Hello and welcome to HeadWay an official podcast of Head-Royce School. Today's guest is John Palfrey, president of the MacArthur Foundation and a long time leader at the intersection of education, technology and philanthropy. A former head of school at Phillips Academy Andover, John understands the world of independent schools and the central role they play in centering students, nurturing creativity and advancing purpose. He spent years teaching at Harvard Law School where he's now a visiting professor.
and he's the author of two books that explore how young people grow up, learn, and engage in an increasingly digital world. Through his leadership in philanthropy, John brings those insights to broader questions of equity, opportunity, and how institutions can invest in people and ideas with long-term impact.
Hello, John, how are you?
Hello Rachel Skiffer, am thrilled to be talking with you. That's how I am. How are you?
I am doing excellently. It is so great to talk to you. It has been too long and I'm really excited for our conversation today. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you so much for the invitation. I'm truly psyched.
Okay, so the MacArthur Fellowship, also called the Genius Grant, has become iconic in American culture, yet its beginnings are less widely understood. Could you tell us a little bit about how the fellowship came about and what was the original vision behind investing in extraordinarily talented and creative individuals in this way?
It's a great way to start talking about the MacArthur Foundation. Thank you, because it is definitely our most iconic program. It's not all we do, but it's a big piece. And it goes back now more than 40 years. And the idea was to identify unusually creative people and to give them a pile of money and running room to go do creative things. And the grant is no strings attached as it's been from the beginning.
And it's a really interesting, diverse, creative group of people from a wider range of human endeavors. And it goes from artists in fields you've never heard of to artists who are painting or doing things you might predict, to scientists who are things you've never heard of, to scientists doing really basic fundamental things that you study in your science classes in high school, through to fields that don't often get held up like landscape architects and others. So it really is trying to point to hope.
creativity, happiness, excitement, what's possible, all these good joyful things from people who are doing really cool things over the course of their careers. And we are lucky to be able to give them money and support.
I celebrate them every time it comes out. And I'm always intrigued by people's passions and the wherewithal to pursue them regardless, particularly when they're not big dollar amounts involved. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit in the context of our students. So at Head Royce, we develop students of character, intellect, and creativity. That is our mission.
As a K-12, I like to tell our older students in particular that creativity isn't something that they leave behind in lower school or middle school. So from your vantage point, what role do you see creativity and intellectual risk taking, playing, and shaping the future of society?
Oh my gosh, it's so crucial. And your mission, I think, is just perfect for a school oriented the way that you are toward developing people who are going to thrive in this coming both society and economy. And I think if we don't foster this kind of creativity year after, we're to be leaving something behind that would be crucial. So that is exactly why the MacArthur Fellowship focuses on this exact idea. I'm sure we'll get to artificial intelligence and things that are happening in the world. But I think as we imagine,
some of the jobs that'll probably go away, but other jobs that we haven't imagined that will become possible. think they often have to do with what is distinctly human and creative. And yes, taking a risk. We certainly don't provide a MacArthur Fellowship for anybody who hasn't taken intellectual risk and probably other kinds of risk in their lives in the public interest, of course, not necessarily just to make money or whatever. While that's fine too, I do think there's a lot to be said for taking.
deep and sincere intellectual risk that will bring about something that doesn't exist right now.
Rachel (
04:13.058)
you get a chance to meet the fellows, spend time with them, get to know them well?
Some better than others. So one thing that's distinctive about our program is that we really ask nothing of the fellows. So they do not apply. They are nominated by others. They need to have a whole pile of people support them from their own field in terms of letters that they're secretly sent in during our process. It often takes three to five years between your first nomination and actually getting an award. So it takes a while. And then once we call them up, we offer them $800,000 over five years.
with literally no strings attached. So if they wish to be out in the rural area that they're working in doing their thing, never coming to see us, never coming to one of our events, that's fine. And they actually don't have to give us a report. We just trust that they are doing something creative and effective with it once we've made the award. Obviously, there's a lot of due diligence that goes into it. So that is a long way of saying sometimes people come to events we host and we're delighted to see them and engage them in our work broadly. And some, of course, are involved in other kinds of grant making projects we're in. So for instance,
around the West Coast. I'll think of a woman named Sophia Noble, who's a teacher in California who does a lot of work in artificial intelligence. She got the MacArthur Fellowship, but she also runs a center that has a grant through our regular grant making. So we see her a fair amount. So anyway, it just depends based on what they want.
Rachel (
05:33.614)
Across the MacArthur Fellows, you've come to know what characteristics tend to emerge again and again and how might schools nurture those qualities in young people.
There's so many angles to that. I have great faith with you as head of school, Rachel, that it is in fact nurtured and that you hold those things up. You know, one way to describe it, I would say that connects to the MacArthur approach is there's creativity along so many different dimensions. I think what we have to do is hold up and celebrate examples in a way that are inspiring, that bring people forward, call people in as opposed to call people out, that kind of thing. And I think that by doing that in a way that
allows people to see, maybe a student seeing someone a couple years older doing something really cool. If you see somebody who takes an idea from one class into another class and merges what they're doing in art with what they're doing in math, and you can find a way to hold that up. A lot of it is the genius I call in the interstices. So like what's between the fields. And very often people get a MacArthur Fellowship are somebody who really good at pure math, but they've figured out how that relates to physics or some other related topic. And so they may not.
always get the top medal in their own field, but a MacArthur Fellowship is often between multiple fields where they may not be seen as exactly an expert in the regular silos, but they are particularly generative when they're doing things across the different fields. I would lean into some of those different forms of creativity and genius and hold them up as examples of directions people can go and then let imagination flow.
in the interdisciplinariness.
Rachel (
07:12.238)
So you talked a little bit about artificial intelligence and you have written extensively, and I'd say early, on what it means to be born digital and then more recently from the perspective of parenting in the digital age. Thank you for that as a parent. It's been very helpful as my kids get older. But how can schools cultivate students who engage with technology and we can be specific around AI, not fearfully or passively?
but with ethical clarity and I guess something beyond hope that kids will be okay.
Well, I would say yes to your question because I think there's a lot of embedded in there. That's exactly how I would approach it, which is these technologies, whether it's the early digital technologies and just email and the internet, which now of course seems so quaint through social media and now to various forms of generative artificial intelligence and so forth. You know, I think the answer of putting your head totally in the sand, pretending it doesn't exist rarely works out for an educational institution, but nor does ignoring the harms. And so.
as you know from our time together at Phillips Academy and over, we did lot of things like device free time and we found ways to have students put their device aside in a bowl as they walked into a classroom or dining hall. And some of it is really emphasizing the time that is face to face and is offline. And so we're thinking that's going to continue to be super important. But when it comes to actually using the technologies, how do you use it in a way that actually enhances your learning and prepares you well for the world that comes and the
we're doing at MacArthur around this, we call Humanity AI. It's a group of 10 foundations now, maybe 12 soon that are really trying to figure out how do we center the human experience as we develop AI. And I think one of the exciting things for somebody growing up in school now at Head Voice is if we play this well, it not only can enhance life, you can be part of that. Like you have agency in the creating and designing of these technologies and hopefully creating and designing the guardrails that will
John (
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keep it from running amok as well. And so I, again, would have people lean in. I do this with my students at Harvard Law School. I actually force them to use the technology. Think about you and I both have legal training. How do you think about while you're training to become lawyers, how you're going to use it when you get into the practice of law in a way that's going to make you more effective as a counselor? I don't think anybody really knows the answer to that question, but I'm actually betting on the students of today in helping figure it out.
Rachel (
09:45.794)
The one question I always have is around misinformation and because I'm older, I have, for instance, a good memory of Malcolm X and the speeches he did or didn't give. And so if I watch something, I'll say to myself, I actually don't think he was ever in that space. But for younger students without that foundation, what are your thoughts around what skills today's students will need to navigate a world marked by
rapidly evolving information, global complexity, and truly misinformation.
The first partial response goes to your parents in the head voice community and maybe older people, is, think, leading into the expertise that you have is so crucial and the knowledge. Most recent book is called Wired Wisdom. And I wrote it with a friend, Esther Hargitines, about actually how older adults use technology. And it turns out that while we think about older adults as being susceptible to scams, for instance,
Yes, they are targeted much more than others for various reasons, but they actually have a greater degree of skepticism about misinformation and scams than younger people do. So there's a skill set that they have. They don't have all the same technical skills that some people have who are in the workforce, but they do have this sort of skepticism from the beginning, as well as, as you suggested, a knowledge base about your example of Malcolm X is so vivid. So leaning into what you do have and the wisdom that you do have, I think is so important in the misinformation space, but it is actually one of the harder
things to address that we've found. We've done a lot of grant making around misinformation. I've done a lot of research and launched projects around it. It's very, very hard to get to because of a couple of things. One is one study anyway shows that misinformation travels maybe five times as quickly as good information, sound information. So there is a quality to the way their networks have been developed, how other algorithms have been developed, which favors false information that's salacious or exciting or whatever, but wrong. And it turns out that many people who share it
John (
11:43.682)
don't share it maliciously, and they often share it, knowing that it might be also wrong, but they share it for attention. So if somebody is really into, including older people, by the way, into having lots of likes and follows or whatever the things are you're after on social, you often might forward something or promote something that is misinformation, knowing perfectly well it's misinformation, but you actually just want the attention. So there are qualities of misinformation that are actually quite hard to get at. You know, there are only a few things, I think, that really work. So education is one.
exactly as you suggested. So was Malcolm X actually at that place? Did he actually say that? Or could he possibly have said that, right? And have that conversation. That's value of schools. A second that's sort of interesting is pre-bunking works pretty well. So if you inoculate somebody against the misinformation in advance, they are then a little more skeptical when they see the misinformation. So that's also an example of what you just described. You have an image in your mind about what Malcolm X didn't do, where he was, and what
wasn't. And therefore, when presented with misinformation, you're like, I don't know about that. So it turns out that a lot of misinformation is sort of predictable. Around an election, you might be able to predict that somebody will make some other politician say X or Y. Or in the midst of COVID, somebody is going to say the vaccine does Z or A or whatever. You actually can do a fair amount of the pre-bunking by guessing what the misinformation purveyors are going to provide. So there are things like that that you can do. It's just super worthy for sure.
But worthy.
Rachel (
13:14.04)
MacArthur Foundation invests heavily in issues of justice and equitable opportunity. In what ways could independent schools think about our role in promoting equity both within our walls and then in the broader community?
Yes, Rachel, it's something that I know brought us together in our previous work and continues to be something of great importance to both of us. And it hasn't gotten easier to do this work, but the importance of it has only grown in my view. So I'd say from the internal school perspective, of course, it's about providing.
equal opportunity to a broad set of young people regardless of where they come from and how much money they have. And that requires an equitable approach, right? Because we know that the background conditions are not equitable. And I don't think that has changed. Of course, some of the rules about how we can pursue it, given what Supreme Court has said and so forth, that may be a little different. But I think that the importance of recognizing that talent is equally distributed, it's just not equally supported, right? And that's partly when we talk about the MacArthur Fellowship.
when you look at the diversity of that group of people, we are actively trying to show that in every community across America, in every demographic group, in every age group, there is creativity and talent that is worthy of $800,000 grants. And I think the same thing is basically true for young people, right? Which is if we look across a community and realize that the skills and talent and amazing ups that little people have are equally distributed across our communities, and yet those who get that opportunity plainly is not, we have to just.
We have to do more work to get to that. In terms of in the community, I'm recording this from Chicago, place you also know well. And just a really simple fact is one that grabbed me since I moved here in 2019, which is in the neighborhood I am based in right now, a baby born today has a life expectancy of 90 years. And if I travel exactly six miles due south into the neighborhood of Englewood in the south side, a baby born today
John (
15:13.698)
has a life expectancy of 60 years. That's a 30 year difference. That baby is blameless, right? And you know nothing about their race. You know nothing about anything else. You just know that the baby was born in a zip code. I don't think anybody could describe that as an equitable arrangement, right? And yet it has so many different layers to it. as a foundation, that means
How do we invest differently in these communities? How do we look at what those conditions are to ensure that each of those babies lives to 90 or 92, or don't know, something better? That would be good. And I wonder if schools also could think about the way that they are in community able to accomplish some of the same things. And are there ways for schools to partner with, whether it's foundations or other civic actors, to look at some of those conditions and say, we're all going to be better off if all these kids live and thrive to 92 instead of the 60 and 90 numbers.
I actually think that's the kind of thing that will lift all boats, all families, and just be a positive.
I'm sitting with that statistic you just shared only because what I love is that we're having this conversation and my mom was born and raised in the exact same place, six miles south that you're talking about. You think about what education can do and how it can bring folks together and provide opportunity. I got some goosebumps.
Rachel (
16:40.076)
You have worked at schools with enviable endowments, but even in those institutions, annual giving is more than a nice to have. Would you be able to share your perspective on why a school's annual fund is essential to the delivery of any school's mission, whether they've got billions or millions or nothing in the bank?
Well, absolutely. I think about my own giving on a much, smaller scale than MacArthur's giving. But we do support annual funds for the places our kids go or places that we admire. And the reason for doing it is just where we started earlier in the conversation. I don't think there's any better bet than supporting young people at an early stage having the kind of incredible educational experience that you and I have had in places like Harvard Law School and so forth.
It starts obviously at the lowest possible age. We can pull it off and goes through the end. And I just think that the return on investment of something like an annual fund is basically as high as it gets in philanthropy. And so when I think about the places my kids have gone to school, they've done both public and private school. So if it's a public school, the parent fund or whatever else that helps provide some support, obviously in a private school setting.
to give to the annual fund even after you've paid the full-frate tuition. Sometimes can be a lift, but I think you have to do it because it is where some of the greatness of these schools is able to come from. And then I think it's important for us to think about supporting schools that our kids don't go to. So I've made a commitment in giving as much to my college alma mater, Harvard, as to NHBCU that is paired in my mind with it. And so we're supporting scholarships at two different institutions doing something similar, but where we know that Harvard has more donors, frankly.
more donors with more wealth, including me, among the alumni base. So I think there are ways that we can think about ourselves as in a broader community of learners, even then the ones that are alma mater for us or for our kids. And I really do think that's super high ROI investing.
Rachel (
18:36.344)
know, for Andover and for Head Royce, we have programs that support students who are in nearby communities. So I also love that part of our annual fund goes to that work to support students in Oakland. I know for Andover, supporting kids and their learning in nearby communities, it's incredibly important. And I like that you talked about the community of learners, because I always think I work at Head Royce, but I feel like
Wherever I go, I am an educator. Just give me some kids and I'll have a good time.
You and I both, Rachel, we have this in our hearts. I think about the Andover example, for those who don't know the geography, it's about 20 miles or so north and a little west of Boston, but it's next door to the city of Lawrence. And at least at different points, the city of Lawrence has been among the poorest of communities, and Andover is near the wealthiest of communities, very different.
know, socioeconomics. so thinking about how these kids are really literally in the same community, the same Valley, Merrimack Valley. And I would imagine the same thing is true in the East Bay and San Francisco. And you've got some of those same incredible disparities of, the world's wealthiest leaders in technology and otherwise, and communities of real need. you know, we're, we're literally sharing the same water and the same air. And I think that's just super important for us not to lose sight of.
Rachel (
20:00.814)
And what excites you about the future of philanthropy? I know for some folks it's like a philanthropy, not the sexiest of topics. But when you hop out of bed and you're like, okay, today is my day, I'm gonna do this incredible thing. What's the future looking like that keeps you happy?
I think it's a good question, particularly for a young person. What's going to get you leaping out of bed as opposed to, oh God, I have to go to work. You're lucky if you get the leaping, but we've all done the, oh God, I got to go to work. A rollout, that's just the human condition. But the opportunity to be part of something that makes a better world is what philanthropy is about. It's for those who don't know the term philanthropy is the love of humankind. And when I reflect on what my job is today, I get to give away someone else's money.
to make the world more just, verdant, and peaceful. So the verdant peace being climate and better environment. And that's a pretty good job. I get to give away this money to make the world better. And you're right, it is not the most obvious or sexy of fields. Most people in the fifth grade or the eighth grade or the 12th grade or college or law school are not thinking, oh my gosh, I want to go into philanthropy. But it turns out to be a very fun thing to do. You will never get super, super rich. There's not a business that you're going to build that will then have equity and make you a trillionaire. That's, of course, not going to happen.
but you can have a very good life doing really important work, embedding yourself in community, and just really trying to support people who are doing cool things. And if you know about venture capital, it's a little like being a social venture capitalist. So you are investing in people, giving people money to do things that you think are really, important and that they think are really, important for the world, but without counting on getting any money back. Not all that different than venture capital, but without the financial return, put it that way.
the heart return.
John (
21:48.066)
The hard return exactly. you do, get psychic returns like you read about when you see this great work or you go to go to a school where the money's being put to work or you go to a, there's a food pantry in the middle of the snap benefits being pulled back, or you go to a place where somebody is protecting a beautiful natural landscape that is otherwise being messed up. you know, there are real returns that you get when you get to experience that.
Rachel (
22:13.912)
So how might you talk to a young person who is still seeking their purpose? Our strategic direction we call pathways to purpose, and we want kids to know that you do not necessarily know exactly what you're going to do when you are done with 12th grade. There's so much life after that. But how would you support a student who's trying to make a difference while still trying to figure out what their capital P purpose is?
Well, I share your sense of this is a crucial question for us to ask as educators, as adults, in terms of how we support young people in this work to come up with their purpose. I think we've made some mistakes in the last generation, you're in my generation as parents and educators of maybe pushing that a little early on kids, so basically saying you have to specialize a little too early. Or if you don't have this passion or purpose, you won't get into the college you want or you won't be a good enough athlete in the sport you love. And I think we need to lay off that a little bit because I think we've created a
degree of pressure that is too high. And so if I were in a conversation with this mythical 12th grader, I would hope that what I could help convey to them is life is hopefully super long. You'll have a chance to do a bunch of different things. And you and I both have had courage. You've worked at McKinsey and you have been an admissions director and you have trained as a lawyer and you have been head of a school, you've been head of a startup school and you've done all these different things.
Same for me. And if we're thinking about those babies born today who are going to live into their 90s, that's a lot of time between 18 and 19. You can do a lot of different stuff. hopefully, if you haven't got it figured out at 18 or 21 or 12, you're going to figure it out along the way in various ways. I speak to myself in my 50s. My interests are slightly different than they were when I was in my early 20s. Not wholly different, but slightly different.
It's kind of a cool thing to go from one thing to another to go in 15 minute increments, you know, an attention deficit type way. But over 10 year periods, like you could do a whole bunch of different 10 year things or three to five year things. And that actually could be really fun and exciting. And I do hope that where we could do better as parents and educators is really to give the sense of optimism, fun, all the things that.
John (
24:24.332)
I know I felt when I was leaving college at 21 that I was so psyched about the world. I don't think we necessarily always convey that to people leaving college right now, and I would love to get back to that.
You can enjoy the inner disciplinarity in your own life.
In a time when public trust in institutions is strained, what do you believe is the enduring role and responsibility of philanthropy in shaping a healthy just society?
I will admit to being an old fashioned institutionalist, actually think institutions have real importance. They carry values from generation to generation. They allow people to put their stamp on something that will endure longer than them. So Rachel Skiffer, as head of school at Head Royce, is doing something absolutely different than two heads before, and there are going to be two heads later, and that's all good. But for having an institution that joins you all,
I don't think we have the ability for a culture to sustain itself in that way. So that is a highfalutin and very abstract thing to say, but I actually really believe in it. I believe in places like libraries as institutions that do that locally in communities. I believe in voting as an institution, a way to have an actual democracy where people have voice and not just one man, which of course has been true in most of history in various ways.
John (
25:45.77)
I believe in schools and universities, sustaining research and teaching in positive ways. And those institutions we know cannot be sustained or cannot be great without philanthropy, right? So you can charge a certain amount of tuition, but you can't do the equity work we talked about, which is having kids from every quarter, every community. If you're charging everybody the same rate, that's just factual, right? In a capitalist society. there has to be philanthropy involved. Likewise, the great research breakthroughs in health, in science, in
really any field, those are not paid for by the market. They just rarely, rarely are. And right now we've seen what can happen if a government spends a lot less money and the pressure on philanthropy has been huge, but also then the social returns become bigger. So those of us who can, think can and should do more in terms of philanthropy right now. And I think we're going to see great benefits from those kinds of investments.
Even our students are realizing the power that they have when they join together around various causes, whether it's in the school or outside of the school. And so that I like to see. And sometimes I tell them, I am a 501c3 institution. There are just some things I cannot do because there are IRS rules. But you as students have incredible sway and power.
And so part of our responsibility is to help them figure out the how and to support them in thinking about ways of creating impact. And so that's been fun.
I love that insight, first of all, about being the 5133. resemble that in my data too. But also this idea about collective action. It's such a fun thing for young people to come together, whether it's around a math club or robotics thing, or it's an activism activity. I sort of don't care what it is in some ways. Just coming together to do something for the good of the greater whole, something other than for yourself, that really can be fun, right? And it also, of course, it conveys.
John (
27:37.21)
agency and power and all those things. so what a great thing for a school to focus itself on is how do you create these pockets, even if they're tiny collective action to explore how fun that is.
Thank you so much, John. This has been an incredible conversation. I'm gonna be thinking about it for a long time. So thank you for your insight and your wisdom. Thank you for doing the incredible work that you were doing at the MacArthur Foundation. As a child of Chicago or a grandchild of Chicago, it means a lot, but I also know that the impact you have is truly global. And even just the inspiration of you continuing to...
Fight the good fight for good. It's always an honor. It's always a pleasure to chat with you. And I hope I get to see you soon in person. But if you're in the way, come visit us.
Well, likewise, we'd love to host you back here in the city of your mom's experience and also the incredible, incredible Bay Area. look forward to seeing you there in three dimensions and time with you, Rachel Skiffer, is always time well spent.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Headway. To follow our progress and learn more about our strategic direction, please visit HeadRoyce.org And be sure to subscribe to Headway wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss what's ahead. Until next time, thanks for listening.
