Reading the Times with Anna Deavere Smith (quotes Deborah Stipek)

Anna Deavere Smith, the actress-playwright, reads the paper most days, almost always in paper form on Sundays. Why? Habit, she says.

I have never been able to read the paper in one sitting! I travel a lot and so I don’t even have a routine about the Sunday paper. More often than I would like I am reading it on an airplane, because I usually take the first flight out from wherever I am.

Did anything on the front page particularly surprise you?

“Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks.” This came as a surprise to me. Perhaps I am Pollyannaish, but even as a sometime academic who is well aware that special interests can inform research, my eyes bulged wide open at the amounts of millions that foreign powers pour into the think tanks. I am not surprised at their willingness to accept the sums. I am saddened because I doubt if what matters to me most – particularly bridging opportunity and education gaps for people – attracts that kind of dough.

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Anything in the paper inspired you?

Nicholas Kristof’s “Whites Just Don’t Get It Part II.” It is inspiring to me that Kristof continues to tend to the conversation on race that he engaged in in the wake of Ferguson. He suggests that “instead of pointing fingers, let’s adopt some of the programs that I’ve cited with robust evidence showing that they bridge the chasm.”

This is essential at this moment. We have a crisis, for example, in education. Statistics show us that poor children of color are more likely to experience disciplinary action that may land them out of school and in prison. Recently when I discussed what’s commonly called the “School to Prison Pipeline” phenomenon with the dean of the graduate school of education at Stanford, Deborah Stipek, she said it’s not the “School to Prison Pipeline,” it’s the “Womb to Prison Pipeline.”

We have a problem. A problem is an opportunity to bring forward resources and to foster innovation. I’m with Kristof: If it’s for the overall welfare of the nation, let’s stop pointing fingers and get to work.

Read the full story in the New York Times.

Deborah Stipek is the I. James Quillen Dean and Judy Koch Professor of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.