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How can universities rekindle public trust and foster genuine viewpoint diversity, without relying on government mandates? 

Today’s guest is Mary Kate Cary, adjunct professor at the University of Virginia (UVA), seasoned presidential speechwriter, and co-chair of Heterodox Academy’s campus community at UVA. John Tomasi and Mary Kate examine the urgent need to move beyond top-down reforms and build cultures of open inquiry from the ground up.

Drawing on recent Gallup polling that shows public confidence in higher education has plummeted from 60% to 32%, Mary Kate argues for bottom-up solutions rooted in the distinctive ethos and history of each campus. She shares examples of innovative, student-facing programming at UVA, such as “Think Again,” “Free Speech Fridays,” and “Disagree with the Professor,” that encourage intellectual humility, critical thinking, and constructive disagreement.

The conversation provides actionable insights for faculty, administrators, and students committed to strengthening open inquiry and viewpoint diversity, highlighting the role of both faculty leadership and supportive administration in achieving durable change.

Mary Kate Cary is Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Strategic Initiatives in the Office of the Interim President at the University of Virginia and a long-time advocate for open inquiry, free speech, and viewpoint diversity on campus. She previously served as an adjunct professor in UVA’s Politics Department, where she taught courses on political speechwriting, the greatest speeches in American history, and co-taught a bipartisan election class. Cary is the founding director of Think Again at UVA, a student-facing initiative promoting free speech, critical thinking, and respectful debate, and she co-chairs the HxA Campus Community at UVA, one of the largest chapters of the organization. Before her work in higher education, Cary was a White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush and has worked as a political commentator, professional speaker, and writer. She was a recipient of the 2024 Heterodox Academy Open Inquiry Leadership Award for her efforts in advancing open inquiry and constructive disagreement on campus.

Episode Transcript

John Tomasi: Mary Kate Cary, welcome to Heterodox Out Loud.

Mary Kate Cary: Thanks for having me, John. It's really a pleasure.

John Tomasi: We're going to talk about the University of Virginia, where you teach. But I just want to begin by saying, so you went to UVA.

Mary Kate Cary: Yes.

John Tomasi: Your husband went to the law school. You have two daughters, I think, who both went to UVA.

Mary Kate Cary: That's right.

John Tomasi: And you're also the co-chair of our HXA campus community. You're our UVA family.

Mary Kate Cary: Yes, we are.

John Tomasi: We're going to talk about Open Inquiry and some of the amazing work you've been doing there with the HXA community and just your own initiative. But let me just first pause just to say something about UVA itself. So you went to Virginia. Your family's a Virginia family. What about that university? Every university is different. And people have different things about it that they love. What does UVA mean to you?

Mary Kate Cary: What initially drew me there was the fact that it was the only American university started by one of our founding fathers. And that is huge. Everything there goes to Jefferson's vision of all men are created equal. And that has led to a student culture there of self-governance. And so the honor system, the judiciary system, all kinds of things, the administration does not control. The students control it. And I thought all colleges were that way. They're not. And that's the way I grew up kind of. And I thought, how can it not be this way? So that's what really strikes me about UVA.

John Tomasi: One of the things we're increasingly talking with our members about all across the country is that we have a set of HXA values and principles, the Open Inquiry U document with our four-point agenda that we're encouraging across the country. But every campus is unique. Every campus has its own biology. And we find that the members who are most successful at building Open Inquiry on their campuses, they don't just take a cookie-cutter approach. Like, here's our principles and plop them down on our campus. They think in more subtle ways about what's unique about their university. And it's often found in the history. There's often elements of things about the founding or about certain stories that are important about that university. If you can find that, like the biology, if you understand the biology, the unique biology of your university as insiders, only insiders do, then you can maybe build the principles of Open Inquiry in a way appropriate to that school, rather than being seen as an outside body or a pathogen. If you're seen as an outsider trying to push for reforms about Open Inquiry, the white blood cells that inhabit the place will come out against you, and they'll identify you. And if they can, they may even stop you or kill you. Hopefully not. Let's start by talking about your teaching.

Mary Kate Cary: Okay.

John Tomasi: And so you were, right out of UVA, you became a speechwriter in Washington, D.C.

Mary Kate Cary: Right.

John Tomasi: For George W. Bush.

Mary Kate Cary: H.W.

John Tomasi: H.W. Bush.

Mary Kate Cary: The old man.

John Tomasi: Fascinating. How old were you?

Mary Kate Cary: 24.

John Tomasi: Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

Mary Kate Cary: Third job out of school.

John Tomasi: Oh my gosh. And that was your third job. Impressive. Tell us about your teaching, and I know one of the courses that I believe you teach is about speechwriting. Can you just say a bit about any of your teaching, but speechwriting if you like.

Mary Kate Cary: So I wrote for President Bush while he was in office and then for years afterwards when he left office. And then started freelancing in Washington for all kinds of people, business and public service. And along the way, I became friends with the dean of the college at UVA. And one day he said to me, have you ever thought about teaching, teaching speechwriting? And I said, well, how do you teach something that nobody taught you? Because I totally had fallen into speechwriting. I didn't take a class in it.

John Tomasi: What did you major in?

Mary Kate Cary: International relations.

John Tomasi: Interesting.

Mary Kate Cary: I thought I'd go in the foreign service and see the world. And then the foreign service, I passed the test, but then they never called. And so I started taking writing jobs. And next thing you knew, I was on the campaign.

John Tomasi: Fascinating.

Mary Kate Cary: It was a losing campaign, I thought, against Michael Dukakis. I thought it was good for character to be on a losing campaign once in your life. And then we won. I was more shocked than anybody. And then they said, would you come to the White House? And I said, the first job was to write magazine articles by George Bush, ghostwriting magazine articles in his voice. And I said, but I've never written a magazine article. And they said, well, are you saying no to the White House job? And I said, no, no, no, I'll take it. I'll take it.

John Tomasi: Nice.

Mary Kate Cary: So anyway, so the dean says to me, you know, do you want to teach? And I luckily found that there's one book on political speechwriting written by two Al Gore speechwriters. And that saved me. And so I teach from that book. And it's very good. And then the second class I teach is the greatest speeches in American political history.

John Tomasi: Fascinating.

Mary Kate Cary: So they have to be American because you could do a whole semester of nothing but Churchill. It has to be politics so you don't have, you know, fake speeches from movies or stuff at the Oscars or the Grammys or something. That's what sounds predictable and boring, but anyway.

John Tomasi: Yes.

Mary Kate Cary: So what we do is we take probably 25 of the greatest speeches and we first do the historical context of that moment and a speech capturing a moment in time. And we look at the person who gave the speech and why did that person give it and not somebody else. And then we analyze the speech itself for the persuasive structure, the rhetorical devices, all the things that made it so memorable and effective. And then we end with, did this change the course of our democracy? And spoiler alert, the answer is usually yes. But the subliminal message to the students is one person speaking up can change the world. And the students that I'm seeing right now, I've been doing this for five or six years. Like I said, I'm an adjunct. I don't have a PhD. I didn't come up through the academy. But parachuting into this, I see young people who do not have great K-12 civic education. They don't think that either Biden or Trump are very good speech givers. So they sort of tune that out. And they remember Obama, but they couldn't name an Obama speech because they were toddlers, basically. Right. So they're not used to speeches changing the course of history. And so that's what's so motivating to me is it's a great way to teach civics as well as how they can speak persuasively and effectively.

John Tomasi: I love how you think on both of those levels about your teaching because people like me trained academically, as most professors are, we tend to think in terms of what the intellectual content is. And we focus on that, which you're doing, which you do also, which you additionally think about. You said, I think you used the word subliminal. Like what else are you, what other kind of soul crafting are you doing in your classroom? Because we all are in different ways, especially I think if we're thinking. Is there one speech in particular that you find that resonates with students?

Mary Kate Cary: Probably the most powerful one I think they like is Martin Luther King. I've been to the mountaintop the night before he was assassinated. And he says, there's a fork in the road. We can go with violence or nonviolence. The next morning he gets killed. That same afternoon, the day he gets killed, Bobby Kennedy is going to give a campaign address in Indianapolis. He's running for president. And he gets the word and he announces to the crowd in a black neighborhood that King has just been killed. And he doesn't know what King said before he died. And Kennedy throws out his campaign speech, gives a five-minute ad-lib speech that quotes Aeschylus, by the way. And the structure of that speech is, we are at a fork in the road and we can go with violence or nonviolence. And so one is a highly structured, longer speech. The other one is five minutes off the cuff. And it's hard to tell which one's better. They're amazing. And they're at the same moment in time. And Indianapolis, by the way, was one of the only American cities that did not riot after the King. I was in Washington as a kid. Washington was on fire. And it was a highly effective speech.

John Tomasi: Do the students listen to the speech or do they read them?

Mary Kate Cary: Yes, both.

John Tomasi: They do both?

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah. Because the delivery matters so much with the speech. And then we're doing a series of videos on them. And so some of them we have actors.

John Tomasi: Oh, really? Nice, nice. Let's talk about open inquiry. Yes. Your teaching has always to do with open inquiry, I'm aware. But you've also been involved in a whole number of formal policy changes and different kinds of initiatives at UVA. So UVA adopted a statement on free expression and free inquiry in 2022?

Mary Kate Cary: Correct.

John Tomasi: You were involved in that, I think?

Mary Kate Cary: Yes.

John Tomasi: What happened?

Mary Kate Cary: There was the Chicago statement and Jim Ryan, the president of UVA at the time, was under all kinds of pressure, mostly from alums, to sign the Chicago statement and endorse it. And if you look at the Chicago statement, it's probably two pages long. And the first page is how great the University of Chicago is. And then the second page is kind of like, oh, and by the way, we like free speech, right?

John Tomasi: Right.

Mary Kate Cary: And Jim said, I am not signing a document that says how great the University of Chicago is. We are the University of Virginia, and I'm not signing it.

John Tomasi: Good, good.

Mary Kate Cary: So he put together a committee, and I got named to it, even though I was fairly new on grounds because of this class that I had co-taught from two different perspectives, which I can tell you about in a sec. And so that was 12 of us on the committee, quite a bit of negotiating of what would go in, but our goal was to have it not go back to the University of Virginia, because then it would be the same as the Chicago statement. It would go to the founding of our nation. And so we tied it to the founding principles, assuming that all the universities in the country would then sign our statement. Nobody did. We had the lone signatures, but I still think it was a success. I think it was great to be involved in.

John Tomasi: So you did just that thing that I was describing before, where you were thinking, not just here's a statement from, let's say, Chicago, where many of the brilliant statements come from, but how do you tie it to the particular ethos and biology of UVA? And that reminds me of another project I think you were involved with at UVA about institutional neutrality. And as you know, the Kalven Report from Chicago is the famous kind of touchstone document. One of the things about neutrality in the Kalven Report that really strikes me is that it says at the very beginning that the charge to the committee is to develop an appropriate policy about institutional statements for the University of Chicago, given the University of Chicago's particular history. So the document very explicitly says this is not a document that attempts to say what the tradition is here, a particular tradition at a particular university. Now, we think that you say that there are common principles like there are for the founding that go across societies and cultures and universities in that document. We developed our own model of institutional neutrality we call Extraordinary U. We built it, though, to be not just tied to Chicago's own history, but to pick up the insights from that report and make them more generalizable and especially adaptable to new terrain. That was a long way of asking you, you know, why is institutional neutrality important? Has UVA adopted something like that yet? And what's the state of play there regarding that?

Mary Kate Cary: Yes. I was not on the committee for that one, but there were definitely heterodox members on that committee, which was great.

John Tomasi: Because the HXA members are usually the experts, the campus experts on these things, where we aspire to find people and then train them up. But anyway, go on.

Mary Kate Cary: Yes. So in, I think it was September of 2024, the university adopted a statement of neutrality, institutional neutrality, that was written originally. You know, it was not just endorsing the Kalven Report, but they really focused in on probably the most famous two sentences in the Kalven Report, which is, the instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics. It is not itself the critic. It's a fabulous line. And that's, they really honed in on, and I think that's, that was the right thing to do. So it's been in place ever since, it's what, a year, year and a few months now.

John Tomasi: Yeah, a lot of us, as you know, we were, HXA was pairing with FIRE to encourage university presidents and universities more generally to adopt something like Extraordinary U, the HXA document, or some version of Kalven. And we, by our count, 144 presidents, we worked with a number, a great number of them, adopted neutrality before Trump was second election. I want to ask you about the UVA's, there's a very complicated political situation at UVA right now. Let's not get into that, because that's an unfolding, unfolding drama. Yes, it could change in the next 10 minutes. But maybe just, before we continue about open inquiry, do you want to share a word with us about how you see outside political pressure, what role political pressure has on, or not just political pressure, but, you know, we've seen all this data, and we know that there's been a loss of trust in American universities. And some people think the way to restore that trust is to have the government come in and make change, force changes. Others think, like we do at HXA, that there's an incredibly important role for professors to work hard to make their own universities better than they are, and to make them more perfect than they are currently. What role do you see for public trust? What's the role of public trust in the way universities are governed and the way people act and reform universities?

Mary Kate Cary: Well, if you look at the polling, Gallup polling, over the last, you know, 10 years, the number of people who have a great deal of confidence in higher education has dropped basically in half, from 60% down to 32%. And among those people, when Gallup says, okay, what is it that is causing you to feel this way? Some of them say lack of affordability, and some of them say viewpoint diversity. Those are the two top answers, lack of viewpoint diversity. And I would argue that the way to fix that is from the bottom up, which is what Heterodox is doing. Individual faculty members, you know, speaking up, as opposed to the government imposing it. And I think that's going to be the way it lasts longest, and that's why viewpoint diversity is one of the priorities of our interim president. That's one of my jobs, is to help him figure out how are we going to do that from the bottom up.

John Tomasi: Interesting. I've been in debates recently on the question of what's the role of campus insiders and what's the role of outside political agents. And the debates have been set up in terms of inside reformers versus outside reformers. I was in one of those debates at MIT recently and at North Carolina just a few weeks ago. I kind of think that way of framing the debates is a mistake. I think there can be some role perhaps for both kinds of reformers. At a state university like Virginia, the government's always involved in the education.

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah, we answer to the legislature.

John Tomasi: There's no state of affairs where politics is not relevant to the university. And there's a role for our society and our citizens who are paying for it, but more important, are part of the same culture that we share to think about universities and to express themselves. Let's talk about some of the things you do at UVA because I think this is actually the really spicy stuff. So think again at UVA. What is that?

Mary Kate Cary: So I first got the idea after reading Adam Grant's book. I probably need to track him down and ask him if it's okay that we're using the same title. Hopefully it's a common enough phrase that because Stanley Fish had a column by that name in the New York Times. But anyway, Think Again is dedicated to four pillars. Viewpoint diversity, freedom of expression, intellectual humility, because people of all ages can be wrong, and critical thinking where you don't just believe everything everybody tells you. You investigate both sides for yourself and decide what you believe. And we realized that there were plenty of people around UVA who are issuing white papers and holding conferences and things like that. And we said, our lane is going to be student-facing programming. And a lot of the ways I say it have to do with taking off your headphones, putting down the cell phone, looking at somebody in the eye, standing up for what you believe in, not throwing bombs, not calling names. And so we have year-round programming. We call it Free Speech Fridays. Some of them are things like speed debating, and we make the EB of debating smaller, so it looks like speed dating, because we really want them—we're going to do that around Valentine's Day. We want them to debate things and then fall in love and get married. And then we have another one called Low Stakes Hot Takes, where the students sit around a table and say things not to presidential elections, but to, is Taylor Swift overrated? Half the room says, what? How could you possibly say that?

John Tomasi: And what's the—so, Low Stakes Hot Takes.

Mary Kate Cary: Low Stakes Hot Takes.

John Tomasi: What are you trying to do? What's the—because I know you're always working on numerous levels. What are you doing?

Mary Kate Cary: That one's trying to get them to see that it's okay to express an opinion that somebody might disagree with.

John Tomasi: Right.

Mary Kate Cary: And to start with Low Stakes and then eventually get braver and go to High Stakes.

John Tomasi: Nice.

Mary Kate Cary: We have another one that does graduate up called Food for Thought. And by the way, all of these have free food. They're at lunchtime, 12 to 2, in the Rotunda, so it's a cool place to go. You're not in some basement of a classroom building. There is way too much kale salad at UVA served at official events. So, we advertise there will be no kale salad at our events.

John Tomasi: That's really good.

Mary Kate Cary: We have pizza. We have dumplings. We have tacos. Things like that.

John Tomasi: You're actually saying no kale.

Mary Kate Cary: Yes, no kale.

John Tomasi: I mean, Mary Kate, you just—you have the finger on the pulse. It's awesome.

Mary Kate Cary: Thank you.

John Tomasi: It's awesome.

Mary Kate Cary: I'm trying.

John Tomasi: Well, having children having gone there recently probably gives you some more of that.

Mary Kate Cary: Yes.

John Tomasi: You probably heard they complain about the kale.

Mary Kate Cary: So, Food for Thought starts with softball questions. What's the best fried chicken in Charlottesville and why, right?

John Tomasi: Nice.

Mary Kate Cary: Medium ball would be best or favorite and least favorite class at UVA. A little uncomfortable to talk about in case you hurt somebody's feelings or something. And then high stakes, hardball would be, tell us about a time when you changed your mind about something important in your life.

John Tomasi: Nice.

Mary Kate Cary: And that one, we have the room for two hours. I figured they'd come in, grab a piece of pizza, and say, oh, Professor Cary, I can't stay. I've got a quiz. Thanks so much. And they'd all take the food and sneak out. At the two-hour mark, every table's still full. I go over to one of them, and I say, so, guys, we're going to run out of time in the room here. I've got to kind of send you on your way. But tell me what you're talking about. And they said, oh, we're doing the hardball. And I said, oh, which hardball did you pick? And they said, the time you changed your mind about something important.

John Tomasi: Nice.

Mary Kate Cary: And I said, what was it that you changed your minds on? And they said, oh, going from atheism to a life of faith.

John Tomasi: Wow.

Mary Kate Cary: And I said, really? I would have thought the other direction in college. And I said, are you guys all old friends? And they said, no, no, we just met.

John Tomasi: Interesting.

Mary Kate Cary: And I said, you know what? Forget about leaving the room at the two-hour mark. You can have the room till midnight. You're awesome. Have a good time.

John Tomasi: You're awesome.

Mary Kate Cary: And then probably the most famous is disagree with a professor. I shouldn't say most famous, most popular.

John Tomasi: I can imagine.

Mary Kate Cary: And so disagree with a professor. We get professors to each write three statements of their own creation that they think will be controversial with students. And some of them pick guns and abortion. Some of them pick some topic in their field of study. Some of them do something silly like, you know, peanut M&Ms versus regular M&Ms or something. The silliest one lately was shampooing your hair is a waste of time and money.

John Tomasi: Nice. Nice.

Mary Kate Cary: And I wondered if that gentleman's wife knew that you had done that. Because if my husband did that, I'd be like, dear, I really don't think you should do that. Anyway.

John Tomasi: I'll just add, by the way, that I have nieces and nephews who are on this kick where they don't wash their hair.

Mary Kate Cary: Oh, see?

John Tomasi: It's a thing.

Mary Kate Cary: Apparently it's a thing. He's a trailblazer.

John Tomasi: I mean, I don't know. They just have dirty hairs.

Mary Kate Cary: I can buy it anyway. So then we put them in a plastic sleeve that stands up on the table. So the students enter the room and look around at all the tables at the statements. And then say, oh, well, I disagree with that statement. I'll sit here. And they grab their non-kale salad and they sit and they start questioning the professor. So it's outside the classroom.

John Tomasi: I'm sorry. How many professors are in the room?

Mary Kate Cary: Usually we have tables. We have four or five tables. Our last one we had probably eight tables. So we're slowly expanding.

John Tomasi: I'm sorry. So you're recruiting eight professors to come along with all the students.

Mary Kate Cary: Right.

John Tomasi: You're a marvel.

Mary Kate Cary: Well, the professors, that's the hardest part is getting the professors.

John Tomasi: Of course.

Mary Kate Cary: A lot of them. Because all the incentives are lined up in the direction of do your research, protect your time. And obviously there are people who care about teaching. But the incentives are just not aligned that way. We have a lot more students than professors. And we're going to keep working on it. But we're getting there. And a lot of them are repeat professors. They just come up with new statements. But it's awesome.

John Tomasi: Can I say something about that? Because I had a professor, Martha Nussbaum, when I first went to Brown. She's a very famous researcher. And a person who's also famously known. She's known for being very focused on her research. And when she was leaving Brown to take a job at Chicago, she took me out to lunch. I was a first-year assistant professor. And she wanted to give me a secret about Brown. And she said the secret was that you could, I should always, at Brown, you can advise a freshman if you want to. You can voluntarily be a freshman advisor, which no professor particularly wants to do. Because you're supposed to be doing your research so you can get tenure and so on and so on. But she said to me, you know, every year or every other year, you should be a freshman advisor. You should also offer a freshman seminar with your advisees in your class. And this is, you know, people don't want to teach freshman seminars because it's not focused on your research. You can't show them the book you're writing and get help at it like you could with a graduate seminar. And she said to me, Martha said to me, you should do it because it'll keep you humane. And I bet the thing you're doing there by drawing those professors, luring them into that room, I bet it affects the way they go about being a professor, about the way they see themselves and their role on campus. Because I think if we can, part of the role of HXA is to, and we talk about open inquiry as a particular thing that we care most about. But behind open inquiry, I think, is something more basic. And that's just, do you care about the students? Do you care about the profession? Do you care about the search for ideas? Do you care about your university?

Mary Kate Cary: Right.

John Tomasi: Are you a citizen? Are you just a professor of some discipline that you get your PhD in, important though that is? Or are you also aware of your responsibilities to your university?

Mary Kate Cary: And to the next generation.

John Tomasi: It's the next generation. And it's also, it's the institution itself, right? So I'm really struck by that you're forming, whether you're doing it subconsciously, you probably are, not just the student's experience, but you're forming the experience of the professors too. That's really beautiful.

Mary Kate Cary: Well, and I'm not in that boat. I'm not on tenure track. I'm an adjunct.

John Tomasi: I'm aware.

Mary Kate Cary: And so I don't have this concern, like you're saying, for my research and publishing and all that. So it's a little different for me, which is, but I, you know.

John Tomasi: Can I go back to something you said a moment ago?

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah.

John Tomasi: I just want to, I'm struck by the comment about religion. Can we just pause on that one?

Mary Kate Cary: Yes.

John Tomasi: Because I want to keep on digging into the work and the different things you do at UVA. But I'm just struck by what you described as students, what did they say again? They said they were, they disagree about religion. They changed their mind about religion. Was that what it was?

Mary Kate Cary: Right.

John Tomasi: Yeah.

Mary Kate Cary: That they had changed their mind going from atheism to a life of faith.

John Tomasi: And so what do you think about religion? Have you had other experiences where you've heard some other things from students?

Mary Kate Cary: Yes.

John Tomasi: Is it easier to talk about religious difference?

Mary Kate Cary: There's a polling that shows that your average college students these days would rather talk about religion than politics because they think with politics, they'll never get another date and they're going to get canceled and all this. And so that conversation with those students that day on the hardball question, sort of the light bulb went off. And I thought, what if we did a variation on disagree with a professor where instead at every table there was a different leader of a different faith, an adult? So you'd have a Catholic priest, you'd have a rabbi, you'd have an imam, you know, whatever.

John Tomasi: You did this. You did this event.

Mary Kate Cary: No, this is, I'm dreaming of doing this next semester. I haven't, if anybody who's listening to this wants to try it and let me know how it goes, I would love to hear.

John Tomasi: You mean try it at some other university or try it at UVA?

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah, try it at some other university. But I'm going to try and do this and have some sort of overarching topic that each religion would have a different take on, whether it's the afterlife or the role of women or something like that. And it would not be about recruiting people to your faith. It would be, I was thinking maybe we would call it something like, tell me why. And the students could go from table to table and say to the Catholic priest, why can't women be priests? And they could say to the imam, why do the women have to cover their heads and the men don't? Or to, you know, any number of things that you could do like that. And so there just weren't enough hours in the day this last fall, but that's my dream is to do something like that. Because I think the polling shows, and the thing we're seeing at UVA, and I assume this is happening at other campuses. I was in the Christian Studies Center last Friday night, two Fridays ago, absolutely packed at eight o'clock on a Friday night. And it's on Fraternity Row. And I'm like, they're not at the fraternity parties. They're at the Christian Studies Center.

John Tomasi: Fascinating.

Mary Kate Cary: Catholic Hoos is what we call the Catholic UVA, because we're the Wahoos.

John Tomasi: I'm well aware.

Mary Kate Cary: So Catholic Hoos is huge. It's hundreds and hundreds of kids. And then the one that was most surprising to me is there's an uptick in Orthodox Jewish recruits at UVA, which I would not have guessed that.

John Tomasi: It's so interesting. I'm hearing some other things across the country at schools that are, I don't think, I'm not sure if they're intentionally moving admissions criteria. They're in those directions explicitly. But when I travel around the country, I often hear from people anecdotes about religious conversations. And there's a desire to dig in on these deep questions, which kind of work beneath the surface of political differences that sometimes inform people's political views, of course. But it's so fascinating that so many students seem to find that subterranean deep questions about the meaning of life, why we're here, as things they can talk about with one another. I want to shift gears to some things happening with you recently. So you mentioned that Paul Mahoney, the interim president at UVA, is an HXA member. When he became, when he was named the interim president, he named you as one of his advisors. What's your role?

Mary Kate Cary: Deputy chief of staff.

John Tomasi: Deputy, he's so lucky to have you for a deputy chief of staff.

Mary Kate Cary: I'm happy to be there.

John Tomasi: Can you, what do you, now that you're part of HXA's administration, what do you see from that vantage point? Do things look different from you? What do you see?

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah, it's been fascinating because, like I said, I'm not a lifelong academic. I sort of parachuted in, and all of a sudden I'm now in the president's office. Like, how did that happen?

John Tomasi: Talent rises.

Mary Kate Cary: No, no, no. But he wanted me to help him with his strategic initiatives. And I said, okay, what are your strategic initiatives? And he said, well, I want to keep it affordable going to this, you know, like we were saying, this is a major concern of the American people that college is no longer becoming affordable. He and I both came from very modest backgrounds and are both first gen back in the day. Second is the 250th of the Declaration of Independence. And as our friends at Monticello like to say, our guy wrote it. So we think that UVA should be, you know, leading the charge on the celebration of the Declaration this year, or this coming year. And then third is, he said, everything you're doing on viewpoint diversity and free speech. And I was like, oh, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, I'll take that job. And so this has been a great joy in my life to be able to give Think Again a little bigger platform. It's going to move into the College of Arts and Sciences where we can reach thousands of students and, you know, market the events and get more support, staff support, things like that.

John Tomasi: Do you talk with Paul about these issues?

Mary Kate Cary: Oh, yeah.

John Tomasi: So he's aware of what you're trying to do?

Mary Kate Cary: Yes. And he gets asked a lot, you know, in interviews and meetings and stuff, what are his priorities as interim? And it's the first thing that comes out of his mouth.

John Tomasi: Interesting.

Mary Kate Cary: So it's been great.

John Tomasi: And so what you guys are doing is just what we're, HXA is, so many of our members on so many campuses are now working with administrations to try to build what we call a whole culture of open inquiry. And that just doesn't, that means more than having certain policies or adopting policies or putting together a bridging differences program, but not really getting into it and measuring it and seeing whether you're making impact or not. It really means building a whole culture in the sense that Brian Casey, the president of Colgate, sometimes puts it in a way that I really admire. He says that what he cares most about is what, it's not the policies per se, but rather the effect of the policies, especially the effect of the policies about what happens in the dorms on a Tuesday night when people, when students are having a conversation. There's no adult around. They're talking about some, something happened in the news that day and it's on, it's on people's minds. What happens in that dorm? How brave is the conversation? Do they have the conversation at all? So that's, but it sounds like you're working on, the kind of things you're doing seem to me to be directed at that sort of whole culture, whole cultural perspective.

Mary Kate Cary: So, so yes. And as they say, we, we were seeing an increase in, started just with one. And now there's probably half a dozen student groups at UVA that the students started to bring civil discourse, viewpoint diversity, all this. They want to hear both sides and they want to, they like disagree with a professor. They told me there's podcasts on how to disagree that are out there, but you don't actually hear anybody disagree. So, so they wanted to start this and we've, we've partnered with people like, Bridge USA, Braver Angels, things like that to bring in, activities for them. And as you know, HXA works closely with these groups too.

John Tomasi: Yeah, it's awesome. They're fantastic.

Mary Kate Cary: And, and so we then had a donor come forward who said, I really love what you're doing, but I don't want to have to write five different checks to the student organization and to underwrite the Braver Angels thing or whatever. And they said, could you start a fund that you control, that doesn't get into the fungible university?

John Tomasi: You, the administration.

Mary Kate Cary: No, me, the adjunct professor before I had this job two months ago. So this started two or three years ago and all kinds of generous people who are alums have given money to this. And, and we give, fun things that the students are doing, that is student facing programming along these lines. And that has really made the difference. And it's administered through the alumni association, which I assume other colleges do it that way too, that if you want to support, say the student newspaper as an alum, you give it to the alumni association and they, they have a fund for it. So that's how we did it. we've also had, things like the, the students came to me and said, you know, the, the website, the UVA website on free speech is not understandable to students. And you're not going to pull up the website in the middle of a protest to figure out what the rules are.

John Tomasi: Right.

Mary Kate Cary: And they said, could you pay us 20 bucks an hour for us to write a student's version of the UVA free speech?

John Tomasi: I love it. It's organic.

Mary Kate Cary: And we said, you know what? We will, we'd be happy to do that. So we just published the free speech tool guide, toolkit for students by students, for students, by students. And, we handed out at, on the lawn tabling and things like that.

John Tomasi: Fantastic.

Mary Kate Cary: and so all of these things, the, the flyers for all the events I just told you about, the free speech toolkit, how to set up the fund. We have the charter for the fund, could all be used by other universities.

John Tomasi: Right.

Mary Kate Cary: All they have to do is change it from orange and blue to their colors. And, and so we started a group called campus discourse project, and, we are going to be the holding tank for all kinds of resources like this, not just ours, other organizations across, higher ed who have great programs that could help. we're, we're putting it all there and, what we're going to start doing is, tracking the metrics, have students do a poll, you know, just two or three questions after every event. Did this change your mind? Did this, make you braver? Did it make you not want to self-censor or whatever? and then we can start tracking the success of these programs. We're also starting to collect all the existing, research into the mental health benefits of this kind of programming. and it rewires their brains and we can show that, that there's less anxiety, less, you know, self-censoring, all that sort of thing. So that other people at other schools can take this to their administrations and say, this is effective. Why aren't we doing this?

John Tomasi: Excellent. And part of the reason why I want to, want to, want to show us for exactly what you're saying right now, because as you know, it actually say we, we emphasize to our members, we want to show them strategies and action. And as you know, we often emphasize these two ideas to our campus communities and our members who want to make changes on their campus, think organic and think porous. Think organic means, what you're doing naturally, which is, have it be from that place. If the students have an interest, inspire them and inspire them to care about these things. And then when they ask to do something like write up their own student version, say yes to them. Then you don't need the world's expert. You need, you need, it's better to have people from the place doing it. So organic means always trying to find ways to make it be from that place by those people. And porous means that you create events like just like the ones you're creating that are not just for some one group of some political view or some contrarians who don't like the way things are, but rather you create events that are in principle opening, opened and attractive to any student.

Mary Kate Cary: Oh yeah.

John Tomasi: So any professor or any student.

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah.

John Tomasi: The more the better. It's like, and that's where you're, then it's really of that place for that place. And that's, that's, that's one of the things you, you, you model that in so many ways that I'm speaking now to our members out there who are listening that I wanted you all to hear because Mary Kate just has a natural way of doing these things that we're always talking with you about.

Mary Kate Cary: And, and I was, I was getting approached at the heterodox, convention by individual professors who I've now kept in touch with who are wonderful who said, and I'm sort of like, Hey, if I can do this, anybody can, I just parachuted in as an adjunct.

John Tomasi: And if some lowly adjunct can do this, you guys who have all these, you've used, you've used the expression parachuting in a number of times, I think, but I think there's something important about that. I think there's sometimes it takes a person with, fresh eyes to see what's really important. And, I think you may have some of those eyes. I want to talk to you about your teaching.

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah.

John Tomasi: and you've been bridging divides on campus and the culture and all kinds of really interesting ways as, as we've, as we've been discussing, but you've also been developing some novel class classes. Can you tell you, there's one you co-teach, can you tell us about that?

Mary Kate Cary: So, so I started teaching the two classes I told you about earlier in 2019, the speech writing court.

John Tomasi: Right.

Mary Kate Cary: So that was my, that's what I thought I'd always do. And then all of a sudden in 2020, a new, department chair arrived. In the politics department where I'm housed. And, she was short on time and she had taught a class called election fill in the blank, you know, 2000, 2004, whatever at Brown and at American. And so now she's going to teach for 20 years in a row.

John Tomasi: Yeah.

Mary Kate Cary: This is Jennifer Lawless.

John Tomasi: Jennifer Lawless.

Mary Kate Cary: Yep.

John Tomasi: So I was, she was a, she and her colleagues in the department of Brown.

Mary Kate Cary: Oh, no kidding. I should have realized.

John Tomasi: You, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a Jennifer Lawless, a Jen Lawless story.

Mary Kate Cary: Oh, good.

John Tomasi: But go ahead.

Mary Kate Cary: So she, so she had just arrived and she had been teaching this class by herself for 20 years, every four years. And, she said to the previous department chair who had hired me, Hey, can you get me somebody who could co-teach to lighten the load because I've got to edit a book or whatever. She had all kinds of stuff going on. And he said, sure. How about Mary Kate? She, she was on a presidential campaign and Jen, you might not know this, but Jen ran for Congress.

John Tomasi: I know very well.

Mary Kate Cary: Oh, good. Up in Rhode Island.

John Tomasi: I know very well.

Mary Kate Cary: As a Democrat.

John Tomasi: I know very well.

Mary Kate Cary: The students could Google both of us and see that she's a Democrat and I'm a Republican. So that was, at the height of COVID. And so we co-taught the class on, Zoom for, 200 students.

John Tomasi: I love it.

Mary Kate Cary: And, and they, at the end we polled them and, 89% of them said they would like more classes co-taught at UVA in the politics department.

John Tomasi: And so you collected the data, you did that same thing, which we think is so important.

Mary Kate Cary: And, and USA Today had us write an op-ed and we wrote about it.

John Tomasi: I remember seeing it.

Mary Kate Cary: I thought that would cause all kinds of schools to suddenly start co-teaching. Nobody did. and that's not true, but I shouldn't say nobody.

John Tomasi: I hear you.

Mary Kate Cary: It was not the tsunami that I thought it would be.

John Tomasi: Right.

Mary Kate Cary: And then, 2024 came no more zoom, first day of class. We did it again. she, she teaches, from her textbook that she's written, that is, a field guide to American politics. And I am in charge of, getting, viewpoint, all kinds of viewpoints of, people in politics for a panel each week on whatever the topic is that week. And so I bring in all my buddies from DC and, from both sides of the aisle. And, this time, first day of class, 250 students showed up second day of class, 500 showed up and the 500 stayed, and it was live in person. And I think it's because they want, they're eager to hear both sides. I would make the argument in a polarized age, all politics classes should be co-taught. the big political organizations should be led by a Republican and a Democrat. I think students need to hear both sides and, and they will, they're saying that.

John Tomasi: That's great. I'll tell you my, the Jen story that I promised. So when Jen arrived at Brown, I think I just got in 10 years, I was a little bit ahead of her career wise. And, I remember when she moved into the, the, her office, she very soon put up posters all around her office of democratic, various democratic politicians. Some campaigns are in the works, others that have happened in the past. I remember thinking to myself, well, that seems strange to put up political posters all around your office of one political party. When we're teaching, in this case, political science. So I eventually went into her office and I said, you know, Jen, I just wonder about this. I just, I just decided to ask her about it. And I said, you know, is it, do you think it's right to have political signs from one party in your, in a professor's office? That's not good for the students, is it? And she said to me, I put them up cause I want to have a conversation with them about, about why I do this and why, and what, what, what it means to have a political view. And, and she convinced me she was actually, she actually was, you know, she was obviously a committed Democrat and I still have some, I've asked some questions about that. I'd like to see if you had that, you probably should have other people doing some other things perhaps, but the way she, the way she, like immediately said, I'm here to talk with them about, about politics convinced me that she really was. So I was so delighted when I heard that you and she were co-teaching because it kind of bore, it kind of, cashed out a promise that she had kind of made to me in the privacy of her office.

Mary Kate Cary: Oh, that's great.

John Tomasi: This was a long, long time ago about who she is. And, anyway, I thought that was, so I was really excited. And you've also done some stuff with, with Spencer Cox, as I understand.

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah. So he, he was, head of the National Governors Association. He's currently the governor of Utah.

John Tomasi: Of course.

Mary Kate Cary: And he, and he, he famously ran a campaign ad, as you, as you know, when he was running for governor, with his democratic opponent, they said, we disagree about things, but we don't hate each other. And that was sort of a model around the country in many ways that we hope would be picked up.

John Tomasi: And at HXA, we were involved with, the National Governors Association while Spencer was the chairperson for a variety of projects. But anyway, go on. Oh, good. Tell us about.

Mary Kate Cary: So as head of the NGA, he had an initiative called Disagree Better, and he had a whole series of, of campaign, I shouldn't say campaign ads, public service ads about he and various other governors from, you know, the other side of the aisle, talking about how to disagree better. And so then that has now spun off into its own, nonprofit, called Disagree Better. And I think they're coming to, Washington DC pretty soon, to be in the National Cathedral and do a big public event. so I think that is great. Like I said, in a polarized political age, we need more of this.

John Tomasi: we're coming up towards the end of our, our conversation. I could talk with you for hours because you've done so many, you've done so many different things and you're doing it in such, such interesting ways. I just, maybe I'll, maybe I'll ask you this question as we reach the close. if, if, if listeners remember one change you're trying to bring about, in UVA is culture, what should it be?

Mary Kate Cary: I would have to say, to try my, my model is, and I'm sure there's other ones like this, Vanderbilt, dialogue, Vanderbilt, everything I've been doing is from the bottom up and, and I think it helps if there is a top down as well as a bottom up at the same time, at the same time.

John Tomasi: It's good.

Mary Kate Cary: I think that think again is moving into the college of arts and sciences and not just a standalone, voice in the wilderness kind of thing. if there's also, for example, civic, they call them civic cornerstone fellows that are at the Karsh Institute of Democracy, 400 students signed up for that, each semester to be, engaging in civil dialogue and workshops and things like that. Vanderbilt, they've got it all in one place where they've got high profile speakers. They've got think again style year round programming. They've got, fellows like in a different department at UVA, they've got, all kinds of, workshops and, they've got a think tank that focuses solely on free speech. when we went down there, for the free speech global summit a month or two ago.

John Tomasi: Together.

Mary Kate Cary: Yes.

John Tomasi: Oh, we met, we met there.

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah, but it was great. And I thought, wow, I, I, it was not on my radar. I didn't know about it till I got there.

John Tomasi: Right.

Mary Kate Cary: And if, if, if we could figure out everything I've been doing, like I said, is bottom up. And if, if there could be more support from the top as well, why wouldn't that be great? So.

John Tomasi: Yeah. And at, at, at HXA, I think you, I think, you know, we're very involved with Daniel Diermeyer at Vanderbilt and also with Andrew Martin at, at Washington university. And we had Andrew on the podcast just recently. And that idea that, professors alone can do a lot, but if you combine professors who care and who understand the issues of open inquiry and are committed to them as HXA members are with, presidents and provosts and deans who are committed to these things too, then you can get a chance to make it really dynamic.

Mary Kate Cary: Yeah. I've seen so many places where you have a, a charismatic professor who gets something going, but then the administration is not like truly behind it. They're, they kind of allow it, but they don't really, they don't lean into it. They don't institutionalize parts of it. And then it kind of comes and goes for a variety of reasons. And, but that, but that to make a deep lasting change, top down, bottom up on the campus is really what you have to have.

John Tomasi: I just want to close by, I'm just saying again, just how much we admire what you do and just, just how much I appreciate your coming, into New York to have this conversation with us for our members, because, you know, our members are finding their own ways or so many fascinating people doing projects all across the country on their campuses. But the way, the things you've described at UVA and the difference you've been making there and the thoughtful way that you go about what you do is, is really a model for, for HXA members all across, all around the world, but across the country, of course. So, Mary Kate, thank you so much.

Mary Kate Cary: Thank you.

John Tomasi: That was, that was wonderful.

Mary Kate Cary: It's been great.

John Tomasi: It's been great having you on the show.

Mary Kate Cary: I'm happy to be here. And thanks for all you do. It's, it's been a joy in my life.