Interview with Jimmy Hatch ’24, The Ivy League Insurgent

- Hi everyone, Hannah here. Just a quick heads up that this episode is a little different from our usual content. We interview our fellow Yale alum Jimmy Hatch, a veteran who came to Yale via the Eli Whitney students program for non-traditional students. Jimmy talks about his experiences with arm conflict and this episode includes some mentions of violence and imagery that may be disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome back to another episode of Inside the Yale Admissions Office. I'm Hannah, I'm a Yale Admissions Officer. And I'm Mark, I'm also a Yale Admissions Officer. And today we're doing something new and different on the podcast. We are interviewing a very special guest. - Yes, we've had guests before, usually fellow admissions officers where we're talking shop about admissions. But today's guest is a recent Yale graduate who we think embodies many of the themes we return to over and over when we talk about the admissions process. - Our guest today is Jimmy Hatch. As an introduction, let's give you a quick biography in reverse order. - So Jimmy is currently a lecturer in Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs and he's working on his second book. He's also launching a new podcast. We'll talk more about that later today. - He graduated from Yale College in 2024 with a BA in humanities and at graduation, he was awarded Yale's James Andrew Haas Prize, awarded to that member of the senior class who's breadth of intellectual achievement, strength of character and fundamental humanity have provided leadership for his or her fellow students, inspiring in them a love of learning and concern for others. - Jimmy's Yale College career began in 2019. After he entered through our Eli Whitney students program for non-traditional students. We did an episode about the Eli Whitney students program with Patricia Wei who directs that program a few years back. Jimmy became the first Eli Whitney student to enroll in directed studies. That's Yale's special year long interdisciplinary introduction to the seminal texts of Western and Eastern cultures that a select group of first years take every year. - Yep, and at the time, Jimmy was Yale's oldest freshman. And sorry, I'm gonna expose you here, Jimmy. He started his college career at age 52. - That college career followed his first two careers. 26 years in the U.S. military, most of them as a Navy SEAL, and then about a decade running a nonprofit, he created to help service dogs like the ones who had saved his life while in combat. - Jimmy served in more than 100 missions and in 2009 was critically injured on a rescue mission in Afghanistan. - Now, even before coming to Yale, Jimmy's work had gathered national attention. Anderson Cooper profiled his nonprofit, which is called Spikes Canine Fund, and named Jimmy a champion for change. Since starting at Yale, Jimmy's writing and reflections on the college experience, as well as his work to study the American military experience in Afghanistan have received national attention. - Jimmy, you don't simply have an amazing story to share, which I'm sure spend hours on, but we think you have a very special perspective on the meaning of a college education and an appreciation for a lot of the values that we try to highlight on our podcasts, like having wide-ranging curiosity, a diversity of experiences, being open to learning from others, and willing to reflect on what it means to be a thinking-feeling imperfect, dynamic human. - So, we're thrilled that with the launch of your new podcast, we have an excuse to have you on. Welcome to our podcast, Jimmy. - Thank you for having me. I hope I earned my sandwich today. - For sure, you are. All right, so we have a few questions that we wanted to get into with you. First of all, most of our listeners are students that are reaching the end of high school. For them, enrolling in college right away on route to a career that requires a college degree is probably the only future that they can imagine or what they've always sort of pictured for themselves. That's not where your head was at in high school. Do you want to tell us a little bit about your decision to join the military when you were 17 and kind of the future you imagined for yourself? - I came up in a different kind of a family environment where I lived in different family situations and some of them were less than optimal. And so, actually, most of the relationships I had with human beings were transactional. If you act a certain way, you get to eat. If you act another way, you probably get to beaten. I was drawn to books on the military in particularly war because it seemed there there was no way to shroud the truth about love and relationships. In combat, people would risk their lives for one another and that was a litmus test that I felt was significant. So, the military being a transactional type of organization show up on time, shine your boots, have a shave, you're doing a good job, like, "Hey man, I'm down with that." So, it seemed like a really good idea for me. And college really was never on my radar. I didn't ever believe that I had the intellectual capacity nor the patience to sit down and study. And I honestly, because of the environment I grew up in, I didn't really see any utility in it for me. You were, however, a reader. Once while you were deployed, you read a book by legendary Yale Humanities Professor Harold Bloom. How did you come across his work and why did his writing appeal to you and specifically why did it appeal to you when you were in that space? You know, having been raised in many ways by the military, I would look at the people that I worked with that I had respect for. And I would try to forget what it is they were reading because I thought maybe if they exposed, you know, kind of the things that they were taken in, it would help me become a better human. And I knew that the classics were important and I knew that Shakespeare was important and I knew that Cervantes was important. But I didn't really know why. And so I was getting ready to go on to the deployment in 2005 and walking around a Barnes & Noble in North of Virginia. And I saw this book called Genius by a guy named Harold Bloom. And in it, you know, he talks about all of those folks that I'd mentioned and a bunch more. And it's a pretty good-sized book. And so I'm like, okay, I only need to take one book on deployment. And several months later, you know, we were involved in a really sad kind of a tragic mission that they've made a movie out of now called One Survivor. And I remember coming back down out of the mountains after that. It was a very difficult time and a lot of dead friends, a lot of suffering. It was a really dark period. And I was so drawn to the book because, of course, Professor Bloom wrote amazingly. And it was, you know, most of it was over my head. But I still felt like I was being taken for a ride and a good one, one that was leading me towards kind of light, that, you know, something different than the darkness that I was experiencing. And it was so compelling to me, you know, I got out of my dirty clothes and I cleaned my guns and took a shower and started reading as I fell asleep. And the next morning, I was reading. And I got up and walked over to this little plywood shack we had that had our one unclassified computer. And I emailed him. His email address was in the back of the book. And I didn't really even know where Yale was. It was so far from the galaxy that I inhabited that it didn't matter. Anyway, I just wanted him to know how much that work had touched me and helped me in a specifically difficult time. Like not a rough time, but like carrying your dead friends and smelling them kind of time. And, you know, he wrote back one word of survive. I was like, what a jerk, you know, it was before I realized that you smart Yale people try to say what you can say in as few words as possible. I'm still struggling with that, by the way. Yeah, us too, don't worry. So you've been really open about struggles you've faced after being critically injured while you're on a mission. What helped you recover from that? It's interesting when you ask that question. What helped you recover? Sometimes I think people are considering their problems the way I looked at mine insofar as if someone hasn't had my experience. What's the one thing that I can do? I'm listening to doctors. I'm listening to people. I've got my friends coming around. What is the one thing that got you over the edge? And there really is no one thing for me. And I think it was a combination of both my colleagues who were not social workers or psychiatrists just coming and sharing space with me. And I didn't like them to be there. And they didn't know what to say. And I was pathetic. But the fact that they were there made me understand that they had to have some type of an affection for me or love for me. They'd prove themselves on the battlefield stopping me from bleeding to death. I'm laying there screaming in a gunfight. And that, of course, was the litmus test for love that I came into the military with. And then here I am, pathetic, drunk, abusing drug, ruining my relationships. And they just kept showing up. So that was, I think, the thing that initially sparked the rest of the process that I went through. I don't know that I would have done that. Because here's the thing, man, I talk about mental health a lot, especially with law enforcement and veteran communities. At some point you get to a place where you just don't have hope. And there's no prescription for hope. There's a lot of medicines that'll fix a lot of things. But I don't know that there is anything that gives you hope, except for love. And that, I think, isn't a kind of word that gets bandied about often in the military or law enforcement communities. Those guys love me and they kept showing up. Those types of situations where people can be vulnerable and safe are important for humans in general. And I think we'll probably talk about diversity a little bit. But I think that is another weight on the scale of diversity being a superpower, which I truly believe. And I would not have said that prior to Yale. But I have sat in classrooms with people who come from professors, students, who come from very different backgrounds. And I'd traveled the world of a fair amount. But here it's the same situation, different people, different cultures. But talking about things, at least I was in the humanities, we were talking about things that were pressing it from the time humans started recording history, Herodotus, to now. And it's funny, as I kept going, I saw that those things really didn't actually change a lot. We have iPhones and running water. But we're still the same people who are capable of love and kindness and savagery and violence and diverse opinions make things harder to generalize. And that's, I think, a gift, especially for someone like me. You had some very strong opinions based on very strong experiences and very difficult circumstances. So Jimmy, before you came to Yale, you were already making news for a founding a nonprofit organization called Spikes Canine Fund. Tell our listeners a little bit about the organization and what moved you to start it. Yeah, so my first dog that I worked with in combat was Kild and Ramadi. In 2006, I chased this guy and sent the dog after him. The guy was fighting the dog. And I put some bullets in him. And one of the bullets went through and killed my dog. He was my best friend. He'd saved my life a bunch. So that was the first impact. And then I did more deployments with more dogs. Some as a handler and some as a team leader. And the night I got wounded, a dog got shot in the head about five feet in front of me and saved my life. That's the only reason I knew there were bad guys there. When I came home, after I got myself sorted out, I knew that I had to have a mission. And I was keen to go to the police and say, hey, my name's Jimmy Hatch. And I used to work with dogs in combat. And I'm like, yeah, we know who you are. And sure, help. It didn't need my help. But they knew I probably needed to have somebody put their arms around me and say, hey, come and be part of our team. Because that was such a big part of my life. And one of their dogs actually needed a surgery and the municipality just didn't have the resources or didn't choose to send the resources that way. And I was absolutely taken aback. That was the case as dog adventures and very tough things on behalf of the community. As humans, we tell these dogs, they don't have a choice. They get to go with us. They don't get a choice as to who they are assigned to. And truth be told, I felt like that was a little bit of my history as well. I didn't have any choices about where I was born or where who I ended up with. And what they taught me or didn't teach me at any rate. Because I felt, maybe I felt guilty. And maybe I had some ethical questions with regard to what we're doing, what we're asking these dogs to do. Because I'll tell you, man, if they knew what we were asking them to do, I think they would not do it. I really wanted to figure something out and help this dog and help the officer. Because the officer, when you have a relationship with a dog like that, their family in a big way, a bigger way sometimes than even the human family, because they rely on you. So I went to a friend who knew how to use this thing called Photoshop, and we made a logo out of a picture of Spike and I in Iraq about a week before he was killed. And we put some stars in it. And there's four stars in it. And each one of those stars represented a dog that I served with in combat that was killed. And I put them on a sweatshirt and I put it on Facebook and said, hey, I'm trying to raise money for a dog that needs a surgery. Man, people love dogs. I made about $6,000, which was enough to send the officer in the dog and get the procedure and come back. And I covered all of it. And I had a little money left over. So I was kind of off to the races. And it took off. We've helped well over 3,000 dogs in all 50 states with medical care, the best ballistic vests they're custom made for the dog, all kinds of equipment and medical stuff. We want to make sure that we're an advocate for those dogs. They don't have a voice. And we want to be that voice that says they deserve to be cared for during the time they're working for us humans. And then afterwards, when all of the-- just like me, when I got out of the military, I had to go see the doctor a lot more. Because of the damage I sustained while doing the jobs that I did in the military and the dogs are the same way. So that was a mission for me. And I was grateful to have it because it gave me a direction to point my energies. And it also did something to me or for me that I didn't know I needed. I did not feel as if I belonged in society. I felt as if I was somewhat of a monster because I enjoyed my job previous to getting hurt. And I always felt like if they knew the things that I'd done, if they knew what I was inside, they wouldn't want to be around me. But I had to get out and tell this story. I had to talk about myself. And I had to talk about the dogs in order to raise money and make the organization successful. So that takes a toll, however. And it's another reason that I've stepped away from it. But it helped me become a better communicator. It helped me talk to people I didn't want to talk to. It helped me come out of my shell and see the society in a different way. And so for that, I'm extremely grateful. It's still out there. We're really trying hard. There's over 25,000 K-9 teams that are working daily here in the United States. And so there's a big community of those souls out there helping us. And I want to make sure that they all have what they need. Amazing. I think we're going to pivot and start talking a little bit about your experience with Yale. Starting with-- and this is-- I just learned this-- but you had a chance encounter with a Yale professor while you were skydiving, which kickstarted your interest in applying to Yale's non-traditional student program. What do you remember about that conversation? And what do you think it was about you that made the professor encourage you to apply? So a friend of mine, another seal was at a conference and met professors at Cooper. And we went skydiving. And I was, first of all, this guy said, hey, man, it's a Yale professor. I'm like, OK, some crunchy old dudes are going to come. But he's a young guy. He's in great shape. He's a good-looking dude. He looks like Bradley Cooper. People can-- seriously, they confuse him all the time. I was impressed with him because when we got out of the airplane, he-- I mean, obviously, he was nervous. But I had probably close to 6,000 jumps at that time. And I'd been an instructor in the military. And in the civilian world, I'd seen a lot of people's faces. I always say, you know, when you jump out of the airplane for the first time, you can't lie. I get to see your soul and your face. And he was committed in serene, which is great, because in the last few months, we went down to Florida together and he got a skydiving license. And he's kind of addicted to it now. He messaged me and said, hey, maybe we could have you come up to Yale. And I was like, what the hell? OK. And I had been giving talks a fair amount. And he said, yeah, we do these things up here. They're called at T. And it's like a small kind of talk. And so I came up. And he walked me around and he showed me Yale. I did my talk at TD. I actually stayed there. And that was the college that ended up being in. Oh, me too. Hello, TD. Yep. Nice. I didn't realize what he was doing. Because that's what he was showing me Yale. Not as a-- like, hey, check it out. How cool it is. But as a, hey, you might think about spending some time up here as a student. And I clearly, at that point, there was no way that I would have even considered it. Anyway, two specific things happened that throttled me. The first one was, you know, I went to lunch. We're sitting in TD, actually. You're looking up. And these buildings are just crazy. They're not posh, but they're stately, you know? And they're spectacular, yeah. And so it's somewhat imposing for a guy like me who lived some of his life in a trailer park and slept on plywood over torpedoes and submarines. Like, this is a pretty big deal. And he mentioned something about me being a student at some point. And I said, Zach, I got no business being here. I mean, look at this. These kids, are you kidding me? I didn't come from this. This isn't where I originated. I don't think he staged it. But man, he couldn't have done a better job. There was a young woman sitting next to him at the very, you know, those big long tables that you can see eight people at. She was sitting there, she had her lunch, and she had her computer open, and she was, you know, aggressively getting after both of them. And he said, pardon me, can we ask you some questions? And she said, yeah, sure. He said, you know, where are you from? And she said, I'm from Los Angeles, from Koreatown. He said, okay, what are your folks doing? She said, well, my father is unemployed, but my mother is a waitress, and that was shocking. And then at some point, it became clear that she was flown to Los Angeles for the, her parents, her family did not have the resources to have her go home on the holidays, and Yale helped her with that. And I was really shocked at that. That is not what I thought a place like this would be. I thought it would be, you know, populated by kids who'd gone to really good schools, whose parents were very comfortable and could afford the tuition. And, you know, I had no real insight as to the way things work here. I left there, he didn't really rub that in at the time. And then that night, we went to dinner with Jim Levinson, who's the dean of the Jackson School, for whom I now work as a lecturer. And he asked me at dinner about this tattoo, I have on my forearm, and there's some words in Spanish. And in 1971, when Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in his banquet speech, he said, "Through blood and darkness, poetry is written. Poetry should be written, and that moved me, and I wanted to never forget that." And he said, "Jimmy, you want to apply for this program?" We have here called the Eli Whitney Student Program. And he claims I told him to f off, which I am completely capable of doing. I don't recall that. I recall laughing and rolling my eyes. And he just kind of dropped it. And we ended up talking about something else. So I left after that trip, went back to Virginia, and Professor Cooper sent me, Zach, he sent me, he said, "Hey, Jimmy, here's the link to the Eli Whitney Student Program. Just check it out, see what you think." So I looked at it, and laughed. And I didn't really even understand some of the terms on it, yeah, I'm not sure. And then one day, I mean, he would text me over a few weeks, and one day I said, "You know, what's the worst thing that can happen?" And so I filled the application out, and I got the whole thing done in like 45 minutes. And I texted, Zach, I said, "Hey, man, I just want you to know I submitted my application." He said, "How long did it take you?" I said, "About 45 minutes." And all of a sudden, my phone rings. And he's like, "Jimmy, what?" Well, I said, "Yeah, you know, it seemed like a pretty straight forward, you know?" And he said, "Well, did you do the essays?" And I said, "Yeah." And he goes, "Both of them?" And I said, "Mm-hmm." He said, "How long did they take?" I said, "About 15 minutes, I think, you know?" And he said, "Jimmy, you don't understand me." And those essays, like, people hire people to help with those because they're so important. I'm like, "I think pretty easy to me now." So he said, "Do me a favor and email Patricia away and ask her if you can resubmit the essays." And just have somebody go over them. It's good to have someone check out your stuff. So I took the essays that I had written previously and Zach and I went over them and he helped me with this thing called punctuation and I also grammar. But we really didn't change him that much, which I thought was interesting. And then that was it. I got an email that said I was accepted and I was sitting at my dining room table. My wife was sitting there. I said, "Well, it looks like I got an email." She looked at me and she said, "You are an idiot if you don't take this opportunity." - So Jimmy, one of the things that we try to encourage prospective students to do when they are going to the application process is to really just reflect and take a moment and ask yourself, what is it that you want to get out of your college experience? And we started off saying for most of our students they've never kind of imagined a different world. You've lived in a different world. At that moment, when you started, what did you want to get out of the experience? What was important to you? What were you looking for when you began that Yale journey? - I really didn't know. You know, I had talked to Professor Cooper, Zach about this and he said, "Jimmy, you know, some people come to college as a means of getting themselves to the next place they want to go in life and some people come to college for consumption and not so okay." To me, that was a little bit unsettling. When you're in the military, you have to think about the whole. You're a lot more of a socialist than anything else. You have to think about the rest of the people in the unit and I thought, listen man, if I'm coming up here, I'm taking a slot away from a young person. This might make the difference in their life. You know, what am I? And then one of the professors, when I got to directed studies, he helped me clarify what it was that made me want to be here and he was going around the room for Stave Class and he looked at me and he said, "James, why are you here? What made you want to come here?" And I said, it just popped. It made sense, it was a clarifying statement. I said, "I really want to be a better human." That was my motivation. And I would not have been able to tell you that initially. I didn't know what I would get and I spent a lot of time thinking I didn't deserve to be here, which was a wasteful thing. And if any of you prospective students are in that frame of mind, whether before you get here or when you get here, I would tell you to stop it. If these folks let you in, you need to get after it. And you need to not waste your time messing around, being insecure about why you're here. That's a useless question. The bottom line is you are here and the other people that are here are impressive and you are impressive and you need to get going. And not waste a moment. Looking back now, do you feel like your time at Yale, majoring in the humanities in this liberal arts college environment helps teach you how to be a better human? Do you feel like you came out the other side of that and accomplished that goal to some extent? Yeah, I think it's an indulgence to judge yourself on your own human quality. Well, sure. But I'm not shy on indulgences, so I do 100%. And I think it changed me. People ask, well, what changed you? I think that's in very strong opinions before I came here on things like foreign affairs and even some of the cultural issues. And I hadn't really ever studied anything. I just, I felt as though my experiences were so powerful that I did have a podium to stand on and say, you're wrong. This is what, you know. But as I learned, specifically in directed studies, I didn't have really any special insights on why war occurred. I was okay at conducting it. And I committed myself in a very heavy way to it, but I didn't really understand what it was going to solve. And I didn't really understand the damage that the entirety of conflict causes for, you know, eons. And that was humbling and it was a bumpy road for me. And I'm really grateful that my professors put up with me. Another thing that we talk with our listeners a lot about is how admissions work is sort of fundamentally about building a community. I like to say that the 6600 undergraduates at Yale are in my mind the most valuable learning resource that we can provide. What were some of the lessons that you learned just by being in community with your Yale classmates? And what do you think were some of the things that they learned by having you as a classmate? When I talk to people outside of the university about my experiences, the first thing I often say is, look, I didn't spend time with the veteran's community. I didn't spend my time with my fellow Ely Whitney classmates. I spent my time with my classmates in directed studies who were just at a high school. And it was absolutely one of the best experiences of my life. These kids were clearly hard workers. Their work ethic was amazing. But their curiosity and their drive to intake as much information to make them a valuable tool in this world, it was very compelling. And I'm glad that I ended up doing that. In fact, when I do talk to veterans that come to Yale, I say, hey, man, get out of that comfort zone with the people that you're accustomed to, the people that speak the same language and use the same acronyms, spend some time with these kids. The number one thing I learned from these kids was to just be ferocious about it. I feel like I was about that, about everything else in my life. But here I had some, there was some trepidation because I didn't feel super comfortable. And then after a while, I was, you know, the 50 so much. I'd say in your early 50s is where you start to not care what you wear and people, you know. And you don't really care if people think you're silly or what, you know, you don't care as much. That helped me also, some of the outreach that the kids did to me on Veterans Day, a young man who's now, I think he's prepping his law school applications, he, presidential scholar from Pennsylvania. I didn't know what that was until I met him. On Veterans Day, he brought me a card in that card. He had had the other kids in directed studies sign it. And it said, thank you for your short story country. And I was stunned. And at that point, and some of the other younger people that I sat with and hung around with that I was in some of the same classes, we just became very close. In fact, we used to meet on Sundays over Zoom during COVID. And they've all, you know, spread to the wind, a couple of them were out at Stanford and ones in law school, ones getting his PhD in economics. But those relationships, I think I've touched what the undergraduates can kind of touch. Recently went to the class of '65 or union. They made me an honorary member. And I saw these connections that these people had, you know, they dispersed all over the world, but they'd come back together. And it was almost as if they'd never left each other. That type of relationship, I think, is really special. And I think I did not put a lot of weight on that. I wish that I had known that that was part of the education as you referred to. - After the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, you proposed a course at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. And Yale kind of took you up on the idea that the course was led by former US ambassador to Pakistan and Patterson. And you were sort of an unofficial co-leader. Can you tell us a little bit about the goal for that class? Why you proposed it and kind of what came out of it? - Actually, it's funny. I didn't actually propose it, but I was asked to go on Anderson's show because they knew that I had been in Afghanistan where I was wounded and that I'd lost friends. And I was pretty raw at that moment because of the way the things were going with us leaving. And I don't remember saying, I was actually a little angry at, you know, the news, you know, they're talking about it in political terms, you know. And I said on the program, I said, look, you know, we need to do an after-action. And what I mean by that is when in the military when we go out and do a mission, even if it's completely successful, we come back and we debrief it and we tear it apart. You know, we have to. If we don't, we're not going to evolve as a unit. And we're going to fall behind. The enemy is going to have an advantage on us if we're not critical of ourselves. If we can't look each other in the eye and say, man, this was a mistake. I felt like we needed to do that as a nation. And one thing that I learned in the course with Ambassador Patterson was that we'd never done anything like that with Korea or Vietnam. There'd been no specific group of people sit down, get the materials, drive through it and come up with some after-action suggestions, even. So when I said that on CNN, fellow who was running the American University in Kabul saw it and mentioned it to Dean Levinson. Dean Levinson messaged me, we talked and he said, look, we're going to do that. But because on the program, I said, listen, we can't have Congress do this after-action, because they can't agree on facts. I thought the only place it could happen is in academia. It has to happen in academia. Because based on my experiences, specifically in directed studies, the raw throat out there, deal with it. I thought that's exactly the kind of sunlight that this festering wound that we had as a nation needed to disinfect and heal so that we could then move on and make better decisions. Look, some of the guys that I went to war with that were killed have kids who've just recently graduated from the service academies or colleges and they're now serving in the military. And they deserve better decisions. They deserve to have people give themselves a hard look and say, hey, I messed this up. Don't do this again. And I think we accomplished in that Afghanistan class. I think we accomplished some very significant things. And it made me feel as if not only did we do an after-action, but we ourselves, me in particular, changed significantly in our views about conflict. - So, Jimmy, one of the things that you did in this class was you invited a spokesperson for the Taliban to come and talk to the class. We have a question on our application. That's about a difficult conversation with someone that opposed in view. It's hard for me to imagine a more difficult conversation than that. Why was it important for you to invite that person and what was that experience like? - Yeah, it became clear to me about two weeks into the course and this was not easy. You know, I was a guy 9/11. I was like a lot of other people and I thought, man, we just need to kill everybody that was responsible. And in my mind, if you sympathize with them, you should probably die. So I thought the solution was just smoking people. And I really did. I really believed that if we just go over there and kill as many of these people as we could, that was gonna solve it. And we wouldn't have to suffer that kind of stuff in the future. About two weeks into the class, I realized that I was an error, that that does not solve anything, that what it actually does is exacerbate it. It elongates the problem, makes it much larger and it makes it much more difficult to look at objectively. So, what's the recoil? You know, when you shoot a gun, there's the discharge and the bullet goes away from you, but there's a little shock that comes back at you. And I call that the recoil and that feeling, there's just a second in there that I jokingly say, that's the place where you consider where the bullet's actually really gonna do. And I considered what, you know, me as the bullet did. And then I thought, what's the exact opposite? The exact opposite of that is talking to people you don't wanna talk to. - Yeah. - And through some of the books that Ambassador Patterson had us read, I've read from people like Condolee Sir Rice and a few others that, you know, those were areas in which we didn't make good choices. And so, I thought for the students and for me, the best thing to do is to talk to the people that we could hated us. And it was right before Christmas, we did a Zoom. The Taliban spokesman was in Kabul. They had to put up a generator for lights and you could tell it was freezing. And we talked for, I'd say it was close to an hour, Ambassador Patterson was there. And some of the other students in the Zoom. And it was a great discussion, really, because the Taliban spokesman, he was very, very well spoken. I asked some pretty hard questions and he had answers for him, really. And some of them were not things that I would have considered. I believe that is what has to happen. I'm no diplomat, I don't understand statecraft. But I do believe this, if we're gonna go start dropping bombs and killing people, we better damn well, use everything in our power to try to keep that from occurring because once you open the gates to violence and conflict, it's very difficult to close them. And I wanted to set an example on this old guy with bullet holes in him, tattoos, baggage. And I wanted to set the example that we have to talk about things we don't wanna talk about. And you know what, kind of learned that here. - You've shared what you were trying to get out of your college experience. Do you feel like you're 20 year old classmates, approached their time at Yale with similar goals or in a similar way, or is there something that you kind of understood about the value of your education that you wished others understood in the same way when you were here? - I would like to think that I helped my classmates, but that, you know, and they would be the ones to ask on that. But, you know, I remember at times sitting with them and being overwhelmed by the atmosphere and the people and the high frequency of the talking. We were, the things that we were talking and things were just discussing, both in leisure and in class. And I remember one time cheering up at a table with them and just saying, do you know how lucky we are? And I didn't always feel that way. I really struggled. It was really hard for me. Classes were very hard. I didn't really have much of a social life because I had to work really hard just to kind of keep up. And I knew how lucky I was. And I wanted them to feel that too. I think if the kids get involved in conversations with people that are not like them, they will have that input, especially if they're older. You know, truthfully, I didn't approach the students because I was afraid that they would think I was a monster. They actually ended up approaching me. And that was pretty compelling. So I was in a class. It was my second semester's right before COVID hit. And each morning, the professor we had, she'd have us do what's called a check-in. And, you know, she would say, what's going on in your life? You know, you can share whatever. And we're going around the room with this one young woman. She said, you know, I called my dad last night and I told him, I really have an hard time making friends here. And he said, well, you know, you have to try to do that too. You can't just wait for people to come to you. You have to, you know, assert yourself and introduce yourself. And I thought, okay, she's 18 years old. These are a bunch of fire-breathing competitive kids. And man, she had a courage to do that in front of these-- And I think that's a theme here that I very much appreciate. Yeah. It's certainly a theme that we encourage folks in their applications is the value in being comfortable with making yourself vulnerable. It doesn't come naturally, but recognizing that you're a real person and that there's another real person on the other side. So Jimmy, one of the things that I enjoy most about your writing and the interviews that you do is that you seem to really let a piece of writing or art or performance affect you emotionally. And at the risk of generalizing sort of about people who are in spaces like Yale, I think most of us sort of tend to approach things like that analytically first. Do you think I'm onto something here? Do you think that you read literature or something like art history, you know, differently than your peers do? And as someone who I think is a fabulous ambassador for the humanities, do you think more people might be drawn to it if we took a more emotional approach first and sort of waited for the analysis? Yeah, I don't know that I've got the brain big enough to decide, you know, which is the better the two. But I will say this, man, I don't look at much analytically. And that's not helped me in some of my studies. I feel it. I have to feel it. If I don't feel it, I'm not going to retain it. It's not going to be a significant part of the tapestry that is my intellect. I have to feel it and I don't know what that's from. I don't know if there's something wrong with me or if there's something out of place, maybe it's all the head injuries, I don't know. But that was the thing about directed studies, except for some of the more a stare philosophy. And even in those classes, I could still get some of the chunks out and go, wow, like Spinoza, right? So, you know, I couldn't read that stuff and have a general understanding of it. But I could feel it, you know, like Spinoza. Let's just use that as an example. I was more interested in the life he lived. You know, he was part of the Jewish community, Spain. And of course, eventually, they were run out of Spain. He moved to the Netherlands to Amsterdam. And that's where he wrote what he wrote. And he was kicked out of the Jewish community there for writing what he did. I respect that. You know, he wanted to get down to what he believed was the truth. Now, I kind of have a general idea that he, like me, thinks everything's God. And that's about where my depth of knowledge comes. But what I felt was, here's a guy. Here's a man, a human who had lived this kind of life and yet reserved a place where he could think about things on an extremely high level. And did so regardless of the circumstances for him, like his comfort. He was so true to himself. So I'm down with that. I think that is-- I can't tell you the arguments. I couldn't recall even probably a sentence from the stuff that I read. I just know that I felt him. And the same man, like Don Quixote, and I was so hilarious. You know, we were talking in literature class. And he said, you know, how was he-- and I think the professor said, he's probably in his 50s middle age, and they're like, man, he's almost dead. And I'm like, hey, wait a minute, hold on. But man, I think I hit something in being the windmill pugilist that the kids couldn't really grasp. And I don't care what age you hit those classics. You're going to feel them. And that-- I mean, if you're open to it, and I was sure open to it, and the more I felt it, the more I wanted, the more I hungry I got for it. And you know, it's just this morning I was-- Charlie Hill was my first professor here, my very first class. And he wrote bullshit on my first paper. I don't think he would do that to a regular student, but he knew where I came from. And he knew I would understand exactly what he was saying with that one word. When he passed his wife, Norma Thompson, who was the director of undergraduate studies, when I arrived here, and she was kind of my go-to person, she invited me over to their home and said, Jimmy, pick the books of his that you would liken. And Charlie Hill was a lot of things, but he was very consumed, I believe, by the way literature could help everything. He was prolific here. And it was all, I believe, that most of it came from literature. And so in his book, he had these little sticky notes, or he would just write in the book. And his handwriting was impeccable. It was in pencil. So this morning, I got my version, my Moby Dick. Because he told me, I said, Professor Hill, is there an American epic? And he said, yeah, Moby Dick. And I got to take a Moby Dick class with Professor Bromux later. And I'm just going to take what he said and go with it. This morning, I had Charlie Hill's version of mine, and I looked at the places I highlighted, and I looked at the places he highlighted. And some were the same, but some were different. And looking at those, this is kind of a special treat. And I have a bunch of his books on me at Dostoevsky, and I'm going to try to read them before I die. And I'm going to try to have Charlie teach me still. And I think, I don't know if that's a gift you can quantify, man. What kind of advice would you give a 17-year-old, who hasn't thought very deeply about what they want to get out of college, or why they should go to college at all? A lot of our listeners are obviously interested in college. They know they're on a path to get there. But is there anything you would hope that they're thinking about as they prepare for this experience? Yeah, I guess just based on my experience, the things that were somewhat shocking to me was, as you've mentioned previously, Mark, that the learning that you do from one another, both in class and outside of class, I was shocked at the angles that valuable heartfelt knowledge hit me. And those are opportunities. And if you can open yourself to them, get past this all, I barely got in, or whatever. And the only reason I keep bringing this up is I've talked to my classmates, and many of them felt the same way I did, in spite of the fact that they were the valedictorian, or that they had to create an SAT score, or whatever. They were concerned about that. And I would say, hey, come here. Don't worry about that. If you get in, you're in. Whatever college you go to, if you get in, you're in. And man, you're not going to have an opportunity like this ever again. And I actually was giving a speech once in Chicago. And a bookstore had an agreement with my publisher to bring copies of my book. And the woman who owned the bookstore was the one who brought the books. And after I gave my speech, I was a student at the time. After I gave my speech, she said, you know, I graduated from Yale. And she was roughly my age. And she said, you know, I wish I could go back now, because I sure as hell would have had a better time. I would not have wasted much as much time as I did. And that's great, you know, and the 17-year-olds were like, yeah, I hear that. And you walked uphill to school, you know, I bought. Truthfully, don't take a minute for granted. I guess that's what I would say. I would say, don't worry, wherever you end up, you should be there. And don't waste your time worrying about what other people think of you or what you think they think of you because they're in the same boat you are. I sometimes shudder when I think about the things in class that I missed because I was thinking about the fact that I'm a 52-year-old guy sitting here with these brilliant kids, what the hell am I doing? That was a complete and utter waste of time. And man, you know, your most valuable resource is your time. So think about it in those terms. - That's brilliant. - Great advice. - Fantastic wisdom to share with our listeners. So Jimmy, last question for you, you're launching a new podcast. The title is the Ivy League Insurgent. - Yeah. - Tell us about what you plan to cover on the show. - Well, I mean, it's still obviously in the mix, but I think what I'd like to do is to try to represent the things that I felt and experienced here at Yale and the whole swath, you know, the stuff that is beautiful that people may not hear about, the stuff that was difficult that people may not hear about. And like, you know, with the Taliban, there's a certain, there's a part of the culture in any university or in any organization that has a, I wouldn't call it a prejudice, but maybe against other, or in this case, I'm speaking specifically about the police. And I've worked a lot with police, police have saved me, saved my life a couple of times, once a child was getting severely beaten. And then later on in life when I was suicidal. And so I work with them a lot and I would like to have them come and talk because I took the ROTC unit, asked me if I could help them with a training day. So I said, heck yeah, and I took them to a training facility that the New Haven Police Department uses. And we were doing our training, we were having a really good time, it was fun. And some of my police buddies were there and one of the kids, one of the young students grabbed me, said, "Hey, Jimmy, man, these guys are kind of nice guys." And I'm like, "What? You've never met a cop?" And he was like, "No." And I said, "All right, training's over. Get in the classroom and I went to the cops." And I said, "Hey, man, these kids have never met a cop." And I'd like for you guys to have a discussion. And they thought, "Oh, yeah, cool." They weren't ready for Yale kids, man. Like, so what do you guys want to know, you know, how do you, they introduced themselves, talked about what they did specifically with Police Farm, and then one of the kids, I think it was the first question, I was like, "How do you deal with all the negativity? How does your family deal with it?" And now there's, now the cops are on their heels and I'm like, "Yeah, buddies." So I would like to do those things. What part of the society is frowned upon? I'd like to bring those people. Because at the end of the day, just like I learned in the Afghanistan class, and just like I learned in teaching my class with these young people, I learned a lot from them. When you sit across the table from people, it's very hard to disregard their humanity. It's a lot harder when you sit across the table from someone and look them in the eye and feel what they feel a little bit. It's a lot harder than paint them as a complete enemy and kill them. And I know that sounds very simple, but really it is actually. We can complicate the hell out of it, but the bottom line is when we start creating another, that's not hard to do, and we're good at it. And people want to blame generation. No, it's been that way since anybody read the Iliad. So I think I want to do that. I want to try to create an environment where we can have not because they need to make money and we need to promote a conflict that maybe doesn't really exist. But because this is how people truly feel, because based on their experience, this is what they know. I want to open those doors and I want to try to create a breeze in this great building that we're in here. I want all thoughts and all viewpoints to be given the same amount of light. And I don't know, man, I may only do a couple podcasts. Well, Steve, that's what I'd really like to do. I have some big ideas. I want to try to present people and situations that are learning opportunities and a bit frightening. Well, we certainly can't wait to listen to the podcast. There is a trailer that's out now. We will play that at the end of this episode so people can go ahead and subscribe wherever they get their podcasts. - If you are a 17-year-old high school senior who's thinking about college admissions, you might not immediately think that a podcast by a Navy vet and Purple Heart recipient is right for you to be listening to right now, but trust us and hopefully you've learned from this conversation. You'll learn a lot about what it really means to study the liberal arts and what it's like to be a member of the Yale community. - Jimmy, thank you so much for joining us today and best wishes for your podcast and all your future projects. - Thanks, Margaret. And thank you, and I'm really grateful for this opportunity. - It's great to have you. - Thanks to former admissions officer, Andrew Brick Johnson, who composes our music. You should check him out at angribrickjohnson.com. - If you have comments or an idea for an episode, drop us a line at Yale [email protected]. And finally, remember that the views expressed in this podcast are ours and don't necessarily represent those of Yale University. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) - Welcome to the Ivy League Insurgent. I'm Jimmy Hatch, a veteran with 26 years of service, 22 of those in the SEAL teams. I'm also a recent graduate of Yale University. In 2009, my life changed forever when I was seriously wounded during a mission in Afghanistan. A decade later, I found myself facing a new kind of fear, walking into my first Yale classroom as a 52-year-old freshman, surrounded by students, less than half my age. The battlefield had its terrors, but nothing quite prepared me for the vulnerability of starting over in an Ivy League lecture hall. Now as a Yale graduate, I'm on a mission to build bridges between the worlds that shaped me, the military and academia. On this podcast, I'll sit down with military veterans, professors, thought leaders, and change makers. Together, we'll explore the flaws and strengths of our institutions, the challenges and beauty of connecting people different from ourselves and the universal threads that make us human. The people I met on more than 150 direct action missions and in the halls of one of the most elite universities in the world changed my life in ways I never expected. Stick with me and maybe their stories will change yours too.