Where this was said
Navigating Polarization: Magnets Over Wedges
At 46:45 · chapter starts 45:50
Asked what he would tell a hypothetical Trump White House 'trust czar,' Diermeier brings the conversation back to ground level: Vanderbilt navigates a genuinely complex political ecosystem — Democratic Nashville, Republican Tennessee, Republican federal government — and must work productively with all of them [1] — Daniel Diermeier "You find the type of things that people can agree on, the magnets, if you will, rather than the wedges." 46:45 . The principle is simple to state and hard to execute: find what people agree on — economic competitiveness, national security, innovation — and lead from there rather than from the contested terrain of social and political ideology. Universities have a strong hand to play in this argument: almost every major technology of the modern era was invented or decisively advanced by university researchers. That is not a partisan claim. Diermeier notes that Silicon Valley wouldn't exist without Stanford, and sees Vanderbilt's satellite campus strategy as a direct application of this insight — embedding the university in innovation ecosystems where the magnet effect is most powerful.
Diermeier's formula for surviving a politically hostile climate: find what people agree on — the magnets — instead of amplifying divisions. For universities, that magnet is the innovation economy, national security, and economic competitiveness.
