{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Anthony W. Marx, President and CEO, The New York Public Library: Master Class in Transformative Leadership","description":"In this episode of Capital for Good, we speak with Tony Marx, the president and CEO of the New York Public Library, the nation\u2019s largest library system and the world\u2019s preeminent public research library. Marx\u2019s reimagination of this storied institution builds on his transformative leadership in higher education when he served as president of Amherst College. A distinguished scholar and political scientist, Marx\u2019s education \u2014 in the power of education \u2014 was forged by his experience in South Africa in the 1980s. We begin this wide ranging conversation with Marx\u2019s beginnings: his childhood in New York City\u2019s Inwood neighborhood, high school at Bronx Science, the intellectual care and attention he received from professors at Wesleyan and Yale, and his early passion for political science, inspired by his involvement in the anti-apartheid movements on campus and the \u201cexcitement of being involved in something bigger than myself, and thinking about social justice at scale.\u201d Marx would soon move to South Africa, where he helped create Khanya College, a free, residential liberal arts college for Black South Africans to prepare them for entry and success in the country\u2019s top universities, where they had long been excluded. Marx notes that his years in South Africa were \u201clife changing,\u201d allowing him to live and work with \u201cpeople who were living and dying for the rights of democracy that we take for granted,\u201d and teaching him how one year of high-quality education at Khanya could \u201cundo\u201d twelve years of a stunting K-12 system. \u201cThe power of the human mind, the power of education to feed the human mind, should never be underestimated,\u201d Marx says. These lessons would define his career and life\u2019s work. Back in New York, Marx\u2019s scholarship on Africa and questions of nationalism earned him tenure at Columbia, where he and his family spent thirteen fruitful years. Without extensive administrative experience or ties to Amherst, Marx was surprised to find himself a serious candidate in the presidential search of the country\u2019s leading liberal arts college, but soon discovered that Amherst\u2019s board was ready to lean into change from its position of strength. \u201cWhen you\u2019re at the top of the game is when you should take risk,\u201d Marx believes. \u201cIt\u2019s a wild way of thinking, but it\u2019s the right way of thinking, but nobody thinks that way.\u201d With the board\u2019s support, Marx undertook a number of groundbreaking initiatives that would make Amherst an even stronger institution; he is best known for his efforts to increase significantly the economic diversity of the student body, improving the school\u2019s racial diversity, and academic standing, in the process.   In 2010, the New York Public Library came calling. Marx saw in the library\u2019s unusual combination of assets \u2014 a branch system that served millions of people in person each year (the most trusted and visited civic institution in the city) and the world\u2019s most used public research library \u2014 a 130-year-old educational institution ripe for \u201cinnovation at scale.\u201d Over fifteen years, Marx and his colleagues have invested significantly in the branch libraries, transmuting them into community centers, which today are, after the schools and CUNY, the city\u2019s largest provider of educational services, all free, from early literacy and career training to English language and technology instruction. In Inwood, Marx\u2019s childhood branch, the NYPL has partnered with various public development agencies and philanthropies to build 175 units of affordable housing atop a new library and community center, a model they are pursuing at other sites across the city. In wifi \u201cdeserts,\u201d the team has worked with internet service providers to beam broadband from local libraries into the neighborhoods. Technology has also been crucial to expanding global access to the research libraries, starting with vast and copyright-respecting digitization efforts. \u201cThe notion is that every book ever written should be available to anyone on the planet for free through their library \u2014 that\u2019s the aspiration and we\u2019re building it,\u201d Marx proclaims. He has not shied away from the promise of artificial intelligence to support this work, if AI can be harnessed in ways consistent with the institution\u2019s values including \u201cprivacy, veracity, and respect.\u201d \u201cEven more than books, trust is our greatest asset\u201d Marx says. He therefore holds that institutions like the New York Public Library have a role to play in shaping the responsible evolution of these new technologies, and to ensure equitable access to information and knowledge. \u201cIt all goes back to the same lesson I learned in South Africa\u2026 that the world learned in the Enlightenment,\u201d he concludes. \u201cWe have to respect everyone. We have to be compassionate towards everyone. We have to understand that everyone has the capacity to learn, to create, to inspire, to inspire others, to have empathy, so that we can live in the world we want to live in.\u201d Mentioned in this Podcast Khanya College Lessons of Struggle: South African Internal Opposition, 1960-1990, (Oxford University Press, 1992) Making Race and Nation: a Comparison of South Africa, the United States and Brazil, (Cambridge University Press, 1997) Amherst College The New York Public Library Neighbors Fight Affordable Housing, But Need Libraries. Can\u2019t We Make a Deal?, (Michael Kimmelman for the New York Times, 2024) ","author_name":"Capital for Good","author_url":"http:\/\/tamerinstitute.libsyn.com\/website","html":"