Ms. Power is the recipient of the American Academy of political and social science 2019 Daniel Patrick monaghan prize. This is 90 minutes. Im the executive director of the American Academy of political and social science. Its my pleasure to welcome all of your to our seventh annual Daniel Patrick monaghan lecture. Briefly, were really pleased to see such a full house as always. Were happy to be joined by folk who s who worked with senator monaghan. Mora is pat monaghans daughter and a tremendous supporter of our organization and this initiative from the beginning. Id also like to thank sage publications. Sage in the publishing world is probably the preeminent Publishing House concerned with the social sciences. They also publish the annals of the American Academy. Theyre also the principal cosponsor of this lecture, having given us generous funding to support this enterprise so thank you to them. Also a quick thank you to the willard staff and to my staff at the American Academy. Theyve just been terrific in getting all this started. We are going to have a brief time for question and answer after ambassador powers talk. Two points about that. One, it is going to be brief. Well only have probably time for several questions. Id ask you to keep your questions succinct, to do your level best to not make them mini lectures of your own or position statements but actual questions. And second, please wait for a microphone to come to you. Were very pleased to know that cspan is going to be covering this today and we also have our own inhouse tech staff. Wait to be heard before you speak. That would be terrific. With that, i welcome ken pruitt to the stage. Ken is the carnegie professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. Hes also a former director of the United States census. More to the opponent of todays proceedings, ken has been a past president or a director in some sort of most every organizatio thats been influential in this doesn country. Shes al ken, if you please. [ applause ] thanks and welcome. And i will say just a few words about the academy itself. The earliest generation of the social sciences didnt come along until about the 1880s. They did help our universities get established for the social sciences. But they were peripheral of course. They were really immature as scientists. And the idea that they should have their own academy was an idea that came out of the university of pennsylvania and launched it and launched it with the journal. So it became the earliest journal in the social sciences that had the responsibility that tom just mentioned of doing more than just reporting our research but also reporting our research in such a way that it would, quote, unquote, make a difference. Its been very successful since. We dont make a lot of noise about ourselves except about 12 years ago the idea was why dont we do at least one thing publicly every year for whomever. Youll see later we elect fellows. That became the monaghan award and Everybody Knows that this was an unusual man. I have a quote that somebody asked me to read, so im going to do it. The nations best thinker among politicians and best politician among thinkers. And thats true. He went back and forth without any hesitancy. Always carried a deep commitment to getting the story right. We started about 12 years ago with this award and the event. Alice was our first nominee. She passed away this last june so we do recognize that and she was a great i think i saw becky blank walk in, maybe. Yes. Whos also a monaghan awardee. Did i miss anyone whos here today right now . Haskins is here. Sorry. Yep. My immediate task is to get somebody else up here who can speak more whats the right word eloquently than i can about our speaker, about ambassador. I would say the 12th year of doing this and for about half of those years we were looking for somebody out of the international world. We wanted to recognize pats of course ambassadorship to the u. N. It was hard. The competition is very strong for these events. We simply never came up with somebody who was in the International Sector who we felt was senior enough and so forth to merit the award. So youve done us a big favor. Ive been under lots of press e pressure. Avril haines will introduce her. She went out and got a law degree at georgetown and is now at Columbia University. Thats just an accident. Not quite, but where shes extremely active in a number of initiatives that the Columbia University is engaged in and so forth. I wont go into those things. I want to say a word or two about shes our National Security assistant under obama. Make sure i get it right. Deputy director of the cia, Legal Advisor of the National Security council, was a real player. Shes a very modest person and you would not know that was true of her, but she was a major player in the last goround and remains that and remains very active. So avril, would you please take over . [ applause ] thank you so much. Thank you, ken. Honestly, im incredibly grateful for the opportunity to briefly introduce samantha this afternoon for her lecture as the winner of the Daniel Patrick monaghan prize. And in part because its a real gift to have an opportunity to force sam in a ballroom full of people to hear what i think of her, because she would never stand for the smoke im about to blow if we were alone together. But also in large part because i really believe this prize uniquely suits her. There are the obvious parallels between monaghan and samantha. They both have irish roots. Samantha was born in ireland and is a proud immigrant. And theyre both authors. Sam, i have to say insanely won a Pulitzer Prize for her book in her 20s after spending a year as a war reporter in the balkans. And they were both harvard professors and she still is and both served as the u. S. Ambassador to the united nations. Moreover, like monaghan, samantha is an ideas person. Shes someone whos intellectually insatiable on a range of topics and believes that the biggest problems causing human suffering in the world today can and should be solved. And they are both incredibly charismatic as people. That really isnt what i was thinking of when i thought of her as being so wellsuited for this particular prize and giving this lecture. Samantha exemplifies a leader who champions the use of informed judgment to advance the public good and shes someone who has consistently thought, as i know ken has and the American Academy of political and social science has, to further communication between the academy and the policy world, between scientific thought and practical thought. And i have no doubt that youll see that today in her lecture. The importance she placed on evidence based policy making and the value of social science and Academic Research and rigor was obvious in her approach to decision making, of her memorandum she wrote for the president in her interventions and meetings and who she selected to have on her staff when she worked at the white house or when she was ambassador to the united nations. She is an intellectual who wants to face the really challenging questions, relishes doing so no matter how complex those dilemmas are. But she combines that drive with an equally, if not more powerful drive to be effective and to produce and to produce impact, and in my experience, that is truly a rare combination. The first time i met sam, and she wont remember this by the way, she was chairing a meeting in the white house on the ottawa convention, and sometimes known as the mind ban treaty and i was a lawyer at the state department and the scene was striking. Here was this incredibly tall, redheaded woman who was a well known human rights advocate chairing the discussion of armed controls treaty in a room full of military officers. And i think that people made fair assumptions about how she would run the meeting, but it is not the impression she left with that day. She had done her homework as she always did, but she made clear that she was not there to advocate for the treaty even though her position was clear, she wanted to understand their perspective and she had studied the report and work hard to unearth the data on the issues, and what she had were penetrating questions that made clear she was listening and wanted to understand what they thought about this, and not accept peoples views on faith, and she wanted to be sure that whatever the issue was on this issue would be rigorous. Moreover, characteristically, she assumed that everybody had noble intentions is and trying to achieve the objectives they felt to be critical cli ly impo to the United States, and not only that, but focusing the objectiy objectytives and examining the means, and examining it in a way that no one else had. As colleague, you cant help but see that samantha is fierce, and brilliant and selfreflection sometimes to a fault, and occasionally stubborn and kind and emempathetic, but tough as nails when it comes to pursuing a better ethical society, but something that promotes a leader today and science and social policy is her focus on the human consequences of governmental action. If you read her book, you will site reflected in spades. She is constantly asking herself, particularly as ambassador to the u. N. , and she talks about whether and how we are effectively integrating a concern for human consequences s into the thought process and into the National Security. And honestly, this may sound obvious but for someone who has worked in government for many year, it is not. If you recognize it as critical critically, important it is no easy to do. When you are looking at the lenses that simplify and ignore the consequences of the statetostate interactions and on the human beings they touch, and i think that in part it makes it easier to sit in the sit room to make the hard decisions to do that, but it is also true that it is challenging to find ways on the time lines that you are making decisions, and in the institutional structures that we have to actually tap into outside sources that give you a sense of what those human consequences are in the moment that is so critical. Yet, today, with the increasing mobile world that we live in, and the state actors are powerful, and if not more powerful and frequently less accountable for the states of the decisionmaking that actually brings together and breaks down the barriers of those between sort of governmental actors and the communities that they are working with across the borders is more and more critical. And the human consequences that we need to take into account are not the potential harms that people may suffer as a consequence of the Government Action on the particular portions of the population, but it is also frankly the opportunities that we can reveal and promote, but also how authoritarian societies can affect the societies, the people who are living in those societies. I think that in short samanthas approach to thinking about these issues is not only intellectually more sustainable and pragmatic, but it is something that we need today and something that the democratic societies have a comparative advantage on, and im so proud and honored to introduce Samantha Power for this prize. I appreciate that the society has done this. It is remarkable. So thank you very much. Thank you so much. I am so, so grateful to be here. Thanks for the American Academy opolitical and social science, to ken pruitt for serving as president and for leading this incredibly important academy, and im looking forward to our discussion after. To tom who hounded me all summer to get a topic for this lecture and never did. So it is going to be a big surprise for everyone here. And to jessica for organizing this which is no easy feat. Of real i have to say more than a word of afrel who i saw working in government the freshest eyes. No tab boooos and no dumb quest and talk about rare. It finds out that one thing that constrains rigorous policy and debate is the sense that certain questions are off limits or a feeling that things should be done a certain way. While the position of the National Security adviser is famously, i suppose, the most stressful position there is in the National Security establishment, the secret, the best kept secret and one of the best kept secrets in washington is that the deputy National Security adviser job is more stressful, because you are mikey in the old cereal commercial, because everything that is hard comes to you. And so she ran the most fairest and most intensively determined and inclusive National Security process i ever saw. Then of course made her way to the cia where she brought her background in International Humanitarian law and her regard for human consequences into that institution, and not only i think changed many dimensions of how things were done in the intelligence community, but won the fierce loyalty of intelligence professionals just as she has everywhere she has worked in the government. And the main thing that i would say about afrel is the desen ti as a perso decency as a frien as a person that she wants to see in the american policy. So i am so honored to be introducing her. And thank you sh, mora, and she there, and i could not be more honored to be receiving this award in your dads honor, and i could not be more pleased and proud as an american and as a person who also lives in the broader world that there is an award named for your dad and we come together to think about your dand his legacy, and again, i am incredibly proud to be here. Afrel drew a few alleged parallels between me and senator moynahan, and i dont flatter myself to believe that i necessarily belong in his league despite again how pleased i am to be associated with him. And so there are as afrel noted a few parallels that i do acknowledge, so both Daniel Patrick moynahan and i do take pride in our irishness, and part of it is that we, and im going to speak about him in the present tense, because he is still such a large force in our world today, but we carry wit an expectation, and irish expectation that good things may not last, and you all remember that after president john f. Kennedy was shot, moynahan famously saying that i dont think that there is any point in being irish if you dont know that the world is going to break your heart eventually and then he paused and added, i guess that we thought that we had a little bit more time. And that is very moving and poignant, and i spend my days with that same sense of worry about the world, and especially these day, but i am hoping that we have a lot more time and not a little bit more time. We both had the experiences of afrel noting toggling between academia, and stints in Public Service though he in a larger range of roles in disciplines and academia than i, and serving in the white house though, and sensing a skepticism of the insights that i might have drawn in the social science or the behavioral science or the Political Science, i often wished that i could mobilize a retort as lively as moynahan could when he was being challenged, and of course, the incident that quick, comes most quickly to mind in context is in 1976 when he was challenging the new york incumbent senator james buckley, and this is moynahans First Political race and when senator buckley pointedly referred to in one of the debatdebate s professor moynihan from harvard and then he proclaimed the mudslinging has begun. No dirtier mud than to be called professor in a political debate. We both believe in the essential role for ideas in the shaping of the Public Policy, and also in the power of words. Never to diminish the power of words. Finally, i feel one other great overlap, but this one is with moras mother, and senator moynihans spouse, the senators wife of 48 years, elizabeth moynahan, and she often said that she married her husband, because he was the funniest man that she ever met, and i wanted to say that i feel the same way about my husband, Cass Sunstein who is here today. You know about his book, but you dont know about his humor necessarily. Some of those books have a little bit of humor in them. So when one attempts to take the measure of moynihan, senator, ambassador, veteran, author of 18 book, nine of which he wrote while he was serving in the u. S. Senate, and president ial counselor, cabinet member, sociologist, professor and public intellectual, what may be most striking of all in our era of intense polarization is his fierce independence of mind and spirit which persisted throughout his decades of public life. How inconceivable would it be today for someone to do what moynihan did to get appointed to cabinet or subcabinet positions in four consecutive president ial administrations kennedy, johnson, nixon and ford. A former teaching assistant of his at harvard bill crystal said that he is never in anybodys camp. And so with being recognized with this honor of a lifetime really, i would like to address a problem that greatly concerned moynahan when he served as u. S. Ambassador to the u. N. Under president ford, and that challenge and concern of his was the future of democracy. So today, i would like to examine first the contemporary state of democracy and the relative appeal throughout the world and discuss the rise of china and the implications for the future of democracy and thirdly, i will argue that facing a future in which these two very different models, the democratic model and the chinese model will coexist on this earth. Id like to look at what we can and should do to enhance democracys prospects. So first on the state of democracy. Back in the fall of 1975 with the american bicentennial approaching, moynihan after leaving his ambassador role in india and taking up the role in the u. N. , spelled out the pessimism about the democratic model in the world in an article for the public interest. He wrote liberal democracy on the american model increasingly tends to the english monarchy and a holdover form of government and one which persists in isolated or peculiar places here or there, and may even serve well enough for special circumstances, but which has simply no relevance to the future. End quote. Moynihan continued, quote, it is where the world was, not where it is going. End quote. Now, for context, we should recall where the world was when moynihan made this prediction. Across the globe, 30 of the world was democracies a thaies point. And so from then the number of world democracies had remained and remarkably unchanged, so maybe it is understandable why moynihan went on to say that increasingly democracy is seen as an arrangement peculiar to a number of north atlantic countries plus a few of their colonies, end quote. Moynihans views had been influenced by his particular experiences in india. He arrived in new delhi in 1973, and in the two years in the country, he witnessed the Worlds Largest democracy experiencing painful backsliding. In late 1974 as he prepared to leave india and return to the u. S. To become the ambassador, he wrote in the journal, quote, here in india, and here, liberty displays the uneasy presence, and endangered species and threatened environment, and that indian democracy should have to struggle to maintain itself is the natural condition of the being. All of the democracies have this struggle. What troubles me so is to find that it is struggling to maintain the reputation in the world, and the heart has gone out of it. We no locnger believe that libbr city going to prevail and we suspect not much longer in western europe, and we fear not much longer in the United States, end quote. Soon after indian Prime MinisterIndira Gandhi had a state of emergency declare and arresting political opponents and cracking down on the Civil Liberties in the country. The emergency as it came to be known lasted a year and half. And moynihan said that the democracy of where it was and not where it is going is derived from the lived experience. He was of course, mistaken, the third wave of democratization was beginning as he issued the dire predictions. While moynahan was understandably focused on india, an uprising was occurring in portugal. After 42 years of military dictatorship, the carnation there led to traditional democracy and what followed as all of you know three decades of democratic flowering around the world. By the time of moynahans death in 2003, the percentage of democracies in the world had more than doubled. Some 65 of the countries in the world, 117 out of 191 were democracies, and of course, moynihan himself relished this development. Not long after the fall of the berlin wall, moynahan wrote to george kinnon, quote, you must be so enjoying the spectacle of the world turning your way. Well, it only took half a century, end quote. In a span of a few decades democracy had become the dominant form of government around the world. Today, however, gloomy prophecies resembling those that moynahan witnessed are resurfacing anew. We are confronting what is known as the democratic recession. We are seeing a pronounced surge in support for the populous nationalist figures around the world, and major established democracies are currently on the defensive and chasened by the seeming disillusionment, and intimidated by chinas success, and distracted by the difficulty of conducting even warnings, and warnings that democracy is in a death spiral have become inescapable, and think of the books that we are reading, how democracies die, and how democracies end. The people versus democracy. Even cass contributed, kit happen here, authoritarianism in the u. S. , and at least he had a question mark. Madeleine albrights fascism is a warning. And many share the intuition that our democracy is inexorably in decline. Polls say that the large majority of the American Public have lost faith and that 55 characterize democracy in the u. S. As weak, and 60 believe it is getting weaker. Polling of the americans aged 18 to 29 finds that almost 2 3 are fearful for the future of democracy end quote in the United States. These sentiments are given additional credence by the disposition and the rhetoric of our current president who in addition to the assaults of the Democratic Institutions like the media, the courts and his political Opposition Party at home has in terms of the Foreign Policy removed the reference to democracy from the state departments mission statement, and repeatedly promoted longstanding democracy initiatives and showing affection nor leafor the most repressive leaders in the world than our allies. So is democracy doomed . I dont think so, but lets examine the facts as the democracies are suffering more than a crisis of confidence. The Global Expansion of democracy, the third wave of democratization that began in portugal has ended. The experts and the rankings differ on the margins of when this began happening and differ on how serious the trends are, the best studies and the assessments of the global democracy if you take them together show that in the last 10 to 15 years the democracy has experienced more setbacks than gains. This is a reversal of three decades of essentially uninterrupted progress and democratic gains. According to the Freedom House, as many of you know, we are now in the 13th Straight Year of the freedom in decline around the world. And in the past three years, it has been established democracies, and those countries like the United States that are considered fully free in the Freedom House index which showed the worst setbacks. Instead of rule of law, something that the United States has been promoting for many decades or seeking to promote, the Carnegie Endowment as documented how more than 70 governments in the last decade have instituted rule by law and not of law but by law to take a number of serious measures to restrict Civilized Society like the regulation and the curbing of Financial Assistance to those organizations. Parties and politicians that were once at the periphery due to their extreme views now occupy influential roles in many established democracies. From these more mainstream positions, they often demonize immigrants and refugees and attack the press and do what they can to undermine the judiciary and the checks and balances that exist on centralized power. Today for example 90 of the media in hungry is owned or controlled by allies of president urban and his fedez party. In poland, the Justice Party came to rule in 2017, and in 2018, the party passed a law to force the retirement of the longserving Supreme Court justices who were replaced by the allies of the ruling party. And reporting is now dismissed as fake news and not just by President Trump, but dozens and dozens of countries, and whether it is brazil or the philippines and the right wing populists who have controlled the levers of government have suffered serious setbacks for open democratic societies, and the most recent pew polling across 27 democra democracies say they are more dissatisfied than satisfied with the democracy in their country. And now the rise of china and how this is fitting in the picture. For those searching for an alternative, the most prominent out there is of course the authoritarian capitalism practiced in china. President xi has been explicit about chinas desire to provide an alternative model that does not imitate western values. He has said, quote, china offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence, end quote. The word independence here is shorthand to signal other countries that china is not going to be butting their nose into the internal human rights practices. Although china has lifted millions of people out of poverty, the governance model has deeply disturbing aspects. Beijing has locked up between 800,000 and 2 million chinese muslims in interment camps, and framing the measure as what it calls effective counter terrorism, and it has of course banned many of the worlds most popular web sites including facebook, google, wikipedia and it has treated people as criminals and not refugees seeking asylums in the gulag. And the most or wellian, china has planned to assign a citizen score to every one of the people. And the citizen score will use Artificial Intelligence to process a mix of information about chinese citizens movements, purchases, social media postings, religions and the records of their family members and friends and the government will be using this continually updated score to classify citizens as safe, normal or unsafe. This score is going to be used in turn to determine the citizens accesses to jobs and social services or whether they should be picked up for preemptive questioning or allowed to travel. Already the Chinese Government has ruled because of bad credit, they have blocked citizens from taking flights 17 million times. And now, they are on the heft to turbo charge the diplomacy, and two cornerstones of American Power since the end of world war ii, and the tools that we have used over the years to support the consolidation of democracies, and chinas Foreign Affairs budget has doubled as the state departments budget stagnates and diplomats flee, and the administration that has generally shunned their expertise and the practice of diplomacy, and greatly enhancing the chinese influence, and it is providing as Much Development financing as the entire world bank. As of 2018, some 20 of africanamericans external debt was owed to china. At the united nations, the u. S. Remains the largest donor, and now wields the greatest influence, and however, china overtook japan this year as the second largest contributor the u. N. Regular budget. It already contributes more peacekeepers than any other permanent member of the present administration. And gallup polling showing that president xi is more favorable than the american president , and while people around the world are more or less eventually split of whether they hold a favorability view of china, the favorability numbers are particularly high in the developing world and among the younger generations. In countries like nigeria and tunisia and others that the u. S. Would like to see shoring up democratic views, the trends are upward. And meanwhile, mexico, poland and even australia, and doubledigit gaps exist between the 18 and 29yearold range who have a favorable view of china and those from older generations, and particularly over 50 who are much more skeptical. Authoritarian capitalism is in a way descendent as was pointed out within the next five years the total gdp of the numbers that Freedom House feels are democratic are going to surpass that of western democracies. And countries like u. S. , germany and france and japan, and, they write, will be smaller that on the autocracies of canada and germany and so what has always been is that accountable governance and economics go hand in hand. For leaders wavering to become more open, and citizens deciding what type of society they want to build, the appeal of democracy has been tied in part for the ability to deliver for the peoples quality of life and economic wellbeing. Chinas well documented success combined with the Global Awareness of the inequality has complicated the longstanding argumentment all of this said, we dont know how aggressive beijing will be to use the leverage and the assistance beyond the borders to nudge the countries on the fence or the democracies that are backsliding in a more repressive direction. We do not know whether they deem it in their interests to, to paraphrase, a former american president to make the world safe for autocracy or authoritarianism. At any time, i saw the competing challenges. In china it was an overriding concern. And over the decades the u. S. Diplomats have recognized that our world is more enhanced in a world that we have more democratic partners to enlist in meeting shared challenges. China sees domestic security as the most Important Foundation of its National Security, and yet in a number of areas, i saw china stepping in and up to influence the countries on the issue where is the United States has enduring interests and now when the United States has vacated a leadership role, that tendency has been dramatically accelerated. While many expect china to actively pull the countries in its direction and not be agnostic about the form of governance that the country is providinging assistance to have, and others like the historian arnie westhead said that sxis governance will work better than ours. And so recently written in Foreign Affairs, china may ultimately present a stronger ideological challenge than the soviet union did, even if it does not explicitly seek to export the system. If the International Order is a reflection of its most powerful states then chinas rise to super power status will exert a pull towards autocracy, end quote. China is not the only person pulling the system in that direction, and today, far more players are on the scene actively promoting their political visions than did so in the third wave of the 1970s to 1990s. And many of them are operating with a range of impressive tools that match or exceed what established democracies are currently offering, development aid, military assistance and diplomatic heft and media influence. Part three of all of this, what can be done . In here, i have a few ideas and the challenges that i have laid out are going to require more than a few ideas to be met, but for starters, the most critical step for americans to take is to focus on our own deeply divided democracy. There are many impediments that stand in the way of improving the health of our democracy. Big money in politic, and gerrymandering, and restrictions on voting rights, and downright corruption, and very much related to all of the above, deep and ever deeper polarization. It is sometimes seems not to have fully penetrated just quite how destructive this polarization is, and how difficult it has made meeting any problem, much less making a dent in the problem as big as a Global Human Rights recession. The salience of political ideas in the country is far greater than the salience of all we have in common as americans, classmates, neighbors, as citizens. Whenever a fresh issue arises, we will see almost an instant polarization now. Just this week, one of the nations leading opinion pollsters, the institute of mon mou monmouth foundation said that President Trump had talked to president zelensky of i investigating joe biden. And so this poll says that trump did not talk to zelensky or they couldnt be sure, but this is in spite of the fact that the president stated openly that he did and despite the fact that the Trump White House released a partial transcript of the call between them. These somewhat baffling divisions are of course mirrored in our congress. Polarization has made the legislative branch immensely ineffectual and irrelevant when we are faced with a major challenge, and when a gunman kills 58 people at outdoor concert, our expectation is that Congress Wont try to do anything to decrease the risk of future attacks. It used to be that International Treaties were ratified with bipartisan support in congress, but that has changed. George w. Bushs administration ratified 173 treaties and the Obama Administration, we managed 20 International Treaties and the Trump Administration so far just 9. On this front, the front of polarization, that is, i was profoundly disheartened after learning of the Supreme Courts 54 ruling this year that the federal courts could not put a stop to partisan gerrymandering, and this is a part to do something that would have had a real impact on the health of the democracy, but instead, the majority on the court said it is acceptable for the politicians to continue to choose their voters rather than having the voters choose their politicians. Over half of congressional districts nationwide are still drawn by legislatures whose elected representatives tend to prioritize keeping their jobs over other priorities, thus, in North Carolina, during the 2018 midterms for example, the democrat and republican candidates each won about half of the votes cast. Yet, republicans ended up winning 10 of the states 13 seats in the house. Manipulating district boundaries for political gain is practiced by democrats, too, notoriously in maryland and new jersey and as a result of the gerrymandering, the primaries are the only important election in so many districts and the increased importance of the primary often favors the candidates who represent the extremes. This can be fixed, but it is up to state courts and legislatures to right this structural wrong. Second recommendation. As we enter a period in which broadly put these two models of government are competing for adherence domestically, and geopolitically, we must rebuild the diplomatic corps, and put ourselves in a position to adjudicate and strengthen democracie democracies. At this point, the pentagon has over 300 people deployed with the pentagon at 3,000. And so slightly fewer people in marching band than the state department has ambassadors, and we only have 40 posted around the world. The battle of the diplomatic, and the authoritarian model is going to play out in the International Domain over the coming decades and we have to be resourced for the battle. In the years after the arab spring, i believed that we and the allies should have done more to help a country like for example tunisia as it was trying to consolidate the hard earned democratic gains that were achieved through the protest movement. Today, when a new leader in ethiopia negotiates with the neighbor, and frees Political Prisoners and opens up the freedom of to press, and reappointing a cabinet with 5050 gender balance to state that the goal is that a democratic election takes place in ethiopia, we and other democracies should be supporting the agenda. In sudan, when an incredibly courageous and persistent protest movement forces the military into a power sharing agreement, we should work with them to improve their chances of getting the military leaders to hold to that agreement. Even now with the Trump Administration awol and also lacking in promoting human rights and democracy, the u. S. Congress can play a role by using laws on the books including the magnitsky act to sanction human rights abusers and the foreign assistance act that requires the executive branch cut off power for those who are taking power from military coups. And also, congress could limit a new law to u. S. Aid of those who get rid of the constitutional term limits, a growing trend. A third and final recommendation is that we have to get our mojo back, and we have to be prepared to defend democracy. Taken together the decline in the freedom around the world, which is borne out by the data, and the inexorable rise of china has deepened a confidence gap that seems to have overtaken our world, and our authoritarians seem to be strutting around, although their model, they will argue in a second, rests on fragile foundation, and the democrats meanwhile at times seem to be running for cover. I confess that i bring an inherent skepticism to sweeping fatalism and to overwhelming optimism. When i graduated from college back in 1992 a book about the global triumph of liberalism, and frances fukiama had written. And i will give you the parallels of the reading lists suggest that people are speaking of the liberal democracies demise with the same certainty that people back when i graduated from college talked about the liberal democracies inevitable triumph, and we should not make the mistake of replacing one narrative about inxorability with the doomsday opposite. My own view is that notwithstanding everything confronting here in the country, and other democracies around the world, we have the better model, and there is a logic to churchills claim that democracy is the worst form of government except for all of those other forms that have been tried from time to time. And in autocracies, Economic Growth is likely to bim peded by stagnant stateowned enterprise, and a lack of transparency in the economy, and even in china, we have seen the growth slowing, and one wonders how secure investors will be with the arrest of expatriots and the absence of due process and property rights. Autocrats as we have seen through history often overreach, and tend not the hear from the critical voices in the circles, and prefer the company of the sycophants. If you work for president xi in china or urban in hungry, you would be reluctant to be the bearer of bad news to the leader. This is not to embrace the team of rivals. In the military, the most capable officers in such systems may be less likely to rise than the most loyal. The lack of accountability when you have endless terms or you are president for life can breed all kinds of decay. And because ethnic, religious, and National Identity is often stymied in ill liberal systems, it is going to lead to social n unrest and violence. While some are flourishing with the autocracy or authoritarian systems, we have reason to question whether the innovation is going to be undermined in the long term by the absence of the freedom of speech, and the presence of so much fear. And finally, one of the biggest factors explaining appeal of illiberal or the policy leaders in democracies is inequality and the feeling of many that they are being left behind by their governments, and by society. This trend may well be one that increases with automation and some of the other structural features of our economy, but there is no reason systems that power at the top will equally distribute benefits or not leave people behind in the age of automation, and even today, we must remember that democracy remains, and this is counter intuitive given some of the statistics that i gave you earli earlier, but democracy the most prevalent. The democracies are home to more than half of the global population. And moreover, despite the real and worrisome backsliding if you are looking at the four widely used and accepted databases that assess democracy over time, and since we have so Many Political scientists here, by describe them, Freedom House, vdem and the policy for democracy and the coding for democracy and the percentage of the democratic countries in the world again according to those is at or at least near the alltime high reached just after the end of the cold war. And the reason for that can be true at the same time that you are seeing all of the backsliding is that the countries are still considered democraticen as you see the setbacks in terms of the rights, enjoyment, and the various freedom indexes. I would also call attention to a trend that hasnt quite registered yet it seems in our public imagination that political participation is now increasing in every region of the world. The voter turnout is up. The people following the news and engaging in the politics and joining Political Parties is up. By many measures the engagement of women in politics has increased substantially. The proportion of the population willing to participate in Peaceful Demonstrations is also rising, and this is not only in democracies. This data. And we have seen recently in turkey, the people of istanbul delivering a stunning rebuke to president erdogan first to the mayor of the political opposition in erdogans base, and then when erdogans party forced a revote to try to manipulate the votes, the candidate was issued a margin almost 60 times that of the initial first race. In hong kong, people of all ages are standing up for rights and the freedoms that are central to their city. In moscow, thousands upon thousands of russians have taken to the streets in the summer to demand free and fair local elections despite arrests and harassment. In sle vaovakia, a young writer was vocal on the lgbt rights became president loudly proclaiming support for european integration. And her victory showed, quote, that values such as humanism, solidarity and truth, truth, are important to our society, end quote. Six months after algerians first took to the streets to peacefully demand political reform, the countrys long term president resigned and after initially trying to rush a president ial election, the countrys interim leaders have vowed to public pressure and postponing that pressure, and despite the stalemate, people participating in the demonstrations have held fast to the democratic transition, and the sudanese protesters who i mentioned earlier toppled the once untouchable president bashir is now toppled and standing trial. We have seen it in the United States. The 2018 midterm elections saw the highest overall turnout in 50 year, and College Students more than doubled the turnout from four years earlier, and the surge of political activation of young people manifested in the marches for climate, for addressing the Climate Change and for addressing gun control shows that the next generation is engaged in pushing back against the status quo. As my Kennedy School colleague Erica Chenoweth has shown that we live in a decade where there are more nonmass violent movements around the world than at any time in recorded history. End quote. Interestingly after years of report that highlight the democratic backsliding the democracy index noted that it had not registered an overall decline for global democracy for 2018. This is not exactly a great day to point or hang our hats on. The report goes on the detail many of the worrying trends impacting democracies like the erosion of the Civil Liberties, but it is highlighting the explosion of the political participation, and pointing to developments like the ones that i have just described saying that the surge and engagement is one of the defining changes currently taking place on the global stage. So, all we can say with certain certainty, it seems is that the future of our societies and the role that governments and citizens will play in shaping them is being actively contested. Despite all of the challenges and setbacks, people appear to have an inexhaustible aspiration to hold their leaders accountable. It is far too early to write the story of democracys fate in the 21st century. When moynahan despaired about the future of liberal democracy as i indicated earlier, he wrote, again, quote, it is where the world was and not where it is going, end quote. But in closing, i would stress that where the world is going is not already scripted. It will be decided by the resilience, the will and the actions of the people who comprise the countries within that world. Notwithstanding all of the grave structural challenges before us, when it comes to a cause as vital as the future of democracy, we must resist the temptation to spend our time admiring the problem. Rather, we must urgently work for the world we seek. I thank you. I have so much going around in my head in terms of where to cut into. This and can you take us all of the way back to moynihans reservations of what was he see and what signals was he picking up to lead him to the rather unexpected that it could all crumble . Well, i dont have much to add much beyond what i described and they were in india and on the verge of a state of emergency and seeing the ethnic and the religious tensions flaring up in big ways, but above all, 70 of the countries in the world were not democratic, and it had not changed since the founding of the u. N. If he were here tonight, and we were querying him about it, and we wanted to say, well, where were the social scientists, and what were they saying and whose fault is it if we are not able to hold on the democracies that we have created . Where does the intel xllectual Foundation Come for preserving the democracies if not from our arguments and so on and so forth . Im not a social scientist, or political scientist, but i think that what i tried to do when i was in government and i try to do today is to draw on the incredible work that is being done by scholars throughout country, and around the world who are looking at the trends and trying to drill into them, and trying to understand where they come from. I mean, i think that there are a lot of aspects to this, and one is the question of the citizenship, and the political participation which of course, has been in voting, and voting right, a and all of the dimensions of voting, and you know, it is the case as many of you know that 9 of the people who voted for barack obama in 2012 shifted to vote for donald trump in 2016, but moreover, 7 of the people who voted for barack obama in 2012 stayed home in 2016, and so these trends are kind of oup and down, and it can be events that motivate the political participation, but understanding those individuals and what is motivating them is really important, i think. And finally, you are seeing the scholars, turn, also, to what has been a very unaccountable, and understudied sector of our society which is the tech world. Alongside that you will see the regulators also paying some attention to the tech world in the face of public outrage, but far more scholarship can be done on that, and now you at the height of the economic worth, facebook was worth more than 167 of the 193 countries in the u. N. I mean, it has more adherence than christianity, and yet while we have scholars who study countries and local government and State Government and federal government, and again, understanding facebook as a player akin to one of the most powerful countries in the world, and yet without any democratic accountability within it is an example of where scholars can go. The reason i come back to it a little bit is that we in the social sciences have an enormously robust half century from when pat would have said that we were in the 60s coming out of the war effort, and we had status, and then began to really dig into the social welfare problems of the United States and so forth and so on. And so my friend Norman Bradburn tells me that jim coleman was the man who launched the big science for the social sciences, and 600,000 students and 60,000 schools and teachers and so forth on the racial crisis. Pat was very involved in that as a matter of fact. He organized meeting at columbia, i mean, at harvard, because there was some sort of skepticism about colemans findings, and judgment that moynihan and the people that he brought in, and no, he was right. So it was a really major breakthrough, and i remember what coleman reports that the issue is community and family, and we cant solve the Education Family by throwing money at it, and we have to have community, and so forth, and so just from that, we had it become a huge enormous explosion of the social science doing the field experiments and so forth, and yet, i guess that i want to put it this way, somehow we must have failed. I dont want to overstate it. We were surprised by the 2008 recession. We didnt see it coming. How in the world could we have missed trump . Something that big and that dramatic, and that transformative and we were not sitting around tables like this worrying about that happening to our society ten years ago, three years ago, four years ago . Well, you know, i think that every, there are a number of dimensions in which we in the Obama Administration were blindsided by major events internationally that are analogous to what you are describing. It is absolutely fair to say that absolutely nobody saw the arab spring coming, and that was a tinderbox waiting to explode. The extent to which putins grievances were going to translate into a militarized aggression to the extent that he carried out. So, you know, on the issue after issue, we were being surprised. I dont think that it is a summary indictment of generations of work by social scientists by any means. It is cause though to ask why in these particular cases that we were blindsided, and so, for example, one, and this is not my area, so i am a little bit out of my depth here, but one conclusion that one could draw particularly about how both in government and in here perhaps that we were blindsided by the degree of support that a candidate like trump could draw and particularly, and that is why i focused on the shift from obama to trump, and that is a significant delta. That might be cause to ask one self, are we doing enough applied work . Are we out there actually identifying the places where different dimensions of the globalization, and the rub of the economic approach or the domestic economic policies and the absence of the safety net where those issues are hitting home. En even when i look back, why was the Opioid Epidemic not a preview on one level of the despair and alongside the despair often a rage that can exist. So there can be a question of whether one is too cloistered in the Foreign Policy where we are asking ourselves the question of the constituency for the u. S. Leadership in the world seems to be dwindling, and you know the question that we ask ourselves and this is applying to people who also do, you know, the International Relations and other sort of the Foreign Policyrelated dimensions of Political Science and international history, but, have we just been talking to one another, and we missed the ways in which various mistakes have been made by successive administrations in Foreign Policy has brought about such widespread disillusionment, and have we missed the ways in which war is conflated with Foreign Policy in some peoples minds and the negative effects of free trade have conflicted with the leadership in a manner that makes people skeptical of u. S. Leadership . And so there is a lot of looking inward that needs to be done given the predicament that we face, but to focus on any one individual or even trumpism would be a mistake, and would lead us on an ephemeral journey and the larger question is if we are interacting with the world sufficiently, and are our questions and not everybody has to do this, and i mean, there is a role, and a very Important Role for pure theory, but are the graduate students getting out to do the kind of the field work to make sure that their theories are tested by an understanding of real people. One thing that i would add in the spirit of not despairing, because i am not sure how much good it does at this point, and in addition to it not being warranted, but i happen to be married to Cass Sunstein who started as a constitutional lawyer and then fair to say almost stumbled into the behavioral economics and the behavioral science, and oh, my gosh, and to have the privilege of seeing what behavioral science has been able to do in the field of Public Policy to improve outcomes for citizens, and i mean, it has been mindblowing. Examples, you know, studying, and you know, why are certain subgroups of low income people so unlikely to fill out Financial Aid forms in order to be able to go to college, because they would be dependent on Financial Aid instead of just assuming they dont want to go to college, and they are too lazy to fill out the form for Financial Aid, and if you are actually able to talk to people, they were completely overwhelmed by the length of the form, and the Obama Administration did with cass and others behind it, repopulated the form to shrink the length of the form to three pages. So if you know that in the school cafeterias, the problem of obesity derives in part of the ease of the access to chocolate chip cookies and french fries and so if you can reorder where the fruit and vegetables harder to access, yo, the unhealthier food, it has a appropriate to us it brings about a appropriate to us decline in calorie intake for people in public schools. On issue after issue you just see data and its impact in howl people are crafting Public Policy, and its awesome. So by your question is fair. I dont think we need to go so broad. I think we can just hook at what are the set of questions now we wish we had been asking and what can we learn about ourselves that we werent asking those that will that relevance or this set of questions that we should be asking today. Certainly one of the things that we take great pride in as a community of scholars, and it did loosen up the borders of economics somewhat which was a little more tightly focused on its open models and so forth and the models didnt quite predict. Anything . Yeah. And, you know, the humanities went through this remarkable period of deconstructionism where they talked to themselves only and had the fights interim to their kiss plin, and they werent very active and present, if you will, and the whole you use the word practical, but also moral. Weve gone through a large we dont talk about more or less very much as social scientists, and i think thats probably going to have to come back. I have to challenge you on something you said in your in your book about selfrightousness about yourself. I dont think you are selfrighteous. I think you really care deeply about genocide. I like that kind of challenge. Thats my favorite kind of challenge. Well, but you were right to go after genocide. You took a moral stance, not just a scientific stance. You can project in a way that it looks like youre impugning the values of others, and the facting is when youre in policy circles there are a set of i want to sound like a relativist because i dont think thats my problem, but i think, you know, just to be fairminded and basically to be effective, also to anticipate what other values and even over, you know, kind of moral precepts others are bringing and then meet them on their terms as well. Thats all i really wanted to yeah. One other thing actually because, you know, again, i dont think im in i wouldnt despair i think quite as much as your question suggests maybe some here are, and i wasnt aware of that, of the extent of that, but one thing that did really worry me was i was out at stanford. I gave the tanner lectures maybe a year, year ago and i learned, and i dont have the number in my head but i had the numbers in my head about the massive migration from social scienced into Computer Sciences hat that opportunity and as a hub rall arts graduate and someone who is so thankful, you know, i didnt sort of burrow myself and that i learned how to express myself and how to think analytically in different ways and how i feel, that served me, and we have two kids and, you know, raising these people i hope are fluid in the sciences and indeed may even fall in love with the sciences but that they would always be able to see the value of theater and literature and music and anyway, i was having that reaction, and then i had a great conversation with a man who was a colleague and professor at Stanford Jeremy Weinstein who was my deputy when i was u. N. Ambassador and a brilliant guy and the match thor of applying ideas inside government. I dont know if theres anybody in Foreign Policy thats better than he is, but he was in the same kind of moment of oh, my gosh, whats happening . I used to have chases of this side and now they are skinying down. I said im going to go coteach Computer Science in an ethics glass and well make sure that every graduate cycles through this line of programming. I mean, his work was on comparative politics in sub saharan africa. It was a leap, and he had to really almost take a virtual sabbatical, a sambat cal of soul to do it is to describe it as interdiswinry. What can we learn about where our society is going and what should affect our teaching which we dont talk a lot about and the lines of inquiry we pursue in our research. A lot of people in the room have a lot to say on this question. I see im surround by the political scientists and im going to start with one. Bob . So i thought it was a great talk, samantha. Thanks, bob, and i wanted to ask you i interpret your call as a call for renewed selfconfidence about democracy and about social science, that is, that we should stop being too much kveching about the problems. At mirg the problem. Yes. And both in Foreign Policy stating more seriously the superiority of democracy, mayor tock sis are all thumbs and xi is all thumbs and thats coming up, and that we should be thinking about social zions as cass has. Did i interpret it right . Couldnt have said it better myself, but theres so many dimensions of this just to tease it out. Both you and i, and i think we even talked about this, a book that i got a lot out of in recent years is graham ellisons book which is i think is titled destined for war but its about applying history to the present and i know its couldnt version and people have different views of it, but one of the things that really struck me in reading that bok and maybe this is one of the critiques i guess is we we know the glass and the brittleness of our own society. Row theirian societies are often so clothed to us, you know, that the kind of thought president and president xi and what hes confronting. Not one become seller in hong kong now can sell a book thats critical of the Chinese Government, the use now have leith al tools in the plegs of protests, but part of this question is how do we also get inside of i think part of my proposition, but its tentative because i havent done it, is iffy with got inside and understood better, you know, fair sort of cost capital includes. Their forecast for themselves and what they are imagining. You only mentioned grahams book because as he forecast chinas rise he does some justice to what the Chinese State is having to navigate within its own borders, but, you know, really killinging into that would be another source i think it would be a comparative to the flaws that were experimenting here. We could be nice but to prounce to be more self. It were lead to us say. And ill give you a few other examples, didnt have time to go in this, not my area but on the question of gerrymandering, i could have gone in in the wake of the Supreme Courts horrific democracydegrading decision, seeing what north korean what the north korean what the North Carolina sorry. This is my problem when i try when you drag me into Domestic Social science, but the what the north climbian institutions are doing in the wake of the Supreme Court decisions, okay, if its not them, its us and its the North Carolina judges that cited the dissent in the gerrymandering case to at least improve the map. Maine now has a voter law, you know, that basically makes your second choice count in a manner that and it was just passed in, a manner that really should help, you know, crowd out extremes on both sides of the ballots because, and extremist may get a lot of votes but not a lot of second votes so, again, digging into these kinds of remedies and experiments that are also going on and then making those broadly known. On one level in the last years weve been through a dream loop an sailiens of all that is wrong with our democracy. When facts dont matter, when scenes is put in the New York Times on the issue of vaccines, some of you saw this article four or five days ago, science is but one voice in the room. I mean, its easy toe focus on our problems, but i think to look, again, at the experimentation and the ways people are trying to address different polarizations and division and try to representeder at the local level and state level and hopefully at the federal level so our democracy. Do you will have had a have a question or anything you would like to put . No question. The problem is i cant see. The lights are such that Maura Moynihan wants to ask a request, and Maura Moynihan makes herself heard like a pop. First of all, i want to congratulate you, samantha, it was a most wonderful speech, i think everyone would agree. It was brilliant and amazing like you always are, and my 90yearold mother liz moynihan sent you your best regards and wishes she could be here and as shes 90 traveling is more difficult and ambassador Peter Galbraith returned from syria and also sent you his regards. Thank you. I thought i would take that mic to say that publicly and for my question, and ill keep it short. The rise of china, which im so glad you addressed in the speech, wouldnt have happened without collusion from the western powers as Everybody Knows, and, i mean, there are so many Shocking Facts that are now coming to light about how chinese firms on wall street are not refused to be audit and wall street lets them, that china steals 600 billion for its intellectual property a year. If russia, india or france or japan did that, that china will never have its human rights record questioned and ive watched this much my whole life and i went to comenist are in 19635 so i saw it. I found it absolutely shocking that the west has given communist china this easy pass and they are very much responsible for the rise of this ashore capitalism model. Where do you think its going, especially giving the uprising in hong kong which i fully support. Thanks. Well, thank you also for your very kind words and, again, just to reiterate how honored i am to be associated with your dad, but notwithstanding your kind words your comments about the west also implicate me because i worked for a pretty powerful western government for eight years and indeed worked day to day at the Security Council, of course, with china, a permanent member of the Security Council which has a veto and so, you know, to address what youre describes, on one level i think you have a point which is that when it comes to a country as powerful as china and even when it comes to a country far less powerful like saudi arabia, there have been these taboos in american Foreign Policy that have caused us, and sometimes its not about whether were confronting or not confronting, its about whether we do it publicly or privately, but in the case of china i think part of whats happened is the interdependence of our economies which is a very, very different sort of structure of competition than it was when the cold war was on and when your dad was was vocal against the soviet union and other human rights abusers. You know, we our economy is also very dependent on what happens in china, and so as you contemplate in 2019, lets see, i want even look back at the last decade, but the measures that you will take as you have seen with trumps very confrontational approach, that has bearing on the lives of american workers, and it has bearing on the prices of american goods, and it now is having a bearing on the slowing of the American Economy at a time when people are already still or are still reeling from the lasting effects of the last downturn in the economy, so, you know, i dont i dont disagree with you about the the problemtic reticence over the years of what happens inside china, but i think my own view is that in this in these decades ahead where we have these two very powerful countries with very different systems, that our democratic model and hopefully, again, with ge on track a little bit better than we have been of late, you know, notwithstanding, Racial Injustice and exclusion and inequality here, that notlets fact that we have checks and balances and a free media and freedom of religion and the rest, that these are going to be a comparative advantage in a competition of some kind between these two models, but at the same time i can tell you fromming is worked at the Security Council and with china, theres almost no global problem in the world, most of the problems that face us are global now, that we can solve without china, so, you know, again, one of the things that bring kids into the street and having them activate around politics and wanting to change the system and render it more effect sieve Climate Change. Were not going to be able to deal with Climate Change simply by yelling at china. I cant get i couldnt get at single peacekeeper deployed to prevent Sexual Violence against women in a war zone or to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers if i couldnt get my chinese counterpart on board because they have a veto and, you know, thats a structural problem in the International System and you can mad at the International System for being that way, but, you know, where we wer going in our domestic debate where democrats and republicans can only agree on is the irredeemable, you know, badness of china. I mean, if you look at the democratic primary debate and listen trump goes back and forth, but if you listen to members of his administration and certainly republicans in congress, its kind of likeike you know, its its a stocking horse now and it makes everybody feel like at least we can unite on something. We can unite on saying how terrible china is. Thats fine, and theres much to complain about as i did, as you did, but we also have to work with china. We have to look out for our own interests and were entangled with china and learning to walk and chew gum, you know, and challenge that government when its appropriate to do so more than we have, i think youre right in the past, but while also carving out space to have a Strategic Partnership on issues that we cant do anything about on our own. Im sorry. Were on our deadline right now. The remaining thing to do evening this you is to welcome you to the fellowship of the American Academy, and there are quite a few of them here tonight, all together only 117, and obviously the moynihan awardee is always a welcome member. Thank you. So i will thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure. [ applause ] and for a truly stimulating and wonderful presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Later today the group new america holds a discuss on rank choice investigate, a system in which voters rank candidates by preference. The candidate with the most first preference votes is declared the winner. Watch that today live at 6 00 p. M. Eastern over on cspan. President trump has a Campaign Rally in minneapolis this evening. Well have that live at 8 00 p. M. Eastern and online an cspan, online at cspan. Org or listen live on the free radio app. This week were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight the focus is the 1864 civil war battle of ft. Stevens fought in washington, d. C. When Confederate Forces tested the citys defenses before turning back. Watch that tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern on cspan 3. This week were also showing you booktv in primetime. Tonight the theme is history. Authors include harvard professor do you know can white who looks at how cold war propaganda was disseminated in the United States, pritan and the soviet union. Later, books on the Womens Suffrage Movement and nazi censorship efforts in the 1930s to repress artistic works they deemed challenging, that all begins at 8 00 eastern on cspan 2. Sunday at 9 00 eastern on afterwards. In her latest book tough love former Obama AdministrationNational Security adviser and u. N. Ambassador susan rice talks about her life and career in american diplomacy and Foreign Policy. Shes interviewed by robin wright, author and columnist for the new yorker. What are you worried about in terms of russia intervention in the 2020 election . First of all, i think its really important for people to understand that it hasnt stopped. This has been constant. They did they were very actively involved in 2016, as we saw, through stealing and hacking hacking and stealing emails from the dnc, from john podesta and others on the clinton campaign. They tried to infiltrate our electoral system. They put out false information and then they were very active on social media trying to pit americans against each other over domestic areas of contention, race, guns or what have you, and their whole thing is to discredit our democracy and to cause people in this country to hate one another and turn against one another and to try to weaken us from within. Watch afterwards, sunday night at 9 00