- [Female Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by.

(tranquil ambient music) - Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory and Florist dedicated to helping you celebrate your life or the life of a loved one for over 85 years.

Chattanooga Funeral Home believes that each funeral should be as unique and memorable as the life being honored.

- [Female Narrator] This program is also made possible by support from viewers like you, thank you.

(upbeat ambient music) - [Alison] On the season finale of The A List, I sit down with a woman who has made it her mission to heal communities through mediation.

- So we talk about in our country about being worried about, we hear it all the time now about, is another civil war a possibility?

Are we heading in that direction?

When we're fracturing it, the seems like that, it makes it so that we're, we're heading down a dangerous road, and if we don't figure out how to prevent sustainable violence as a tool, and as a way of how we deal with our differences, we're gonna be living in a very different America.

- [Alison] Join me as I talk with Samar Ali, coming up next on The A List.

Summer Ali's impressive resume might seem overwhelming.

She is a research professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, a former white house fellow and co-chair of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy.

But the through line in her career has been a heart for unity, a goal which she puts into action using her skills as a mediator.

In 2017, she co-founded millions of conversations, a nonprofit organization that seeks to transcend divisiveness, a mission that is needed now more than ever.

Samar, welcome to The A List.

- Thank you.

- We are thrilled to be with you and to hear your story, and there's just, if I had to start off this show by just listing everything you have done already in your very young life, the show would be over.

Like it would take up the whole 30 minutes, but my goal is to get into as much as possible because I just think it's a fascinating trajectory.

- Thank you, thanks.

- And I'd love to start from the beginning where you started, which is not too far from here.

- Yeah.

- In Waverly, Tennessee.

Tell me about your upbringing.

- Yeah, thanks again for having me.

It's really an honor to be here and I always love coming to Chattanooga.

So thank you.

I grew up, so we are about an hour, well, about two hours right now, Southeast of Nashville.

I grew up an hour and 15 minutes to the west of Nashville in a county called Humphries County, a city called Waverly, and it's a border county.

So we have three stars on the Tennessee flag, west, middle east, we're right on the border between west and middle, technically considered middle.

And Waverly is endearingly called the last Mayberry standing.

It is that small of a town.

It's a town of about 4,500 people.

- So what was it like growing up?

Did you feel the smallness of the town in good ways and challenging ones?

- You know, for me it was mostly good.

I really had a very like, pollyannic like experience growing up there.

It really did feel like this town that cared about you, it cared about every, and everybody knew everybody and everybody knew everybody's business and you know, and everybody would joke if they didn't know your business, they'd make it up so you might as well tell 'em.

And it was fun and it felt very safe and it felt also a place where you could dream and believe in your dreams.

- So what did you dream back then?

- Yeah, well, it is a great question, you know, I always dreamed of peace.

I dreamed of what I'm doing now.

I'm a mediator.

I grew up also traveling to the Middle East as my parents are from there.

And so we would spend our summers there with our grandparents and I would see, and I understood the conflict in the Middle East and the conflicts in the Middle East.

And I always thought about what would it be like if there was no conflict and what would that look like?

And how could people have the experience that I'm having in Waverly all over the world and feel that.

and so I've always been interested in that and the international piece of this too, of traveling and meeting people around the world and thinking about what is our place in this big world?

- Did that come also from like dinner table discussions, and your family unit, were they always pushing you to seek more?

And I mean, the irony is not lost that of Middle Eastern descent lands in the middle of Tennessee, right?

- Yeah.

- And then finds peace there.

- Yes.

- And this idea of dreaming in unity.

But what did your parents, what was that message that they sent to you at a young age that really planted those seeds?

- It's your choice.

I mean, that's the thing.

It was, it is your choice.

You decide whatever it is that you decide to do, be your best self at it, put your best effort towards it and see, and don't ever, and the sky is the floor really.

And what do you have to lose?

And so I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family and also a very opinionated family that are a mix of extroverts and introverts.

I'm definitely an extrovert, but of really, of thinking about, like if you put your all towards what you're thinking of doing, what could you accomplish and achieve?

What can you achieve as one person?

What can you achieve together?

And also, I think another big underlying current in our family is service, community service, giving back, my parents are doctors.

My grandfather was a doctor, my aunt's a doctor.

And so we were a family of many, many doctors who went into that profession, because like, how do you help people heal?

How do you be community healers?

And for me, my mother told me, do your future patients a favor and do not become a doctor.

She did not think I would become a good doctor.

So I was thinking as a lawyer, what does that version look like in a community of where you're trying to get back and be of service and as a healer, and for me, that's rooted in mediation.

And because communities get sick too, especially when they're divided.

And so many people when they hear about lawyers, they think, oh, you know, but they don't think also about most mediators, many mediators (tranquil ambient music) either have a religious background, or they have a legal background.

- From childhood dreams of peace to aspirations of healing communities through service.

It seems that Samar had a unique understanding of the path ahead of her.

The first step toward those goals was moving out of her small town and into the big city where she attended college at Vanderbilt University.

It should come as no surprise that Samar made a big impact during her undergrad years there as student body president.

Setting the stage for her next big transition to law school.

So what was the lens that you were sort of looking through as you started and went through law school?

Was it that you were gonna be this sort of lawyer healer?

- Yeah.

- There was a mediation top of mind, I know that law school, even today, you know, you can get your law degree, but take so many different roads.

- Yeah.

And I didn't know where exactly where it would lead.

I knew it would give me the tools.

I actually even loved law school even more than college.

And I just had an incredible class, was very collegial, kind of goes back into modeling about how you can be competitive, but in a good spirited way.

And I felt like Vanderbilt Law School was healthy in that way.

And I had the opportunity of a lifetime between my first year and second year of law school to go and live with Archbishop Tutu and his family in South Africa.

And I saw what was possible and Archbishop Tutu changed my life, his family changed my life.

Again, going back to that piece about dreaming of like, and actual living the history of what is possible because you believed, and he himself being an ultimate healer in many ways.

And he introduced me to Edwin Cameron who helped write the Constitution of South Africa, who was the protege to Chief Justice Chaskalson, who was Mandela's lawyer.

He took me under, and to this day he still mentors me.

I mean, he trained me and so, and laws and apprenticeship.

And so my apprenticeship as a peacemaker began in such an incredible place with incredible teachers and mentors that they shaped my career.

And Vanderbilt gave me the tools and the skills to build on that and to build on that experience.

And one of the reasons I went to law school as well was because I always wondered, and my travels predominantly to that point before Africa to the Middle East, I always wondered what made the United States a super power and what was different, and in terms of why there was more opportunity here.

and one of the things I kept coming back to was the legal system and the rule of law and the constitution.

And I wanted to study that, I wanted to, in undergrad, it's difficult to get, if you wanna study the constitution and you wanna concentrate time, law school's a really good way to go and do that.

And especially our legal system.

So I was always interested in the constitution, our legal system rule of law and comparative law.

(chuckles) - I'm just, I'm blown away because it feels like, while law was the path and has continued to be a path that you take, there are so many different roadways that you could have taken.

- Yeah.

- And the fact that you have come back, and I don't wanna jump ahead too far.

- Yeah.

- In your story, but have come back, not only to the United States, but also to Tennessee.

- Yeah.

- And also so close to home is so full circle, but also a little shocking, I mean, in all of your travels, because I know you are the consummate international traveler.

Did it ever dawn on you, I can do what I want and maybe do it better or more efficiently or more effectively if I lived somewhere else?

- No.

I mean, because my thinking rather was, if I keep traveling like this and I keep moving like this, I might not know what home feels like.

- Yeah.

- And so in order to be an effective mediator, I need to feel peace within, where do I feel peace?

It's at home, and where am I feeling, and had I thought about this a lot, where do I feel at home?

I feel most at home actually in Tennessee, I feel most at home actually in, technically Waverly, Tennessee.

And so I can best serve the world and the work that I'm doing if I make Tennessee my home base and call it a coincidence or whatever that I happen to be back here in this moment of in our modern history where we're facing extreme polarization levels of where we need mediation.

- Right.

Now you keep using the word mediation.

- Yes.

- Define that for me.

- Yeah.

- So what a mediator does is help reconcile differences in a nonviolent way between two or more parties that are facing dangerous odds between each other.

- And when we, I mean, when I hear mediation, a lot of times, I'm solely thinking about people going through a divorce.

Right.

- Right.

- They go through a mediator.

You're much more than that.

- I don't even say much more because I think that mediation does get at the core, the art of mediation is hyper local work.

- Okay.

- We think of it, we celebrate international work, we celebrate national work, but I think we have to, I really do believe we have to celebrate the hyper local grassroots work that hits at the core of individual experiences, which gets to mental health, which gets to a lot of other issues too.

There's a lot of different reasons that people are feeling disconnected.

- Yeah.

- And what you have a mediator to come in for is, for example, when there's such divisiveness, during the Syrian civil war, you bring in mediators to try to say, how do we stop the violence?

Really good mediators also work to prevent the violence, to prevent sustainable violence.

So we talk about in our country about being worried about, we hear it all the time now about, is another civil war possibility?

Are we heading in that direction?

Well, what you want is a mediator or a mediation team to help prevent that from happening because you wanna prevent the sustainable violence before it happens.

And especially when the violence is being done for identity based reasons, you're a Republican, when the demonization of the other happens, when the demonization of an identity happens, either it be, we're now seeing an uptick for example, right now in antisemitism, we're seeing an uptick in hate crimes against Muslims.

And hate crimes against the Asian American community and also political, the partisanship too and the demonization of who you voted for and just communities and who you're doing business with dividing along those lines, when we're fracturing at the seems like that, it makes it so that we're heading down a dangerous road.

And if we don't figure out how to prevent sustainable violence as a tool, and as a way of how we deal with our differences, (upbeat ambient music) we're gonna be living in a very different America.

- [Alison] It is clear that Samar's career trajectory has given her a unique set of tools to help bridge divides.

After working as a judicial clerk, it was her position at Hogan Lovells law firm that set her on the path to being appointed a white house fellow in 2010.

During her tenure there, she focused on Homeland security and counter terrorism.

But when she returned home to Tennessee and joined the administration of then governor, Bill Haslem, she was personally confronted with the ugly truth of identity based fear and hatred.

I wanna talk about millions of conversations.

And I wanna talk about the project on Unity and American democracy that you are now co-chairing with governor Bill Haslam and Jon Meacham.

- Yes.

- But, just as I'm fascinated by your origin story in Waverly, I think it's so important to understand the origin story of millions of conversations.

- Hmm.

- Because you go from the Obama white house in a nonpartisan role.

- Yes.

- To serving for a Republican governor, Bill Haslam at the time for Tennessee.

- Right.

- And as you will say, it didn't quite go as everyone expected it to go.

(chuckles) - Yeah, that's an understatement of a lifetime, for sure.

So suddenly me, the person who's preaching on violence and who's working towards that and working towards building systems, and thinking about how we create and support systems that are healthy for society, and to how do we counter hate crimes and how we counter violence, suddenly I become the target of violence because of my identity, because of my natural born identity.

And there's this moment of where I realize I might not make it out alive.

And when I realized that, I realized the sacrifice, in the name of what I was thinking, what am I sacrificing in the name of what is it I'm doing?

Do I believe in this work so much that I'm willing to put myself in this position?

And the answer was yes.

And this is my home, and I've come to do this work.

- So how do you teach people to listen?

And I know that's part of the millions of conversations, right, not just to speak, but also to listen.

How do you encourage people to gather at the same table when it's uncomfortable?

- So I don't teach people.

- Okay.

- People teach themselves.

And I think this is the key people have to, it's the way you do it.

Everybody knows how to listen.

Everybody knows how to listen.

It is reminding people of that, of the power of listening, and conversation requires listening.

It's a rhythm of a back and forth, you speak, I speak, I'm listening, I'm responding.

Trust is being built.

And it's kind of rooting us back in our humanity.

And what's happening is we're in this fourth industrial revolution of this hybrid state of existence of where reality is being shaped online and offline.

Our experience with truth is being shaped and how we relate to facts is being shaped by disinformation, misinformation, and actual information, blending together online, creating an experience with reality that's blending with offline reality.

And here we are like almost in this like Star Trek existence of, especially after COVID, well, we're still in COVID, whatever phase it is we are in COVID and saying, okay, my nervous system is taxed.

And how do I exist as a human being of where I'm sharing this world and including my job with robots?

That can be manipulated and algorithms.

I mean, we didn't even talk about algorithms 10 years ago.

- Right.

- And so where does the human spirit come in?

Where does the humanity come in?

Where how do we connect and tap into that in this current world?

And listening is such an important skill because in part what it does psychologically is it grounds us, it calms the nervous system, it slows down time.

I need to listen, you know, like, let me, even if I disagree with what you're saying, as I'm listening to you, even just hearing your voice and taking it in, I'm humanizing you, I'm beginning to humanize you.

- So how does the project on Unity and American democracy further that goal as well?

- Yeah, so I think that one of the ways it does that is, I first off, I would say, it's not a coincidence that you have a former sitting governor, a historian, and a lawyer/mediator peacemaker coming together, because we have to understand our past in order to know where we are, and together to talk about where we're going.

And to be able to do that with someone who has led a state is invaluable.

And to be able to sit and say based on our experiences, based on how we're, and so that's the interdisciplinary approach, which I really truly believe in of where we ourselves are breaking down silos.

We ourselves are practicing what we're preaching.

And so the project on Union and American Democracy, that's step one of where we ourselves as problem solvers are bringing our disciplines together and saying, okay, we have this complex problem, we want to get there.

What are the steps we need to put in place?

And then how do we talk about this in a national, in a way that affects the national discourse and also specifically engages policy makers and decision makers who are grappling with these problems daily.

So I'm sort of like the bridge and the connector between the grassroots side of this (tranquil ambient music) and the grass tops policy making side of it.

- [Alison] Samar's work with the project on Unity and American Democracy, millions of conversations, and countless other projects and initiatives that she devotes her time to all circle back to that dream she held onto growing up in Waverly, Tennessee, a world without conflict.

It might seem like a lofty goal, but Samar's diligent mediation at the grassroots level allows her to see the real life impact of this critical work.

So how do you measure success?

- I measure in a couple of different ways.

One is how divided we are as a nation, our language that we used and how we talk about each other.

We are experiencing a hyperpartisan state right now, we know this based on pure research.

When we begin to see the divide, go for the partisan divide and the reasons for the partisan divide diminish, and we start supporting each other in healthier ways and how we measure that.

I think when we know that we are practicing unity, when we are modeling leadership, when we are modeling unity for the rest of the world.

When the rest of the world is also looking at us, 'cause everybody's struggling with this issue right now.

So when we all have a social, we renew a social contract of working towards, I think at least two or three key democratic principles, and what I mean by democratic principles is principles that support democracy.

And we do it in a non-violent way and we see violence going down as well.

And these are things we can measure.

We know then that we're succeeding.

- So what gives you hope?

- Our humanity, our ability, we have been here before.

Human beings are constantly experiencing this cycle, and we don't have to go through a civil war in order to realize peace together, in order to realize unity, we actually don't have to have war.

And we've avoided it in the past and come out stronger and we can do it again.

But we have to be able to figure out how to do it with an online component this time around.

And that's one of the reasons why we started millions of conversations, 'cause that online piece and the offline piece and the combination of those two and working all together is so important.

What gives me hope as well are that Americans are optimistic.

We are an optimistic people, we are a can do people, we are a roll up your sleeves and let's get it done.

We like to solve problems, we never like movies for example, that in negatively or end on a low note, we just don't, we always will say, that's not the, I like American movies, I like American films that make you feel there's hope.

And I think that that's what the rest of the world is also looking to us and from us right now, give us hope,.

And that's the, not the irony, but the thing is, is that the only way out is together.

- Hmm.

- We're divided because of ourselves.

So the only solution of how we get out of this current state is us figuring out how to get along.

And we can do it as human beings and that's what gives me hope is that we know how to do it, we have it in our DNA.

Yes, we have it in our DNA to fight, we also have it in our DNA to not fight and to make peace and to sustain it and to have common sense.

So it's completely doable.

- Well, I think you've given me and all of us a lot of hope.

- Thank you.

- And I appreciate that.

Thank you for being with us Samar.

- Thank you so much.

Take the pledge to listen.

(chuckles) - I already did.

- Okay.

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- [Female Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by.

(upbeat ambient music) - Chattanooga Funeral Home Crematory and Florist, dedicated to helping you celebrate your life or the life of a loved one for over 85 years.

Chattanooga Funeral Home believes that each funeral should be as unique and memorable as the life being honored.

- [Female Narrator] This program is also made possible by support from viewers like you.

Thank you.