Science is a Living, Breathing Process: Dr. Holden Thorp

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Holden Thorp, the Editor-In-Chief of Science Magazine. Formerly, he was Provost of Washington University in St. Louis and spent three decades at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where he was Chancellor, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and a Kenan Professor of Chemistry.

Transcription

Transcribed by Caden Sweet (he/him)

JP: Start recording. So yeah, Holden. Let’s start with like a short autobiography. Can you tell me you know your name? Educational journey where you are now, and just what you’ve been up to.

Holden: Sure. Well, first of all, it’s great to be on and thanks, JP, for all you’re doing with this, podcast I think it’s a really useful thing for a lot of people. But yeah, I was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. About 75 miles from where you’re doing your research. my mom ran the theater in my hometown and it was sort of the family business. So I was expected to work there.

JP: Are you a musician?

Holden: Yeah

JP: Oh, cool!

Holden: I am. Yeah. So so initially, you know, when I was a little kid, there was nothing to do but for me to be in the in the shows.

JP: That’s cool.

Holden: But I was a terrible actor. Because, you know, people who have analytical brains are sometimes very, very bad at at at lying and about, you know, and acting as a way is like lying.

JP: Basically.

Holden: Yeah. And so uh so as soon as I was old enough for her to tell me, I love you, son, but you don’t get to be in the plays anymore, which was when I was about 12, she - you know, I started just picking up other jobs. And initially, it was just fixing everything in the theater, and then eventually, I I learned to play music so I could play in the orchestra pit. But that was all good training for all the things that I was gonna end up doing in life. And after I went from there to college, you know, I thought I was gonna be a physician like a lot of kids, cause I didn’t know any better, you know I didn’t know people who are good at science did anything other than that, but when I was in college I did undergraduate research with Tom Meyer.

JP: At UNC Chapel Hill.

Holden: Yeah, in the chemistry department, and at the last minute I decided to go to Pasadena and get a PhD instead of going to medical school. I was admitted to both Duke and UNC Medical schools. My parents were kind of shocked about that but they figured it out that it was the right thing. And so I went to Pasadena, got my PhD with Harry Gray. I went to Yale to do a postdoc, and I always tell people you know. They say they always think you have to have this brilliant plan. I went to Yale to do my postdoc because I was in love with somebody who was a student at the Yale School of Drama and I’ve been married to her now for 36 years, so

JP: That’s amazing.

Holden: So that turned out to be a smart decision, and also I had a great advisor there, Gary Brudvig, and we worked on photosynthesis. And then I got my first faculty position at North Carolina State, and I was there for 2 years, before I started getting calls from lots of other places, and my dream was always to go back to Chapel Hill, which I was able to do. And for 15 years I did what college professors do, got grants, published papers, taught my classes, started a company that didn’t make it, but I learned a lot about the biotech business doing that. And then I went into administration, and I was Dean and the Chancellor, and when I was a Chancellor I got run over by a truck because I figured out that there was a 30 year old athletics academic scandal, and Tar Heel Nation didn’t love it that I revealed that to them, and NC State Wolfpack nation wanted revenge. and I got caught up in all of that. So I, I did everything I could, and then I went to Washington University to be the Provost, which was a really great gig. I worked with Mark Wrighton, who was one of the most successful chancellors. I was a pretty experienced provost having been a Chancellor for 5 years and so we were able to do a lot of things at Wash U that that we wanted to do. And of course that’s one of the great great environments for for medical science in the world. And so I enjoyed my time hanging around that awesome medical school. And then when Mark Wrighton retired, I decided it was some time for something new, so I told the search consultants to bring me the, the other jobs that people do when they get out of administration, foundations and museums, and, and they said we got something even better, and they brought me this job being the editor of Science, which is

JP: So cool.

Holden: The best job I’ve ever had. Yeah.

JP: Cool. So are are you still teaching? I thought you were also like a

Holden: Oh, yeah, yeah. So my faculty position is at GW. I moved it from Wash U so that I could have everything in the same town. Because I, you know, I live basically on the GW Campus. The triple A S offices are 8 blocks away, and so my whole world is kind of right there on the blue, orange and silver lines. And I don’t have any formal duties at GW, because I’m on leave, but I teach one class there, and also play the bass for student musicals, and occasionally help the Administration out with various things that come up when they need need somebody to talk to who’s been - seen it all.

JP: Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, you just gave us, you just gave me so many options to to, you know. so many options to talk about and and discuss, but I guess we should go in chronological order, I’m very intrigued by the idea of you getting into Med school, and then choosing to do your PhD. So can you tell us about that? What what were you thinking when you decided, you know what the the Med School route isn’t where I want to go, it’s it’s the research route. Because I think that’s a very common thing.

Holden: Yeah. Yeah. So, like I said, you know I was a very determined person who makes, makes plans, and my plan was to go to medical school. And so I went to college, did my pre-med classes. You know, filled out my AMCAS.

JP: Yeah. Holden: Did the MCAT and it was only at the end of my junior year, Tom Meyer was my teacher for a inorganic chemistry class that I had to take, which I loved, and I asked him if I could join his research group. He shouldn’t have taken me, because I only had one year left. But he did, and that was probably, you know, that was a lucky, lucky break when I was when I was a PI, I usually didn’t like to take undergrads unless they were sophomores, so that I had - by the time I taught them how to do some stuff, they could actually get some things done. But Tom agreed to take me, and he had 2 terrific post docs that I worked for and you know, I just - once I got there, it was like my whole world changed. That was that was the place I wanted to be doing stuff. And so I learned a lot, and as I started getting towards the end, you know, I was very unsophisticated about how graduate education worked.

JP: Aren’t we all.

Holden: I didn’t even realize, you know, that you got paid a stipend. I thought you had to pay to go to graduate school, but I gradually figured all this out, and I thought that I would have to wait a year and go through the whole cycle, but in May or June, or something like that, I mean it was after graduation, cause they had hired me to work through the summer, which I was excited to be doing, I went in to Tom’s office one day and said, I’ve decided I want to go to to graduate school and the 2 postdocs I was working with said, maybe I don’t have to wait a whole year to do that. And he goes, oh, yeah, no, you don’t. Tell me where you where you want to go, and I’ll call them up. And so he did, and he called Caltech, and they sent me an application, and 6 weeks later I was driving down I-40 going to to Pasadena, yeah.

JP: That’s awesome.

Holden: Crazy, yeah.

JP: Yeah. But you’re you’re a Carolina boy through and through right like, what made you want to go to Pasadena? Was it truly just the work of the the PI that you ended up joining the lab of?

Holden: Yeah. Right? So when I asked all the people at - in the lab who I should go work for, they all said you should go to to Caltech and work for Harry Gray.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: I trusted them. When I went out there and met him I could tell that it was definitely the right thing for me to go do. Dick Feynman’s book was coming out right then, and you know there’s turns out there’s some problematic things in in that book. But there’s also a lot of great stuff about being a scientist and being at Caltech. And so, I got excited about Caltech reading that and excited about going to work for Harry, and when I went out there met everybody, you know it was a perfect match, so was a whirlwind experience. But that’s the way it goes sometimes.

JP: Yeah, I guess that’s just how the cookie crumbles, right?

Holden: Yeah exactly.

JP: So, yeah so I’m a, again, I’m a third year at UNC, and something on the back of my mind every day is okay, am I going to go into academia? Am I going to pursue science policy? But in the name of love you chose to go to Yale right? So can you walk us through that right like being a graduate student at Caltech. I’m assuming you’re still together with your with your wife, right?

Holden: I am, yes.

JP: So it’s like, yeah, you probably brought her to California, and then it seems like she was the priority, right? So she ended up going to Yale.

Holden: Oh, no, that’s no. So we knew each other before. She - and we had kind of an on again off again, long distance relationship that was never, you know, really serious or anything. Mainly because I was more in love with her than she was with me.

JP: We’ll make sure to send her this after.

Holden: Yeah, she’s used to me telling people that. They - but she kind of changed her mind about all that, and and went to New Haven. And so I went up there to visit her, and it was a similar kind of thing. I just I, I realized that I needed to go to New Haven somehow. So I walked into Gary Brudvig’s office and said, hey, I’m here. I’m wondering if you have any post docs. and he offered me one an hour later, after we talked about science for a while.

JP: That’s awesome. So was Academia always on on the mind cause. I mean, you went -

Holden: No, absolutely not. I mean Harry had - so postdoc was a choice that I made because I wanted to go to New Haven, and there weren’t any industry jobs there. So I mean, I guess I could have gotten a job at Pfizer or something and commuted but, but the postdoc worked out, and I knew I’d known Gary went - was a postdoc at Caltech and I knew a lot of people that knew him, and I trusted that working with him was going to be a good thing. So, so you know, coming out of Harry’s lab, I was not thinking about academia at all. Because Harry’s lab was huge and he flew around the world all the time, and I thought if I was him I’d be frustrated that I didn’t spend more time with each one of my students. Now he’s still amazingly intent - attentive guy, to legions of people who have worked in his lab. But I didn’t think I had the interpersonal ability to to do all the things that he did on that scale. But when I went to work for Gary, I was his first postdoc. There were 12 people in the lab, he came to the office almost every day, he came in the lab and looked, and we talked about the experiments we were doing. And and I thought, oh, this is what it’s like to be a young PI who has their own lab and is hanging around with their students and post docs and doing the stuff that I love to do. And so that that changed my mind about going into academia. It was really Gary’s example. He is just such a great leader. And more - you know, Harry, Harry’s one of a kind, and I know I wasn’t one of a kind. Gary’s more somebody I could, I could imagine being like.

JP: Hmm! So do do you mean that, as in like being a mentor and his ability to mentor people? Or do you mean that? As like his, you know, inquisit nature of being a scientist. Right? What about it?

Holden: Well, yeah. They’re all - I had 3 great mentors and Tom Meyer, Harry Gray and Gary Brudvig. And they’re all amazing scientists. They’re all very different people. And I think what, what made more sense to me about Gary was just demonstrating to me that you could do this on a scale that I saw was felt was manageable. Tom and Harry both had 30 people in their group.

JP: Oh, wow!

Holde: And, and Gary had 12, and so it was just a very different environment. Yeah.

JP: So can you walk us - can you walk us through what your mentorship style was like? What do you think constitutes a good mentor, because you have a lot of academic experience and administrative experience, and I’m sure this topic has come up, I would assume, so, what do you think people should be looking for when they’re like in graduate school, or as undergraduates? What are they looking for in a mentor?

Holden: Well, I think it’s not necessarily the same for every person. Because I, I benefited from 3 very different people, but I would say for my style, you know I liked to be in a group of 8 or 10 co-workers who I knew and knew what they were working on, and could wander around in the lab and talk to, and, you know, stay with - stay attached to across the course of their career, which I’ve been lucky to do for the most part. And so, you know, I guess I would say one thing about me that’s a little different. Is that I liked research, I liked doing research, I’m the editor of Science now, I, I need to like research. But I would say my academic career has been one where students have come first. I love teaching GenChem, you know, I teach a class at GW now even though I don’t have to. And I, I care more about my grad students and post docs, and where they are in the world than I do about the actual work they did. The actual work they did was a a vehicle to help them achieve their goals, and I guess for me as well. I mean, I wouldn’t have been a influential faculty member without a solid research program, and I knew that, but it was mainly a way of enabling me to do the other parts of academic life that frankly, I, I guess I enjoyed more. And so yeah, I’m a college professor to the to the core. That’s, that’s yeah. I’m, I’m happiest when around students.

JP: Yeah, but you dipped your toes in administration.

Holden: I didn’t dip my toes, I jumped, I jumped into the deep end of the pool, yeah.

JP: Yeah, so how did that happen. Did someone just call you up. And, and they’re like, can you become the Chancellor? Or like, I’m so confused as to how that happens.

Holden: Yeah so there’s a famous quote from the - from Ernest Hemingway, there’s a book called The Sun Also Rises, which is about a guy who goes bankrupt. And there’s a famous quote in there when they ask - somebody asked him how he went bankrupt, and he said, first, gradually, then suddenly. And that’s, that’s how it happens when you go into administration, you know. First the - you’re getting on various committees, then you’re, then you’re being given projects to do by the administration. I had a strange twist in my career, which is that UNC, as you know, from hanging around there, has a science museum on the campus, the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, and it was down on its luck and hard to, would be - if you walked over there now, it would be hard to imagine that because they’ve done a great renovation, and they have wonderful technology in the theater, and there’s kids around all the time.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: But there was a time when it was a sleepy place and a lot of the Chancellor - a new Chancellor came and said, why do I have this? He probably thought he needed to get rid of it, but that would have been a political disaster, because every third grader goes there on a field trip, and so he asked me to see if I could figure out what to do with it, and I ended up becoming - kind of, not really the interim, I mean I was the interim director, because the plan was not for me to do it for the duration, but I was basically the full time, or the permanent director. It was still half time compared to my, my regular academic responsibilities. But I helped turn that place around, and the goal was to get a real informal Science Education Person to run the place, and we did that when we found Todd Boyette, and I did what the Provost instructed me to do, which is, he said, you can’t do this for more than 5 years. I did it for 4. I turned everything over to Todd. But it was a great thing, because I learned a lot of the ropes of administration, fundraising, HR policies, you know all kinds of the way the way accounting worked outside of just contracts and grants, which is the only thing I knew. And so after that I became the chair of the Chemistry Department, which is a powerful department.

JP: One of the best in the country.

Holde: One of the - yeah, and a huge chunk of the graduate students at UNC, and Arts and Sciences are in Chemistry. And it’s a big, big operation. All those buildings over there on the corner of of of South Road and Columbia. It’s a it’s a big place, little city of chemistry over there, and when you’re the - when you’re the chair of that department, you’re sort of the mayor of that city of Chemistry, and so I did that, and then, you know, one thing the Provost had told me early on, he said, don’t ever estimate how - don’t ever underestimate how fast these jobs can turn over. So I went to be the chair of the Chemistry Department, thought I would do that for 5 years, which all my predecessors had done. But then the the provost became the President at the University of Arizona. The Dean of Arts and Sciences became the provost, and I became the Dean of Arts and Sciences. And I thought I would do that job for a long time, cause I love that job. I’m an Arts and Sciences guy to the core. And I loved doing that work but then my very first trustee’s meeting as Dean, the Chancellor announced that he was retiring. So he retired, and I started getting letters from the search consultant, saying, you’ve been nominated to be the Chancellor of the University. I wrote back to them, I said, you gotta be kidding, I just moved into my office. I said, go get somebody really good, and you know if I do a good job at this, you can call me again in a few years. And that didn’t work. A few weeks later I got a phone call from the Chair of the Board of Trustees, saying, hey, I’m the boss, and you’re coming to talk to me. He was nicer about it than than that, but that’s kind of the message that I got. So I went and talked to the committee, and and 11 months later I was the Chancellor of the University. and that all sounded pretty - that was all exciting. But these are very, very hazardous jobs. You never know what you’re gonna find. The last thing on my list was an athletic scandal because Carolina hadn’t been in front of the NCAA in 50 years. And when that all happened. You know I was doing pretty good on other fronts. You know, we had the O - 2008 financial crisis. We actually managed to get through that pretty well. A lot of people on the campus were very appreciative of the way I handled it. But we had an athletic scandal, and also the 2010 election. All the politicians that I knew got voted out of office in North Carolina. That’s when the Republicans took over The North Carolina Legislature, probably for the foreseeable future, because that happened in the year when the districts were redrawn. So North Carolina became a Red State. And I had signed up to be a Blue State Chancellor, and then I had an athletic scandal at the same time, so I was very, very fortunate to get out of there, in one - mostly in one piece. and and I went to to Wash U, where I had an amazing experience being the Provost.

JP: So how long were you Chancellor, at UNC?

Holden: 5 years. Yeah, 2008 to 2013.

JP: Gotcha. It’s hard because you’re getting thrown into all these different leadership positions, and like if I were in your shoes, and I was asked to be Chancellor, I think it’d be really hard for me to to not have goals geared towards science and those departments right, like I would I would be trying to like, diversify STEM and like make sure all the funding goes to that, I guess you know. But did you have at least goals or a vision as a Chancellor for your science departments?

Holden: Yeah. So I mean, I think we actually did make some progress on on those very things.

JP: Right? The Chancellor’s Science Scholars, I think you were a [inaudible], right?

Holden: Yeah. Yes. So yeah one day I got a phone call from Mike Summers. I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago. He was yeah, very excited that I was interviewing you.

Holden: Yeah, and so he said, Freeman and I want to make a copy of the Meyerhoff Scholars at a bigger place, and and it - one in the South, and we’ve selected, we’ve selected you. And course, I was all ears about that, and Mike came down, and we talked about everything. And yeah, it’s, it’s called the Chancellor’s Science - we called it the Chancellor’s Science Scholars, so that one day maybe somebody will write a really big gift and we’ll name it after whoever writes that big gift. But for the moment it’s called the Chancellor’s Science Scholars, and I guess that refers to me and Carol and Kevin and and and Lee Roberts, who are all the Chancellors who’ve who’ve presided over it, because we’ve all been enthusiastic about supporting it. So no, I mean my goals, you know, if you go back and read my installation speech, which I did cause somebody else was asking me to help them with theirs. And I was actually kind of surprised at how much my philosophy was consistent over the 15 years that I did this, because my view has always been that the administrators are not really the people who have the vision. The vision is in the minds of the faculty and students and staff. I mean, there’s 3,000 faculty in Carolina they all have a slightly different vision, sometimes radically different, of what they want to do, and the Administration’s job is to facilitate that. So, and not a lot of trust – a lot of trustees don’t love to hear that when you’re in a president search. They want you to come in and say, you know, we’re gonna go big and AI, or big data, or whatever the buzzword of of the week is that they’re - they’ve been hearing when they go to the Aspen Institute, or wherever they like to go to, to think these kinds of thoughts. But the truth is, it’s a fool’s errand.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: To think, think that you’re going to tell 50,000 people what the vision is and have them all go, okay, we’ll do that. And so my pitch always has been, I’m I’m - as an administrator, I’m here to to make it easier for the people of the University to be creative and achieve their goals. Which you know, sometimes works great. I’ve been into President interviews where I told them that, and they said, you lack vision. I’m like, no, I have a vision. I have - my vision is that this is a place where creative people can flourish. You know we had a - so if you read my installation speech, it’s all about how we’re gonna take care of all the people and make make life better for them, and of course diversifying STEM would be in the - well within that envelope. And when I was a provost, I mean that, and and - which I really actually enjoyed more than being a Chancellor, that was explicitly my job. I mean, I was the I was the Ops guy. I was the person who walked the campus, and people told me stuff that needed to be fixed, and I went back to my office to try to see if I could fix it, and I enjoyed that role immensely. So yeah, that - so of course, so you know, we had a we had a little visioning campaign that we called the best place to teach, learn, and discover. So I wanted Carolina to be the best place to come, achieve whatever your dreams were. Your dreams. Not the dream of some guy sitting in a wood paneled office talking to a bunch of business people. You know, that’s that’s not - and I think this is this is something that’s kind of plaguing higher education right now, is that the the board, the boards are asking the Presidents for this technicolor dream, and nobody’s saying, you know, is it easy to start a new degree program? Is it easy to get your courses approved? Is - are your, are your, are your grants getting through the system easily. You know, when there’s when there’s harassment, is it being addressed quickly, are the are the audit findings being taken care of? You know, the - these are actually the things the Administration should be doing rather than coming back with some big idea and sending everybody off in some direction.

JP: I agree. I thought that was the job of the administration, anyways.

Holden: It is, but they don’t necessarily select for people who want to do that.

JP: Right.

Holden: Yeah.

JP: Yeah. I don’t mean to open up a a can of worms, but like I think it’s -

Holden: No such thing with me, don’t worry about that.

JP: Yeah, but it’s just so interesting because you’re a Chancellor, and now you’re working for Science Magazine, you’re a professor. What are the biggest barriers when it comes to, let’s say diversifying STEM? We’ll just keep using that as an example, like, what are the barriers right? Like, there’s money, but it also sounds like there was an administrative issue, you know, like what processes need to be reimagined, you can say all of them, cause I think it might be all of them. What what processes need to be, you know, restructured first, in order to to have this beautiful idea of you know, diverse, a diverse STEM workforce.

Holden: Yeah. So, in my opinion, you know, it’s all very internal. It’s all internal to the world, mostly of science, but it’s about the institutions also. So you know, the first thing I think, is recognizing that science is a collective process done by a collection of human beings. Those those human beings most advantageously come from lots of different ways of thinking, lots of different cultural backgrounds, lots of different societal norms, and that - there’s no discovery ever in the history of science that was truly made by one person. And so holding up the Nobel laureates or the you know people who are standing up saying, you know this is what I, I did, you know, that’s all, that’s all bad. Because science is done by collections of people who, who bring their whole selves to what they do. And there’s a school of thought, and these people disagree with me passionately, and I get into it with them on social media. I’m not on Twitter anymore, because I got worn down by that, but they don’t - they disagree with me passionately about this. There’s a school of people who are, are strong academics who’ve done stuff. Who will say, well science speaks for itself, and the findings of science are independent of of how they’re done, and who does them. I disagree passionately with that. I wrote a piece called it Matters Who Does Science, that was widely circulated that you might have seen that that talks about how all the different people who contribute are incredibly important.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: And and that’s across every dimension of identity. And so the first thing we have to do is to get everybody to buy into the fact that that is correct, and we don’t have that. We have a lot of people who who say it doesn’t matter the identity of the people who do the science because the the results are are absolute in some sense, but they’re not. We change them all the time. We we change the way we - I mean, that’s what science is. It’s a living, breathing process where findings are replaced by new observations that are interpreted in more expansive ways, and our our knowledge of the universe evolves. And that’s only going to happen when we we don’t have the same kinds of people with the same ways of thinking, constantly looking at the same problem. Because all you’re gonna get there is more or less the same result that you’ve had. You need - you know we just awarded the Newcomb Cleveland Prize this year to a paper, that’s the prize for the best paper in Science, to a paper that showed how horses moved in the United States. So, there were horses in the in the United States early on, they all went over the Bering Strait, and then there weren’t any horses in the United States, you know, when when Native American culture was was flourishing. But then the Spanish settlers brought brought horses, and a lot of people thought that they stayed in the South, where Columbus and the other Spanish settlers were colonializing the Americas, and that the horses didn’t come to the North until they were brought by the British settlers – colonialists. And - but, in fact, the - when the Spanish colonialists brought the the the horses, they migrated north quickly. So, horses were integrated into Native American culture long before any British settlers showed up, and the only way that we’re able to figure this out was by geneticists and archaeologists collaborating with scientists from the Lakota tribe, who are not trained traditionally. But I spent a lot of time with these folks down - if you don’t think they’re scientists, you don’t know what you’re talking about. They’re scientists, all right. They make observations about nature, and they make adjustments to things, and they observe how perturbations change nature, and they make scientific conclusions.

JP: Right.

Holden: And, and so the collaboration of these Lakota scientists with Western science. you know, produced a finding that you wouldn’t have got - that Western science never produced on its own. And so, you know, that’s a great example of how you can’t just have a bunch of guys like me doing what we’ve - who look like me doing what we’ve always done and expect to figure everything out, just doesn’t happen, because we always look in the same places in the same ways.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: And so I think the biggest thing that we need to do to do a better job of diversifying STEM is to to get get more people to buy into this. Now, as far as the institutions are concerned, that’s another thing, because different people from different cultures and backgrounds have different societal norms.

JP: Right.

Holden: And we have a bunch of societal norms that we expect for scientists where we’re very reserved, and we’re you know, just all about our data, and those are norms that were all cooked up when the only people in science were were white European men, and and not every culture works that way. So one of the things that I, a lot of people think I’m too out there with my opinions and stuff, and there are many reasons why I do that, but one is to make it safe for other people who don’t conform to this old norm to to feel like they can express themselves in the way that’s common for their culture. And so we have a lot of work to get the institutions to understand this. And then, you know, I think the biggest thing of all is that these things are hard to do, and they’re especially hard to do when you’re trying to do too many other things. So these institutions have just made so many promises of things that they’re gonna do. And they’re so driven by external factors, rankings and citations and grant revenue, that they just have a hard time - they don’t have the capacity to focus on the real human issues that need to be solved if you’re gonna do this. And in a sense, you know, when UNC sent you a letter saying, JP, you’re going to join a diverse community where you’re going to be encouraged to find every idea and expression that you want to do, and we’re gonna support you and all that, they can’t actually deliver on that, right?

JP: Nope.

Holden: Okay? And, and they know it. And it’s not just UNC, every school does it, and as - with undergrads in some ways it’s even worse. We tell the undergrads all this stuff, and then, you know, we’re we’re not able to give them the individual attention that they deserve. And so, you know, the - and this, I mean I just told you the whole story of how I didn’t know I wanted to be in academia until I figured out I could have a small group.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: So, you know, helping individual students is my number one thing that I enjoy doing, but all of the incentives in the system are to avoid that. And so, on the one hand, you could blame the old guys with big labs for flying around the country and doing startups and taking on administrative roles and all the things that they do, but they’re actually behaving very rationally compare - given the incentives that the system is giving them.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: And so, the biggest thing that has to happen is that the boards need to recognize that they’re promising the students a product that they can’t deliver.

JP: Right.

Holden: And they don’t, they don’t want to do that.

JP: Right.

Holden: Yeah.

JP: So what needs to happen? So like a lot of things need to happen, obviously. But let’s say you’ve had a board of your choice like, what are you getting rid of like, what are you, what are you doing first? Like what is on your list of of things to do? What are you checking off the list?

Holden: Yeah. So first of all, a lot of things. And this is left and right, because the the left wants the the university to do a lot of things that are probably better done by actual NGOs and and organizations that are in the community more than the university should be. I mean, I’ve always been an advocate for public service by universities, but only if it’s tied to academic activity in in a very intimate way. So so there’s a lot of stuff on that side that probably better off farmed out, and just allow you know, the nonprofit world to to flourish and take that. And then on the other side you, you know, athletics is a is a big one, and it’s particularly difficult in North Carolina, because you have a system board that has 2 rival schools under it, and board members on a system board are always affiliated with one school or the other. And so you have, in North Carolina, you have this weird thing that you have to run athletics when half of your governing board wants you to fail. Okay?

JP: That’s so weird.

Holden: Yeah.

JP: That’s such like a weird political thing.

Holden: Yeah. And so you know, it’d be - and so, as a result, the Chancellor can’t just tell the Athletic Director to go do their job and keep them posted, which is what you do with a lot of other administrators that you trust right. But you can’t do that because the governing boards are constantly hauling you back into the middle of the whole thing. And so you know, and then there are other things like the hotels and the fire departments and the police departments, and the the way the buildings and grounds are done, and all all that kind of stuff has just gotten so complicated that there’s no choice but to throw bureaucracy at these problems. And you know somebody has got to stand up and say we don’t care about the US News, we don’t care about -we don’t care about what our friends say, you know, at the Metropolitan Club in New York, or I used to always say, everything at at North Carolina has worked out at the Yacht Club on Figure 8 Island, you know. We don’t care what our friends say on - at the Yacht Club on Figure 8 Island. We’re actually here. Our number one job is to help the students. And if something conflicts with that, we’re gonna say it’s not as important.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: And they’ll say that in the abstract. But then, once push comes to shove the pet projects that they have, they still want them done. And and so, you know, the - it’s it’s hard to see an institution making that choice. I mean, it it probably [inaudible] be one of the top schools, because they have so much to lose in terms of prestige and everything.

JP: Yeah

Holden: I mean Arizona State is a school that’s done some unconventional things, mainly because when Michael Crow went there, you know, they didn’t have as much to lose as a lot of the other top places. Now they’ve gotten a lot better, they’ve gotten into the American Association of Universities, thanks to what he’s done. It’s it’s it’s not necessarily - the changes that he made are not necessarily in the direction that I’m talking about right now. I’m talking about emphasizing and rewarding faculty and staff who prioritize the students, rather than the external luster and recognition of the institution.

JP: Right? So you’re you’re talking about an actual culture shift. And I really like how you laid that out, because if you think about it, it reminds me of music, right? So I just played a show at my favorites brewery a couple days ago, I work there part time, and I did 2 songs by myself, and I absolutely hated it right? And I’m sure it wasn’t the best music I could have produced. But then I brought all my friends on, and we were, we were having a party right? Like everything is better when you’re with other people, especially in science. So that’s an analogy I like to tell people is like. I don’t know, it’s kind of like music, right? It’s nothing without collaboration. So why are we putting so much emphasis on the lead man when it’s it’s really the whole band.

Holden: Right? I think that’s I think that’s a great analogy. Absolutely. I mean, I’m a bass player. The bass player’s job is to make the rest of the band sound good.

JP: Yeah. The bass does wonders.

Holden: Yes, yup, it’s it’s - there are some flashy bass things in the world, but for the most part it’s something that you mostly only notice if it’s not there.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: Yeah.

JP: So, given all of your experience, what type of advice would you give to a graduate student or a undergraduate student getting into research? You know, like what what advice would you give me that I could take for the rest of my career? Let’s say.

Holden: Yeah so the most – I think, and this is something that I write about a lot, and I’m very focused on, is it is up to you and you alone, what you want to get out of your education. If you want to go be a PI, and run your own lab, write grants and publish papers, and take care of grad students, the institution should help you do that. If you wanna go work in science policy, we should encourage and celebrate that. If you want to go to industry, if you just want to get a PhD and make a change in your life and not do science anymore. If you want to work at a museum, be a great teacher, these are all really important things, and we have a big problem, where the PI’s are, many of them, unduly focused on getting their students into academia, and not paying enough attention and giving enough credit to their students who want to do other parts of science. And we have an even bigger problem, which is the institutions and the PI’s are not very well equipped to help you go do those other things. And all of that needs to be built up, and if the students came first, and we could accept the fact that the goal of education is to give you what you need to go achieve what you want to achieve, not we - not what we think you ought to achieve, then, you know, this could be set up, and you have every right to demand that. And if you’re not getting that, you need to find somebody in the university can help you advocate for what you want. I mean, I always tell my students at GW, I’m really really good at getting things out of universities, and so if there’s something I can help GW do for you that you deserve, you’re not wasting my time by asking me to help you get it.

JP: Yeah, awesome. Yeah, that’s that’s great advice. Thank you so much for that. So, the next question is not actually career related, science related. It’s if you, me, and Francis Collins, because you mentioned that you you know him, and like, I’m sure you’ve played - talked to, talked about music with him. What song would we be playing if we had a had a show, and we all got to play together?

Holden: So, I’m gonna be on bass and he’s gonna be on guitar, and you’re going to be on what?

JP: I can be on piano.

Holden: Okay.

JP: [inaudible].

Holden: Right? Well, he’s a big Beatles fan, I mean, I know that.

JP: Oh, really?

Holden: Yeah, because I’ve seen him playing a lot of Beatles’ songs. You know, Francis are old, so it’s gotta be something that’s pre-1980.

JP: What song are we doing, though? So we’re going to do the Beatles, I’m assuming?

Holden: Well I don’t know. I’m just kind of setting the genre. I prefer to do something that has a little more of a groove to it.

JP: Yeah.

Holden: So so you’re gonna sing right?

JP: I’ll sing. I can sing.

Holden: Yeah. So, I don’t know. I think it’s never a mistake to play, What’s going on?

JP: Yes, okay.

Holden: That’s that -

JP: Oh, you’re lagging! What happened? Oh, there you go.

Holden: [inaudible] candidate for it. Oh, did you lose me?

JP: Just for a second.

Holden: Do I need to repeat that?

JP: Yeah. I would like, yeah.

Holden: So I think it’s never a mistake to play what’s going on. First of all, for me, it’s got a James Jamerson bass part, who’s one of the greatest session-bass players of all time, it’s a song about something important. Marvin Gaye’s life was incredibly illustrative, the lyrics of the song are perfect, you know, it jams, I mean, there’s not quite - we need to get the exactly the right drummer, but I think we can do it.

JP: Yeah, it’ll be easy. I - we have a, I have a little community out here.

Holden: Okay, good.

JP: What are your favorite places to hang out at or eat at in the Chapel Hill area.

Holden: Oh, well, I I like this new barbecue place, it’s actually in Durham, called Picnic.

JP: Oh, I’ve heard of it.

Holden: Yeah, a lot of people like that. I’m I’m a big Eastern North Carolina barbecue person.

JP: Nice.

Holden: Yeah, so I like it there a lot. And I guess you know for me, there’s a bench with my aunt’s name on it that is near the Haynes Art Building.

JP: Cool! I should go look for that, yeah.

Holden: Yeah, she was my inspiration, my Aunt Daisy. And so, I like to go there and contemplate things in life. So yeah.

JP: Cool. Well, I’m do - I did my best to try and keep this under an hour, because I know you are a very busy person. So that’s all the questions I had, but I do have to say it’s it’s been an honor to like listen to you talk and just hear your stories, and I’ve really looked up to you, especially since moving to North Carolina. You know I’ve I’ve followed you on social media for a long time, and just I’ve agreed with everything you’ve said. So I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Holden: Okay JP, well not everybody agrees with everything I said, so it’s always good to meet somebody.

JP: But I will defend you, don’t worry.

Holden: Okay. Great talking to you, thanks for all you’re doing with this podcast. It’s the kind of thing that a lot of graduate students need to hear.

JP: Yeah, of course. Thank you so much. Tell Francis I say hi next time you see him.

Holden: Alright, I will. Okay bud, see ya.

JP: Thanks Holden, bye.

Holden: Bye.