Laurie L. Patton has served as Middlebury’s president since 2015 and is the first woman to lead the institution. Under her leadership, Middlebury has distinguished itself as a forward-thinking, community-driven institution through programs like the Energy2028 sustainability plan and the Conflict Transformation initiative. And since 2019, Laurie has hosted the MiddMoment podcast.  

But Laurie’s tenure is coming to a close. Beginning in January 2025, Laurie will take over as president at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before she goes though, she sits down with Matt Jennings, editor of Middlebury Magazine and the executive director of editorial services at Middlebury, for an exit interview. 

Now in the guest chair, Laurie answers questions about how the job of president and the Middlebury community has changed her over the last 10 years, her work on free speech and inclusivity in the higher education realm, navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, and what she hopes her lasting legacy at Middlebury will be. 

MiddMoment is a production of Middlebury College and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

On accomplishing dreams and leading with legacy at Middlebury

[15:54] Every single dream I had for Middlebury I have either accomplished or begun so that I know it's going to stay in some form. And that has been extraordinary to see. And those are things like the school of Abenaki, the conflict transformation work, an initiative and the effect it has had in our community and as well as in broader communities, the work on Energy2028, and the sense that we always need to assume the mantle of leadership because we have a combination of rural resources, capital resources, and a can-do spirit and a legacy that we're proud of. That's very rare. And that means that our obligation to lead environmentally is hugely important—the town-gown relationship being as vibrant and cordial as it always was, but I really wanted to give that message loud and clear.

The balance of solitude and community in creativity at Middlebury

[50:05] Middlebury is that kind of space where there's an opportunity simply to be on your own and enjoy. In the midst of community, that allows for the tension between the solitude that creativity demands and the community that creativity demands together.

On Middlebury's unique blend of tradition and innovation

[13:04]  There's something else about the restlessness, and that is more about the fact that I have never been in an institution that has been this old and still has a spirit of newness in it. Every other American institution that has been this old that I've been part of has not embraced the sense of innovation. And that's an overused word, but I think Middlebury appreciates creativity.

Rebuilding Middlebury through listening and accountability

[23:41] The last 10 years have been central and critical for Middlebury to be in a space where it sees its own brokenness and moves from that to do the honest rebuilding that has to be done, whether that's thinking about freedom of expression and freedom of academic inquiry—two different things—and inclusivity afresh. Whether that's thinking about what it means to belong at Middlebury and also what it means to be accountable at Middlebury for constructive engagement in its own right. I think all of those things have emerged to the fore, and when I tell this story, I talk about the fact that we began by listening.

Show Links:

• Laurie L. Patton | Middlebury
• Energy2028 | Middlebury
• The Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation | Middlebury
• House Crossing by Laurie Patton

The Monterey Trialogue from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey brings together leading experts from the United States, China, and Russia for in-depth discussions of their countries' interests and concerns in the vital regions of the world. 

The Trialogue is a novel format, yet an indispensable one. At a time when intra-governmental cooperation and communication among the three global powers is fraught, this initiative prioritizes and solicits the perspectives of in-country experts from the three regions, analyzes geopolitical challenges through the prism of history and culture, and emphasizes the importance of the trilateral relationship for each country separately and for the world as a whole. 

Today, we are talking to the two directors of this experimental initiative. Peter Slezkine was hired as the new director of the Monterey Trialogue in 2023. He earned his PhD in history at Columbia and has served as a fellow at East China Normal University in Shanghai, the Clements Center at the University of Texas, Austin, the Belfer Center at Harvard, and International Security Studies at Yale. 

Anna Vassilieva is the founding director of both the Monterey Trialogue and the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, where she also teaches and directs the Russian Studies program. 

In this episode, host and  Middlebury President Laurie Patton interviews Peter and Anna about their personal and academic backgrounds, the inspiration behind the trialogue, and the significance of interpersonal understanding in international relations. The episode highlights the initiative's recent summits in Tashkent and Belgrade and delves into the pedagogical models and future aspirations for the project.

MiddMoment is a production of Middlebury College and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

What is the problem with present-day politics?

[23:58] Peter Slezkine: I suppose the problem with present-day politics is that these three worlds are understood as entirely alien. So, they are simplified, reduced, and exoticized. And there's no need to even try to understand them. One word, like autocracy, is sufficient to basically exhaust the entire question. And that is the problem. We need to understand that lumping Russia and China together obviously overlooks the many ways in which these countries are different culturally, the ways in which their geopolitical interests don't always align, their histories are very different. And the same thing with every node of this triangle. And so, I think education is our main purpose.

Where will the Monterey Trialogue be 10 years from now?

[58:07] Anna Vassilieva: Hopefully, people will learn how to talk to each other and figure out a grand strategy that doesn't involve violence but involves diplomacy. It's about resurrecting diplomacy. I do believe in the power of communication. This is why Peter and I work very, very intently on selecting the best, the intellectuals who would carry the torch.

On the philosophy of Monterey Trialogue

[17:28]  Anna Vassilieva: I've been teaching for 40 years, Laurie. 40, 4-0. It's hard to believe. But I understood one of the faults of international education, international politics, and so on and so forth is that we teach the differences. We base our education on what is different. And in the last 15 or 10 years, whenever the wisdom hit me, I've started to build my courses on what is the same about us. What is the same about us? Let's watch the movies, let's listen to the language, let's learn poetry, let's see art, and figure out what's the same about us. And once we know what's the same about us, then let's talk about the differences. So, that's how I would begin. And that's, for me, the philosophy of the Monterey Trialogue.

Show Links:

• Monterey Trialogue | Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
• Anna Vassilieva | Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
• Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
• Peter Slezkine | LinkedIn
• The Trouble With “the Free World” | Foreign Affairs

Middlebury has a long standing relationship with Alexander Twilight. Twilight graduated from our institution in 1823. He has been noted as the first person of color to graduate from an American college, and later became the first American of African descent to serve in a state legislature in the United States, when he was elected to the Vermont General Assembly in 1836.

And today, we’re talking with Annie Weinberg, a 2010 graduate of Middlebury who has gone on to honor the legacy and spirit of Twilight, through founding the Alexander Twilight Academy 

Located in Boston, Massachusetts, the Twilight Academy is a catalyst program designed to support students from under-resourced backgrounds. Beginning in the middle school years, ATA provides rigorous, year-round academic programming and mentorship for students who otherwise may have never gotten an opportunity to access such support.

In this conversation with host and Middlebury President Laurie Patton, Annie shares her inspiration to leave her finance career and pursue education. She emphasizes the transformative power of education and explains how her love for relationship-building and intellectual curiosity led her to establish the academy, saying that education should be the great equalizer in society and should help students identify and follow their passions.

MiddMoment is a production of Middlebury College and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

Middle school is a window of opportunity

[36:01] UNICEF calls middle school the second window of opportunity. The first window of opportunity is early childhood. The second window of opportunity is middle school. And I think that people think about middle school, and they just think about this hormonal, you know, this time where there's a lot of chaos going on and peak brain development, but it's also this moment of peak neuroplasticity and this ability to build self-efficacy. And if you can help harness a child's motivation and belief in themselves at that moment, there is a really high likelihood that they will begin to believe in themselves. And that course will longitudinally follow them for the rest of their lives. 

Education is the great equalizer

[11:28] While education in America is the vehicle that halts social mobility today, it should be, and has always been, promised to be, the great equalizer in America. And I think when we think about the origins of my story and founding Alexander Twilight Academy, it's in that innate belief in young people and their stories, and in the innate belief that education should and can be the great equalizer.

Annie’s hope for the future through young people

[40:59] The good thing about the career that I've chosen, and really the life's work that I've chosen, is that in this time of extreme tragedy and despair, I'm able to wake up every single morning and feel really hopeful optimistic about the future of our world because I know these amazing young people who, when they're at the helm, our world is going to be so much of a better place, and I think that's the big picture dream for Alexander Twilight Academy: that our students have built this network of people who look like them and who have grown up with them who can be those allies and disruptive change makers in America.

Show Links:

• Alexander Twilight Academy
• Alexander Twilight | Middlebury
• Clifford Symposium | Middlebury
• Alexander Twilight Academy | Our Impact
  • Egg Drop Experiment and Fortune’s Poem

Food waste is a major issue not only in the United States, but around the world. Whether it's the mass waste that gets dumped by restaurants and grocery stores or the bag of lettuce that was never opened, rotting away in the back of your refrigerator, it touches each of us daily. 

Nick Whitman is the co-founder and COO of Divert, an impact technology company on a mission to Protect the Value of Food. Fueled by the vision of a waste-free future, Nick co-founded Divert in 2007 to prevent wasted food through the creation of advanced technology and sustainable infrastructure. 

He sits down with host and Middlebury President Laurie Patton to chat about his time at Middlebury as a Poli sci major, his ADHD diagnosis and his understanding of the value of neurodiversity, and his work with Divert to tackle the human and environmental crises caused by wasted food. 

MiddMoment is a production of Middlebury College and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

How did Nick develop the love for sustainability?

[04:38] I think my 20s were, in some ways, the opportunity for me to figure out what I wanted to be. And I spent a lot of time trying different roles and trying on different roles. And it wasn't until later on, when I went back to business school, that, for me, marrying the love of sustainability and the love of the environment with my love of entrepreneurship really started to bring out Divert and how we created Divert and how it started. But sitting at the intersection of those two parts—entrepreneurship and the environment—is, for me, a formative experience.

The power of technology is to give data

[34:15] The power of technology is not to sell more technology or products; the power is to give you data and to shed light on what is happening on the ground level so that you can make meaningful changes.

On embracing the power of thinking differently

[16:01] I'm a huge believer of neurodiversity. I'm a huge believer that, in some cases, it's a little bit underrepresented on the diversity spectrum because it brings people together who think differently. It's such an important part of that, and people's brains look at problems, right? They may not be the most organized; I'll never be the most organized person, but I can approach problems and come up with solutions that other folks can't. and I think that's a really important skill.

Stop throwing away data

[38:19] We have to get away from the idea of calling it waste. We have to get away from the concept of just throwing it away because we're really throwing away data. We're throwing away insights and have to figure out how to take that, digitize that information so we understand what it is. And then, tell us, let's figure out what that tells us about the operations, the performance, and society as a whole.

Show Links:

• Nick Whitman LinkedIn
• Divert
• Driven to Distraction by Edward Hallowell 

Carolyn Finney, PhD is a storyteller, author, cultural geographer, and a self-described accidental environmentalist whose work explores the intersection of identity, privilege, and our natural surroundings.

She's the author of Black Faces White Spaces: Re-Imagining the Relationship of African-Americans to the Great Outdoors. And lately she's been workshopping a performance piece titled The N Word Nature Revisited in which she interrogates our collective relationship with the land, an interrogation that includes a spirited conversation with the ghost of John Muir.

Carolyn teaches undergraduates at Middlebury as an artist in Residence and environmental Affairs, and last summer served on the faculty of the Breadloaf Environmental Writers Conference.

In the second part of this 2 part interview, Carolyn & President of Middlebury Laurie Patton continue their conversation on the intersections of creativity and race in our natural landscapes, the need to look beyond environmental justice, her most notable “Midd Moment,” and new ways of thinking about ancestry. 

MiddMoment is a production of Middlebury College and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

On Carolyn's role as an educator

09:02: I wanted to build my knowledge base, my own confidence, and my ability to talk about a wide variety of things. I love learning in the broadest sense. So whether I was living in a village in Nepal for a year and a half or back and getting my master's in Utah, it didn't matter. I was looking to add it all as an opportunity to build something because I wanted the opportunity to have a public platform to do this work. As an educator, I just wanted to have my own independence and freedom to think more broadly and expansively and be my whole self within that process.

Understanding your intention and choices

15:42: You're always going to be faced with choices. Sometimes they're limited, sometimes they're not. But the responsibility is yours to make the choice that's going to be in service to the intention. So you can be authentic in relationships the way that you want and ultimately upright.

Environmental justice and everything else

04:33: The question of justice is also about relationships. Our ability to lean into that tension and show up to it both externally and internally it's about who and how we are. And to think about it as a geographer, it's about human-environment relationships; it's about people and place. We don't exist separately.

Show Links:

• Carolyn Finney
• Carolyn Finney - Middlebury Profile
• Carolyn Finney Instagram
• Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury
• Black Faces, White Spaces Book
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. 

Carolyn Finney, PhD, is a storyteller, author, cultural geographer, and self-described “accidental environmentalist” whose work explores the intersection of identity, privilege, and our natural surroundings.

She's the author of Black Faces White Spaces: Re-Imagining the Relationship of African-Americans to the Great Outdoors. And lately she's been workshopping a performance piece titled The N Word: Nature Revisited in which she interrogates our collective relationship with the land, an interrogation that includes a spirited conversation with the ghost of John Muir.

Carolyn teaches undergraduates at Middlebury as an artist in residence in environmental Affairs, and last summer served on the faculty of the Breadloaf Environmental Writers’ Conference.

In part one of this two-part interview, Carolyn joins host and president of Middlebury, Laurie Patton, to discuss how her upbringing and family history in Westchester County, New York became the foundation of her life’s work. 

And don’t forget to join us next week for part 2 of this engaging and dynamic interview with Carolyn Finney.

MiddMoment is a production of Middlebury College and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

Perspectives on conservation easements and the complexity of understanding

16:28: A lot of people I've met who are in the work of placing conservation easement are generally very thoughtful, caring folks who love the land and the landscape and have also been educated similarly to the way I've been educated in the world about how to think about it right now. I think the nuance begins depending on who you are. Like it's going to look different if you live in a certain skin and experience. And having said that, I think there's a lot of not knowing, right? About our past. I also think, and this is just my opinion, you know, look to read and look at stories and what's going on daily in this country and oftentimes, the resistance, and I say it very gently but clearly, to wanting to understand the complexity.

Did we lose the shared American narrative?

17:41: There's an assumption about that shared American narrative that it was never shared. You know, it depends on who you ask. The opportunity is how we develop the skill set to look at that textured history and where and how we see ourselves.

Our personal experiences are part of a larger story

22:44: We all have our family stories or our personal experiences, but actually, it's part of a larger story. The textural piece is all of ours. And so we are all accountable and responsible for it differently, but what happens if we all become responsible for it? It's amazing.

The damaging experience is only one piece

27:58: We all live a damaging experience as human beings on this earth because part of the legacy of the past is a lot of the hard and painful things that are there for all of us that we all carry. Whether or not we pay attention to it or not is perhaps our individual choice, or, you know, our circumstance. But there is what I would like to say: that brokenness that's always there, along with intense joy, love, and resilience.

Show Links:

• Carolyn Finney
• Carolyn Finney - Middlebury Profile
• Carolyn Finney Instagram
• Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury
• Black Faces, White Spaces Book

For some, finding your career, life, and purpose can be a lifelong task. But Rebecca Makkai knew she wanted to be a writer since she was 7 years old. But it wasn't until graduate school that her journey took her to Middlebury.

Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels I Have Some Questions for You, The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believers was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize, among other honors. Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is the Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.

She joins host & President of Middlebury Laurie Patton to discuss her teaching career, overcoming writer's block, her time at Bread Loaf, dabbling in other genres or mediums for inspiration, and her deep personal roots to Vermont. 

MiddMoment is a production of Middlebury College and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

On building a character

20:57: I know a lot of writers who start with character. They start with a vibe on a certain character, and then the work early on that they have to do is figuring out how to push that character into action. What is this character going to do? What will they get up to? For me, I start almost always with plot. I start with the main things that I want to have happen. I don't have it all worked out necessarily, and then I need to work backwards from there to reverse engineer a character. I need to think about who is the character, who would be the most susceptible to these circumstances, who would be the most vulnerable to this, or the most changed by the events of the novel.

A skill that any artist should have

10:38: One of the best skills any artist can have is the ability to distinguish between being stuck for reasons of craft and being stuck for psychological reasons.

The similarity between painting and writing a short story

18:20: When you write a short story, it's like painting a picture on the head of a pin to get everything in there. And when you write a novel, it's like painting this giant mural; when you're working on it, you're too close to see the whole thing.

Show Links:

• Rebecca Makkai website (https://rebeccamakkai.com)

A fearless virus hunter. That’s how many describe today’s guest, who has been on the front lines researching emerging infectious disease for nearly three decades. 

Anne Rimoin is an epidemiologist who is an internationally recognized expert on global health, disease, surveillance, and immunization.

Anne is a 1992 graduate of Middlebury College and earned a Master's in Public Health from UCLA and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins. Currently, she holds the Gordon Levin and Dow Chair in infectious diseases and public health at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health, where she directs the Center for Global and Immigrant Health.

She sits down with host & President of Middlebury Laurie Patton, to discuss her time in the PeaceCorps, white savior complex & parachute science in the global health space, vaccine hesitancy, and finding the joy in this work despite the white hot glare of polarized debates.

MiddMoment is a production of Middlebury College and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

The core of the DRC program

19:26: The basis of my program in DRC is this deep, fundamental connection with the people there and my interest in trying to understand, well, what do you need? What do you want? What can we do to make your life better? And I think that training from being a student at Middlebury and having this just very different kind of approach as opposed to a completely science-based approach has made all of the difference in the world.

The importance of applying methods to health situations

15:14: What I tell people all the time is don't focus on what the disease is; focus on what the methods are and be able to apply them to any health situation.

Show Links: 

• Anne Rimoin - UCLA
• Anne Rimoin - NIH Bibliography
• Anne Rimoin - Twitter
• Guinea Worm Eradication Program in Benin in West Africa
• World Heath Organization
• APLA Aids Project
• John Spencer
• Spencer Prize in Oratory

Hi, this is Laurie Patton, President of Middlebury, Professor of Religion, and host of this podcast, MiddMoment. Though there is still about a foot of snow on the ground here in Vermont, my thoughts are on spring and the return of this podcast, my conversations with Middlebury folks that tackle ideas of the day. I'm so excited for this season, season 3.

Among our guests will be an epidemiologist, colloquially known as a virus hunter, a critically acclaimed novelist, a filmmaker, a cultural geographer, and much more. I hope you'll join me for the upcoming season of MiddMoment. 

If you're not already a subscriber, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Talk to you soon!

"MiddMoment Podcast is a production of Middlebury College and is produced by University FM."

24 Hour Plays Viral Monologues series, "Unknown Caller" by Dan O'Brien starring Jessica St. Clair. 

Life Shrinks by Dan O'Brien

Without Evidence by Dan O'Brien

Jessica’s latest space comedy, "Space Force," premiered Friday 05/29 on Netflix.