Ken Chenault and Ken Frazier on the Challenge of Polarization Today

So I'd say first of all, you know, having what I would call an enduring relationship that's really built on trust is very powerful. And we'll talk a little bit about how everything came together, but very frankly, we met at Harvard Law School. I was in my third year, Ken was in his first year, and at the end of the day, third-year students didn't spend a lot of time with first-year students, so I didn't know Ken really very well at all. And then in fact, when I saw an article that Ken had been promoted to run a major business unit at Merck, I gave him a call.

The other thing is that our spouses went to college together. That's right. And the other thing is that for me, Ken has always been someone that I looked up to. And when I was moving over from the legal side to the business side at Merck, very quickly I got a phone call from Ken who said, 'You know, there's a lot about the corporate world that isn't written in books, and I think we should spend some time together because it's important for you to know the unwritten rules.' And I've always benefited from him.

So I think we're in a very different place. Unfortunately, I think we're in a different place. I think what was important about the effort that Ken and I were involved in and led was, to your point, Edward, we both believe strongly that corporations exist because society allows us to exist. And if you in fact want to build an enduring company, even in a self-interested way, you need to be very concerned about our society. For the United States, there's nothing more important than our democracy, and the right to vote is fundamental to that democracy. And I'm going to have Ken sort of cover both a little bit of the legal and strategic side of what we did, but I think what was very important is our view that we have to in fact preserve our democracy. And if people can't vote, or they are prevented from voting, or they make it difficult for people to vote, that has a serious impact on our democracy. So neither of us believe that corporations should speak out on every issue, but there are fundamental issues, and what can be more fundamental than the right to vote?

No, we got actually over 700.

I think it would be much harder to get CEOs to take a stand on those issues, on many other issues. It's amazing how much the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction in our society. We are, of course, an incredibly polarized society, and a great deal of that has to do with the fact that I believe that the American people really don't know who to trust anymore. They don't trust institutions anymore. You know, frankly, we don't have very much of a shared identity as a people anymore. There's a lot of systemic inequality, and all of that leads to a polarization. And I think today CEOs are very concerned about speaking out in a deeply divided society. And a big part of that, frankly, is people don't know how to speak to the sort of the common values or the middle there. The extremes monopolize the communications in our society, and so CEOs are afraid of being accused of being woke or accused of being on the wrong side of issues. We have huge domestic tensions in this country, we have great economic tensions, and now we have geopolitical tensions with what's happening in Gaza that are greater than they've ever been since Vietnam. So I think CEOs want to kind of avoid being in the middle.

Yeah, and I think, Edward, just one thing there that is important is that thinking back, there were some signs of CEOs who said, 'I don't want to get involved because of the politics.' And the way we were able to convince CEOs at that time to get involved is to say, 'This is not a political issue. This is an issue of fundamental rights.' And frankly, the example that I use with some CEOs is I said, 'What would you have done in the 1930s when there was racial segregation?' Well, I said, 'Oh, we wouldn't, I wouldn't have gone for that at all.' I said, 'That's really not true. Companies didn't act. What they said, if they were pressed, was a political issue. That was a fundamental rights issue.' And so I think at the end of the day, we've got to focus on that. But to Ken's point, right now it is so politicized that people can't focus on the fundamental issues.

I don't think anyone would have anticipated the rapid change in our society. And again, I attribute a lot of it to how communications happens in our society now, which is to say that people can go to social media, there are all these algorithms that bring people into contact, connect with people who already think like them, condemn people who don't think like them. And so because you either are one side or another, the Gallup poll last year said for the first time in American history, race, religion, and region are not how people identify. Ideology is how people identify. And so politicians take advantage of that to create anger and resentment. And I think CEOs just want to keep their companies out of the controversy.

Yeah, I think it's to Ken's point, it is a fear that it's politicized. I mean, if you think about this view that DEI is the cause of all of society's problems, it's the cause of Boeing's problems. I mean, anything that happens, people will say, some people will say it's DEI. And the reality is, fundamentally, if you step back and say, 'Well, would things be better if we didn't have women in the workforce, blacks in the workforce, LGBTQI in the workforce? Would things be better?' I mean, that's just ridiculous. But the reality is, unfortunately, the business community has been relatively quiet.

So let me start by saying I think the big challenge that we face in a polarized world is to be able to communicate with people. And the first step is you can't possibly construct an effective argument to change someone's mind if you don't understand how they think. And I think too often people jump to the communications point without trying to understand the perspective. In my old business, there's an anti-vaccine movement, and inside a company like Merck, which is a science-oriented company, it just drives people crazy. But the reality of the world is we're never going to be able to communicate if we don't actually understand the other side's perspective. So that's the first thing. I think the second thing is because we have so little common ground, it seems to me that the way that we ought to try to articulate our points of view is to go to higher ground. To Ken's point, we share certain values as Americans, and whether or not we're on the left side or the right side of the political spectrum, if you talk about some of those higher-level values, you have a chance of maybe getting to more common ground. So to use the DEI example, right, people, you know, they have their own impression of what those letters mean. All right, but the reality of the world is if you ask the average person, 'Do you think it makes sense in our society to expand opportunity for everyone?' they would say yes. Right? Some people would say, 'Well, those words are, you know, reverse discrimination.' Well, I think most Americans don't want to discriminate against anybody on the basis of that, and yet at the same time they want to expand opportunity. So one of the keys is to talk about things at the level of principle and values so that you do create an environment where people can actually come together.

You know, one of the things I would say, Edward, is where I see some hope, and it's interesting, as divided as our society is, if we look at a range of companies that in fact have pretty diverse populations, things seem to be working fairly well. Doesn't mean that there are not issues and that more needs to be done, but to Ken's point, I think I'd go back to what's critical is what's the shared identity. And I would say one of the fundamental issues, I think, in America is we do need a shared identity. We do need an understanding of what are the core values of this country, and that should not at all say you've got to be in this political party versus another party. That we may disagree on the tactics, we may disagree on some of the strategies, but the key thing at the end of the day is what's the alignment on the core values and beliefs. And I think what's also important is we've reached a point in public discourse where the truth no longer matters in a number of quarters. That's a fundamental problem. And so if you ask me where should leaders be speaking out, they should be speaking out in matters of truth and facts, because that's not political.

Well, yeah, I think that's exactly what the issue is. At the end of the day, people have weaponized communications. You know, they use gaslighting, they use fake news, they use alternative facts. I think the challenge for us is, again, going back to what I said before, is if people believe you understand how they interpret the world, then you have a better opportunity to try to bring them to a point where they can recognize what's in common. And I do think what Ken said is really true. At the end of the day, if we can't communicate about facts rather than ideology, then I think we have very little opportunity to come to a common perspective on things.