Welcome to Mind Over Chatter, the Cambridge University Podcast!

One series at a time, we break down complex issues into simple questions. 

Subscribe here: https://mind-over-chatter.captivate.fm/listen

In this first series, we’ll explore climate change. Climate change is likely to affect almost every area of our lives… like a toddler with sticky fingers. But how did it become this way? What are we doing about it now? And what does the future hold?

We’ll ask smart people some simple questions and see what happens!

We speak to Jennifer Howard-Grenville, Diageo Professor in Organisation Studies, at the Cambridge Judge Business School. 

This is a fascinating conversation, we look at organisational culture through an 800 year old lens, by examining how Cambridge University sustains and conveys a culture. 

Jennifer debunks the myths about organisation culture and explains how organisational culture is more than a mere “statement of values” but instead reflects the practices and expectations of people working together.

We also discuss what the future of work might look like post Covid-19 and how organisations and leaders can maintain a culture after the shift to remote working 

We look at organisational culture through an 800 year old lens, when we discuss how Cambridge University conveys and sustains a culture.  

Jennifer debunks the myths about organisation culture and explains how it can be broken down into practices and beliefs, rather than physical environments and rituals.

https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/faculty-a-z/jennifer-howard-grenville/ 

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/video/sustaining-culture-when-everyones-remote/ 

In this episode Dr Kamal Munir, reader in strategy and policy at the Cambridge Judge Business School, joins us to talk about how racial inequality is reproduced in organisations and why it continues to escape scrutiny. 

We think about how the Black Lives Matter protests have prompted organisations to do some soul-searching, and we explore some practical solutions to achieving racial equality at the workplace.

About Kamal:

Dr Kamal Munir is Reader in Strategy & Policy at the Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, where he also serves as the Academic Director of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy. His research interests lie in social change and stasis. Dr Munir is a Fellow of Homerton College and also serves as the Race Equality Champion for the University of Cambridge.

Transcript:

Nick Saffell 0:00  

Hello and welcome to the other university. I'm your host, Nick Saffell. In this episode dr Kemal minear reader and strategy and policy at the Cambridge judge Business School, joins us to talk about how racial inequality is reproduced in organizations, why it continues to escape scrutiny. We think about how the Black Lives Matter protests, prompting organizations to do some soul searching and explore some practical solutions to achieving racial equality in the workplace. I'm going to jump in right into this one, what is institutional racism and sort of how is it different from straight up racism?

Kamal Munir 0:37  

I think institutional racism the clue is in the name that it is institutionalized when something becomes institutionalized, it comes to be taken for granted it is not questioned anymore. So whereas if you see someone walking on the street being called names based on their race, that would be pretty evident to you as racism, institutionalized racism, which mostly happens inside organizations and, and and of course, at a larger level in societies, you may not be able to tell. So white privilege is part of institutional racism, when people actually understand it to be just part of, you know, normal life and part of a meritocratic organization. And this is this is how it is. So, it is it is much less visible, it is much more subtle, and it is embedded in organizational processes and routines,

Nick Saffell  1:41  

thinking about the routines, how do workplaces contribute to sort of racial inequality then,

Kamal Munir 1:49  

basically, based on what I understand of organizations, there are two ways in which organizations contribute to institutional racism. And there are two myths that pervade most organizations. One is that they are meritocratic, and the other is that they are efficient. So, when an organization and the members of the organization understand the workplace to be meritocratic, they automatically assume that everyone who gets promoted everyone who gets hired is on the basis of merit. And if we go deep into organizations, we see that that is not necessarily the case. meritocracy, meritocracy tends to be a myth. And increasingly, there is more and more research coming out, showing exactly why meritocracy remains a myth in organizations. And when we look at organizations numbers, it becomes pretty apparent that there are certain people

Kamal Munir 2:58  

based on race, you know, who are just performing much better than others. So if you look at fortune 500 CEOs, 96% of them are non Hispanic whites. In America, if you look at top management in various sectors, you will take finance companies, only 2.4% of executive committee members 1.4% of managing directors and 1.4% of senior portfolio managers are black. Same in technology, only 1.9% of technology executives and 5.3% of tech professionals are African American in America. So similarly, the average black partnership rate at US law firms between 2005 and 2016 has been...

In this episode we speak to Professor Sarah-Jane Blakemore from the Department of Psychology, about the adolescent brain and the return to school.

We think about the effects of social isolation on teenagers, the long term impact of Covid-19 and we ask if we are doing the right thing by having students return to university during a pandemic.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and leader of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group. Her group's research focuses on the development of social cognition and decision-making in the human adolescent brain, and adolescent mental health, running behavioural studies in schools and in the lab, and neuroimaging studies, with adolescents and adults.

More Information:

https://sites.google.com/site/blakemorelab/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/sjblakemore

Transcript

1

Speaker 1

0:00

Hello, and welcome to the university. I'm your host, Nick Saffell. In this episode, we speak just Professor Sarah Jane Blakemore, from the Department of Psychology, about the adolescent brain and the return to school, we think about the effects of social isolation on teenagers, the long term impact of COVID-19. And we asked if we are doing the right thing by having students returned to university during a pandemic. We all know that the return to school is looking different this year, from a teenager's point of view, what are some of the biggest differences. So some might be that things are missing, but some might be real pluses.

2

Speaker 2

0:37

Cool is very different. It has a lot of young people that are limited to one or a very small number of classrooms for that essence, to try to minimize movement around the school. There are one way systems they the shedule of the day has changed. Of course, there is isolation, if they get a any of the symptoms of covid. And those symptoms are not, you know, completely unambiguous. So if children are getting colds, often families or schools are worried that they might have covid. So that means they have to stay off school until they get it anyway, it's very, very disrupted education. And I mean, I don't have any good solutions to this, I think schools are, are kind of firefighting in a very, very difficult circumstances. And actually, the schools that I know of are mostly doing a really great job in tough circumstances where there's a lot of worry around, and anxiety. But ultimately, the school teachers head teachers really care about educating the young people there. I mean, young people are, you know, can be quite resilient and adaptive. So, young people I have spoken to my own children, their friends, young people I work with, seem to be coping quite well, with with school with going back to school, what I think they found particularly difficult was locked out and not being in school for so many months, many teenagers were not in school for a period of six months when they should have been. And that really is difficult, not only because of the lack of learning, of education of education, academic subjects, but also because of the lack of social interaction and routine and structure that school provides that I think, is what young people that I know, found particularly challenging. Do you think teenagers are sort of taking it in their stride, then I think there are a huge, huge individual differences, some teenagers seem to be coping really well. Others have really suffered over the last few months, partly because of the lack of social interaction face to face social interaction, in the constant changes of rules with regard to social interaction, and also anxiety, anxiety about the virus about family members getting the virus that has affected young people in many different ways. And some, some are more resilient to it than others, just just as adults,

1

Speaker 1

3:02

we're hearing a lot about the sort of behavior of young people respect to the

In this episode, we speak to Simone Eringfeld, MPhil student at the Faculty of Education and producer of the Cambridge Quaranchats podcast. 

 We talk about education in the time of Covid-19, how the move to online education will affect the idea of the university and how she sees the disruption as an opportunity to reimagine the future of the post Covid-19 university. 

Simone shares conversations from her Quaranchats podcast where guests reimagine the learners’ journey, possible ways forward, and how institutions like Cambridge might embrace necessary change. 

Simone Eringfeld @SimoneEringfeld MPhil student at the Faculty of Education @CamEDFac , educationist, writer and photographer. Co-Chair of Cambridge Peace and Education Research Group @CPERGUK

Researching ‘post coronial’ futures of Higher Education. Podcast host of @CamQuaranchats.

http://www.simoneeringfeld.com/

https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ceid/2020/07/09/eringfeld/

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/UE-Simone-Eringfeld

We speak to Dr Helen McCarthy, a Historian of Modern Britain at the Faculty of History and Author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood.  

In recent months, many working parents have had to juggle looking after kids at home with their usual jobs.We talk about how the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on working mothers. 

We take the historical perspective and the long view to try and make sense of these gender divisions. 

We talk about our reliance on childcare, the broader economic impact of the last few months on women, and how to ensure it is truly valued in the coronavirus recovery. 

Guests:

Dr Helen McCarthy (@HistorianHelen), Historian of Modern Britain at Faculty of History (@CamHistory) and Fellow of St John’s College (@stjohnscam) Author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood @BloomsburyBooks 

More Info:

https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/people/dr-helen-mccarthy

Transcript:

Unknown Speaker 0:00  

Hello and welcome to the other university, a podcast about the people who make Cambridge University unique. I'm your host, Nick Saffell. In this episode, we speak to Dr. Helen McCarthy, a historian of modern Britain at the Faculty of History, and author of double lives, a history of working motherhood. In recent months, many working parents had to juggle looking after kids at home with their usual jobs. We talked about how the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on working mothers. We take the historical perspective and the long view to try and make sense of these gender divisions. We talked about our reliance on childcare, the broader economic impact of the last few months on women, and how to ensure it is truly valued in the Coronavirus recovery. Just tell me a little bit about your experience of lockdown so far?

Helen McCarthy 0:52  

Well, my experience of lockdowns probably fairly similar to that of many other working parents, I've had my two primary school aged children at home for most of it, they managed to get back to school for a few weeks towards the end of the summer term. But it's been pretty intense and pretty full on. I've been trying to do my teaching and my university work. My husband, who's a lawyer, has been working at home doing some virtual court hearings, which has been a new experience for him. And it's been, you know, we've been sort of tag teaming it, trying to sort of muddle through as best we can. But it's been it's been a pretty stressful period.

Unknown Speaker 1:34  

So do you think it's changed your working practices as a family? With this sort of future mindset? Do you think it's going to change how you'll go about work?

Helen McCarthy 1:43  

Well, I've talked a lot about this with with my husband, who has only been into his chambers in central London once since the beginning of lockdown. And it certainly seems that for the legal profession, there may very well be a longer term shift towards doing a lot, a lot more online, including potentially quite a lot of court hearings, virtually. So that could be a permanent shift. And I think for universities, for my for my line of work. I mean, online teaching, obviously, is the immediate future for us, because University of Cambridge is, has...

In this episode we talk to Tyler Shores about digital fatigue and distraction, and how we can all take care of our digital wellbeing.

We also talk about his experience of setting up an entirely online high school, and how we can think about online learning in a much more holistic way.

In this episode we talk to Ibrahim Rahman about how he’s been raising money for Cambridge City foodbank and helping Muslim families struggling with hardships during the pandemic.

We also talk about his journey from Wimbledon to the social media team at the university, and how he’s been using his expertise to help Cambridge Central Mosque engage with the community during lockdown.