Anne-Marie Slaughter will deliver the commencement address to Tufts' Class of 2014 today. The president and CEO of the New America Foundation, Slaughter was the first woman to serve as the Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State from 2009-2011. In 2012, she published "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" in The Atlantic, which sparked a national dialogue about gender equality in the 21st century. Slaughter is also an esteemed name in the field of education, holding titles at Harvard Law School and Princeton University, where she was the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She will receive an honorary doctorate of laws at the commencement ceremony.
A lightly edited version of the conversation the Daily had with Slaughter follows.
The Tufts Daily: Will the commencement ceremony on May 18 be your first visit to Tufts?
Anne-Marie Slaughter: No, goodness, no. I taught at Harvard Law School for many years, so from 1994 to 2002 and before that, I was a student in Cambridge and visited Tufts often.
TD: With the announcement of the commencement speaker, many students have been discussing your contribution to the ongoing dialogue on work culture and the potential changes it can have on family life. Is work-life balance a theme you wish to address during the Tufts commencement speech?
AS: Yes. I will be talking about work life in, I hope, some new ways. I'm going to be talking about that much more than foreign policy.
TD: It's been nearly two years since the publication of your article "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" in The Atlantic. What is the most memorable response you have received since then?
AS: Oh my goodness, that's an impossible question to answer. I've gotten hundreds and hundreds of letters and emails, and I've spoken to ... thousands of people since in different speeches. I would say there's just been an extraordinarily rich tapestry of comments and writing and talking ... This turned into my life for the last few years, so the most astounding thing was that [the article] went up online on a Wednesday night, and a week later, a million people had read it, or at least a million people had gone on the website. You had a million unique visitors and in just one week that's an extraordinary response. One of the things that did surprise me was how many responses I got from men.
TD: Many students are graduating with some job experience, typically through on-campus work study or internships. What are some of the ways that college students can address the problems of our modern work culture at the university level? Is it possible for Millennials to address these issues before fully entering the workforce?
AS: I think that Millennials are addressing these issues by themselves [by] thinking about the kind of life they want. And many Millennials do, I think, place a healthier emphasis on things like having time to work out, and question why they always have to be sitting in an office when they can do that work just as well from home or at Starbucks ... So I think the best thing Millennials can do is ask questions ... [like] 'Why do we have to do it this way? Why can't it be done a more flexible way, a way that will fit my work and non-work life together?'
TD: Your work is primarily in public policy and the nonprofit sector. Obviously, your expertise appeals to the vast number of students who are looking toward careers in government and public service. But how do these matters transcend these fields? Do you offer similar advice to aspiring doctors, artists, engineers, etc.?
AS: Yes. I talk about work and life in terms of breadwinning and caregiving, but it touches everybody. For people who don't have kids, they have parents or siblings or spouses or friends. The need to balance connection to others and relationships with others and your professional identity with others that's pretty universal.
TD: As a lawyer who has shifted into the nonprofit sector through the New America Foundation, what are the predominant policy issues you are focused on?
AS: New America focuses on a wide range of issues. We have a whole set of foreign policy issues. We're mounting a big project on the future of war, which is, of course, quite far from work and life. We have a very active education policy program, everything from early education to pre-K through 12 to higher education, and we're thinking a lot about that. We do social policy and financial inclusion, [surrounding] how you can build assets for people in the population who don't have them. We are doing a bunch of policy issues around breadwinning and caregiving [and] things like the coming retirement crisis. I'm expecting a lot of parents to start moving back in with their kids.
TD: Do you see more of the "sandwich" generation where people are taking care of kids while also taking care of their parents as something one particular generation identifies with, or is that something that will continue with Millennials?
AS: I think that's going to continue. It's going to continue in part because everybody is going to live longer. You are going to find that you may not be sandwiched, but you are certainly going to have the experience of having to care for your parents and your children, should you have children. But again, this issue of taking care of your children, ... it could be your biological family, it could be a constructed family ... [but] it's the people in your life who have cared for you and ... you also will care for them.
TD: In your article, you address this issue by suggesting that schools should adjust to fit their schedules around the work schedules of men and women. Is there any sort of tangible effort you have seen in that regard?12
