Mercury News interview: Tom Campbell’s journey: from D.C. to Berkeley to Africa
Tom Campbell’s résumé is longer than most, and reveals a restless intellectual energy that is somewhat rare in a politician.
He recently stepped down as dean of Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley, and filed papers to form an “exploratory committee” to run for governor. He remains a professor at the school and has joined law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in its Palo Alto office as an adviser.
A Republican, Campbell served five years in Congress starting in the late 1980s, served a term in the state Senate in the 1990s and was director of the California Department of Finance from 2004 to 2005. A former Stanford University law professor, he has spent six summers teaching in Africa.
For this Q&A, Campbell laid down one rule: no discussion of his possible run for governor. Instead, he asked the newspaper a question: “Would you be interested in doing the interview strictly on Africa? It’s an area of great interest to my heart; it gets such little coverage, and I think we might actually reach some potential volunteers to help among the Merc’s readership.”
Q No problem, but first we’d like to know a little bit about what you’ve learned during your association with the Haas School of Business over the past six years. Have students changed during the time you were dean?
A I think they have. I started in 2002 and the students that I saw were coming back to get an MBA because
they could afford to take the time away from their start-up because their start-up had not succeeded. During the intervening years, the economy came back strongly, then last year, there was the downturn again. When you have a downturn, you have more students applying for an MBA. It’s counter-cyclical because the value of their time is less – they are not moving away from a job that is paying so much.
Q What’s hot and what’s not at graduate business schools?
A Non-profit management and social responsibility in for-profit enterprises are very active at Haas and throughout business schools in general. We have a program that has really caught on where students get an MBA and expect to go to work for a non-profit.
On the flip side, there are profit-making businesses in which shareholders support a desire to do something beyond profit maximization. We studied that in the Center for Social Responsibility, and we have an investment fund where students make investment decisions based on both their company’s financial and non-financial good. It will be fascinating to see if you have to give up some financial rate of return in order to achieve a non-financial goal, or not.
Q How about the students? Did you see the number of foreign-born increase?
A I don’t know that it’s more, but I would say a substantial level of students at the undergraduate level at Haas are first-generation Americans or foreign born – more than half.
Q You’ve spent a lot of summers teaching in Africa, principally Eritrea, Ghana and Rwanda. Why?
A I visited 25 countries when I was on the Africa committee of the House International Relations Committee when I was a congressman. This is how it got my interest. I served five terms in Congress, and every break in the schedule that I could manage, I went to Africa.
Q What were you doing there?
A Teaching and traveling, visiting Peace Corps and governmental projects, projects that Africans had made successful. There was a lot in microfinance and I can’t talk positively enough about the Peace Corps. Wherever you go in Africa, you will find a businessman or government official who says “I got my start because I learned English at the Peace Corps.” Presidents of countries have told me that. And that’s for pennies compared to what we spend on other things.
Q There’s so much you can do with small effort.
A Or with a lot of effort!
I taught at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in Rwanda. They’ve got a department of “appropriate technology.” They match the technology to the environment. They make solar ovens so you don’t need fuel. They make paper clips, extracting the wire and turning it into paper clips. If you were to add up what is the income from all this, it would be very, very low. If you ask, are people able to produce enough to sustain a healthy life, the answer would be yes.
Q Rwanda must be a tough case, given its recent history.
A They went through genocide in 1994. I started going over there in ’96 when I was in Congress. I’ve been back several times since to teach. Literally nobody I met was untouched, that is to say they had a family member who died, or had a very close friend who died. What’s remarkable is how they’ve turned it around, positively. They are making an economic investment in telecommunications. They are leap-frogging the need to put copper wires into people’s homes because of cell phones.
Rwanda is making this turn, and they are very conscious of the opportunity to take evil and turn it into tremendous good with a process similar to South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission.
Q What did you teach?
A I teach whatever they ask me to. One time I taught Ghanaian constitutional law. Largely I’m teaching in business schools. Things like what industries should be run by government, what should be open to the market, when should government regulate prices and when not.
Q What can a business gain by devoting part of its energy to helping people in places like Africa?
A You see more and more companies attracting workers who want to participate in doing good things. If a company has a program that will allow an employee to participate, that company is going to attract better, more loyal, happier and more productive employees.
And there are things you learn. Eritrea has, sadly, a long history of civil war with Ethiopia. They got their freedom in 1992. There are lot of land mines. As a result, at the University of Asmara in Eritrea, I’d say maybe 25 percent to a third of the students are missing a limb. Those who are missing legs cannot get up the stairs to the second floor or the third floor. No questions asked, the students just carry each other. I’ve never seen anything like it. Very naturally, somebody offers you his back and you climb on it and he takes you up to the next floor.
Q That’s a good metaphor for what you’d like to see people and companies do.
A It is.
