In this final episode of TPTM Season 4, we say goodbye to hosts Reem and Colleen and hello to the incoming Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy, Dr. David C. Wilson.

Transcript

Colleen: [00:00:01] So we want to know, is this your podcast debut?

David: [00:00:05] I believe it is. I may have done, I've done a lot of, you know, NPR type stuff and stuff with networks, but I think this is my first actual podcast, like where somebody may have to find it, search for it, and push, play it and stop and listen to it later, otherwise. Yeah. So I think I'm a rookie.

Colleen: [00:00:28] Oh, that's exciting, so we're honored.

Reem: [00:00:31] Welcome Talk Policy To Me listeners to the final episode of season four. We covered a lot this season. We're such an excellent podcast, don't you think, Colleen?

Colleen: [00:00:39] I totally agree. We talked about Tik Tok advocacy and public engagement.

Reem: [00:00:46] Anarchism and police unions.

Colleen: [00:00:48] And digital venues of public engagement and public parks.

Reem: [00:00:52] Name a more comprehensive, well-researched, thoughtful, relevant podcast. I'll wait.

Colleen: [00:00:58] Nobody comes close.

Reem: [00:00:59] Everyone is saying this.

Colleen: [00:01:01] So today, after a season that took us far and wide, at least in terms of subject matter, we're bringing it back home to the Goldman School of Public Policy.

Reem: [00:01:10] We're talking with the new incoming dean of GSPP, Dr. David Wilson.

Colleen: [00:01:19] All right, let's get into it.

David: [00:01:22] Yeah. So I'm David Wilson. I'm currently a faculty member at the University of Delaware in political science and psychological and Brain sciences and serving as the senior associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, representing the Social Sciences portfolio. I've been at University of Delaware for 15 years. I'm a full professor in both departments. I'm affiliated with, prior to coming to UD, I worked at the Gallup Polling organization in Washington, D.C. for eight years, and prior to that I worked at SPSS as a consultant and kind of trainer for one year officially, but then served kind of as an advisor for a number of years and also worked for the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation doing tobacco cessation policy, which was exciting at the time. So that's pretty much our background. I also have a little bit of a background in military. When I was a senior in high school, I was an athlete and I got an injury and got scared and back then they had these commercials on television, if you join the military or the army, they'll pay for college and all these things. So that was my backup plan. And I did that in high school and wasn't really smart enough to get out until 19 years later. So I've done a couple of deployments and so I have public, private, and nonprofit sector experience. [00:02:44][82.3]

Reem: [00:02:46] What have you already experienced of Berkeley and what are your kind of candid expectations of Berkeley? Because we know that we have a reputation.

David: [00:02:53] Well, believe it or not, I haven't been there yet. So of course, COVID has been in place for over a year now and the surge started last fall. So I've had online engagements purely. I've been to the area before, but I've not been there in years on campus. So the campus, the culture, the community is going to be, you know, I'm just going to learn on the job. And I like experiencing new things. I don't shy away from new challenges or change or difference. So I'm embracing it as something that's a growth opportunity for me. I have been to all 50 states. I have, I've been to six of the seven continents, including Antarctica, but not Australia yet. Australia was on the list, but COVID put a cramp in that. And I've been to every national park in the continental United States. American Samoa is way out in the middle of the Pacific. There are a couple of random Bush national parks in Alaska that you have to get to with with a plane or, you know, a bear trapper or something, and then Dry Tortugas National Park is off Key West and it's just a headache to kind of get down there and then go and do this. So those are the last ones on my list. But every other national park in the United States, I've been to and several in Canada as well. So I like experiencing new things, so Berkeley will be another national park.

Reem: [00:04:23] Yeah, I'll say that as far as I can, as far as I know. And I haven't seen as much of the world as you have, but there's no place like Berkeley.

David: [00:04:30] Yeah, I look, I look forward to seeing. So. So my expectations are that there's no place in the world like Berkeley.

Reem: [00:04:35] Highly diplomatic.

Colleen: [00:04:38] We have heard about your, we heard about your cat, Daisy.

David: [00:04:42] Daisy? Yeah.

Colleen: [00:04:44] Is Daisy around?

David: [00:04:46] Daisy? Daisy might be around. She now, she got fed at 11, so she's probably somewhere sprawled out. Daisy is not like the flower is like the rapper Jay-Z, Right? So she's got her own personality. She likes company. But when she's ready to kind of do her business, she's like, alright. I'll see you guys in a little while. I just go do your thing. I'll talk to you later. But with the weather warming up, she's an indoor cat, but she we have a little area where she can kind of get outside experience but not be outside. So she really loves that now and probably is somewhere nearby trying to figure out how to break the screen down or something like that.

Colleen: [00:05:30] Has Daisy ever come on any of your travels?

David: [00:05:33] No, but she will accompany us on a drive out to California from Delaware, so.

Reem: [00:05:41] Oh, how is she going to handle that? [00:05:43][2.1]

David: [00:05:44] She doesn't know yet, so, you know, going to spring it on her that morning.

Reem: [00:05:50] So we'd love to get into some of your research because we know that you've got a book coming out pretty soon, right?

David: [00:05:58] Yeah. So the book is is actually an accumulation of probably about 14 years of research on a topic that is kind of esoteric to political science, but it's really relevant to the world and it's on racial resentment. And the title of the book is Racial Resentment in the Political Mind and in the Political Science World. Many years ago, decades ago, a couple of researchers discovered that racial attitudes seemed to be changing the the ideas of biological inferiority and entrenched stereotypes about, you know, cultural laziness and some other things were not as prominent in public opinion and survey research as they had been. And in fact, they were very abstract, symbolic values around effort and ethic in deserving this that seem to be most predictive of white Americans' support for policies and amelioration of the racial inequality that existed in the United States. And the original term for that was symbolic racism. And it was symbolic because these were abstract values. They weren't real. There was no real racial threat. There was no violent threat. There was no real economic threat. Mid-Nineties Two researchers came along and changed the name of that to racial resentment. And they basically called it another form of prejudice, but used the same measures as the prior research had done. And the challenge is that resentment is not prejudice and it's not racism. So to call it resentment, but conceptualize it as prejudice with the same measures that you originally called racist, racism, were a challenge to the scholars who like to theorize and explain and think about why these attitudes seem to predict things that are related to race and things that have nothing to do with race, like climate change or voter ID laws or support for felon voting rights, which may activate some racial thinking. But there are plenty of other things that could predict these things. Why would racial resentments predict them? Our research over time has shown that these attitudes are not very well explained by stereotypes about what African-Americans level of effort and laziness is, or their propensity for crime, or whether they're intelligent or not. Those kind of racial entrenched stereotypes don't explain much of the differences in racial resentment. What does explain differences in racial resentment is the perception that people are getting things they don't deserve. And at the foundation, resentment is about someone getting something that someone else feels like they don't deserve. And when they get it, the resentment is an anger over the rules being broken or the merit criteria being ignored, so to speak. And that's where resentment comes into play that people resent the means to the end, more so than the group. The group does play a role. So racial resentment is about African-Americans. But what people actually resent with regard to race is how race is used as a merit criterion. And so the book is about conceptualizing racial resentment for whites' attitudes for blacks, but also posing the theory more generally that blacks can actually resent whites as well. And which makes perfect sense that if African-Americans think whites have a status they don't deserve because they're keeping other people from attaining that status, then of course, blacks should resent whites for not accepting or taking accountability for racism and discrimination, for not going out of their way to really try and understand the perspectives of African-Americans and other things. So the book is really about giving resentment its own legs, and allowing resentment to help explain politics, which is who gets what, when and how. And so someone's getting something and they don't deserve it. Then the immediate reaction is some anger or some irritation or some frustration. It'd be the same as someone being able to graduate from UC Berkeley without having to take the same amount of courses that other people do. It would activate some purpose, some irritation. And so that's what the book is about, really explaining how race comes to irritate people's politics. So we tend to think about racism on average as being anything related to race that feels uncomfortable or negative or antagonistic. And so, for example, if I say that, you know, African-Americans should stop using excuses, racism and slavery as excuses for the behavior, it comes across as racist. It doesn't mean it necessarily is right. And that's contentious in the world because we're anchored already in a way of thinking about things. So when you try and understand why racial inequality still exists, certainly racism and stereotypes still play a role, but also justice concerns play a role so that justice concerns can be equity, equality, and need. So if African-Americans have been historically disenfranchised, they need policy to help equalize things. The immediate reaction to those policies that are created and implemented means that they have to get something, some kind of additional status, some kind of help–amelioration. And that fixing is what people resent because it's based on race. And so people resent everything, you know, I can I could resent, you know, almost any doctor resent people at another university because they're getting, you know, benefits that I don't get. But how do you put the adjective in front of it, like racial resentment? How does resentment become racialized? Well, in the context of change, it's very straightforward. That resentment becomes racialized because you have to use race as a criteria for the distribution of things in society. And if you don't, then you won't get the racial equality that you're looking for. So racial equality to achieve it becomes this thing where you can't just target the attitudes, the negative racism in the hostility. You have to target the very challenge that it takes to to change things in society. And people resist change when they feel like the change is due to an unfair criteria. And that's again, race is an unfair criteria. So what this does is it really gives us a different way to to look at why the problem of racial inequality still exists. It is not just because of racism and prejudice.

Reem: [00:12:38] Well, I'm so curious to know what inspired you to start looking into this. Was there like a kind of specific dynamic that you were observing?

David: [00:12:46] No. So I started this in 1995 or 96. And the starting point for me, I'm a survey researcher by training methodologies who looks at how people think about answering survey questions and and what those answers mean for our understanding of their behavior or their positions, whether on policy issues or just, you know, politics is a decision about who gets what, when and how. So what led me there originally was I didn't like the measure of racial resentment that was being used. It was unclear that it was actually measuring any kind of resentment, let alone the symbolic racism or prejudice that the scholars who wrote the items said that they measured. So that was my year as a graduate student. That was my challenge, is that I didn't think this really did what it said it did. And I was as provoked by my professors to explore it further and say, well, you don't like it, you do it better. And so I started thinking of ways to measure the things that they were really trying to get at. So I was interested in African-Americans political attitudes and including their resentments over maltreatment, their resentments over hinders for equality, their resentment over not having descriptive representation, or when they do have it is not substantive representation. And also I held resentments over when I sat in classes in public policy that there was no discussion of the public. It was mostly about policy. And so I wanted to become more interested in people, in the public, and see how their voice gets into policy decision making. And that was my original impetus and academia forces you to take different lines sometimes and that's what I had to do.

Colleen: [00:14:40] Yeah, well, so it sounds like you've been you know, you've obviously been working in this vein for quite a long time. And as your book comes out, you know, I'm curious to know, like what- who do you hope to reach with your book and kind of what do you what kind of impact do you hope this this research as it kind of hits the presses, has on on the people that you're talking about, right–the public of public policy?

David: [00:15:04] Yeah. I'm not sure how much impact it will have. It's not a it's written for college sophomores and juniors. It's written for an undergraduate population interested in trying to understand what's happening today in a setting of learning and not one of necessarily public dialog. As a political psychologist, I have an understanding of how the media works. I have no naivete kind of assumptions about the public and how they'll take good ideas and run with them. I'm an administrator in a university. I know how change works and it doesn't work in this pace. My hope is, is that we question an idea and we get others to question it as well. And that's all I can ask for. If people do more than that, great. But as an academic, my first charge is to make sure that we can test ideas and the existing ones and the new ones. And we do it with some scholarly rigor and and provoke thought.

Reem: [00:16:06] You are and kind of an interdisciplinary scholar. You're in kind of the policy world and obviously in the statistics world and also in the well, the other department that you're in is brain science?

David: [00:16:20] Yeah. You know, kind of in front of it. I think I captured the interdisciplinary piece, and I do it intentionally, actually. So I'm a political psychologist by training. So psychology, political science, I've also done public administration, I have an MPA. I was originally interested in policy. My undergrad degree was in government. I took all my stats classes in industrial organizational psychology.

Reem: [00:16:42] Yeah, and I think that's really exciting to. I think of public policy also as an interdisciplinary space. And so can you share some of first of all, some of your experience in policy school, how you came to kind of absorb this interdisciplinary-ness, and what does that mean for how you think about a policy degree in policy school now?

David: [00:17:04] So I was introduced to public policy at the University of Michigan and the Woodrow Wilson Fellows program, which is now, PPIA, I think exclusively. That was my first experience in the Woodrow Wilson program, brought together students of color between their junior and senior years who might be interested in graduate school and should be exposed to policy. And you learn statistics and economics, all this great stuff. And before that I had minimally paid attention to economics and statistics and paid a lot of attention to government and policy. So what was interesting is that in our cohort, there were people that were doing all these things economics and policy and then politics. And then there were some sociologists and I think there was a historian and it was a mathematician. And so there were maybe, I don't know, 40 some odd of us, you know, crammed into a space in Michigan, in the West quad, and we take classes in statistics and economics, and then we have the practicum where scholars would come and talk to us. And that's where I really learned that that's how you come up with solutions up to that point. Everything I thought about was just, Oh, this is going to be all about David coming up with a good idea or somebody else coming up with an idea. And we hopefully we follow. But the policy framework allowed us to think about problems with an actual entity that would help to solve that problem. It wasn't going to be random. Any individual that came up, government, the public sector would do it, and they do it not in a haphazard way, but one that was written and well thought out, that had outcomes and inputs and it had a period of review. At some point we look at it again and reevaluate how much we should spend or whether we should tweak things. And so while I got a system for understanding how to come up with solutions, so I became interested in graduate study. I went to Michigan State, studied public administration, left to go work at Gallup, doing policy research. So I was doing survey research and policy research and statistics and all this stuff all at once. I mentioned I was in the military. I got deployed for Iraqi freedom from 2003 to 2004, 15 months in a host of different places and situations, which pretty much led me to say I want I wanted to do something for myself before it was all done. And so I decided to go into academic work and landed at the University of Delaware. My time there led me into administration, and one of the units under my administrative portfolio was the School of Public Policy at the University of Delaware, which we ultimately renamed the Biden School, Joseph Biden School of Public Policy. And it's now been around for three or four years and is doing well. So my learning of contemporary policy schools is having administered that school for, I guess it was up to six years before it got its own stage.

Colleen: [00:19:57] We're curious to know, you know, and thinking about over time, your relationship to like public policy institutions or public policy degree granting institutions, rather. What do you think a public policy degree means today? And how does that inform how you're coming in as the new dean of the Goldman School?

David: [00:20:20] Yes, good question. I don't know what a public policy degree means today. I'm not sure anybody does if they tell you they do, ask for the data. I think there's an assumption around public policy, public affairs, public administration about what you're supposed to do when you're done. And this is just kind of this is a little bit more of the status quo. You know, failing to want to adjust a little bit is that, yes, you do need good analysts from the public sector. Yes, you do need good managers. You need good advisers. You need people that understand data. You do need that. But you also need people to understand how to communicate, how to find their talent, how to have perspective and understand politics and culture in American history about what's worked and what hasn't worked. And you can't just be the robot that takes the input process and gives the output without any kind of feeling or passion or drive. And I'm stereotyping a lot, largely. But the original notion of the policy analyst and the the the public manager was that you're the objective voice in government and doggone it, we're going to stay pure. And of course, that doesn't work very well in a world where persuasion matters and communication matters and in politics and in psychology matter. And so I see the value of the degree is that you get a real set of tools. And that's what attracted me to policy in the first place. You get a real set of tools where you can solve problems and understand the world in a systematic way. What we need to do is think about where we then put the talent and so it doesn't always have to go into the public sector. I do think it's important to to provide employees for the public sector, but we need to think more broadly and come up with entrepreneurs who are excellent consultants, who are analysts that can work in a range of sectors to help people solve problems, because you still take those those tools and those skills and you can apply them in the nonprofit. The private, the non-state actor, NGO world, as well as the public sector. And so I see the value in that. You get an experience that should transform how you approach problems, but you don't have to follow any kind of traditional path. And so what I what I hope to do is have more conversations with the students and the alumni about how to actually create that transformational experience in terms of personal development and growth. It's okay to get the skills. You're going to get those in the classroom as well. But what kind of experience do you have? And what I learned at Michigan in 1993 when I went to the Woodrow Wilson program is that I don't have to learn just from books. I can learn from other people as well. And not only professors, other people. I mean, like my my peers, my colleagues. How do I develop those skills? How do I create those relationships? And then how do I sustain them? I got a lot to learn about what exists now, what people are happy with and what needs reimagining. But I don't see any boundaries on the public policy school or its outcomes.=

Colleen: [00:23:38] So I'm wondering kind of like if you were to build a public policy program from the ground. Are there certain courses that you would that you would say like, absolutely, everyone has to take these and these are kind of essential for a troop policy degree.

David: [00:23:53] I think there's no doubt you need a core set of skills to be a good not just analyst, but a good reader of policy and a good evaluator of policy and a good understanding of what the public needs in general. I don't I don't know what I would do in terms of a curriculum in the classroom. So, you know, curriculum stuff is hard to change and adjust. And that is just that is just the nature of the beast. Universities have procedures. They require time, they require input, they require a will. And so courses can stay on the books for a long time and not change. And new persons can come in and change content. But courses exist, whereas experiential learning opportunities and mentoring and development programs outside of the classroom is where I see students can have the biggest impact. You know, the learning thing is a very classroom versus personal. I mean, one just has more force because you get a grade and you go to graduate. The other one is more voluntary, but the other one is where you really can build interpersonal or interpersonal growth and build relationships. So thinking about how to have students have an experience in a policy school outside of the classroom is something you could do faster you can have bigger impact with. And I am almost sure the data would show that the relationship between what you experience and learn and what you keep from that will be more sustaining and more useful as you navigate the waters of the air quote, real world or whatever that is. Picking and choosing jobs, networking, traveling, developing families, navigating workplaces and policies and politics, and who's in charge and who's not. Rules, formal and informal. You can do your best to learn that in the classroom and develop courses, but that's not really where you're going to have the biggest consequence, in my opinion.

Colleen: [00:25:53] Yeah. And I think this brings us to another topic that we wanted to touch on in the last couple of minutes we have with you like to to this end of these like relational components of a public policy degree are relating to each other as a cohort. What sorts of things do you think will be important for the Goldman School as we come out of the pandemic and transition back to in-person learning and being together?

David: [00:26:18] The big things are understanding and having empathy for the challenges that have that have happened. Some things you can change, some things you can't, but you can at least be tolerant of what's happened over the past year. No one's experienced this before in their lives. And so everybody's kind of disrupted in some way, whether they even are conscious of it or not. So as the first thing in terms of of what what kinds of practical things we like to do, I like to hear from the students, but I haven't met with the students. I don't know what you what you need or what you want or what you don't want in and how you decide that. So I think there's a lot of work that has to be done in an agency that has to be given to students to create your own destiny and not rely on a dean, or you don't have a department chair or a chair or some administrator to tell you, you know, what's the best way for you to come out of this and return to it?

Colleen: [00:27:26] As we bid welcome to Dean Wilson, Reem You and I are bidding goodbye to GSPP and to Talk Policy To Me.

Reem: [00:27:34] Yes! We're graduating from Zoom University and from the podcast. Any final words for our listeners?

Colleen: [00:27:41] Thanks for listening into our wild and wonderful policy musings over the years, and this was honestly one of the most fun parts of grad school and definitely one of the most fun parts of quarantine life. How about you, Reem?

Reem: [00:27:54] Thanks for listening, I love you. Bye!

Colleen: [00:28:00] Talk Policy To Me is a co-production of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans.

Reem: [00:28:08] Our executive producers are Bora Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck.

Colleen: [00:28:13] Editing for this episode by Noah Cole and Elena Neale-Sacks.

Reem: [00:28:18] The music you heard today is by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Pat Mesiti-Miller.

Colleen: [00:28:23] I'm Colleen Pulawski.

Reem: [00:28:25] And I'm Reem Rayef. Be well.

Colleen: [00:28:26] Our last question we have is that did you know that Dean Brady got married in the main building of GSPP in the living room?

David: [00:28:42] I did not know that. I did not know that.

Reem: [00:28:45] Well, he did. He did. And we would like to know how you will kind of ritually demonstrate your commitment to GSPP and denounce all your ties in a similar fashion.

David: [00:28:59] Well, I think I have worn a UC tie twice already. That should be enough.

Colleen: [00:29:03] Oh, no, no. It's not like getting married in the living room.

David: [00:29:07] There'll be, no it'll be no more marriages. Oh, I haven't even been in the I haven't been in the building, so I need to know what the room looks like. Maybe we should put a portrait up or something that, you know, that's- not of me!

Colleen: [00:29:22] Of you?

David: [00:29:22] Not of me! Not of me–I'm thinking for Henry.

Colleen: [00:29:23] Let the record show. Dean Wilson calls for.

David: [00:29:29] Does the living room have a name or is it separate or what is it?

Colleen: [00:29:32] And we just call it the living room. But it's also where we have all of our office hours.

David: [00:29:38] Yeah, I- I renounce whatever I propose until I see this face.

Colleen: [00:29:42] All right. Just make sure you wear the tie.

David: [00:29:45] Happy to wear at a time. I like wearing the tie.