.

Limmie Pulliam: Yes.

Carmen: Yeah, that was awesome.

Limmie: That was a lot of fun.

Carmen: That was a lot of fun. So just so the audience knows, it was in the title role in The Ordering of Moses, the 1932 oratorio by celebrated composer R. Nathaniel Dett, who in 1908 became the first Black double-degree graduate of �鶹��Ƶ.

And you were on stage killing it, as they say. So let’s just start there. Tell the audience what that’s like, to be in that space.

Limmie: It’s really hard to describe. I’ve had the opportunity on a couple occasions to perform in that space, and both of them have been because of �鶹��Ƶ.

My first time there was as an undergrad in a chorus for the Mahler Eighth Symphony.

Carmen: Yes.

Limmie: Under the direction of the late great Robert Shaw. As an aspiring young singer, it was just motivating to be in that space and to see the excellence that was represented on the stage, and the soloists, and the orchestras, and the conductor. It really gave me something to aspire to.

Carmen: Right.

Limmie: So when the opportunity arose for me to once again return to this space with �鶹��Ƶ, the �鶹��Ƶ Orchestra and �鶹��Ƶ choruses, and such a prolific piece as The Ordering of Moses, it was one I couldn’t really pass up.

Because there aren’t too many hallowed spaces in the classical music world here in the United States bigger than Carnegie Hall.

Carmen: Right.

Limmie: And to achieve making a debut, there was something extremely special for me because, one, most people wouldn’t think that at the age of 47 you would be making a major debut at a place like Carnegie Hall.

Carmen: Right.

Limmie: Which I hope inspired others to really know not to ever give up on their dreams.

Carmen: That’s right.

Limmie: And that as long as you have breath in your body, it’s never too late to achieve your dreams.

Carmen: It was an incredible story in The New York Times that recounts how you came back to music. Maybe help our audience understand how you come back, and what that day was like, by all accounts kind of reigniting your career.

Limmie: Yeah, so it was 2007. I was working as a field organizer for Obama’s first campaign.

Carmen: Okay.

Limmie: I was overseeing the five most southern counties in Missouri. We were doing a local event, and they had some surrogates they had sent in.

So I’d invited someone to sing the national anthem, and we were all set. And the day of, they get cold feet.

I’m thinking, okay, we’ll just scratch the anthem for today. And my boss didn’t like that idea. He said, well, can we get someone else to do it?

And I said, I don’t know anybody who could do it on such short notice.

Carmen: Right.

Limmie: And he said, didn’t I read on your resume you used to be an opera singer?

I said, used to be. It’s been several years since I’ve sung at all in public. Over five years now. I don’t—

And he goes, how bad could it be?

I said, it could be pretty bad. I have no idea what’s going to come out of my mouth.

Carmen: That’s right.

Limmie: And he said, I don’t think anybody would notice.

I said, but I would notice. I have standards that if it’s not up to those standards, then I’m definitely going to notice. And I would be horrified.

Carmen: Mm.

Limmie: But he insisted. So I finally went off to a quiet place and just started searching for a key that I could do it in that was comfortable enough.

Because the anthem has a wide range.

Carmen: Oh my gosh.

Limmie: It just isn’t easy.

Carmen: It is not.

Limmie: And so I found a comfortable key. I stood in front of that audience and I sang it.

Carmen: Before you say what happened, you walk up to the stage, how are you feeling?

Limmie: I was so nervous. My stomach was in my throat because I had no idea what was about to come out of my mouth.

Carmen: Right. And you hadn’t done this in five years.

Limmie: Right. And so I stand there and I start singing, and by the end of it, it was almost as if I had kind of disassociated myself from what was going on.

Carmen: Yeah, out of your body a little bit.

Limmie: Yes. And then afterwards people clapped, and several people came up to me, because it was in my hometown, and said, it’s so nice to hear your voice again.

And it was then, as I began to kind of tinker with the voice afterwards, that it just—

Carmen: Opened the door in a way you hadn’t planned?

Limmie: Because I didn’t expect it to be as good as it came out, because I was so out of practice.

So I began tinkering at home, singing along with recordings. And then one day I found a trunk that had a lot of my lesson tapes from �鶹��Ƶ.

Carmen: Oh, wow.

Limmie: So I had videotapes of lessons with Richard Miller and started working with those tapes.

Carmen: Back to your old instructor?

Limmie: Vocal instructor.

It was one of those things, almost like riding a bicycle. As I began to work with the tapes, as the coordination came back, as I paid more attention to the voice, I said, this voice is different than it was.

What I really thought in the beginning was that maybe I wasted time by not singing over those years.

Really turned into a blessing.

Carmen: Wow.

Limmie: It allowed the voice to settle and mature and grow without me putting extra miles on it.

Carmen: What an incredible lesson for all of us.

Limmie: I jokingly say I’m 48 now, but my voice is 36.

Carmen: I think sometimes we think careers are linear.

Limmie: Mm-hmm.

Carmen: And we see people in these successful moments and think it always flowed that way.

But we never know what people have overcome.

Whatever you want to say to students about resilience and coming back stronger.

Limmie: I would encourage students and anyone aspiring in this industry to really run to the noise.

When you face a challenge head on, you give yourself the chance to turn an obstacle into an opportunity.

Every challenge holds a lesson waiting to be uncovered.

So don’t be afraid to face your fears, step out of your comfort zone, be persistent, be consistent, and don’t let a no deter you.

Carmen: Yeah.

Limmie: It’s up to us to define ourselves, not let others define us.

Carmen: Amen.