Transcript of Usha Vance’s Remarks At U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum

Well, you can’t beat the weather, of course. And I grew up in a pretty Asian American community with people from all over the world. But we had a lot of family friends who were Indian Americans who had come at around the same time and were also teaching at UCSD. We had friends from all over as well, from every kind of background.

So it was really a community, I think, where everyone felt a sense of purpose and a sense of working together. Everyone was really invested in being a part of this country and pursuing the American dream for themselves and their kids. So I just felt like it was a time of limitless possibility and encouragement and I’m really grateful to have grown up there.

So I left after that to go to Yale in New Haven. Rather different climate, but I really. It was also a wonderful time to be a Yale student and that sense of possibility continued. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to live in San Diego since then, but we do spend a lot of time there with family and with all of these wonderful people that I grew up around.

Family Support and Independence

INTERVIEWER: You know, as parents, we often care so much about our kids as they grow up. At the same time we selfishly would like for them to go to school close to where we live because we know they will often meet somebody halfway across the nation and stay there. Were they 100% supportive of you and your independence on this?

USHA VANCE: They were. Actually makes such a difference, yeah. My parents are surprisingly free with their children, sort of defying stereotypes. Their attitude was, as long as you’re putting your best into everything that you do, and as long as you really care about what it is that you’re working on, then we support it.

Now, that’s not to say that they didn’t think that flying all the way across the country when there were some very good universities close to home wasn’t something that you had to think kind of seriously about. But once I had a real reason to go, they were all in. And, you know, as you suspected, or as they probably suspected, my life sort of veered towards the east coast after that. And I married someone who’s from the eastern half of the country, and obviously I’m here today, and they’ve been very supportive of all of those steps.

Perspectives on US-India Relations

INTERVIEWER: You know, when you think about the relationship between us and India, the people in this room believe it’s the most strategic relationship in the world between any two countries. We’re a little bit biased. And when we first said eight years ago that our goal was to create not only the most strategic, but to change the lives of every citizen in every state, all 50 in the U.S. all 29 in India, and go way beyond trade, into health, into standard of living, jobs, growth, et cetera. I fell in love with this concept because of the people of India and how close it could be. When you think about the US India relationship from your personal perspective, what comes to mind in terms of your views of it and your thoughts? Because you see it from an angle literally none of us do.

USHA VANCE: Well, of course, it is a very personal relationship because I have family members who are in India, and I have many family members who are in the United States. And I did grow up visiting India and visiting those family members, and they grew up visiting me. So that’s always been a relationship that I’ve personally thought of as very important.

The way that I think about it more broadly is I think this is a time of great opportunity. And I think if my husband were here, he’d say the same thing. Obviously, the United States and India, their relationship has ebbed and flowed at times. There are times when one country’s needs and one country’s goals are different from the other. But right now, I think in the next four years and in the future.

The fact that there is this established Indian American population here and so many people in India who know the country and know the people who are here doing great things, having great opportunities. When we were visiting recently, I was just struck by the number of people who came up to me to say how much they loved our country, how they visited family, how they visited just for pleasure, that they were hoping for a close relationship, looking forward. And I think these personal ties actually really have something to do with it.

Meeting the Vice President

INTERVIEWER: If you allow me to ask some personal questions. And you, of course, very effectively would dodge any you don’t want to answer. Tell us about how you met the vice president. And, you know, we read about it, but often what you read isn’t necessarily what occurred. And who knew first that this was going to be kind of a great relationship for life. What do you all do together? Tell us a little bit about your personal life. And I know what that’s like when you’ve got three kids trying to raise them, plus two jobs at the same time.

USHA VANCE: Absolutely. Well, we met in law school. So by the time we’d met, we’d followed sort of radically different paths in life and converged in the same place. JD of course, had grown up in Ohio. He had been in the Marine Corps as an enlisted Marine. He’d kind of raced through college in Ohio State and then made his way to Yale Law School. And I’d taken the kind of diligent, progressive path of college to or high school, to college, to graduate school and some jobs and to law school and Yale Law School.

And I think there are other schools like this. But Yale Law School in particular at the time was the sort of place where they would just pick someone from here and someone from there, and they’d bring you all together and kind of toss you in into this small community where everyone really got to know each other. So as it happened, he and I just had the exact same schedule for the first semester with another 15, 16 people. So we were just sort of stuck together, whether we wanted to be or not.

And, I mean, we even had, and I think our first semester or first couple weeks, a paper that we had to write together that required, you know, sitting and working through all sorts of things. We didn’t know each other at all. But that was a wonderful basis for friendship. And you think, you know, we have these really different backgrounds and, you know, what would we have in common? The reality is that we had so much in common.

And I think this experience of being in the same place and meeting in person, something that is all too rare today, just allowed us to really get to know each other. So we were friends for a while before we started actually dating. I think it’s fair to say that J.D. was sort of the pedal in this relationship and I was a little bit of the brakes because I was sort of focused on all the schooling part of it. But it. We both knew, I think at the same time, when it’s good, it’s good and you start to know that it really is.

INTERVIEWER: When you meet your partner in life, you just sense it, don’t you?

USHA VANCE: Yes.

Trip to India

INTERVIEWER: When you think about your relationship with JD and you think about going to India together, Can we talk about that trip a little bit? And what did it mean to you, to your family, to your kids? Key takeaways. What was the Prime Minister like? We hear there was a puppet show. But you know what I’m really after? I’m after everybody in this audience getting to know you because I believe you’re fantastic. I think you’re going to be so good for our country as a role model in many ways. Share a little bit how that trip went in a way that everybody here gets to know you a little bit more, if we may.

USHA VANCE: Of course. Well, I mean, it was, I think I told an Indian publication this. It really was the trip of a lifetime for us. My children had never been to India, what with the pandemic and JD venturing into politics and all that. And so they’d grown up just knowing so much about this country. The stories, the food, the relationships with grandparents and friends. But they had never actually seen it. So it was just sort of mind blowing from their perspective.

And then for me and JD, I think it just could not have been any more special. We had the opportunity to see some of the greatest sights in North India. We’re looking forward to our next trip and trying to get to the parts of the country where my family is from as well. And it just was sort of one hit after another, right? The most incredible food, the peacocks that we got to see everywhere we went. Getting to see the Taj Mahal in the morning and appreciate it as the sun was just sort of coming up and the cool skies and blue skies over in the background.

And of course, as you mentioned, meeting the Prime Minister, that, that was really very special. We’d actually had a chance to meet him before and it’s funny, my kids saw him, they were sort of sleep deprived in Paris and they saw an Indian man with a white beard and white hair. And they just put him in the grandfather category immediately. So they just, they are very into him, they just love him. And he really cemented his status by giving our 5 year old a birthday present that day.

So when we were able to visit his home, they just sort of ran up, they were hugging him. He was just incredibly kind and generous to them. And I think it was a very productive conversation for JD and the Prime Minister, of course. But also I think it was a real opportunity for us to kind of cement that personal relationship that they have, which I think is only to the good.

And as you mentioned, there was a puppet show that was a particular highlight with sort of puppeteering from all over the country, including from Andhra Pradesh, where my family is from. There were bits from the Ramayana, there were sort of comedic bits with animals and it was a huge hit. My kids have been trying to recreate it at home with construction paper, which is going about as well as you can imagine.

INTERVIEWER: You know, your kids, if I remember right, are three, five and seven years of age.

USHA VANCE: That’s right.

INTERVIEWER: If you can share some of the takeaways both during the trip and on the way back, I’m sure as parents, you said, what did you think? What surprised you, et cetera, on it. I know that Prime Minister Modi has an ability to form unbelievable relationships with people of all ages. And I happen to believe that’s just because he’s a very sincere person. Share some of the kids takeaways, if you will, because you. Through the mouth of young children, we learn so much about ourselves and others, how they view things.

Usha Vance’s Experience in India with Her Family

USHA VANCE: Well, I think JD’s probably told the story at some point, but when we were at the Prime Minister’s residence, our son was just so taken by everything and then taken by the entire cart of mangoes that was available for him to eat that he announced to the Prime Minister that he thought he could maybe live there and started making his plans. Dialed that back a little when he remembered quite how hot he had been earlier in the day. But he just loved it. And our children, they talk about it all the time, actually. They’ve been all over the place and they’ve had wonderful opportunities to see the world, but this was really special to them.

Ewan, our oldest, was really taken by the sculptures in the temple that he visited. He just thought it was incredible craftsmanship and of course showed things that he was very familiar with from stories and from talking with me. And then Vivek, our middle child, was very excited to meet elephants and peacocks and a camel and just any animal that he could kind of get his hands on. And then our daughter, I think she’s sort of along for the ride. She really enjoyed her time in an autorickshaw. That was maybe the highlight for her. The Secret Service was very generous and allowed us to kind of drive in an enclosed area for a few minutes. So we had a lot of fun with that.

The Second Lady’s Summer Reading Challenge

INTERVIEWER: You announced on Sunday a challenge about reading. It’s one of the things that I believe in firmly. I believe in life. Your future is determined by your education and your access to technology. But if you can’t read, you can’t get educated. And if you get educated, you can’t focus on technology. It’s a passion for me personally. I’m dyslexic by background. Two parents who were very, very effective doctors, but they could not fix this reading issue. I had, and only because of a teacher that was early stage, before dyslexia was understood, who spent a lot of time helping me read and learning how to do it, able to go to college and beyond. In terms of the approach, what was the focus in terms of the challenge? Was it the fact that our scores are going down in terms of literacy in our country, your knowledge about education and what does that mean for the future? What first was the kind of the event or concept they kicked it off, and then secondly, how did you come up with this challenge? Because I love the competitiveness of the challenge.

USHA VANCE: Well, for anyone who doesn’t know, which is probably most of you, on Sunday, we announced a reading challenge that we’ve called, very creatively, the Second Lady’s Summer Reading Challenge. And the point is just to get kids reading in the summer. It’s a time of a lot of learning loss. It’s a time when there are distractions galore. And all we’re asking is that kids, either by themselves or with an adult to help pick up a book, read 12 of them, write it down, and send it in to us. And if you do it, that’s great, and we’ll send you a little prize, and we’ll enter the kids into a drawing to come visit the White House and have a little fun in D.C.

But to answer your question about why we’re doing this, there are a few strands. The first is, as you say, I’m conscious that reading scores have dropped over time, and I do think that that is something that, of course, lots of people are working to rectify, and I wanted to do something small to contribute to that.

But the second, I think is a little bit broader. And that is, you know, I’m not the first to say this, and I won’t be the last, but we live in a world of distractions now. It’s very easy to just pick up your phone all the time. It’s pinging you. It’s hard to just sort of sustain attention in a way that I just don’t remember being the case when I was five or six or seven. And that worries me. I do think that one of the things that is very special about being a human is that we have this capacity for sustained thought and reflection. And those produce very beautiful things like the Taj Mahal that we visited.

Without that kind of sustained focus, you can’t do things that make being human so special. And I worry that when you’re not able to kind of think this way, when you’re not able to focus, when you’re constantly distracted, you really lose something. And I think of reading as an antidote to that. And I see this in my own life, I’ll be honest. I look at my phone far too often. I, as a lawyer was constantly receiving emails, constantly responding. Being quick and being aware of what’s going on at any given moment was an advantage, but it changes the way that you think.

And so I myself have been challenging myself to read things that are increasingly challenging, increasingly long, sometimes increasingly boring, in an attempt to really bring that part of myself back. And I don’t want children to lose it at all. So this challenge grows out of both of those impulses.

And I think you’ll see over time that it’s just a sort of bite sized component of a larger project to continue expanding access to literacy, improving the ways that children learn to read, strengthening their desire to read. And our goal is to keep rolling out little things bit by bit and see which ones work and which ones don’t, and then try to expand the ones that work. As a former lawyer, I just, I get really bored if I don’t have projects. And I really like to have deadlines. And so that’s the way I’m kind of thinking about this. Start with one thing, move on to the next, and keep building from there.

Family Background and Future Plans

INTERVIEWER: And looking at your background and your family’s background. Many of them are teachers interesting enough in physics. So two questions is part of it because you realize how important teachers are to engaging with the young people and having the right skill sets when they come to school so they can be heard? Or are there other elements you learn from your family about teaching that help to drive it. And then. Last question. You’re wicked smart. Did you ever think about physics?

USHA VANCE: Well, I’ll answer your last question first. My grandfather was a physicist. My great aunt is a physicist. My dad is. All my uncles and aunts basically are engineers, except for a couple biologists, including my mom. So, yes, I did think about it, and I did love math and all that growing up, but there was just something about history and the humanities that captivated me. And I just love writing and reasoning in that way. And I just knew that a career in physics was never going to captivate me in the same way. But my dad did when I went to Yale and he knew I was going to study physics. He said, I’m only going to ask you one thing, and that’s that you take a physics class. So I did that my first semester, and it was a good experience, but unfortunately not since then.

INTERVIEWER: Well, you know, what you enjoy in life and what you’re good at. Last question, a little bit. Your thoughts about the role that you want to be involved in as the second lady, key things that you really are passionate about and what you can share with this room in terms of your initial thoughts. And I know that’s going to change over time, but maybe in summary, if you could kind of educate us a little bit with what you’re currently thinking.

USHA VANCE: Of course. Well, as I mentioned, I think literacy is going to be a big focus of my efforts. I think it’s a natural fit given that I have small children, we’re thinking about it all day long, and my own personal interests. But beyond that, some of the broader considerations that I’ve just been thinking about and I know everyone has been thinking about recently.

I’m trying to take it a step at a time here because this is, of course, a very exciting opportunity, but totally new to me because my husband didn’t even enter politics until about three years ago. So we’re trying to kind of seize every opportunity to be useful where we can. One thing that I’ve grown increasingly interested in, again, from the starting point of just sort of seizing an opportunity and attending is the Special Olympics, an organization that I think has really done a lot of good in this country. So we’ve been starting to get involved there. And then I think I’ll sort of leave it at that for the moment. And if the projects kind of take up all my time, then that’s wonderful. And if not, then we’ll try to add some more and try to be as productive as possible during this time.

INTERVIEWER: I want to thank you for your kindness. I can see why many of your peers always say you are the most helpful. Even in a competitive environment, you spend time with your peer students, helping them with their notes and direction. I appreciate your candor and your honesty. Please join me in thanking the Second Lady for the future she’s going to have for this country.

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