The purpose-driven university transcript

Daniel Ridge (DR): In this episode we'll be discussing the purpose driven university. We tend to think that the role of universities is to educate students and to support faculty in their research. However, the narrow focus has led universities to be perceived as ivory towers detached from real world issues. But in the last few decades, with organisations shifting the focus to purpose, responsibility and sustainability, many have come to realize that universities can be a force for good, that they can intentionally contribute to the communities and the environment they're part of. Joining me today is Debbie Haski-Leventhal.

Debbie Haski-Leventhal (DHL): My name is Debbie Husky level former Professor of Management at Macquarie Business School, Sydney, Australia. Debbie is an expert on corporate social responsibility, responsible management education and volunteerism.

DR: She's the editor in chief of the Society and Business Review and the author of several books, including the Purpose Driven University. Debbie is also a TED speaker who regularly speaks on purpose, social responsibility and the future of higher education.

I'm so happy to have you today, Debbie. Thank you for joining me.

DHL: Absolute pleasure.

DR: In your new book, the Purpose Driven University, you write that purpose is the New Black. What do you mean by that?

DHL: It seems like purpose is becoming ever so popular with new books, Ted Talks, conversations about it, and it's, I think it's mainly generated by the new generations coming to take positions in business and academia, Generation X, Generation Y, which are more purpose driven than previous generations, so the research shows us. So, it's quite important now for businesses to engage people and for other institutions to engage people by having a shared sense of purpose, thus creating meaningfulness and impact through the organization and via the organization. And so that's becoming a really important conversation in the business world and outside the business world. And so, the whole idea of purpose, if you like, is the reason for which something exists. So, if I have a phone, the reason for which the phone exists is so we can communicate. The reason for which a lamp exists is so it could shed light. The reason for which we exist is a little bit more tricky. So, a lot of people are asking themselves, why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? And so, it's becoming a really important conversation for individuals and organizations. And the reason I'm talking about it is because I'm tying purpose to impact so when I talk about purpose, I don't just talk about what it is that we're doing with our lives and so on, but we look at it through the lens of impact, how can we use who we are, what we know, and what we stand for, either as a person or as an organization to benefit others. And that's the impact purpose that can provide a sense of meaningfulness.

DR: Well, most of us are familiar with social responsibility, which is part of the same conversation, being discussed in the context of corporations. How's it similar different for universities?

DHL: So, my recent book, the Purpose Driven University, is looking at how we can implement ideas around purpose and even spiritual intelligence in an academic institution. I've been studying volunteering, which is the pro social behaviour of individuals and corporate social responsibility, which is the pro social behaviour of organizations, for many years now. And it struck me about two or three years ago, that we don't see as many examples of universities that are led by purpose and their vision is about creating impact. And so, I've tried to write in my book, sort of a guideline and blueprint to how universities can implement everything we know about sustainability, responsibility, and so on in an academic institution, which is where I work and the context of my life as well.

DR: Well, so what then does a purpose driven university look like?

DHL: Hmm, great question. So looking at the idea of purpose and impact purpose, I've tried to define a purpose driven university which utilizes all its resources, people, intellect, and so on, to generate a positive social impact on the environment and the communities in which they operate through their teaching, research and service. So, everything that we do as academic institutions can be leveraged to create a positive global impact and help other institutions to address the global issues that we currently face as humanity, from climate change, to COVID-19. If we are to utilize all these resources, everything that our universities know and do in order to address these issues, there is no limit to what can be achieved.

DR: Right. You talk then about a holistic social responsibility. Is that part of what you're talking about here, volunteering, community giving?

DHL: I think it's more than that. So, I always talk about holistic approach, both in CSR and in a purpose driven university. It's more than giving money to the nations or even volunteering. It's more than corporate philanthropy. It's even more than student projects. It's about how we embed our purpose in everything that we do, in our vision, in our mission statements, in our actions, our identity our behaviour, everything is impacted by our desire to create a positive impact on society and the community and to leverage everything that we have in order to do that.

DR: You mentioned mission statements. I find mission statements with universities and high schools interesting because a lot of them just offer platitudes about excellence and integrity. But you point out that a university's mission statement needs to be significant. Why is that so important?

DHL: That's a really good question. And when we talk about mission statements, they need to be genuine and holistic. Research shows us that about 70% of mission statements include the word integrity, which is a little bit funny, because if it's about who we are in alignment between the self and you know, the identity and the behaviour, it's a little bit odd that everyone copies it. And so, we saw that even with Enron, companies that had wonderful values written on their websites, such as integrity and honesty, but then when it comes to action, the action speaks much louder than these words. And so, for universities to have a strong mission statement, we need to move away from these big words and really use a meaningful statement that's aligned with who we are as an institution. And I've seen that We've actually looked at the top 100 mission statements of universities all around the world. And we found that some of them are really inspirational where others are just using these kinds of words of integrity and excellence. I think that was the top word “excellence” in universities’ mission statements as if there is any university around the world that doesn't want to be excellent. And so looking at more inspirational examples of genuine and holistic mission statements, I remember Stanford University, which was about promoting the public welfare by influencing or exercising influence on behalf of humanity and civilization, and the University of Technology Sydney, talks about how it's a public institution, a public organization, and that it wants to be defined by the global impact that it creates and by providing support for the economic, social and cultural prosperity of our communities. And so these universities are really trying to have a vision about how they can help to, for lack of better word, make the world a better place, and how they do that, by leveraging who they are as an institution, their history, their vision, their people, their research areas, and so on.

DR: Well in your research, which universities stuck out to the most and why?

DHL: There were a few that really inspired me and of course, there are many others, but a few that really spoke volumes to what a purpose driven university can look like. And I've, I've actually mentioned two of them right now with the mission statement. So, Stanford University is utilizing their research capacity, their experiential learning, together with their desire to create a positive impact and they're doing some amazing things. Even spring break for students are about influencing the community. So, students go out and work with local communities and even in more distant places to really make a difference. UTS started an institution for social justice and impact and everything is aligned with that. They are giving grants for academics to create social impact. There are many other universities that leverage everything from their people to their intellect, their, even their physical campuses to work with the most vulnerable people in our society, so refugees, people struggling with poverty and homelessness, and all of that while also promoting research and teaching. It doesn't have to come at any cost to the research and the teaching that we do. But in fact, it helps enhance it because they strong purpose can engage people and create a sense of affiliation with the university, which then translate to better performance. And in academic institutions that usually translates to better research and teaching.

DR: So essentially, universities need to be asking themselves the why, what are they about? What are they doing? What happens when they don't ask this question? Because, apparently, they don't there are universities that are working on this model of just teaching research, getting up in the rankings. What are the consequences of universities that aren't asking themselves these questions?

DHL: I think that's the most important question to ask. And if we look only at what we do and how we do it, what we teach, what do we research? How many articles do we have? How many citations Do we have, instead of asking ourselves, what is our Why? Why do we do what we do? Why does it all matter? Why should anyone care? And that's the most important question: What is the why of our universe? Why do we exist? There's, so there 10,000 universities around the world? Do we really need another one? Or what is our unique impact purpose that can define us, connect us and help us create a better impact. And if we don't ask ourselves the questions of why, then we get low staff engagement, we are not able to attract students especially as I've mentioned generation Z and Generation Y students. They are really looking to work in and study at universities that are driven by purpose. And so, by having a strong enough why knowing why we do what we do, and not just what we do, and how we do it is essential for our university to become a destination of choice for purpose driven people. And these are the ones who are intrinsically motivated to perform well. They have the passion to create not just great research and teaching, but also a genuine impact. And that's what universities should want. So, some are doing that already. I wouldn't say that non. No university in the world is looking at their why. But we need a lot more work around finding our why and working according to our why.

DR: It's interesting that you point out the generational shift with millennials and Generation Z. So, what is the saying about how this is going to transform universities but even going beyond the university into society, as this generation grows older and goes through education and out into the world?

DHL: You know, I've done this research we the United Nations principles for Responsible Management, Education, PRIME, and for the last decade, we've run surveys with business students all around the world. And we have asked them many questions. But the last question was, how much would you be willing to sacrifice of your future salary to work for an employer that 1) cares about employees 2) cares about the environment 3) curious about communities, and 4) cares about stakeholders. And then 5) was curious about all of the above. And so, I've put the table with the percentages. And in the end of these table, I put 40% and over, and I thought, No, no one is going to select that option. But I just put it so I can have a nice bell curve. And I can show that it's slow in the beginning is low in the end, but I was pretty shocked when the results came in. And this is not just once but four times. Four times students told us that 95% of them would be willing to sacrifice some level of their salary. And one in five students was willing to sacrifice over 40% of their salary to work for an employer that presents a holistic approach to CSR, the one that, you know, takes all of the boxes. And that's a really strong signal that our students sending us as their educational institutions, but also their future employers. And so, for me as a person working in a university, I can see that it's so important to students. They're so committed these millennials and generations are so committed to responsibility and sustainability, that they're willing to sacrifice their salary to be in such a an environment. What are we willing to sacrifice to help them live a more purpose driven life? We are as their educators seem to be more focused on their future incomes, rather than on their ability to make a difference. We look so much at how much our graduates make, instead of the difference that they can make, that we're not serving their needs. They're telling us very  clearly that they need to live by a strong purpose. And if we're not delivering that, then they're going to be looking for education and work elsewhere.

DR: I think that's really remarkable. I noticed early on in my academic career that universities often look at students as consumers, that they're purchasing the product that they're generating revenue for the university. Is this a healthy way to look at students?

DHL: I don't think it's a healthy way to look at students nor is it a healthy way to look at consumers. We shouldn't look at people as walking wallets as an income source, instead of seeing them for the humanity which they have and their needs and their ability to do something with their lives. And so, because there is so much emphasis around profits and ranking and the graduate’s income and our income, we missed the point we miss the centre or the core of what we need to be doing and I'm not saying that university shouldn't be caring about their students fees, or their income. I know it's important that they know. Like, we see that now with COVID-19. Universities cannot operate without that. But it's not why we exist. Reminds me of this famous quote by Peter Drucker, who said, Profits for a business is like oxygen for a person. If you don't have enough of it, you're out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you're obviously missing something. We need the profits, we need the income and the our graduates need to have a job. So, employability is important, and they need to make money. But it's not why we exist, not as individuals, not as organizations, not as universities. And if we're not able to articulate with our vision with our mission statement, why it is that we exist, then we're not going to be able to appeal to those students. That's why we have such low levels of engagement among students and academic stuff. There was a Gallup survey from 2017 that show that only 34% of university faculty and staff felt engaged with their jobs. I was shocked when I saw that number, because I thought, you know, we have all this theory that tells us that if we give people autonomy, competence and relatedness, they'll be very happy at their jobs, and they're not. So, what is wrong? What is wrong is we're lacking purpose. We have too much focus on ranking and income and too little on purpose and the why that is really the fuel of the car that we're driving.

DR: So how do universities get faculty engaged?

DHL: It's important for university to rediscover their purpose. I'm not saying define their purpose, but rediscover their purpose. A lot of these institution used to have a strong purpose, even when there were founded, they were founded with a vision, but oftentimes we almost like shift away from the original vision. Even the word university, which is I writing this book, I thought, why do we call that university? And what does it have to do with the word universe, often really fascinated by the origin of words. And so I looked into the universe is a whole, right? It's the whole universe. And a university was supposed to be a whole community of scholars working together to enhance knowledge and also benefit society. But we really shifted away from that original vision. And so, universities need to work with their staff with their students, with their stakeholders to rediscover what is their purpose, and then embedded in everything that they do, live by it, and finally share an amazing story of impact and engagement.

DR: Well going back to the students then how can universities involve them in purpose and impact?

DHL: If we're not going to do it, students are going to show us the way and there already are. There are so many student bodies and organizations that are aimed at increasing our academic institutions’ sustainability, our responsibility. Many student organizations are working very hard to green our campuses. And so, they're already starting this movement bottom up. We don't need to do that much. We just need to open our doors, open our hearts, open our ears, and let them help us to do that. I don't think a purpose driven university can be something that's done top down. You cannot force a purpose on other people. You've got to create it in a three way collaboration and in a joint effort to really make it everyone's purpose. And so, you've got to have the students, you've got to have the academic and professional staff. You've got to have the industry which you collaborate with the government. And so on, working together to address the issues of purpose and impacting each institution, and it's doable, but it takes a lot of time and effort, sometimes even other resources. And I know that a lot of universities are trying to find a shortcut. So, they will hire a consultancy agency, someone who could help them come up with a really nice slogan and define their purpose, but it's done inside out and top down. And it's not the way you can do that. If you want to define and rediscover your purpose, you need to create genuine platforms where people can share and work on the purpose of the university.

DR: So if it's collaborative, between the students, the university, the instructors, what would purpose driven teaching look like?

DHL: Great question. And I think teaching, research, service, each one of these provides university with an opportunity to be more meaningful, purposeful and impactful. And so, for us, it's about teaching philosophy that looks at why we teach. For the purpose of this book, I actually went and looked at some universities, and their teaching philosophies. And so, I remember one very famous university that tells their academic staff that if you want to be promoted, you need to explain what your teaching philosophy is, which is great. But then it goes on to explain the teaching philosophy looks at how I teach which methods I use, and why do I use these methods? This is all about questioning the what and the how not the why. Why do I walk into a classroom fully with students and try to share knowledge with them? What is the role of the professor in the classroom? Is it an all knowledgeable person that's just standing in front of hundreds of students, showing them how smart we are? Or is it about enabling a space of shared learning where everyone can bring their own passion and enthusiasm into the classroom? So, we have to exercise more of our teaching philosophies. As individuals, we all need to ask ourselves, why do we teach? We don't get to do that often enough. And then as a university, we need to ask ourselves, why do we teach? Do we just teach so we can have a lot of students sitting on the chairs and generate income? Or do we teach because we want to inspire the next generation of students to create a more sustainable environment? That's a huge difference between teaching just for the sake of creating graduate attributes and generating tuition fees to creating an inspiring, teaching one that engages not only the students but those who teach as well.

DR: Right? So, I find it kind of funny how that same aspect of teaching and research can become very generic and driven by reaching certain goals and statistics within the university. But what I've also noticed is that service is a very generic term within the academic community. Is there a way that universities can use this term “service” in a more effective way that makes it more purpose driven?

DHL: Absolutely. These two terms have been misused. So firstly, when you look into research impact, most universities define it by the number of citations that you have on your articles, and how good the journals in which you publish are. That's not research impact. These may be some output, but it's not research impact, unless we define research impact in terms of the changes we make to people's lives, because oof our research, then we cannot really talk about research impact. Similarly, service which is about serving others, it's about benefiting, society, benefiting our stakeholders seems to be more about ourselves as academic institutions and so many times services about how many committees do you sit in? And how many reports have you written for the institution? Instead of looking at how can we serve the community? And I think that impactful research and impactful service would look very different what they look today, in many universities

DR: What about leadership inside the universities? What does effective leadership and a purpose driven University look like?

DHL: Looking at many academic leaders in even in the leading universities around the world, I see people who are so focused on themselves and their success and what they have achieved and why they are entitled to have this role in the university, using that to show their accomplishments, their power, their status, instead of using this amazing power that you have to create a social impact. And I think that's such a missed opportunity. Power is not just a privilege, it's also a responsibility. And so, I'm inspired by university leaders that really look at the university that they lead as an opportunity to create an impact beyond delivering diplomas and creating research which may or may not be cited. And so, these are leaders who are looking at their role as almost like servants, how can we serve our institution? And how can we serve society based on our role and on the power that it gives us. And so, I would say that an inspirational university leader is more responsible, sustainable, impactful, and purpose driven in a way that creates a ripple effect among people, staff students community, and really thinking about how I can use my voice and use the power that I have to become a force for good in the world.

DR: Well, in discussing leadership, we often look to one single person, but you discuss the importance of shared leadership. Why is this important in the context of higher education?

DHL: It's really significant because as I said before purpose cannot be forced top down. It has to be shared by everyone. And so, if we are to become a more purpose driven University, we really need to start practice shared leadership. As universities we're really privileged in the kind of people that we hire and the intellect that they bring with them. The fact that we're not using that amazing intellect to help us achieve our purpose, and help us achieve more global goals such as, for example, we may speak about that later, the Sustainable Development Goals is a waste of opportunity. It's a waste of power. It's a waste of voice. It's a waste of intellect. And we could really share leadership in a sense that we enable everyone in the organization inside and outside the organization to become change agents and to really help us recruit others in a way that we can discover our goal, our vision and to work together towards it.

DR: Well, most of us are familiar with IQ and EQ, Emotional Intelligence, but what is SQ and why do you think it's important to leadership?

DHL: SQ is spiritual intelligence and it was only developed in recent years. And for a long time, I was not sure exactly what it meant. I thought, okay, maybe spirituality, a little bit of kumbaya, some religion, I was not really sure what it meant. But when I started diving more into it, I realized that's a really fantastic concept which can be utilized also in the context of the purpose driven university. So, spiritual intelligence, for me, the easiest way to capture it is that it's the opposite of materialism and ego. We are not just about what we buy and how much we make. We're not just about ourselves. Spiritual intelligence is the awareness that people have of themselves, so they know themselves really well, but also awareness of others. They understand with compassion what is happening around them in the world. They don't ignore the reality of others, and then they use their sense of connectedness to others to jointly work towards a shared vision of what we can do to be part of a bigger picture, which is also a really important part of spiritual intelligence, this awareness of, it's not all about me. I'm part of something bigger than myself. And I can work with others through compassion and awareness to achieve something that's bigger than myself.

DR: So, in your research, did you encounter individuals like this?

DHL: I've encountered conscious leaders and spiritual leaders, ones that use their spiritual intelligence, either in business or in politics or in academia. I've recently seen Jacinda Ardern, the PM, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and she is an amazing example of someone who leads with empathy, really high levels of EQ and very high levels of SQ and she says, I'm going to be accused of being weak just because I have compassion and empathy. She's often dressing her role with humbleness and modesty because it's not about her ego. It's about her trying to serve others in the best way possible. And I think now with COVID-19 it's an interesting litmus test to leadership around the world. We can almost draw a line between leaders who are conscious and humble, and the way that they help to address these issues. Whereas in other countries where the leaders are not so much a great example of spirituality and connectedness and empathy and compassion, that we see a huge outbreak of COVID-19. So even in the politics, we can see examples of leaders who work with consciousness and spirituality in order to serve others, and we see that in businesses as well, and think of many examples like Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield who started Ben and Jerry's, and they said, we are a company with a view their social mission, we just happen to make ice cream. Cole Coleman, who completely changed Unilever with his sustainable living plan, Yvon Chouinard, who started Patagonia just to address sustainability issues. And in academia, we have leaders like Amy Gutmann from the University of Pennsylvania, who leads the university with compassion and vision for a better society. And many others.

DR: Well, then does leadership in corporations differ from leadership in universities in terms of being purpose driven?

DHL: You know, what I think not so much. I think that conscious leaders are going to be doing well in most contexts. I think it's not so much about the business. It's not so much about even the industry type, or if it’s about a university or about a business. It’s about having these wonderful features as a leader that can help you connect to others in any kind of institution, in any kind of organisation. Yes, there are differences, of course. Leading universities is not the same thing as leading businesses, although it seems like in the last to decades more universities became more and more of a business-like thinker. And it's funny because when I recently looked at the top search results in Google, on “Universities are…” some of the results were “universities are a scam,” and they “are business”, they “are corporations.” So, a lot of people who are looking at universities do think that we operate like businesses. I think it's time for university leadership to actually shift away from that, showing that universities can operate by different values or different vision and not become so much of a business but rather education institutions that's about enhancing the well-being of the students that comes through our doors and the communities in which we operate.

 DR: In the last few months, universities have had to quickly react to COVID-19 and shutting their doors to students. And now as we go into the next school year, universities are having to adapt to online teaching or deciding whether to go back into the classroom. How can a purpose driven university help address these issues surrounding COVID-19?

DHL: You know, it was Nietzsche who said, when you have a strong enough why you can endure any what. And I think, now more than ever, we need to have a really strong purpose as a university to be to be able to engage our staff through these difficult times. It's not easy to shift all your teaching online. For a lot of professors and lecturers, it's very tough, not just technically, but mentally as well. A lot of people are missing the personal touch to face to face interactions with students and it's going to affect people. Not all of them in a good way. And so, if we that's the time now to rediscover a purpose and articulate it in a way that could really give people sort of a beacon of light of where, why we're doing all of these, where are we going with this? And if you know your why, it doesn't matter if you teach online, or if you teach face to face. It really is about teaching for this purpose. And so maybe some universities think this is not the time now to talk about purpose. We need to survive. We just need to, you know, shift all our teaching online and just worry about that. But there was never a more important time in our history for us to articulate our purpose and engage all our stakeholders with it.

DR: Well, can this attitude help universities respond to the Black Lives Matter movement?

DHL: It's a really interesting trend that we've seen in the business world towards what we called corporate police activism. And for many, many years, businesses did not want to engage in political issues. And you can see why, right? Because every time you engage in a political issue, you may actually create resentment among people who do not identify with this political issue. So if it's about gay rights, you may get a lot of people very angry, because they don't think that gay people should have these rights. And so, businesses were shy of taking any political statements and many businesses actually had a policy of not using their brand for any political reasons. But the last five years have seen a huge rise in businesses starting to be more active in social and political issues from you know, in the US, it was the travel ban and now with the Black Lives Matter. And so, what we see is businesses saying we can no longer just sits idly and do nothing when things are happening in the world, which we may not agree with. And with the Black Lives Matter, we had businesses talking about it in social media, but some are really trying to make changes within the organization. So that the effect of Black Lives Matter will make genuine changes. Similarly, in academia, I haven't heard any universities talk about Black Lives Matter. It could be me, I just did not encounter it as much as in the business world. But I think it again presents an incredible opportunity for universities to stand up to what they believe in and say we are for social inclusion and equity. We need to stand up and speak up and become part of this movement. We're not going to sit on the fence and just wait for these to finish. And this is not just putting a tweet on social media saying, we're all supportive of the Black Lives Matter #BLM. But really trying to look at the way we treat people with different backgrounds in our institutions. If the entire executive leadership of this university is made up of white males, then we have a problem. And that's something that we need to look at. If promotion is maybe accidentally, maybe not, prefers people from the mainstream ethnic groups, then we have a problem. And we need to address that not just by tweeting about it, but really about looking at ourselves and our policies and our actions and how we can change them to become more inclusive. We are all working towards SDG 4, the Sustainable Development Goals. We talk about inclusive and equitable quality education where everyone has an opportunity to have a lifelong learning. We're currently not doing that so much, especially in some countries like the US, there is very little social mobility for people who come from certain backgrounds to actually attend university. And to be able to gain a degree and gain the social mobility needed to come out of poverty, and to come up from different social circumstances. And so, this is again a great opportunity for universities to really look at ourselves and change what needs to be changed so we can really become part of this movement.

DR: In your book, you offer very concrete examples of how universities can transition into a purpose driven institution. You have a lot of detail, but what are some of the main takeaways that universities can pull from this they can take steps to concretely become purpose driven.

DHL: The book offers a six step framework to how you can implement these ideas and become a more of a purpose driven university. And those six steps are looking at how you build alliances with all your stakeholders that we spoke about, especially the students, the staff, the businesses you work with, etc. How you weave connection between the thousand points of light that you've got within the university. It's very much possible that you already have a lot of purpose driven programs, projects within the university, but as long as everyone works in silos, it's very difficult for the university to become a purpose driven one. It's important for us to connect the dots and to create these connections that will enable us to leverage on everything that's already happening, encouraging more action so we can become more purpose driven. We need to rediscover a purpose together with our allies, with our stakeholders through these connections that we've done, and then offer a more of a holistic implementation where the purpose and the vision are embedded in everything that we do. We really walk the walk and talk the talk, and then we need to lead impact. So, we don't just create impact, we're actually leading with our impact, inspiring other universities to do the same. And finally, we create this shared narrative of change, and we share it with everyone around us to continue this cycle, build more alliances, connection, purpose and implementation.

DR: In the final chapter of your book, you look to the future of education. After all your work. What does the future look like for universities? And are you optimistic?

DHL: Well, to start with the end question, I wrote this book with hope for creating change. So yes, I'm optimistic otherwise I wouldn't write such a book. In general, the future of higher education is looking at things like digitalization is happening much faster than universities thought with COVID-19, employability of students, especially in the era of AIs and automatisation of work and being more student centred. So, these are the main themes when you look at the future of higher education. And these are all really important. But the future of a purpose driven university implies taking a more of a holistic approach to all of that, having a strong enough why overarching cause for everything else to happen, and shifting away from looking just at profits and ranking and fees to looking at impact and change. And I really like using this phrase that a lot of universities were obsessed with being the best in the world. Where are we ranked in The Financial Times, where we ranked on the Higher Times of Education. But it's now time for us to become the best for the world. Instead of being the best in the world. It's now time for us to really think about how we can utilize our resources, our people, amazing intellect, even our physical campuses to create a unique purpose impact.

DR: Well, thank you so much for offering this to us. This has been a really fascinating conversation, I think a really important one. So, thank you for joining me today to talk about this.

DHL: An absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

If you're interested in learning more about Debbie Hasky-Leventhal’s work on the Purpose Driven University, you can find a link to her new book in the show notes as well as to her 2019 TED Talk. Also, don't forget to check out the Society and Business Review. Thank you for listening to the Emerald Podcast Series.