After Words: "Poisoned Ivies" with R-NY Rep. Elise Stefanik

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:02]I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?

[00:00:13]>> Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it >> And is it anti-semitic rhetoric?

[00:00:17]>> Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct and we do take action. So the answer is yes that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct.

[00:00:35]Correct?

[00:00:38]>> Again it depends on the context.

[00:00:40]>> It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes. And this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.

[00:00:49]About a month after this exchange with Congresswoman Elise Stefonic, then Harvard President Claudine Gay did resign. In a New York Times op-ed, Gay called the hearing a quote well-laid trap.

[00:01:04]This week on Afterwards, Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefonic talks about that hearing and her book Poisoned Ivy's, the inside account of the academic and moral rot at America's elite universities.

[00:01:20]This is afterwards from C-SPAN.

[00:01:23]This week, Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefonic talks about America's elite universities, including her alma mater, Harvard, and makes an argument that these universities have abandoned their founding principles of freedom of thought and open debate.

[00:01:40]She sat down with founder of the Catalan Consulting Group, Sarah Catalan, at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California in April of 2026.

[00:01:53]Well, welcome. Welcome to your Valinda.

[00:01:55]Welcome to California. Welcome to the Nixon Library. I am so excited to be here today. It's wonderful to meet so many of you. And I want to begin by thanking the Richard Nixon Library and Museum for just this extraordinary resource for Americans and visitors, frankly, from all around the world. I want to thank Chris for that kind introduction and the entire staff here who are just extraordinary.

[00:02:21]professionals in terms of their focus on welcoming fellow Americans, but also their focus on civic education and teaching the legacy and the administration and the extraordinary life of President Richard Nixon. And it's great to be with you, Sarah, someone who uh I worked with their office very closely when she served as the district director for Chairman Ed Royce, one of my former colleagues in the House.

[00:02:47]>> Well, you took all of my talking points, so thank you. I'm just kidding. Uh, I want to just jump into the book and I am going to try to ask you some pointed questions without revealing too much. It is a great read if you haven't read it yet. It is not too long. It is not painful. Uh, it's a little bit depressing at parts, but she gives you a little bit of hope at the end. So, I highly encourage everyone to pick it up and um and to get through it. So, uh, let's get into it. You ready?

[00:03:19]>> I am ready.

[00:03:20]>> Okay. So, you talk, uh, in the beginning of the book, you talk about your parents and how formative they were in your early life and the work ethic, and you really feel like you got a lot of that from them. You got into your number one choice, Harvard, and it was everything you hoped for. You had an uh, overwhelmingly positive experience, it sounded like, and then we end up here.

[00:03:46]What was there any one instance or anything that really stood out to you that led to that decline from your experience to what students are experiencing now? It's a great question.

[00:03:58]So, a little bit about my background.

[00:04:00]Before I served in Congress, uh, which I've served for over 12 years, I grew up in upstate New York in a small business family. I'm one of two children and neither of my parents had the opportunity to graduate from college but they were very successful entrepreneurs and small business owners and I saw them build a small business from scratch. The work ethic that they taught me uh the dedication to their customers that I learned that helped shape my values as a public servant and as a congresswoman representing my home region of upstate New York. And I think a lot about the role of parents. Those are our first and most primary educators in terms of shaping our values. I understood that as a daughter, but even more importantly, I understand that as a mom now. I have a four-year-old son, Sam. And we are seeing parents are paying increasing attention to the education that their kids are receiving at K through 12 and in higher education. This is my first book and a lot of times political figures will write a book about their political journey. That was not what this book is. I chose an issue that I feel very passionate about that I have a strong legislative record and really wanted to give an inside behindthescenes look at that hearing heard around the world. Let me ask you this in this audience. Did you happen to see that hearing with those university presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT? Yes.

[00:05:38]The world saw that hearing and it really set off an earthquake and a long overdue conversation in higher education reform that resonated frankly across party lines and had significant consequences even between now and where we are today in what's happening in higher education.

[00:05:57]So you asked Sarah, how did we get to this point? It was a number of factors over time and I hope we can get into some of those policy areas in this discussion. Right.

[00:06:08]>> Absolutely. Were when thinking about your personal success, right? So you finish Harvard, you go to work at the White House as one does, right? Why not just move on to the White House? Um, and then being elected as the youngest female member of Congress the time, youngest House Conference chair, youngest just about everything. Uh, very very accomplished career for such a young woman still. Do you have any uh just personal mentors or was there anything along the way that you really felt like this was your person that was pushing you on?

[00:06:44]I do have personal mentors both in the House of Representatives but also just in my life. I I think back to um my educational journey when I was growing up. My parents transferred me from one school to a school that was a better fit. It was an all girls independent day school and I really thrived and it challenged me academically. I think that was a real turning point in my life in terms of thinking about reaching and challenging myself. I would never have imagined that I would be serving in Congress, but building that confidence um and focusing on academic excellence that served me well as I continued in the future chapters of my life. In the House of Representatives, I talk about this a lot. the role models that I had of some of the Republican women members like Kathy McMorris Rogers. She was a longtime Republican member from the state of Washington. She was in House leadership when I was first elected. Um those mentors are very important because it allows you to see yourself potentially in the future as leaders within the Congress and within the particular party that you're in. So I saw Kathy as the conference chair uh and then it turned out years later I was proud to be at the leadership table as as the highest ranking woman in Congress.

[00:08:05]>> She has an amazing story having a son with special needs and you know all the additional pressures that she had. She's a great lady. So getting into what you refer to as the academic rot that you see in the universities, is that what drove you to seek the education committee or did you already know that was in the background of your mind of where you wanted to be?

[00:08:30]>> Great question. So when you're first elected to Congress, the way you get assigned to your committees is you rank committees that are important to you.

[00:08:39]So, typically a member will list subject areas that are important to their district or a policy expertise that they have a background in. Um, interestingly, my freshman year I ranked House Armed Services and the Education Committee as my top two. And I was one of the only Republican members that listed the Education Committee as a top priority.

[00:09:03]But I will tell you today it is now one of the most pursued committees in Congress because of the importance of this conversation we're having in education. So here I am as a freshman member, this is over a decade ago on the education committee and I talk about in the book how education was formative in my life but has been losing its way and has shifted from the founding mission of in this case many of these very historic institutions.

[00:09:32]The hearing itself, what led to that hearing was after the October attack from Hamas against Israel, we saw a skyrocketing of anti-semitism on some of the most elite college campuses. We saw pro- Hamas encampments overtake classrooms and university spaces. A significant increase in harassment, anti-semitic assaults against fellow students and uh American Jewish teachers, Jewish students. It was unrecognizable to me.

[00:10:06]That was not my experience 20 years ago.

[00:10:09]So I urged my colleague who's chair of the committee, we have to haul in these university presidents. And I've been in a lot of hearings over the years, very high-profile impeachment hearings, cabinet secretaries, tech CEOs. I've never been in a hearing quite like this one where the moral bankruptcy was on such stark display. And for folks who may have watched portions of the hearing, it was the entire day. I was not getting direct answers, nor was any member from these university presidents.

[00:10:42]And I thought to myself, and it wasn't even a prepared question. I thought about it in real time. How can I ask this in the most direct way to force them to answer correctly? And that question was, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your university's code of conduct? I expected them to say yes without hesitation and I plan to follow up what disciplinary action has been taken against those that violated the rules. But to my shock and true astonishment, the president of MIT, the president of Penn, the president of Harvard, arguably some of the most elite institutions in the world said it depends on the context. And the world heard in one week one billion views of that testimony. It set off an earthquake. In 48 hours, the Penn president was forced to resign. I met a Penn graduate earlier today here who was very happy about that resignation. Within two months, the Harvard president was forced to resign.

[00:11:49]Multiple universities that we were about to call in to testify preemptively resigned. And you've had such a tectonic shift broadly in higher education. Even this past year, if you look at the admissions data, it has shifted significantly where students are applying to schools and if they get accepted, where they're metriculating, moving away from these schools that are focused on political indoctrination and not their founding mission, which was focused on academic excellence and academic rigor.

[00:12:22]>> Absolutely. Let's get into that question.

[00:12:25]I think you have rightfully earned a great reputation for yourself on asking really critical questions, but this truly was the question that was heard around the world. Was there anything that surprised you? You mentioned the number of views uh in the reaction, the positive, overwhelmingly positive reaction that you got from that question. Was any of that surprising to you? The most surprising part of this whole experience was their answers because I thought it was going to be the most simple straightforward question of the hearing and I worded it that way. So it wasn't a political question that it was a straightforward moral one and it was very shocking to me. What's interesting and you know this having worked in Congress for many years this was there were there was no media in the room. It was just the C-SPAN footage at that time. It was the last question of the entire hearing, most of the other members had left the committee room. And what was really eerie, in addition to the moral bankruptcy and academic laziness of their answers, was they stood up, didn't think anything was wrong, and left the committee room. And I called my staff and I said, 'I think this was a very important question and moment in the hearing. Before our office could put out anything, that C-SPAN footage caught on literally around the world and billboards went up in Israel.

[00:13:52]My chief of staff's email started crashing every single day for the next couple of weeks. we became inundated and really became the repository in the entire Congress on all of these challenges in higher education. It set off an investigation and it set off many of the actions that are being taken today by the Trump administration regarding the executive orders into place, the Department of Justice lawsuits, the withholding of federal dollars to force these schools to fix themselves because they're not going to fix themselves. they have to be forced to do so.

[00:14:29]>> So, you mentioned several of the university presidents who were essentially forced to resign. Uh, one thing that was surprising to me when I read that in your book is after that revelation, after the millions of views, after all the public pressure, there was not a single example that you cited of a truly, you know, just repentant uh president. They all were forced out just kicking and screaming the whole way that they had done nothing wrong.

[00:15:02]Did they learn anything today? Do you think that if you had that same hearing, is there anything that they learned from this experience or is it just the pressure that you mentioned?

[00:15:14]>> I think we're in a very different place today because of that hearing. So when we call university presidents now to testify, this hearing itself is what not to do. It's literally taught by those preparing witnesses what not to do in Congress. Um, what was striking to me is that it wasn't just the presidents that stuck their heads in the sand and didn't want to acknowledge that their testimony was so deeply wrong. It was many of the boards. So, you have the boards of these universities and I go in depth into the Harvard Corporation. I go in depth to the Penn board's decision-making process. They did not initially want to take any action in holding those university presidents accountable or frankly enforcing the rules to ensure uh civil rights protections for Jewish students on campus. And that to me when I highlight other aspects we need to fix. We need to fix the governance structure of these universities to make sure that you have good stewards both from a fiduciary perspective but also from a values perspective of these schools. The other part of writing this and this was a three-year process to write this book.

[00:16:27]I went back to the founding principles and founding mods and some of these schools were founded prior to the founding of our country. Here we are celebrating the 250th year, the semiquincentennial and in the case of Harvard for example that was founded in 1636.

[00:16:46]In the case of Penn, one of the visionaries that essentially co-founded Penn was Benjamin Franklin. Colombia, uh, a leader that founded Colombia and was an early student at what was then called King's College was Alexander Hamilton. These were extraordinary institutions with incredible mission statements. Yet over 250 years later, they've fundamentally shifted away and have instead moved out of touch with American values. And I highlight again some of the root causes of why we are where we are today.

[00:17:24]>> Right.

[00:17:25]>> C-SPAN's Afterwards podcast continues in a moment. Now, back to this conversation with Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefonic.

[00:17:35]Again, you go through that in extensive detail in the book, so I I won't go over it too much here, but uh one of the toughest things for me to read, which I think was necessary, but what you call the catalog of horrors, and it was the treatment of students on campus, and you go through dates, times, names, just cataloging, you know, everything that had happened. Um, I was a World War II history era major, so it was deeply troubling to see those parallels. And I wanted to see if you could touch a little bit on that. That's one of the reasons why I wrote the book in that I think not only it's an important book for this moment in time of what's happening in higher education but also for historic purposes of I was very concerned that the traditional media would brush this era as a few instances at a few institutions and brushed under the rug. That was simply not the case.

[00:18:40]This was systemic. It was widespread and I thought it was important to have all of this information, all of this firsthand testimony, the whistleblowers in one volume to ensure that we reset course. This does not happen again. And I want to give credit. The real brave voices in this were these students who at the age of 18, 19, 20 came in front of Congress and testified as to what they were experiencing on campus. Think about that. These are young leaders just beginning their adulthood, still in school as undergrads who literally reset the course of reforming higher education because they they had the courage to come forward, use their voice under very very stressful and under significant duress at these institutions. And in these chapters, I go through many of these students who I've gotten to know, who know the ins and outs of Congress now. And it's a real lesson in how to be civically engaged to fix these institutions.

[00:19:48]I think the two most troubling examples that stuck with me was the mapping project where essentially they're doxing uh Jewish business owners, Jewish students, Jewish teachers. And as an effort in anti-semitism, you're kind of glossing over the fact that these are also American citizens who happen to be Jewish and they're getting targeted by people who may or may not be American citizens on these campuses. Um the other point that you mentioned was that it several of these events had happened on the historic anniversary of crystalall knocked.

[00:20:26]Have you had any other comments or observations from people who have read your book about those parallels with 1930s Germany and kind of what they're experiencing on these campuses? I I'll give an example. This happened to me just this week. I was having a lunch in New York City and it was um prior to an event related to the book and um a Jewish woman who was probably in her maybe early 80s. She said she had read the book and she had forgotten about her experience facing anti-semitism at higher ed in a particular moment in time. She said it flashed back it flashed back to something she faced in her educational journey and said it was a very difficult book to read but a very important book to read to remind fellow Americans this should never happen in our country ever. Certainly not today, but never again. You also touched upon the mapping project that's in the MIT chapter. It's extremely disturbing and you really your jaw drops when you're reading one after the other after the other these horrific instances and targeting of American Jewish students or American Jewish staff, professors. You talk about the foreign aspect of this. There are significant foreign dollars that are flowing into some of these universities from uh countries that are sewing this discord and sewing this anti-Americanism.

[00:21:57]The number one foreign funer of higher education is Qatar or communist China.

[00:22:03]They set up what are called Confucious institutes which we have worked to ban in Congress. And then the question of um the percentage of foreign students. So, I think it's a wake-up call to Americans, and most people I didn't realize this prior to doing my legislative research. 40% of the students at Colombia are foreign students. So, these universities are no longer prioritizing American students.

[00:22:31]Some of those foreign students were the leaders of these encampments that created riots, violent assaults and destruction of university property. And yet the university allowed that to take place. These are American institutions and they need to remember that as a priority rather than focusing on global institutions.

[00:23:00]Let's talk a little bit about that. The foreign funding and the foreign students. That was definitely something that stood out to me and I I made several notes about that. Uh in California in 200 I think it was 22. We had an effort to cap the number of foreign students at our Ivy Leagues.

[00:23:20]I'll call them uh Cal Berkeley, UCLA, some of the other schools. And the schools were saying that they need the foreign students because they pay tuition at three times the rate of instate students. But the net effect was our local students were not having spots available to them because of this. So you mentioned uh 40% at Colombia. I noted that it was 28% at Harvard and pretty close to 40% too at MIT.

[00:23:50]Do you think that is affecting the American competitiveness? The fact that we educate a lot of students from foreign countries and then they might go back home and compete against an American worker for a job. Do you think that's a factor in that? My proposal that I put forth is I think we should cap the percentage at 15% per institution. And I come at this from the lens of not only doing this oversight work in Congress that I touch on the book, but take a look at my alma mater at Harvard. You now have Harvard, which has been publicly stated by the Chinese Communist Party that that's where their family members go and then they go back into the Chinese Communist Party system.

[00:24:33]That is not acceptable. The other piece, you talked about the financial aspect of this. These schools have multi-billion dollar endowments. they can and should prioritize American students. It's just an excuse. And one part of the hearing that did not get a lot of attention, but it was a very important question because their answer was so telling, I asked the university presidents, particularly Harvard, can you line out for me your top foreign funders? And I always can tell when a witness clams up and doesn't want to answer the question because I've hit on something important, she avoided answering the question. What that told me was they are not being fully transparent where these dollars are coming from. So what we have done is in Congress is we passed what's called the deterrent act to close some of these loopholes because previously foreign dollars could flow into a university center or a specific professor or a particular department and those dollars weren't disclosed publicly. Now, because of legislation that's in place, all those dollars have to be disclosed publicly. And we've seen recently Secretary Linda McMahon has put out important public reporting about what those total dollars of foreign funds are. And that's why we can point to over 1.2 billion from Qatar last year alone as the number one. Number two was China.

[00:25:59]And of those 40% of foreign students I know at Colombia 47% of those are Chinese. So just incredibly staggeringly high numbers. Um in addition to the competitiveness issue I know I mentioned to you before. I thought about it in context too of uh ideologies that we're importing, right? And you mentioned in your book that rather than educating these foreign students on the founding of America and our founding documents and what really makes the United States unique, we are importing their ideology.

[00:26:36]Have you seen that um as a factor in some of the events?

[00:26:40]>> Absolutely. that is a factor both in the foreign students piece, the foreign funding piece, but I also identify the faculty tenure as one of the challenges that we face in higher education. It used to be decades ago, and this is hard to imagine, that you would have more balanced of the um you know, conservativeleaning and liberalleaning faculty member. That's no longer the case. If you look at some of the data now, it's 88 to1 in humanities departments at Harvard. it's even more of a delta at other schools if they have one conservativeleaning professor. Um the self- selection process of faculty tenure which was of course initially envisioned as a way to protect um academic um academic freedom and academic uh rigor but it has become monolithic ideology. So you're self- selecting increasingly radical positions outside of fundamental American values.

[00:27:42]So I believe there needs to be and I talk about some of the positives in the book. These universities that work at recruiting a diversity of voices ideologically. So for example the Hoover Institution at Stanford that is a prime example of that is a positive benefit to Stanford University at large. Some other universities are starting those like the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida. Vanderbilt is a standout who is getting it right and moving in the correct direction unlike what the poisoned Ivies are doing. So you talk about there is the catalog of horrors which was important from a historical perspective and also to give these students voices. But I end the book on a high note of schools that are charting a a positive course and interestingly parents and students are are voting with their wallets in their feet and you can see the shifting in metriculation rates and in where young students are applying.

[00:28:42]Yeah, I was hanging on for that chapter because it does get heavy at times in the book and I was waiting for the the hope, the light at the end of the tunnel. And I noticed that the programs that you mentioned that are um getting it right, as you say, a lot of them are focused on, you know, kind of the roots of the American system or good governance and things like that. I know you had an opportunity to tour the Nixon Library earlier. Did you get a little briefing too on the American Civics campaign and what they're working on here?

[00:29:16]>> Yes, I am a big believer that we need to um rebuild our civics education in this country and the fact that we have the 250th anniversary is a great time to do so. An amazing exhibit here. But I'm particularly impressed with the investment and the innovation that's happening right here at the Nixon Museum and Library on their civics education program and their future plans to have more and more students in the classroom at this facility learning civics education because these are going to be the future leaders of America. That's what's so disturbing about this is what happens in the classroom translates to what is happening in society at large.

[00:30:00]And I draw a direct line. Take Colombia for example.

[00:30:04]There's a direct line. What happened at Colombia leading directly to the socialist mayor of New York City.

[00:30:11]Literally the same people that organized the pro- Hamas encampment were the boots on the ground for the campaign for this socialist takeover of New York City.

[00:30:20]That's deeply concerning to me as a fellow American. And that's why what we teach at these schools in civic education broadly is so important as we educate the next generation of leaders.

[00:30:31]And I think about that as a mom. I mean, coming through this library, the first thing I thought was, I need to bring my son here. This is just amazing. Um, and we try to educate him civically and be very um judicious in the schools that we choose to send him to. I imagine much in New York, much like California, uh that >> similar challenges.

[00:30:54]>> The the list gets smaller every year, I think. Um but we found a good one for my son who's a freshman in high school. But yeah, we were definitely looking at uh at your list of those good schools and kind of making a note of it for a couple years from now.

[00:31:11]>> C-SPAN's Afterwards podcast continues in a moment.

[00:31:16]Now, back to this conversation with Republican New York Congresswoman Elise Stefonic.

[00:31:22]>> Uh, so I have to ask you the million-dollar question. You talk in your book, uh, when President McIll, for example, had stepped down, you were like one down, you know, two to go. And, um, you obviously have a passion for this work. I mean, it it led you to spend three years writing this book. So, with so much to do, why leave Congress now?

[00:31:43]I'm assuming that you're not getting promoted to the president of Harvard anytime soon. So, so what is next for you? Where will we see you next on the road?

[00:31:51]>> You know, it's been I don't think you should serve in Congress for your life.

[00:31:56]And if you look back to our if you look back to our founders, they did not envision these to be lifetime careers. And I look at some of my colleagues, particularly across the aisle, particularly from this state. You know who I'm talking about. They've been there longer than I've been alive, and they're they're not effective at solving the issues that are very important in this country. So, I've always been a believer in term limits and I've been very proud to serve as the highest ranking New York Republican in over 100 years, have an incredible seat at the leadership table and really make an impact, most importantly for my constituents, but also on um issues that are important for the entire country.

[00:32:45]And as a mom of a four-year-old, it was just the right time for new challenges for our family. And let me tell you, I'm I'm definitely not ruling out running for office again in the future, just not um reelection this year.

[00:33:03]And I just fundamentally think that's how um we can ensure that these institutions um whether it's the House of Representatives or the United States Senate that you don't have again these long-term ineffective electeds that you continue to have vibrancy and that churn that's really important to make sure that we're solving the issues. So I've been proud to lead by example. Uh, and my constituents, I will tell you, uh, I get messages or I speak with them every day. They are, they're just so kind and so connected to our family. They say, "We're happy for your family, for what's next. We're going to miss you as a member of Congress, but we're so proud of you and and just grateful for the service you've done." That means so much to me. And what I find is that means that I've kept my promises to them when I ran and they took a risk on me. Think about that. that I was 28, 29, just turning 30 when they elected me. They took that risk and I've been proud to earn their support over the past decade.

[00:34:06]Well, I think we have some questions from the audience.

[00:34:12]I'm sure they're all about Harvard, but let's see.

[00:34:17]So, this is one that I kind of alluded to earlier. Our son is a freshman in high school. So, as my child is beginning to look at colleges, as a parent, do you have any advice on what we should keep our eye on?

[00:34:32]Great question. I think focusing on the academic work, the curricula, the syllabus, you know, there's increasing pressure on these universities to make those public, to have the syllabus publicly available, to have the curricula publicly available. um making sure that the investment both in time and in dollars is worthy of what they're teaching in the classroom and also looking at the data of what is the job placement rate after they graduate from various institutions or various departments. I think that's incredibly important. Some schools and some states um require that like the state of Florida for example they make that data publicly available but I would really focus on what is what is happening in the classroom and is it focused on academics or is it focused on this political indoctrination and then I would look at um the safety and security and when I say that I don't mean you know uh some of the left term about safe space what I mean is the physical safety of these students this is something that is on the mind particularly of uh American Jewish families and I myself I'm not Jewish. I'm a Catholic. I think it's very important to recognize that this skyrocketing of anti-semitism is a canary in the coal mine for anti-Americanism and attacks on Western civilization. That's why this hearing resonated in such significant ways.

[00:36:03]>> Absolutely.

[00:36:09]So, a positive question. Uh, have you come across any glimmers of hope for the American education system? I absolutely have. My the greatest glimmers of hope that I have found are the students themselves. I pointed to the fact that I highlight some of these students amazing stories uh in terms of their bravery, sharing them with Congress under very challenging circumstances that are hard to imagine going through at any point in your life, let alone when you are a young student. That's a real bright spot for me. And then I highlight institutions that are getting it right.

[00:36:44]I pointed at Vanderbilt. I talk about University of Florida, which at that time was led by my former colleague, Senator Ben Sass. And I I know many of you have probably seen some of these really heart-wrenching interviews that he's given as he's facing his health challenges, but he also talks a lot about the lessons he learned leading a higher education institution. One standout Ivy is Dartmouth. Um you had that university president enforce the rules, focus on critical thinking in the classroom and academics and it has gone in the right direction whereas the other Ivy Leagues have gone in the wrong direction. So there are glimmers of hope and I would also point to innovative institutions like uh UTX, University of Austin which was founded in 2021 by Barry Weiss and some of these real innovators understanding that higher education needed a shakeup and then I highlight centers like the Hoover Institution and others that are bright spots on these universities.

[00:37:45]So, talking a little bit about uh being an elected official, not easy for a woman, not easy for a 28-year-old woman to decide to run for Congress. Uh we have a question that says, "My do my granddaughter wants to be a congresswoman when she grows up. Do you have any advice for her and you're not allowed to say don't do it?"

[00:38:05]No, I would encourage her to do it. Um I It's interesting. When I first ran, the advice was, "It's going to be a weakness that you're a young candidate."

[00:38:16]It actually ended up being one of the greatest strengths because people are looking for energy and a new generation of leadership. And I won a district that previously was held by a Democrat that Republicans had struggled to win over and over again. No one thought I could win. and I won the district by over 20 points and now put up some of the largest margins ever in the history of districts. So oftentimes what can be viewed as you're a non-traditional candidate, what can be viewed as a weakness ends up being your greatest strength. So I think that was one lesson and that I would impart on someone who wants to run for office. Um and then get involved in your community. Uh that is the building blocks for if you want to seek office someday, get involved in community organization, in foundations like this one at the Richard Nixon Museum and Library. Um get involved at your school board. You learn a lot um from that local uh involvement and local leadership. And then I would say when you get there, there's a whole other list of advice I would give when the granddaughter ends up running and winning and have her reach out to my office too. I benefited very much from talking to mentors and um don't hesitate to reach out to my congressional office.

[00:39:34]Just do it before the end of the year.

[00:39:36]>> Yes.

[00:39:36]>> Yes. Okay. Uh I'm going to take a little bit of a liberty with this question, but you mentioned you have a four-year-old.

[00:39:43]What is your hope for the higher education system by the time he gets there? And then my liberty is I'm going to add on where are you sending him to college? He's four, so I'm sure you have it all planned out already. You know, I I come at this as a policy maker and an alumni of one of these schools, but also as a parent, as I talk about, and we have an opportunity to fix higher education. It's not going to happen overnight. We need to stay vigilant on this issue and really make sure that we're attacking all facets of it. So addressing and blocking some of the nefarious foreign funding that's flowing in rep prioritization of American students as well as the founding American values of these institutions academic rigor um is incredibly important and in so many cases we've shifted away. I think the return to the traditional great works and western cannon of what's being taught in schools and a real core curriculum rather than these very very um professor pet projects and very radical ideologies that are in some of these classes. I hope we fix higher education by the time my son Sam um graduates high school and goes on to college. The other point I would make is we need to move away from this forced approach where it's one-sizefits-all and everyone goes to four-year college. That is not where we are today. Promoting these vocational and technical educational programs that is a pathway to success. And even right here in California, home of Silicon Valley, look at the entrepreneurs who have benefited from, for example, the Teal Fellowship.

[00:41:23]I meet billion-dollar company founders who are 21 years old in my office every single week who are solving major problems started at these schools decided this is not worth my time and I want to found companies instead. They're extraordinary innovators. So thinking outside of the box I think needs to be um encouraged rather than discouraged.

[00:41:46]Um so moving away from the one-sizefits-all. I don't know what college Sam is going to go to, but um certainly I will tell you we read with him every night, my husband and I. We focus on making sure he is not on a screen, which is I think a a conversation that so many people are having in terms of digital devices and education. And we very much focus on teaching him our family's values and to be civically minded.

[00:42:13]>> Absolutely. Well, I think we would uh I think we would all anyone who's seen your testimony in uh in Congress and seen your questions would join your constituents and thanking you for the service that you've done to your district and for your country. And thank you for joining us here tonight. Thank you so much for this wonderful audience.

[00:42:36]Thank you to our moderator and to the Nixon Museum and Library. Thank you.

[00:42:45]Thanks for listening to Afterwards from C-SPAN. You can watch more conversations with authors like this one every Sunday on C-SPAN 2's BookTV.

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