Eva Dale 0:00 From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host, David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work being done by faculty and staff in the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University. From departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials, mathematics and languages, among many others, the college always has something great happening. Join us to find out what's new now. David Staley 0:32 Since August of 2019, Gretchen Ritter has been the Executive Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University. She joins Ohio State from Cornell University, where she served as the Harold Tanner Dean of the Arts and Sciences from 2013 to 2018. Before she returned to the faculty, she previously served as Vice Provost and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a graduate of both Cornell and MIT, and has also taught at MIT, Princeton, and Harvard universities, and I'm very pleased to welcome you this morning to Voices, Dean Ritter. Gretchen Ritter 1:09 Thank you, David, it's a pleasure to be here. David Staley 1:11 So I, first of all, I have to ask, what is it that attracted you to Ohio State in the first place? Gretchen Ritter 1:16 It's a great school, you know. I've devoted my entire career to higher education in various ways, and I am committed to trying to continue the legacy of the positive impact that higher education can make in American society, and this is a place that does that so well, at the size and scale of Ohio State with 10,000 people graduating every year, you can do so much in terms of positive change. David Staley 1:49 You've been here since August; what have you learned thus far about the college? Gretchen Ritter 1:54 Oh, I've learned so much. One of the things that's been such a pleasure for me, in my first few months here has been going around in meeting with faculty and various departments, I've met with roughly 150 faculty so far, and in between, you know, thinking about budgets, working on space, doing memos on this or that having a chance to sit down with a faculty member, to find out about their work to figure out what they're passionate about where they see opportunities, is so deeply humbling and encouraging. I'll just give you an example of this. One day, a couple of weeks ago, I met with three different faculty members, one from one of our biology departments who's working on the micro biomes of cockroaches, no deer, it turns out that cockroaches are actually a good model for humans, we'll let you contemplate that one for a minute. The second person who I talked to is an economist who works on the science of innovation, and to think about the role that that can play in healthcare, in education in various areas, was incredibly exciting to me. So I was thrilled to meet him. And the third faculty member was someone who's working on landscapes of American religion, and thinking about the way that what we hear cues, various understandings, very sense of community and belonging, and all of these folks are available to our students to learn from and work with. David Staley 3:32 So, 150 faculty since August, I don't know where you find the time. What is it that you can say about our faculty in Arts and Sciences? What would you say, sort of in totality? Gretchen Ritter 3:42 We have an amazing faculty, We're incredibly fortunate. I wish other people could come with me on these visits, I think they would come back with a sense of tremendous pride at what we have here. The range that we have, we are of course, the largest college of arts and sciences in the country, and to have the range of disciplines, from art, from music to physics and philosophy, to Political Science in Psychology. It is a place where you can learn about the world from so many different points of view, and it is a place where really eminent researchers are making a difference on the frontiers of knowledge. David Staley 4:29 I'm interested in your vision for the College of Arts and Sciences. Gretchen Ritter 4:33 My vision for the college is to sustain and expand the role that we play within the university within the state within the nation. We have been through a period in the last few years that has been challenging. We've had budget challenges, there have been challenges in terms of public support and understanding, I think for higher education among other things, and I want to help move us in a direction where we have a sustainable budget model where we can invest further in both research excellence and teaching excellence, and make sure that the kinds of contributions we make here now will continue for the next 150 years. David Staley 5:19 So how, what are some ways that we can achieve some of these goals? Gretchen Ritter 5:23 We need to think about our budget, we need to think about how we can begin to encourage students to take a full course load, one of the things that we see that's happening right now, is that our students are not taking a full course load. This is in part because they come to college, with a lot of credits under their belt already, because of advanced placement courses that they take in high school or the College Credit Plus program, and as a result, they tend to take fewer classes overall, especially in the first couple of years. David Staley 6:00 So these are college courses they've taken in high school, before they've come here? Gretchen Ritter 6:05 Exactly. So the reason to do some of that makes a difference in our budget, but it also makes a positive difference for students. Research shows, in fact that students who are more academically engaged who are taking a full load of courses do better in college. So, we need to help through advising to encourage this, but we also need to make sure that we offer the right kind of pathways for students to help attract them to add credentials while they're in college that will benefit them once they get out of college credentials, such as credentials, such as a credential and data science, credential, and world languages. So these are sort of small packages, if you will, of course, it's a little bit less than a minor, but something that demonstrates to a potential employer others, that you've got the skills and orientation to really make a difference. David Staley 7:04 So you talked about extending the role of the College of Arts and Sciences, the university, the state and national level; what does it mean to start with the university? What does it mean to expand our role within the university? Gretchen Ritter 7:15 Well, as you know, the college was created out of a merger of five colleges about 10 years ago, and part of the logic of doing that was to really recognize the weight and importance of the arts and sciences within Ohio State University. That, I think is an incredibly important goal, and I don't think we fully realized it yet. I think in part, the college is not as internally integrated as it might be yet there's still some legacy of these old colleges, but I also think we need to do a better job of articulating our role in the larger university. One way of thinking about this, for instance, is that to have a great college of engineering, you need a great math department, right? If you have folks in a lot of our health sciences, who are working in human service areas who are trying to help think about some of the social and behavioral aspects of health, having a great psychology department, heavy and great sociology department is an important part of the path towards getting there. David Staley 8:25 And extending our role in the state, what does that look like? Gretchen Ritter 8:29 I'm a huge believer in the land grant mission. It's one of the things that attracted me to coming to Ohio State, was one of the things that attracted me to Cornell as well, which is also a land grant school, and I think that having that relationship to the state is critical to the kind of public impact that we have. And how do we do that? We do that not only by educating people and providing opportunities for them, we do it as well, by helping to encourage the creation of new knowledge that will help to solve problems the state is facing. We are of course, for instance, right now, the University has a large grant to try and help address the opioid crisis. Many faculty members within arts and sciences are part of that effort, big problems, the opioid crisis, terrorism, inequality, climate change, are only going to be solved by a multidisciplinary effort. Our college is well poised to make a difference in those kinds of efforts. David Staley 9:41 You talk about the need for greater internal integration in the college. In what sorts of ways, what sorts of things are you talking about there? Gretchen Ritter 9:48 I think that we don't recognize enough the ways in which we all benefit from the span of discipline in perspectives in this college. I think that one of the powers of the arts and sciences model, whether it be a research or education, is the ability to see and imagine the world from different points of view, artistic, scientific, social, that's where you get critical thinking, that's where you get innovation. That's where you get the ability to imagine the world in new ways. So that, to me is something that we need to kind of take up in more positive terms, I think that there are times where we can get a little siloed in our areas, whether it's feeling like we need to champion the humanities more, or appreciate the role of the sciences more, all of those things are true. But a lot of what our value is, as well, is the ability to cross those lines, our students know it and see it, many of our young faculty know it and see it, we have to catch up to them. David Staley 10:57 So how do we do that? How do we break down silos of which there are many at Ohio State? Gretchen Ritter 11:02 I think it is inevitably the case that big part of your work is always going to turn to how do you break down silos and the value of breaking down silos, you know, we're comfortable in our own spaces. And I think encouraging people to take risks and be creative means a willingness to understand that not everything we try is going to work means that we have to have examples that encourage people to cross those lines means recognizing and celebrating it, and means recognizing the ways in which we inadvertently reinforce the silos by our own internal organization by how we present information, for instance. So among other things I'm working on, how do we give examples of great work that's being done that crosses these kinds of lines. And you can look, for instance, on some of the amazing courses that are taught, that are really cross disciplinary, like a course on the history and the microbiology of HIV, or a course on climate change that brings together faculty from three different departments across the college. Those are incredible opportunities for our students. But they're not just incredible opportunities for our students, there are great opportunities for those faculty members. They've started research projects together, they think about what they're doing in different ways, because they're in conversation with each other. David Staley 12:36 Well, I appreciate you talking about students, and especially the impact of AP and College Credit Plus classes, because I think for a lot of students they take especially Arts and Sciences classes in high school, thinking that Well, I can get those out of the way so I can do my real work when I get to university, and I think sometimes your students aren't as drawn to the arts and sciences. What can we say or what can we do to interest more students in the arts and sciences, and especially the career possibilities open to them? Gretchen Ritter 13:09 Yeah. I understand the concerns and anxieties of both students and parents, or in a changing world technology is moving very rapidly. People are very concerned about what kind of economic and job opportunities they're going to have. I think we need to do two things. One is we need to answer some of the questions about job opportunities in relation to arts and sciences and liberal education. We also need to talk about the value of college as being about more of that. So let me talk about the first first, research shows that an arts and sciences degree is the most successful degree over the long term. If you look 10 years out the best earners have arts and sciences degrees. Why is that? It is because an arts and sciences degree is intended to train you for meta skills and orientations. What do I mean by that? Not the skills that apply in a kind of narrow and unique way to a specific job or task. But the kinds of skills that are more flexible that can help you in the long run. One of the ways of thinking about this is that it's a degree that helps you continue to be a lifelong learner. If you think about where we are at this moment in history, all of these amazing companies that are such a large part of our economy right now. They didn't exist 10 years ago, if we are only training students for the jobs that exist today, we've done them a huge disservice. One part of the great success of the American economy is that we have invested so much in education that is broad, that is flexible. That is oriented to creative thinking, innovation. That's the kind of education that stays over the long run. And that contributes to your long term success. And then the second part is that it's not just about individual economic success. We're educating people for citizenship. We're educating them to be contributors to our society, in our community, and having an education that helps them to think about the world, and the kinds of problems and issues that are facing us today, and to be creative and imaginative and to think about the issues that we face as a country is an education that's good for all of us. Eva Dale 15:51 Did you know that 23 programs in the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences are nationally ranked as top 25 programs, with more than 10 of them in the top 10? That's why we say the College of Arts and Sciences is the intellectual and academic core of the Ohio State University. Learn more about the College at artsandsciences.osu.edu. David Staley 16:17 I'd like to spend some time talking about your research, you're trained in political science, you've been a professor of political science. I understand that as an administrator, it's difficult to do teaching and research, but I'm particularly interested in a book you wrote a couple of years ago, "The Constitution as Social Design: Gender and Civic Membership in the American Constitutional Order". First of all, tell us about the main findings of this book. Gretchen Ritter 16:41 So the book is really oriented around the question of, when did women become full citizens under the US Constitution? David Staley 16:50 So you mean more than just simply gaining the right to vote? Gretchen Ritter 16:54 Right. So, were they citizens from the beginning? Were they citizens after the Civil War and the ways that we changed our understanding of citizenship then? Did they become citizens when they got the vote? Some would say that they're still not full citizens, the 1960s and 70s, we saw a huge increase in the recognition of women's rights under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, but there is still a kind of looming effort to pass an equal rights amendment to further institutionalize on notion of equality, and women's citizenship. So it asked that question, and in the process, it takes up issues about what it means to be a citizen of the United States. And how it is that a quality has become part of our imagination of citizenship, in ways both good in somewhat less good. And the less good parts have to do with the things that are missed by a notion of equality in Athens. And it has to do with things like social relationships with family with things that are about not just you as an individual, but you as an embedded person, and a larger social structure. And I think they're for women, in particular, a kind of fuller notion of citizenship would contribute more to their inclusion in American constitutional order. David Staley 18:31 So when did women become full citizens? Gretchen Ritter 18:35 I never really answer that question, in part, because I think it's an ongoing project, and I think we can imagine the Constitution and constitutional development more generally, as a process that is always trying to answer the question of what do we mean when we say we the people. David Staley 18:56 So, the term, one of the terms in the title of your book is civic membership, and it must play an important role in the book; define for us civic membership, first of all. Gretchen Ritter 19:05 So, civicmembership is another way of thinking about how we include people under the umbrella of the US Constitution without always fully recognizing them as citizens. So, for instance, immigrants to the United States who may not be citizens still have some elements of civic membership in the U.S. Slaves in various ways were regarded as members of our larger political body, women before they had the right to vote were regarded as civic members, but not recognized yet as full citizens. David Staley 19:41 So, I'm also interested in a book that you coedited called "Democratization in America: A Comparative and Historical Perspective". First of all, tell us about the essays in this volume. What were the larger themes that the book covered? Gretchen Ritter 19:54 It was a great project to be part of, and I'm grateful to my co editors that I got to work with them on this, and it's something that I think kind of paved the way for a trend in American politics and political science right now, which is to say, what can comparative politics teach us about the United States, and teach us about our own democratic traditions, and more recently, answer the question of, how does it help us understand the moment that we're in now? David Staley 20:28 Well, start with what a comparative perspective tells us about our democracy, then I want to ask you about our current moment. Gretchen Ritter 20:35 So, at the time that this particular set of essays was published, we were really thinking about what we could learn about the emergence of all these new democracies that had happened in Eastern Europe that had happened in Latin America, over the 80s and the 90s, this huge wave of democratization, a really positive event that everyone was celebrating what we could learn about those transitions in a way that helps us to understand the United States, and to appreciate and realize that the United States, while we tend to think of it as a fully formed democracy from the beginning, really, in fact, it formed us democracy over an extended period of time, when you realize that it was a rather small portion of our population that were awarded the rights of full citizenship from the beginning. We didn't include Native Americans, we didn't, of course, include those who were enslaved, we didn't include women, then you realize that this has been a longer term process and a process that was punctuated by large events like the Civil War, like the New Deal, like the 1960s, and to think about how that process of democratization happens, and when and whether there were reversals and what that can teach us as well. David Staley 22:00 Reversals - there have been reversals? Gretchen Ritter 22:03 Well, so that was an interesting debate for us at the time, and we had, I would say, some disagreement within the group of authors for that volume on it. But I think those who are working on this project, now those who are trying to think in a historical perspective, and those who are thinking from the perspective of comparative politics, I would say that, in fact, of course, democracies can reverse that you should recognize, for instance, that most of the authoritarian leaders that have come to power over the 20th century, were originally elected. And it was over time, that they began to erode the protections for the Democratic structure, and that the country as a whole became less democratic. David Staley 22:53 So democracy is more than just the vote, it's more than just the franchise. Gretchen Ritter 22:57 Absolutely. David Staley 22:58 What's included in the definition, then, of democracy in this context? Gretchen Ritter 23:02 So democratic health, in this sense, includes protections for things like freedom of the press, of an independent judiciary, of a citizenry that is able to ask questions to challenge authority in various ways, and has the social space through freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, etc, to do that. And so when you see things that are tending to him in that space, that are undermining the role of some of those key civic institutions, including things like the press, then you should be a little bit on guard, you should worry a bit about what it means for the health of the Democratic structure overall. David Staley 23:46 So, the status and future possibilities for our democracy today? Gretchen Ritter 23:51 It's, of course, a huge question that everyone is asking right now. I think there are things that are worrisome to me personally, I think the attacks on the news media is one of those things that worries me the attacks on on occasion on the independence of the judiciary is one of those things that worries me. But I would also say that we've had challenges to democracy in the past, they've tended to come in the midst of crisis. We certainly saw it during the Civil War. We saw it in World War One and the period just after that, and we tend to always bounce back. I don't want to be sanguine about the moment that we're in and to assume that because we've recovered from Democratic challenges before we will recover again, I think that that recovery requires engagement on the part of Americans who care about our Constitution and our democratic structure overall. And I think it's part of our work also, of course, is educators to tell people to you know, be informed look for different points of view, look for different sources of media, pay attention. David Staley 25:07 So, I tend to think of political science today as a increasingly quantitative mathematical discipline, although just from this conversation, it sounds like your approach is more qualitative and humanistic. Is that a fair statement? Gretchen Ritter 25:19 So my own scholarship has always been informed. I think from a more qualitative historical point of view, I think that's certainly the case. I think that political science, like many of the social sciences is quite methodologically. Diverse. It is definitely the case that political science, like many fields, in general, has been the beneficiary of new methods and approaches that are statistical and computational in nature. And in fact, we've got some amazing scholars here in Arts and Sciences at OSU who work in that direction. But to me, one of the benefits of these fields is again, to be able to approach a common problem from different points of view and to learn from each other. David Staley 26:08 I want to get to your current research, but I just have to note that in 2014, you had the opportunity to interview Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the New York Historical Society. Tell me a little bit about that interview, just that experience. Gretchen Ritter 26:22 Well, it was an amazing experience for me. So I am, as we've noted, a scholar of constitutional law, women's politics and citizenship. So in the book that we talked about earlier, I wrote about Ginsburg and her incredible contributions to women's constitutional rights in the United States, particularly when she was the head of the ACLU Women's Rights Project. And so the opportunity to sit down and interview her I was and remain completely in awe. She is, of course, one of the most famous graduates of Cornell. And the interview happened in the context of Cornell sesquicentennial. And as I said, at the beginning of the interview, the interview happened about a year after I had been hired to come to Cornell as the dean, if they had told me that I would get to interview Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when they hired me, they probably wouldn't have had to pay me. David Staley 27:27 I'm curious to know, how did you end up in political science? What was that journey? Gretchen Ritter 27:30 I've always cared about politics. You know, my father was an elected official, he was a district attorney, and then a judge. And he and I used to have conversations and debates about politics. From the time I was about 10 years old, on, I grew up in the era when, as a yet very young person, I watched the Watergate hearings. And of course, a lot of the debates that were happening around Vietnam. As a teenager, I can remember watching Barbara Jordan, give the keynote address at the Democratic Convention, and feeling so moved by her speech that I wrote a letter to her. I was, you know, 13 or 14, and she wrote back to vote, and that's kind of sealed the deal right there. David Staley 28:20 Well, I said that, as an administrator, it's hard to have time for research, but ask the question anyway, are you working on anything now? What's next for your research? Gretchen Ritter 28:28 I am working on something. The work is rather slow, who knows when if ever this book project will come out, but I'm working on a book on democracy in higher education. And it really comes out of thinking about what kind of contributions does higher education make to American democracy? When we talk about why higher education is important in the United States, we often say it contributes to democracy. So I wanted to kind of push that and say, In what ways and are we doing our job? Well, so I talk in particular about sort of three main ways in which higher education does contribute to democracy. The first is by creating opportunity and inclusion for Americans, the second is in preparing people to be engaged in thoughtful citizens, and the third is by creating knowledge that advances our society. David Staley 29:29 That sounds like the land grant mission. Gretchen Ritter 29:33 It is, of course, the land grant mission. It's not just the land grant mission, but the land grant mission is I think, one of the things that we can be particularly proud of, in our country is this incredible commitment to making sure that education is broadly available to people have talent and ambition from any backgrounds, and we've realized that commitment really through a system of state universities, and that is something that I think has been absolutely transformative to our society. David Staley 30:08 Who's the audience for this book as you see it? Gretchen Ritter 30:11 I think the audience is broader than academics. I think it's anybody who cares about higher education. David Staley 30:19 Gretchen Ritter. Thank you. Gretchen Ritter 30:21 Thank you, David enjoyed the conversation. Eva Dale 30:24 Voices from the Arts and Sciences is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Technology Services studio. Sound engineering by Paul Kotheimer, produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Eva Dale. Transcribed by https://otter.ai