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PBS senior correspondent Judy Woodruff has spent two years reporting on how America has come to be so divided — and what it will take to bring us back together. In an exclusive interview with Stacy Palmer, CEO of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the veteran journalist talked about the origins of polarization and what she’s learned from conversations with Americans in more than two dozen states.
“The sources of our division are deep, and they are complicated, and they go way back,” said Woodruff, whose “America at a Crossroads" series of reports is entering its third year. “They have to do with where people grew up, their world outlook, their life outlook. They have to do with economic circumstances. They have to do with race, they have to do with educational background. They have to do with just about everything in our lives.”
Woodruff joined Palmer for The Commons in Conversation, our interview series that’s an extension of The Commons, our project exploring the work of philanthropy and nonprofits to bring Americans together and strengthen communities. She spoke about nonprofits she has encountered working to combat division and her plans next year to focus even more on communities at ground zero of what she believes is a national crisis.
“I now hear almost every day about another group that’s sprouted somewhere that is trying to bring the community together,” Woodruff said.
Watch the discussion on the Chronicle’s YouTube channel or on LinkedIn with free registration. Below is a lightly edited, A.I.-generated interview transcript.
‘So Much More Work to Be Done’
Stacy Palmer: Welcome to the Commons in Conversation. I’m so pleased all of you have joined us today. I’m Stacy Palmer, CEO of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. And The Commons is our project to look at all of the ways that nonprofits and foundations can close fissures in our society. Be they gender, generation, geography, race — everything that is keeping our country from getting important things done. I’m joined today by Judy Woodruff, who many of you know from the PBS NewsHour. What you may not know is that she’s also very involved directly with a lot of nonprofits and foundations. She is a founding member of the International Women’s Media Foundation.
She’s been on the boards of Carnegie Corporation, Freedom Forum, Duke Endowment, and many other organizations, so she has lots to offer about all of the things that nonprofits and foundations can do to work on the divides in our society. And she’s been exploring that through her new project that has been operating for the past two years to really explore what’s going on in this country. And I can’t wait to tap her wisdom so that we can hear what nonprofits and foundations can do next. Judy, welcome.
Judy Woodruff: Thank you, Stacy, I’m so glad to be joining you and to be joining this wonderful effort on the part of the Chronicle, The Commons. It’s something I hope a lot of people know about.
Palmer: Terrific. So, I’d love to hear about your project and how it got started.
Woodruff: Well, as I was approaching 2022 and thinking about what I wanted to do after I stopped anchoring, this was something that was long in the works. I knew I was going to step aside from the anchor desk at the end of 2022. I knew I didn’t want to stop working. I didn’t want to stop reporting. And the thing that was staring me in the face, Stacy, was the fact that I have never in all my, frankly, 50 years of being a political reporter in this country, seen Americans so divided.
It seemed to be everywhere you looked. People were not just disagreeing, but disagreeing in a harsher and more existential way, if you will. And so, I thought I want to spend, I said to my colleagues, I want to spend the next two years traveling around America, talking to ordinary Americans, asking them what is on their mind, how do they see the country, how do they see their role in it?
How do they explain the divide? Do they think we’re divided? And, thankfully, my colleagues at the NewsHour were very enthusiastic about this idea. So I did start at the beginning of 2023. We’re now two years into it, and we’ve decided to add one more year. Not that we think it’s all going to be healed by the end of 2025, but because we think there’s so much more work to be done and I can tell you more about that in a minute. But that’s how it all came about.
Palmer: That’s terrific. I’m curious if you had to take a few lessons of the things that are most important from the many people you’ve interviewed and you’ve been in, I think half the states, so you’ve really got a robust view of what’s been going on. What are the things that you think people who work at nonprofits and foundations, what should they know about what you learned?
Woodruff: Well, I’m sure that, you know, for you and for the for the folks who follow what the Chronicle does, nonprofits and foundations, I’m sure you’re already aware of so much of this. But I can tell you from on-the-ground conversations with people and the research that we have done, that the sources of our division are deep, and they are complicated, and they go way back.
They have to do with where people grew up, their world outlook, their life outlook. They have to do with economic circumstances. They have to do with race, they have to do with educational background. They have to do with just about everything in our lives. And they certainly have to do with technology and the way that we get information, and we don’t get reliable information anymore.
It’s much easier today to have an opinion about something based on very little and to spread that information around. And I think it also has to do with the fact that we are a big, bustling country of over 340 million people. Many of us feel connected in ways that are wonderful and fulfilling. But for many other Americans, they don’t feel connected.
They feel isolated and forgotten. And I have to say, it also reflects on our capital city. I live in Washington, D.C. I love this city. We’ve raised our children here. But it also is a place of division. And we and this city has modeled fierce division and ugly division in ways that I think have not been healthy for America. So I think those are just I think some of the most important ways, most important things that I see lying underneath all of our division.
Palmer: And having that long context, I think is so important. You know, some people think that this is a new phenomenon. It’s more that it’s just getting worse. And we’ve seen it building over such a long period of time. I’m curious, what are the things that you saw as bright spots? Are there some solutions that you can see from the kind of reporting that you’ve done?
Woodruff: Well, it’s a big job that that people have who are trying to make a difference in our division. But I would say that the organizations I see making a difference in the people are the ones who are not getting discouraged by the magnitude of the challenge, who have decided to take it upon themselves to try to bring people together at the community level, at the neighborhood level, at the metropolitan, city level, people who are trying to bring people together over a cup of coffee, groups like Braver Angels, who are trying to get people to sit around the table and discuss hard issues and do it in a respectful way. We see that happening around the country. Some of these groups are so small, you know, most people have never heard of them, but they are trying. And I will tell you, honestly, Stacy, I now hear almost every day about another group that’s that sprouted somewhere that is trying to bring the community together.
We see universities that have established projects around healing division, the polarization labs, for example, at Stanford and Duke University, which is my alma mater, and a number of other schools that have established centers or programs that are dedicated to studying this and making sure that as students get an education, that they understand they’re going into a much more divided world than literally than we’ve ever seen. So I do see organizations trying. I also, as I said a moment ago, the magnitude of it is enormous. And so I think at some point, it’s going to require leadership at the national level, modeling respect for the other side, modeling listening and understanding that it’s reminding everybody that it’s okay to disagree. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing and having different opinions.
That’s what our democracy was built on, the fact that we should be able to disagree. We should be able to have spirited debates, but not in a way that that wants to denigrate or at worst eliminate the other point of view or the other side, the other person. And yet, that’s where we are. The language, the rhetoric has gotten very ugly. So I salute organizations. I mentioned Braver Angels. I could mention many more — Starts With Us and I could go on down the list — More in Common. You’re looking right now, Stacy, and I’ll give it a plug while you’re showing it. This is the website for America at a Crossroads, which is the name of my project. This is part of the PBS NewsHour site.
We also show up, by the way, on the NewsHour homepage. We occupy a prominent position there. But when you look at that and you click on that, it takes you to this page for America at a Crossroads, where you can find all 46 or maybe it’s now 48 pieces that we have done, every other week on the NewsHour, since the beginning of 2023. Each one of them takes you to a part of the country, to a different person, to a different place where folks are struggling, trying to come together and there, you see some news items, but there’s an interview here. Some of these are news items that you’re looking at right there.
But you’ll see, for example, the first piece I did, which was an interview with President Joe Biden, where among other things, that this was in February of 2023, I asked him if he had ever seen the country as divided and he said no, and it deeply saddened him to think that politics had become a blood sport in so many words, and the fact that people couldn’t even tolerate being in the same room with one another. But you see there this piece you’re seeing here aired in November after the election, where we went back and spoke with eight or nine of the people we’ve interviewed over the past two years to ask them what they thought about the election result and what it says about the prospects for bringing America together.
And that was fascinating because even some of the Trump and Harris voters who felt very fiercely about their choice and felt they’d absolutely made the right decision, said that they think that there’s room to hear the other side.
But there is also a view out there, I have to be honest, of folks who think, who will say to you, I think it’s important to stand our ground, and there are issues upon which I feel so strongly that I don’t want to I don’t want to give in. I don’t want to compromise. I don’t want to, I don’t plan to have any sort of, or make any sort of give where I am. And I think my point is that that’s okay. That, again, is perfectly in keeping with democracy to have different views. The question is: On the biggest, most challenging issues of our time from the role of government, government spending, immigration, the environment. We have to find ways to come together or else we will not find solutions to these tough issues.
Palmer: That’s one of the reasons that we think it’s so important for nonprofits and foundations to get involved in this, because nothing’s getting done while we’ve got this polarized situation and all of the things that organizations are working on to heal society in many ways, having, you know, scientific advancements, making sure the environment is protected, all of those things are getting stuck by this polarization.
So that’s why we think it’s such an important issue for everybody in the nonprofit world to deal with. But there are special segments of groups that you’ve mentioned that are really working on bridging these divides. They’re often referred to as the bridging groups. And I know you looked at some of them as part of your work and some were successful, and some were not so much. Could you talk a little bit about those examples?
Woodruff: Sure. I mean, for example, an example of one that that was working, we went to a Braver Angels chapter in Cleveland and sat with a group of voters, half of whom identified as Republican, half Democrat. And they talked about, even though they have the strong views that they have, how they thought it was valuable to at least try to sit down and get to know someone with different political views. As you know, that that’s not as common anymore in our lives, because we tend to we tend to congregate with people we agree with.
Another, I would say another really important example was in the state of Tennessee, where in the aftermath of a terrible school shooting a year ago in Nashville, where three nine-year-olds were killed, and three teachers, we were made aware that the group called Starts With Us, had been invited in to try to come up with recommendations for the state government, state legislature to try to reduce gun violence in Tennessee.
And as you know, this is a divided state. It’s voting very red. It’s transitioned from blue to red over the years. But you have the urban Memphis, where there are there are terrible statistics with regard to gun deaths, shootings. And then you have rural Tennessee, where there are fiercely pro-gun beliefs, gun rights. So what Starts With Us did is they put together a group of 11 Tennesseans from across the spectrum. They were very careful about how they did this all the way from very pro-gun control mothers in Memphis, schoolteachers who had seen, known students who had been shot and killed in their school or in the community, all the way to fierce 2nd Amendment supporters in rural Tennessee. They put this group together across the spectrum. They spent three days together hammering out a set of recommendations, and they talked to us.
We interviewed several of the members of this committee. They call them the Tennessee 11, and they talked to us about how hard it was in the beginning to even sit together. But then they work through that, and they came up with these five recommendations, commonsense recommendations, including increasing education, about the significance of gun violence in schools, all the way to the most, I would say, controversial — hardly controversial — recommendation they made was that if someone shows signs of having emotional or mental distress, that there’s an ability to take a gun away from that person.
So they went to the Tennessee state legislature to brief members of the legislature on what these recommendations were. This is a Republican majority legislature. Again, a very a red state, Republican governor. They could not get even members of the legislature, Republicans, to show up for the briefing. And we interviewed, we spent time with four of the members of the commission, but two of them in particular who were very pro-gun rights. One owns a shooting range in rural Tennessee, very pro-2nd Amendment, said he was told us he was distressed, he was worried that he had already been receiving threats from others in the community about even participating in this effort to bring this state together. The other gentleman, who was, again, very pro-gun rights we interviewed, said that he chased his state representative down the hall at the state capitol to talk to him, to try to get him to participate in the briefing, to ask him why he didn’t want to participate. And he said he just he couldn’t reach him. He couldn’t talk. He ran away.
And both of them expressed, lamented the state of division in the state that they love. I mean, they love living in Tennessee. And they still hold to their beliefs. But they were fearful, frankly, after this exercise that they were going to be ostracized by members of their — of the of the gun-rights community.
And there were some similar concerns on the other side. But I came away understanding more, I think, Stacy, than I had before, just how challenging this work is at the state level, no question, and even at the community level, although there are other examples where it’s working, and we celebrate those. But in some cases, it’s hard.
Palmer: It truly is. Is there one that you particularly want to celebrate so that we can see that there are things that are working? A good example of that?
Woodruff: Well, we know that that there are a number of communities where groups have made headway, and that’s what we plan to focus on in 2025. We are in touch with about four or five organizations already who are getting people to sit down. I mentioned Tennessee. I also want to mention Alamance County, N.C., where a group called the Harwood Institute has been invited in to help this formerly completely rural county, which is now rapidly changing to become a bedroom, more urban area with housing challenges, immigration challenges, economic challenges, helping the members of the community deal with this — school challenges — and they are making progress. They at least are getting people to sit around the table together. They’re very much on the front end of this.
I interviewed Rich Harwood, who’s the head of that program. And I think that there’s, certainly you have to give them credit for going in there, because people have strong feelings on either side. But they’re jumping in. They’re rolling up their sleeves and working at it. And I think that’s the kind of project that we’re going to be watching. We are going to spend much of 2025, again, traveling around the country trying to find efforts that both are working, and some that aren’t, so that we can understand, you know, what are the ingredients that are necessary to get people to work together. What makes it more possible, and what are the ingredients that may make it more difficult? We’re learning from this process just like our viewers are.
Palmer: That’s a great note. What would you say is the most significant thing you feel like you’ve learned from this project?
Woodruff: I would stress the most significant thing is how complex it is. You know, you asked me a minute ago, what goes into making this divide. And I think I mentioned the economy, and where you grow up, and technology, and race, and the rest of it. I didn’t mention faith. People’s faith, their religious affiliation, or not, has a big bearing, we are finding, on their sense of either being willing to listen to another side or not. And so, you know, that’s something that we’re going to continue to look at. The other thing I want to mention, Stacy, is, is local journalism. We all know that, and I know this is something that’s of great interest in the philanthropy community, because more and more foundations are supporting efforts to revive local journalism.
But we have discovered, in a way we didn’t realize before, just how important it is to have some form of local journalism in order to hold a community together. We went to the panhandle of Texas, a small town called Canadian, where the local paper, the Canadian Record, serving a few thousand people, 45-page weekly paper coming out every day, 46 pages, was going under last year because the owner, the editor, could no longer afford to keep it running.
She had a very tiny staff. She was personally delivering newspapers around the community. I’ll just tell you very quickly, we went there, and it’s a very conservative area politically. I interviewed one rancher I will never forget, his name is Steve Rader. He and his family lived in this area for generations, and he had tears in his eyes as he talked about the end of the Canadian Record.
He said: “This is the paper where I read about my children and my grandchildren, high school football games or basketball games.” He said: “It’s the place that recorded births and marriages and deaths, traffic violations, the police blotter.” He said, “I didn’t always agree with Laurie Brown” — she’s the editor — “with her editorials. She leans a little bit more to the left than we do, than I do.” But, he said, “This newspaper has been the glue that has helped hold our community together.”
We then talked to other folks in the community who said they don’t know how they’re going to learn about who’s running for city council. How are they going to know, you know, about whether it’s a good idea or not to open up a new home for seniors, senior living facility, or not.
And so, it was a reminder of something that, you know, I know academics are studying this. It’s clear that where there is no local journalism, people turn, a lot of the time, to national news, which can be very opinionated, very divided. People sitting there on a TV set shouting at each other, or just giving you one side of the story, and you don’t know that it’s possible for people to work together. You don’t know that it’s possible to solve problems, and, in other words, that it’s actively harmful for our fiber, our strength as a country when we don’t have local journalism.
Palmer: It’s really critical. And certainly the solutions are what, you know, there have been survey after survey that that’s what Americans want to know more about. And so, the support for these local nonprofit efforts is absolutely critical. I’m so glad you mentioned that. I also hope that a lot of other media organizations will look to what you’re doing as an example of the kinds of things more people need to know about so that they can plug into it in their communities and really have hope that some of these groups that are working to close these divides will make progress, and they’ll make more progress if people join into them.
Judy, thank you so much for talking to us today. We’re very excited that your project is going into a third year, and especially what your focus is on all of the groups that are trying to close the divides. I know all of us will be watching closely. Thank you so much.
Woodruff: Thank you, Stacy. Such a treat to speak with you. Thank you. And thank you so much for what the Chronicle is doing with The Commons.
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