Mindsets, skills and leadership, experience and access, and critical consciousness - we need all four of these things for our students to be the leaders, people and citizens we want them to be.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As a leader, these attributes - confidence, perseverance, work ethic and good sense - are all things I look for in people. I also try to lead by example and create an environment where good questions and good ideas can come from anyone.
The most important role of a leader is to set a clear direction, be transparent about how to get there and to stay the course.
In the long run, we will need many more African-American, Latino, and Native American leaders, and leaders from low-income communities, who can bring additional insight and a deeply grounded sense of urgency, and who are the most likely to inspire the necessary trust and engagement among students' parents and community leaders.
A leader in any place must ask himself who he identifies with, with which values, and towards what goals.
Students need to learn how to think critically, how to argue opposing ideas. It is important for them to learn how to think. You can always cook.
Universities should be about more than developing work skills. They must also be about producing civic-minded and critically engaged citizens - citizens who can engage in debate, dialogue and bear witness to a different and critical sense of remembering, agency, ethics and collective resistance.
Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves - and be free.
What is important is a leader who can be trusted.
You can expect to find these four priorities - education, economic vitality, efficiency in government and the protection of families - woven into my decisions as Governor. They will serve as my compass as I work with you to chart a future course for our state.
In the end, as a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: what you create and what you allow.