Kaitlyn Blume 00:00

What does AAPI Heritage Month mean to you? Why do you think it is important?

Mariko Silver 00:07

I think, particularly now, it’s important for us to be reminded collectively and individually about the importance of learning our entire American history, learning about not only our own communities, but all of the communities that make up the American fabric. Different perspectives bring additional value, and those different perspectives woven together are what make America. So I hope that people will take the opportunity of not just Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, but all year long, and not just African American History Month, but all year long, and not just Women's History Month, but all year long, to seek out perspectives that they may not share experientially and to understand how the range of American lives, together, make America possible.

And I think particularly for public affairs professionals, having the designated month reminds us to really try to understand something new about the experience of those in the world to whom we as public affairs professionals have some significant sense of responsibility to. So I think it's a really exciting opportunity. And I hope that people will take advantage of it.

For me, personally, as someone of Asian American descent, it's also an opportunity for me—I'm of Japanese American descent—to understand more, not just about the Japanese American story, but about the incredibly diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander story. And we do say AAPI, or Asian American Pacific Islander, and that is a statement of solidarity, a chosen identity. And also, within that, are many different ethnic groups, many different types of experiences, many different ways in which people came to the United States, or in the case of Native Hawaiians, were here before the rest of us got here, and not to treat Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as a monolith, but to really use it as an opportunity to understand nuance. And of course, it's also an opportunity just to be proud and be seen. I have two small children, so for them to feel that their heritage is recognized and important, and to have it, in some very specific ways, in a sense on display, for them to be proud of, particularly during AAPI Heritage Month, but hopefully far beyond.

Kaitlyn Blume 02:41

The theme for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month this year is advancing leaders through collaboration. How do you think we can all work to achieve this goal?

Mariko Silver 02:54

First, referring back to my answer to the previous question, it is an opportunity for us to think within the Asian American Pacific Islander community, how we can support and uplift one another, and how we can collaborate with other communities to support and uplift everyone.

We've been talking a lot in funder circles and elsewhere about, not just Asian American Pacific Islander solidarity, but cross-racial solidarity, thinking about how the actions that we might undertake in a public policy frame benefit people well beyond, including but well beyond, Asian American Pacific Islander communities. So I think that perspective taking is incredibly important, making sure that one is not doing something for one's own community or constituency that might undermine the work of another community or constituency, and really taking that seriously as part of the work.

The other thing, of course, is simply showing up for each other, understanding that people have different experiences, whether it's in the workplace or in broader society, and really listening, listening with what people have called a beginner's mind, listening in an effort to learn—not to fix, solve, resolve, and understand before you've actually learned and understood, but really to take the time and the attention that's required to understand the experiences that someone is trying to convey to you. So that, again, as public affairs professionals, we can make the best possible policy.

Kaitlyn Blume 04:24

So moving on to public service, specifically, you have served at the federal level, you've been in academia, you are now at a foundation. So who or what inspired you to work in public service?

Mariko Silver 04:40

I worked at the state level as well. So, in terms of who inspired me to go into public service, I think it depends on how broadly you construe public service. I would say that both of my parents, particularly my mother, certainly inspired me to pursue a public-serving career, not necessarily public service in the narrow sense of working in government, but a public, service-oriented career of some kind, to make sure that I was using all of my advantages to the best of my ability, and all of my privileges to the best of my ability, and not just to advance myself, but to try to do my best to make the world a better place for everybody. Or as many everybody's as one can embrace. So that was always very clear. I can't point you to a time because it was just always in the air, in the water. So I would say, it's a product, in large part, of how I was raised.

And I think, back to your intro about Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I also was always very aware of what public policy can do to harm as well as help. My mother was incarcerated, together with her brother and my grandmother, at Tule Lake Incarceration Facility during World War Two for being Japanese American. Not that it should matter, but, notwithstanding the fact that she is a third generation American. And I don't remember ever learning that. I feel like I always knew it. And my kids now know it too at eight and ten, and knew it long before that. So there was a sense in which that understanding that public policy is a powerful instrument was just ever present.

That having been said, I wasn't particularly directed to a job in government, per se, until probably a little bit later in life.

Kaitlyn Blume 06:52

What is something you are excited about right now?

Mariko Silver 06:55

I am very excited about the next generation coming together, which actually is a multi-generation coming together, within and beyond the Asian American Pacific Islander community, in support of the kind of work that I was describing earlier: diversifying our understanding of Asian American Pacific Islander experiences, deepening our shared understanding of Asian American Pacific Islander experiences, and how those experiences intersect with the experiences of other communities because of course, we all live in this mix together. I myself am mixed race as well. But the intensifying of attention and the efflorescence of both funding and ideas, work on narrative change, work on policy change in support of Asian American Pacific Islanders is very exciting. And it's the most exciting when it isn't only about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, when it's about Asian American Pacific Islanders being at the table with other groups that want to advance all kinds of progress in the systems and structures that help to make society possible.

Kaitlyn Blume 08:13

What is your favorite class that you ever taught or took and why?

Mariko Silver 08:26

My favorite class that I ever taught is probably the class that I taught at Bennington about immigration policy, in large part because it gave me an opportunity to—this is before we were all on Zoom all the time—it gave me an opportunity to invite and beam in via video conference, some of my extraordinary friends and colleagues who are real leaders in the field and bring those folks together with students. I learned an enormous amount, even as the students were learning enormous amount. And that, to me, is always the most fun and exciting environment, to know that you are being exposed to something new, some new ways of thinking, and to be in that with other people. So that was probably the most fun class I taught.

My favorite class that I took as an undergraduate was—I was a history major as an undergraduate—was a course taught by a professor, since passed, named Robin Winks. He was, at the time, the chair of the history department at my undergraduate institution, and he taught a course called “The Writing of History.” We read a book a week, and every week the author of that book would come in and talk to us—it was a seminar—about how they came up with their idea to write the book in the first place, how they did the research, how they crafted the story, why they told the story the way they did from the perspective that they did. And we read a few others who were no longer living, but for the most part, we read historians who were living and actively working, and then they would come in and speak with us. And it was enormously eye opening. First of all, it was just great fun, but it was also enormously eye opening in terms of what goes into crafting the stories that shape us, both the rigorous work and the deliberate decisions, and sometimes the not so deliberate decisions. What inspires us to think about or write about a particular moment in time or a particular set of ideas, and then how those ideas move into either academic or popular culture based on the choices that those thinkers and scholars make about how to tell the stories.

Kaitlyn Blume 10:48

Moving on to some real lighthearted questions. What is your favorite midnight snack?

Mariko Silver 10:57

Oh, you were serious? They really are lighthearted questions. I am a late-night cereal eater. Somehow, if I crave something sweet at night, often, then if I eat cereal, I feel a little bit virtuous, even though it's my children's cereal, which has probably more sugar than a bowl of ice cream that I could have eaten and just been happy with myself. So cereal, I guess.

Kaitlyn Blume 11:19

If you could witness any historical event, what would you want to see?

Mariko Silver 11:27

One thing that comes to mind is deeply personal, which is...I have been to visit...I certainly would not have wanted to be incarcerated in World War Two. And the incarceration camps that held Japanese Americans. I have been to visit some of the sites that are well preserved, like Minidoka. And you certainly can feel what it might have been like, but you also know that you are feeling it at a deep remove. It's perhaps more that I wish everyone would go and visit those sites, and other sites of, to put it mildly, poor national decision making, so that people can, not just imagine that they know, but also feel what it might be like to be on the receiving end of some of those disastrous decisions that were made at the public policy level in this country. And of course, the same can be said, and should be said, of sites of Native American massacre, sites of slave massacre. I don't say that because I think that America needs to be self-flagellating. I say it because I think it makes us better to know how powerful we are and how that power can be put to destructive use, as well as how that power can be put to great positive use. Which didn't answer your question. So, I would say if I were able to witness a single historical event, I think I might have liked to be on a ride with Genghis Khan.

Kaitlyn Blume 14:02

Do you have a favorite podcast, journal, newspaper, or other kind of media?

Mariko Silver 14:10

So I try to listen and read widely. So by saying favorite, it's not to say that I think it's always the best, but I will admit, I'm a history buff. I do love “Throughline.” I always learn something, including about things that I think I already know something about. I will say too, I also love “You're Wrong About” and the long series debunking the story of Tonya Harding and debunking the story of Princess Diana, so let's not be too serious all the time.

Kaitlyn Blume 14:47

All right. Lastly, what is the best piece of advice you have ever received?

Mariko Silver 14:53

It's funny. When you ask me that question, my mind immediately goes more to what I did with what I thought were well-intentioned but not good pieces of advice than specific good pieces of advice. So one very well-intentioned, poor piece of advice that I received is, when I was first moving into leadership positions, someone who was further advanced in in their career than I, who happens to be male, very well-regarded, essentially said to me, “If you want to be a leader, you have to behave more like a man.” He didn't say it that way, but he said, “You have to be more aggressive. You have to be more assertive. You have to speak more loudly. When you give a talk, you have to make sure that you...,” you know, et cetera, et cetera. And I tried that once. And it felt so wrong.

And, you know, I don't think I particularly lead like a woman or a man for that matter. It was more the idea that there was one way of doing it, and that you had to be in that register all the time. And my experience as a leader of organizations, particularly as a leader of a college, I would say—but also in the federal government and elsewhere—is that the idea that you have to put on a certain kind of attitudinal uniform, and you’ve got to keep it buttoned all the way up to the collar, all day, every day, you have to put on all that armor, otherwise, people are going to see something that you don't want them to see, I'll just say, that piece of advice didn’t work for me. I don't think I could execute it, even if I really tried. But even more than that, I've found it to be ineffective. I think people can read from a mile away when you're not being yourself. There are times when you might want to put on a particular hat, or a particular version of yourself. You might want to put a particular version of yourself at the forefront. But I think being honest with yourself that that's what you're doing, and sometimes actually being very frank and honest with others, that that's what you're doing, is a really important part of leadership.

Sometimes I used to say—when I worked with students, they would come in and talk to me about this and that—I would say to them, “Okay, now I'm putting on my college president hat, and I'm gonna tell you what you what I think. And then I'm going to take off that hat, and I'm going to put on my adviser hat, and I'm going to tell you what I think. Then I'm going to take off that hat, and I'm going to put on the hat of someone who cares about you as a human, and I'm going to tell you what I think. And then we can decide together what we should do.” And I think lots of people do that, or versions of that. But it's a very different approach than the piece of advice that I was given, which is, you must always be in one particular mode as the leader.