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>> i do some consulting work onamerican -- [ multiple speakers ] [ silence ] >> satalia: jonathan jansen isthe rector and vice-chancellor of theuniversity of the free state in southafrica. regarded internationally as oneof the top researchers in the field of education, he has earned a formidablereputation for transformation

and for his deep commitment toreconciliation in a divided society. a gifted speaker and writer, he's the author of several booksincluding "we need to talk" and "knowledge in the blood." we'll talk with him abouttransformational leadership, about reconciliation, and about the future ofmandela's rainbow nation. here's our conversation withjonathan jansen...

jonathan jansen thank you somuch for joining us. >> jansen: thank you. >> satalia: you were appointedvice chancellor of the university of the freestate in 2009 becoming the first blackto lead the university in its more than 100 yearhistory, describe to us what theenvironment, what the climate was like whenyou took office. >> jansen: well, the universityhad just had a horrible

racial incident without whichi'm quite convinced i wouldn't have gone there or they wouldn'thave invited me. and everything was very deeplydivided, the black students wereseparated almost completely from the white students ineveryway. >> satalia: and you're referringto the reitz video. >> jansen: that's right, yeahwhere... >> satalia: describe what thatis. >> jansen: in effect if was fourwhite male afrikaan

speaking students who wereprotesting racial integration in the residences. and the way they did that was torecord a series of interactions with five blackworkers, four of them who were womentwice their ages and the women participatedthinking this just was an innocent interaction with guysthey knew. >> satalia: and had a decentrelationship with. >> jansen: and had a fairlydecent relationship with them

but they were in fact abusingthem and at one stage appeared to urinate into food which theyget the workers to ingest and you can imagine when thisvideo broke on youtube and went viral as the kids say, i mean the university becamenotorious for everything having to do with vices, etcetera,etcetera. and the university authoritiesthen decided that one way which to try and get out of thisrut was to bring in people who knew about racism and hadworked with these kinds

of issues in higher education. >> satalia: and that was you. >> jansen: and i had justfinished the book "knowledge in the blood" which dealt withthis kind of stuff and so they invited me overthere and i was quite interested to see how one could go aboutchanging a very old university but when i got there i wasastounded because you know that had been a number of yearsafter 1994 when we got democracy.

so i was astounded by the levelof segregation in everything from the classrooms to theresidence halls to the open spaces on campus andso on. i assembled a team and saidwe're going to try and change this and i've beenthere now almost four and half years. >> satalia: a lot of peopleweren't exactly thrilled with what you did and i'll saywhat you did, these four students they weresuspended,

they were fined heavily and theywere actually sentenced but their sentence their jailsentence was suspended. you invited them back to theuniversity to finish their education. >> jansen: yeah and there was aspecific reason for that and that was that theinstitution which is has ahistory of white nationalism andsegregation had in fact given the impression that these were just four rottenapples

and that the institution itselfyou know was innocent of what happened and i said ohno. we have to now that i'm head ofthe institution we have to take responsibility forcreating the kind of environment in which these young peoplethought this was normative, you could get away with it,okay, they wouldn't have done this ifthey knew. so we went and did a series ofpublic you know events in which we said as a universitywe say sorry

to decent black people, todecent white people all who have been hurt by this stuffand we take responsibility for the fact that we producedthese kinds of young people and so in doing that we also saysorry to them and invite them back in order tocorrect the bad behavior. now by this point they were bothin the criminal and civil courts, you knowjudgments against these young people andso this wasn't substituting for social justice, this wassaying

that having happened is there away of bringing them back, not unconditionally but in a waythat opened the road for reconciliation with thepeople they humiliated. they were quite happy to gothrough that, the workers astoundingly werevery big hearted and wanted that and that's the story ofthat particular process. >> satalia: the last story inyour book "we need to talk," which is a compilation ofarticles that you've written about,

issues confronting south africaended with those janitorial workerstalking with these four white men whodid this horrendous thing and it's really a remarkablestory, this forgiveness, this reconciliation. >> jansen: yeah. >> satalia: why do you thinkinstitutional reconciliation is so important. >> jansen: because you know ourinstitutions are

as afflicted by the apartheidand its cruelty as are individuals and so thedutch reform church for example which is a whiteafrikaans church that was the state church if youwill, you know has yet to come cleanin a very public way and say we delivered thesermons, we produced the parishioners, you know so institutions i thinkhave to take responsibility just asuniversities have

to take responsibility,etcetera, etcetera. without that it's very difficultin our case for black people to come intoformer white institutions and task the in institution toact in their best interest. >> satalia: the leader of theyouth league of the anc youth league wasfurious at your decision and in fact came to talk withyou. >> jansen: correct. >> satalia: remarkably one ofthe first things you said

to him was i love you. >> satalia: and you embracedhim. >> jansen: yes. >> satalia: and-- >> jansen: this is the guy whosaid i should be killed. >> satalia: you should bekilled. you should be killed that whatthese young boys did was a criminal act and what you did inaccepting them back at the university was a criminalact.

>> jansen: right. >> satalia: what was that like? >> jansen: at that point youknow you very much unaware of yourself, you're very awareof the influence of, in my own life, of god, you're very aware of thisspiritual moment and you're very aware ofmandela. you're very aware of the factyou're not acting on your own, you're not acting you're notsetting precedent you have

to do exactly what the greatmandela did when he came out of prison, so little peoplelike me say given the space which i occupy why can't wespeak to anger whether it's blackanger or white anger in a way that invites people intocommunion rather than pushing them away becausethey're angry. it is something...it's a longroad i had to walk in my own anger with whitepeople, etcetera but i'm very, very grateful to have workedwith both white

and black students over theyears, that has really deeply changedme and enabled me to be able to embrace somebody who saidkill the man. >> satalia: you were educated insouth africa at the university of the westerncape. >> satalia: and from there youwent you studied abroad first at cornell where you earned yourmaster's degree and then on a fulbrightscholarship you studied atstanford and earned your phd.

how important was that studyabroad program. >> jansen: hugely important. you know i have a very, very deep respect for the unitedstates because i learned here forexample the value of criticism, the importance of democracy, because at that point it was aforeign concept to us under apartheid and thepossibility of creatinginterracial or what we call non-racialrelationships

with other people based on...nowi'm sure you will tell me, the u.s. still has a far road totravel and yet you've made enormousprogress, i even think in my life timehave a black president, i didn't think in my life timeyou would have achieved so much despite the long roadahead. that inspired many of us asblacks africans enormously and then the tradition ofdemocracy. so i was astounded as mystudents often are these days

when i send them to the u.s. iwas astounded by how many white folk in the presbyterian churcheswere actually solidly anti-apartheid and were solidlybehind us in support. i heard so many stories, thathad a huge impact on me so when i went back home i said to myself it is possible youknow because remember at that point mandela was stillin prison so you don't have the benefit

of you know his own work ofreconciliation. that had a huge influence on me. >> satalia: tell us a little bitabout how you came to go to university in the firstplace, so few black africans had that opportunity and you did andyour parents seemed to have been remarkable people. >> jansen: oh, they were reallyfantastic, you know because we grew uppoor, they were they both, especially my mother came frommiddle class black family

so part of the anger for us as children was having thattaken away. >> satalia: you had propertytaken away. >> jansen: yeah and given towhite folk and all of that and huge health and otherconsequences for the family. so but what was amazing aboutthem despite having had such great loss you know at manylevels, not just material, they were absolutely dedicated, devout christians who had amodel code.

i often say to people because of my parents i've neverdrunk wine in my life, i've never smoked and mychildren are adopted. two of those things are true butthere is... >> satalia: and not that yourchildren are adopted. >> jansen: and they're raised inthis cocoon you know in which even though that waspoverty and oppression and all that you understood that your brother was yourbrother,

your sister was your sister thatyou never hit back and that kind of stuff. that made a huge difference buti stumbled into university, i didn't know there wassomething called university because my parents didn't go,nobody in my community went to university and i had a friendwho went and he said go with me and check out this placecalled university. i said what do they do there, hesaid they study. i said but i just studied atschool, so study again

and i sort of stumbled into it and i didn't do it wellinitially because it was a hugegap between apartheid schools andthe demands of the university, etcetera and the longer i stayed in university the better i didbut the real, real jump for me was when i hadthe opportunity through arch bishop tutu he wasthen bishop tutu to get a scholarship and tostudy in the united states because they had the foresight,

him and some americans on thisside that one day the country willchange and we need new leadershipetcetera particularly blacksouth africans so i got in under that, came to cornell, i was scaredstiff. i didn't think i could doanything and the people were famous andwrote books and you know and i was a high school teacheri was-- >> satalia: you taught biology.

>> jansen: yeah and i was scaredstiff you know and the first day, i'll neverforget this i met general novak at cornell university andhe said oh you're the man from africa and here's mymanuscript, i'd like your comments on itbefore i send it to the harvard university place. i mean it's the first time i wetmyself in public, i said what on earth can ipossibly say to the great man. but that's the beauty

of your higher education systemi'm sure he appreciated my silly marks on his manuscriptbut what he was really trying to convey is i believe in you, i think you can give mecomments, that changed meforever. >> satalia: and that's whatyou're trying to do for other south africans, one of the first things you tellthem is you're smarter than you think you are and you're smarter then peopletell you, you are,

how important is that message? >> jansen: crucial because we'veended up on both sides, both black and white, the youngpeople with this notion of victimhood, you knowsomebody's out to get us, okay the black kid believes thatwhite people are still in control and therefore they'redisadvantaged, the white kids believe thatblack people are now in power and they are beingdisadvantaged, so i go in with this notion thatyou're not going to sulk,

you're not going to play victim,i believe in you. you have enormous capacity to dogood and to do well in your studies because i'm halfas smart as you and my god if i could get this opportunityand do something with it you can do much better. so i come and i really believethis you know, that young people in the systemthat doesn't expect much from anyone, our school systemthe standards are so low its scary.

>> satalia: you say you cangraduate from high school knowing 40percent getting 40 percent correct on the text. >> jansen: or 30 percent in somesubjects so those system downplays thepotential of young people my singular goalas far as school is concerned is tosend a message that is very counter cultural,of course you can do well, it's not your skin or anythingelse that determines that.

i believe that and the 25schools we've taken on as university; one i'mpresident of it just becomes so terribly successful withinone year. >> satalia: well, that's what'sso interesting about what you do as rector and vice chancellor you wereactually going out into the townships, you were going to the primaryschools and to the high schools andyou're taking that message

to them and as you said you'rebringing them under your wing helping them toachieve what's necessary to make it to university, that'sjust so different from any college president i'veever heard of. >> jansen: yeah and it's scaryin fact because-- >> satalia: you need to do it-- >> jansen: i didn't budget forthis so i went to the schools and one school had an average of30 percent passing in grade 12 which is the end ofschool.

and i said okay any of you passwell enough to come to university i might give you ascholarship and i thought one or two mightyou know, i mean almost half the class did and so i to scramble for money. just by telling the kids youknow what they can do and then getting them the bestteachers you can actually change it. >> satalia: and at the same timeyou're very concerned

about access and on the otherhand standards. >> jansen: absolutely. >> satalia: so how do youaccomplish both, how do you allow thisopportunity and maintain the high standards of the university of the freestate. >> jansen: absolutely so one ofthe things that we did apart from trying to get into theschools before young people show up at the gate of the universityand again i learned a lot

of this stuff in your country, we put grade 10 kids in firstyear classes at university over weekends and holidays sothat by the time they come to the freshman year they'vealready completed the first year courses in chemistry or lawand so on. the second thing we've done isto create a whole new campus so that if you are failed by the school system we'll giveyou an additional year or two and we raise the moneyfor it so that

by the time you're done withthese small classes, very intensive instruction, youknow reading support, etcetera, you can in fact thencome into the mainstream degreeprograms at the university. we have a full campus on thesouth campus as we call it and many of the same people havenow become doctors and teachers and lawyers andaccountants simply by giving them another year ortwo. the premise being they're notbehind

because of things they didwrong, they're behind because of theschool system that doesn't work. >> satalia: in fact you went toa very dysfunctional school in i believe cape town and you said you are not theproblem, we are the problem. >> jansen: that's correct. >> satalia: how do you changethat problem, 80 percent of the schools aredysfunctional,

teachers not showing up, booktext book not available, no electricity or in some caseplumbing. >> jansen: yeah, well the firstthing they've got to do is look beyond thematerial resources, as important as they are, those are not the primaryreasons kids do poorly, so what i discovered in southafrica was that our primarily problems asfar as black townships schools areconcerned is the lack

of routine, so the first thing to do is we get a team togetherjust to establish routine in theschool. like if you start at 7:30 in themorning, on the dot 7:30 you start toteach and instead of ending at 3 you're going to end at5:00, we need to catch up for stuffwe've lost in the earlier grades and so on. but just making sure there is aroutine,

just like raising kids justmaking sure there's a routine for waking up and going to sleepand what you eat and what you don't eat. so at a very basic level ourproblem is a routine because our schools are deeply,deeply dysfunctional. once you've established that ateacher shows up, is qualified with a book inevery subject and teaches half your problemsgo away even if that teacher struggles withmaterial resources.

>> satalia: you are a teacher atheart even as the vice chancellor. >> satalia: you in fact teachusf 101. >> jansen: a freshman class. >> satalia: freshman class, a seminar a mandatory seminarclass and the whole idea behind it is to create decent human beings. >> satalia: explain what you doin the seven module course.

>> jansen: it's again stuff thati've learned in your country from columbiauniversity for example the core curriculumwhich is to say what are the seven bigquestions that the undergraduate mustgrapple with and so i get the most talentedprofessors in the university. the senior people and i saythink of the question in astronomy that's importantfor student to grapple with even if they're not goingto become scientists in law,

in ethics, in history, in theperforming arts and so on. i teach this to the questionwhich is how should we deal with our violent past and youteach it not to convey content but convey a set of skills ofhow to think about everyday dilemmas. and initially the students theyrevolt, they don't want this stuff, they say i came here to be achartered accountant what are you doing.

>> satalia: they consider ituseless. >> jansen: now it's the mostpopular course because they understand thatthere's a difference between being trained and-- >> satalia: and being educated. >> jansen: and being educated. >> satalia: how do you divideyour time, i don't know how you sleep because you write you're aprolific writer,

you have an open door policy, students come in they don'tnecessarily need an appointment, you're out in the townships,you're talking with people, you're addressing issues thatare critical to south africa, how do you fit it all in, how doyou prioritize? >> yeah, you know the one thingi did when i with almost any job is that ihave an agreement with my board and that agreementis if you expect me to sit behind a desk all day

and sign leave forms you got thewrong guy, you know if you want me to makethis a really exciting place for teaching and learning andnew ways of thinking of management and so on thenallow me to assemble a team of people who are really, reallygood at the other levels and that can do the mundanestuff, because i'm not good at it. so of course i management thebudget, of course i manage equipment andso on but most of the drive

for that stuff happens withreally competent people, who are better than i am atdoing those kinds of things and that frees me up to also doother things. >> satalia: also you have thissort of simple approach to leadership, you have two orthree things that are really critical to youand you invest all of your energies into those,what are they right now, what are those two or threethings that are critical? >> jansen: well, the two bigissues for me at our university

in our context is number onereally improving and deepening humanrelationships, again because you're talkingabout 350 years of colonialism and apartheid, i know in myheart of hearts that that's not going to theeffects disappear simply because of good intentions orgood policies and so forth, so i invest a huge amount oftime and have to do even more of those things in the next fewmonths and try to just get faculty andstudents

and the broader community toagree on some basic things like the embrace of the strangerfor example. >> satalia: the embrace of astranger? >> jansen: yeah, yeah, so youknow that-- >> satalia: what you mean by that is you know there areincidents in south africa and in this country where theforeigner is attacked. >> jansen: the foreigner isattacked but the foreigner is not alwaysfar in the sense of being

from somewhere else, theforeigner is gay and notstraight, the foreigner is catholic andnot dutch reform, the foreigner you know is poorand not wealthy and black and not white, etcetera,etcetera, etcetera. and so working very, very hardto find ways of doing that. the second big issues for me is raising the academicstandard, i believe that africa, southern africa in particularmust have some

of the best universities in theworld and i make no apology for that, i was privileged tostudy in this country at some of the best universities and i know it's not difficult toachieve that. so keeping very high academicstandards but also make bold and very strong human standards, those are the two things ireally want to do. >> satalia: in your book,"knowledge in the blood" you say that blacks and whites share amutual destiny

and mutual vulnerability, we'rein this mess together, explain what it's going to taketo undo the harm of apartheid, the decades ofcenturies of apartheid. >> jansen: i know this soundsharsh and when i do many, many talks and workshops across south africa the olderpeople normally get upset with me but i say to themlisten, due to limited time there is notmuch i can do for you if you're 60 years old and youserved in the white military

and you have all this bitterstuff, black or white that you carrywith you, there's not much i can do foryou, but i can do a lot for yourkids. so allow me to work with these18 year olds as they're coming to universityand most of them, not all, most of them will become the newleaders with a new vision that is generous towards otherpeople and that is counter cultural interms

of the politics of the day. so for me that is the primarygoal is try to get young people and i thinkin two or three generations from now we will be fine. the problem is you can't simplydo that as a university presidentyou also have to do that at other levels ofleadership, domestic leadership in the home, corporate leadership in the workplace,

public sector leadership ingovernment. >> satalia: and is thathappening? >> jansen: no, that's theproblem and of course communityleadership you know in the voluntary sector and wedon't have that, we don't have a lot of politicalleadership, we don't a lot of leadershipthat is generous, that is mandelian if you will inthat sense and so i often feel that some ofus are up against

but that's the [inaudible]. >> satalia: you say that therainbow nation that you and others aspire to for so many south africans has onlybeen the rain. that's correct. yeah and-- >> satalia: so how what role canany of us, all of us play in helping-- >> jansen: yeah you knowcertainly southern south africai

would say in many of theseforums i would say at the very at the most simple level, startwith your kids, make sure that the kinds ofpeople that come through your home, don't looklike you, pray like you, love like come from where youcome and so on and so on-- >> satalia: and that was yourchildhood. >> jansen: that was and a verypowerful way and then you lay imprint ontheir hearts and in their minds a notion ofhumanity that is much larger

than what we inherited. so at a very simple level startthere you know i last two weeks ago i met with churchleaders in the bloemfontein communitywhere our university is and i said when last did youpreach on racism in your church and they all said, we don't, i said well that's why we stillhave problems you know. so let's try to get people wherethey are, where work to do simple thingsand that is talk

about the difficult stuff. so that we don't have to of course the common southafrican experience and i'm sure the u.s. as well can't we just leaveslavery alone, can't we just move forward. >> satalia: right let's not talkabout it. >> jansen: and my argument hasalways been that's fine the problem is the past keepsshowing up.

>> satalia: unless you talkabout it. >> jansen: unless you talk aboutit. >> satalia: all right, it's beena pleasure talking with you jonathan jansen, thankyou so much. >> satalia: i hope you enjoyedour conversation with jonathan jansen. comcast subscribers can watchthis program anytime on penn state on demand. find out how through ourwebsite:

conversations-dot-psu-dot-edu, where you'll also find anexcerpt from jansen's books. i'm patty satalia. we hope you'll join us for ournext "conversation from penn state!" [ music ] >> production funding providedin part by the corporation for public broadcasting and byviewers like you. thank you.