Transcripts For CSPAN C-SPAN Weekend 20101011

the invitation of aei to this event. it means a great deal to me to be here in washington for a change on a cold and kind of rainy day. usually it's hot and humid when i'm here. this is a nice change. thanks for coming out to the event. i like to thank steve hayward who i taught with in a history of government class in ohio, steve, who works, of course, on environmental issues and energy issues for, ei dabbles in the side on ronald reagan publishes big books about him and figures he gets to talk about on every occasion. we talked about lbj and reagan and you can guess who got who. i'm angling for william harry and reagan. my talk tonight is adapted from my book. it is a little different than the book itself. it's the conservative century revisited. he was not the first person to predict the demise after a republican defeat. it's a standard stroke of politicians to state how a catastrophe at the polls states a requiem on the right. this is taken so seriously that an essay published in the february 18, 2009 edition of the new republic was turned into a book, the death of conservative released to wide acclaim a few months later. it was recognized that in the history of post war american conservativism, defeats contain the seeds of future victory, but something seemed different this time. conservativism lost its roots. it was not a philosophy endowed with insights on civil society and tradition by burke, the founder of american conservatism, rather, they were defending the administration of george w. bush and reckon with scoff laws of glenn beck and what passes for conservatism today would based on not a set of principles, but on a distrust of all ideologies. there's much to admire in that argument. he believes that . . often conservatism politicians act as echo chambers. conservatism was transformed to what was called a counterrevolution consistent on the prewelfare state regime. this perspective dominates thinking on the right today, he contended, but they have not been able to convince the american people of the rolling back of the welfare state. now, let's pause to reflect that this is written during the asession of barak obama and the new republic published it at the down of obama's presidency back when anything seemed possible and bush style conservism was a rejected force in american life. one is reminded who i losely par phrase. liberalism had arrived and two years down the road a shining path looks tarnished and even dull. not only is obama and the liberal congress misread its mandate, but compounded the economic problems facing the country through massive digit beef sits in the health care legislation. they are conservatives today, 42% in one poll. the tea party movement may be responsible for the seat change. beginning in march 2009 the tea partyers caught the obama white house, democratic leaders in congress, and the media by surprise. unable to explain such opposition in any other way, liberals relied on another common stroke, the tea party opposition had to do with race. they opposed obama because he is african-american. why would anyone oppose him for any other reason other than race? it's been the obama white house and not the tea party that is on gaps on race. despite the best efforts of liberal politicians and media to suppress and smear it if the tea party doesn't smear itself first, the tea party endured impacting this year's primary elections and next month's midterm elections in a manner no one could have predicted two years after the historic vote of obama. conservatism stood up again. we have been down this road before, and the only thing surprising about the reawakening of conservatism after political defeat is it still surprises some and pundits. it is a now well-established pattern in the history of the last century. remember when bill clinton's election in 1992 signified the end of ronald reagan? we were in the new other of are -- era of change, don't stop thinking about tomorrow was the refrain. then the overreach in health care and scandal in congress and the promise to the raising middle class taxes and a conservative republican congress was elected in 1994, a result of newt gingrich's tactic. two years later, clinton himself uttered the famous line, the era of big government is over. the resignation of richard nixon in august 1974 showed the ends of the republican party that year. voters elected a class of left liberal democrats to a congress that failed. during the next six years with the exhaustion of what remained of the new deal coalition they challenged policy and proposed policies to counter economic stagnation. conservatives made gains in the 1978 midterm elections k enabling rornld reagan to build on the coalition to win the presidency in 1980. on november 3, 1964 james resten wrote in the "new york times" that barry goldwater not only lost the presidential election yesterday, # but the conservative cause as well. it seemed that way at the time, but conservative organized and changed the focus of their movement away from the extremism that defined politics to that time. liberalism fractured over the great society, vietnam, race riots, and the urban crisis allowing conservative the to make gains two years later. ronald reagan won election as governor of california that same year. certainly no conservative, nixon emerged and was elected president. in each of the cases, conservative declared dead reenmerged in a short period of time. is the pattern occurring again this year? one common feature of the historical examples is that liberalism is its own worst enemy. liberals overreached pouching further on reform and economic redistribution than the american people want. the liberal coalition fractured over other issues developing out of their efforts to reform society, for instance, race, identity politics, antiwar views or abortion. conservatives are not immune on overreaching either. the bush administration failed to craft a coherent strategy in iraq. in its decoration of mission accomplished was the mark of hubris acane to fdr claiming victory in japan day after defeating the japanese fleet. newt gingrich believed he could shut down the government and the merch people would be with him. the social security checks, food stamps, welfare payments, the mail, you name it trumped conservative principals in this case. in they overreach on their agenda has success of organizing against liberalism and dumb luck the standard change of parties by e lock tore yats. it's propped american history alternates between activism and passivity. they are led by modern liberals and conservatives govern in a passive period to return to normalcy. it's a nice theory, but too clever. the cycles remove agency from history. if change is simple, than passive periods when conservative run things leads to activism and establishes a new cycle. history is fixed a little different than your average marxists. it's on behalf of ideas and opposition to liberalism, the same pattern holds true for liberals. while correct to argue that liberal presidents are more active seeing their ideas and objectives in grand ways, it is not honest to suggest that all conservatives are passive in their approach to government, content to eat beans and nap during the afternoon. more importantly for the liberals, activism reflects the ideas of a nation emerging from darkness to light. franklin ruse vet said they have destiny. barak obama said we are the ones we have been waiting for. we are the change we seek. conservatives typically lack grandness in the duties of government because they have a better understanding of the limits of humanity and change. while quoted we have it in our power to start the world over again, it was not used for a great society. it was expressed best that government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. though as things turned out, government grew under reagan's watch. however it is clear from the tea party movement that after two years of economic stimulus, costing taxpayers $3 trillion and stimulating nothing more than an increased unemployment rate in the private sector the change people seek may be the reagan's renewal of government. my argument is that conservatism possesses a character that allows conservatives to shift and alter their movement in holding true to certain beliefs. it is a movement con stamently in flux, constantly in crisis and remaking itself. this is not a weakness of conservatism, but itself strength. it is one of the reasons that the much proffized has not happened. those deserving of the label of conservatism were reactionary. they were uninterested in political organizing. modern liberalism was the dominant political idea in the country. conservatives columbia university professor wrote express themselves only in action or in gestures to change their ideas. that would soon change. if conservatism is prod yum, what features are shared by those who use the label conservative to define their views? conservatives of every variety can agree that the constitutional order of the founding era what has been called ordered liberty is a crucial barometer for america. it is not that conservatives make a feddish of the constitution, but many in power have too often departed from those principles. rather, conservative seek to defend and protect the legacy of american rule and the rule of law. conservatives believe the christian religion and western civilization is crucial to society and politics. here, conservatives even many libertarians accept that most social and economic problems are at base moral problems. conservative have been nationalist and speck call of american power abroad early in the century, but willing to support internationalism when opposed to an ideological enny. finally they uphold the principles of liberty by fighting of the encroachment of state power, supporting the free market system, and protecting individual liberties. this doesn't represent any consistent ideological creed. indeed, few conservatives embrace them all at the same time and these principles all show oh desperate conservatism was and is as a belief system. how do conservatives contend for power if their movement was fractured and contentious concerning their basic principles? how did it move from the reactionary movement in which it began the century to the revolutionary one that ended it? the roots of conservative organizing as many historians have shown lie before the new deal, yet it was during the depression decade when a group of conservatives who george gnash called "scattered voices of protest profoundly pessimist tick about the future of the country." it went into a movement a writer one of the key opponents to fda. the revolution was "like the hag fish, the new deal entered new form and devoured the meaning from within." a government controlled by the people became one that supported the people and so controlled them. sounding like glenn beck speaking about obama without the millions of viewers and listener beck has going for him, garret concluded where the is new deal going? the answer is too obvious to be debated mple every choice made whether it was one that moved recovery or not was a choice true to the design of to totalitarianism government. describing the new deal became a staple criticism for a group of journalists called the old right. he was no means alone. albert j. knock impacted thinking and other founders of the movement as well described fdr election. they distrusted and sustained mass democracy equated with the threat of the revolution with the rise of culture modernism. the new humanist attacked the demise of standards and literature and others sout a return to the soil and federal and statists foe doesed on the rule of the elite. none of these rejected roads in america offered a new deal and failed to impact the shaping of conservatism. the architect who contributed to a brief gothic revival so popular that heches featured on the cover the "time" magazine gave way to the antidemocratic tradition in 1918. it achieved perfect work and reduced mankind to a level of incapacity where great leaders are not wanted or brought into existence while society itself is unable of its own power as a whole to lift itself from its own uniformity. the most essays centric essay argued most didn't deserve the label human. millennium after mill lin yum this basic flood sweeps on and it's the every lasting man, the matrix of the human being, the stuff from which he is made, unquote. all efforts to reform society and to improve the conditions by which men live were fallacious and free of education, democratic government and suffrage and the unlimited opportunities of the civilization have clothed man with the deceptive garments of equality, but underneath he is forever the same. i suggest that the cause of comprehensive failure and the bar to recovery is the persistence of this every lasting man and his assumption of universal control. this perspective is a long way from the tea party and from the pop pew louse conservatives of today. that was the biggest problem. they were like brave care robin. they ran away leaving the political battlefield to liberals alone. the masses couldn't be trusted to defend western civilization, only a remanent of like mind the individuals could do that. this is not a politics of conservatism but of reaction. it was a politics without any hope of ever seriously challenging roosevelt or anyone else threatening constitutional government and ordered liberty. what about political figures on the right down the 20s and 30s? there were certainly plenty of politicians who fit the label conservative and calvin cool lig for one equated well with modern conservatives. robert taft was the best known conservative politician of the era and failed to win the gop presidential nomination three times. other conservative republicans, many former progressive like william and johnson proposed a noninterventionist foreign policy, but they were not laissez faire and believed in high tariffs. the gop was not the most fruitful vehicle for opposition at the time and conservative politicians lack charm and political savvy of fdr. there was no think tapings or other constitutions to craft policy during the depression. organizations like the american liberty league founded by al smat and founded by the dupont family promoted economic freedom that was labeled the wall street model of human liberty. there was scattered tax protests in chicago and women organizing in fifer of the limited government. none of this activism flourished or was it organized. it was happen hazard. it came from within his own party from southern democrats hostile to labor unions and civil rights for african-americans. they could work with figures to oppose fdr and the new deal, southern democrats remained wedded to their party and region well beyond the new deal era. southern racial conservatism was not a fruitful style for organizing a national conservative movement. when the south switched to contism in the 1980s it was not backlash against race, religion, taxes, so played a role in the south. they had no answers for the problems of the gretion great depression or response to the new deal. when similar downturns occurred in later years, the stagflation of the 1970s and the long recession and academics, stiewlts, economists, politicians and pundits offered solutions and policies designed to address economic problems, not then. it would take some time for conservatives to get with the program and craft an alternative to the new deal. this al alternative was a return to limited government and free market economics. an assault athe new deal had to come first. business executives like son oil began to fund and direct an assault developing resources necessary to resurrect the free enterprise system. organizations like the manufactures and the national chamber of commerce played a crucial role in this effort as did economic economists at the university ever chicago including frank knight who challenged the arguments about deficit spending. fdr's use of the federal government purse to secure votes and support for organized labor and a tax on business all had the intended effects making it difficult for business to advance their ideas successfully. it was roosevelt's own missteps, own hubris the supreme court packing plan and executive branch reorganization followed by his cuts to spending in 1938 which brought down the new deal and came to their opponents. many who focused on free enterprise at the time seems that businessmen opposed the new deal. they focus was on activism in groups and individuals like puw. seeing this as the basis for the conservative movements. this links the activists of the 1930s to the antitax and labor of the 50s and of the 1970s. most of these histories ignore the larger corporations which accommodated to the new deal and to liberalism generally. new left critics called this corporate liberalism. what alternative did business have but to fight against the regimen of the economy? there was nothing sinister about business organizing against unions and government. few of the businessmen of this era was the supermen and there was no one among them and they saw plainly that liberalism and encouragement of organizing was not beneficial to their self-interests and to the spirit of free enterprise. only during world war ii did he realize he needed the support of business allowing them to profit from the war effort giving them favorable tax breaks and most importantly helping businessmen recover their loss social capital. this did set the table for conservative revival. business executives helped support the publication and wide distribution of books and founded the journal the freeman and tired activists established organizations like the foundation for economic education in 1947. in 1947 too he helped create a free market salon for economists. by the end of the 40s, conservative intel lek chiewls wanted to move out of the remnant and into the revolution. communism played an important issue in the post war period more more so than businessmen and the communism was the main yiewn fier for the right after world war ii and got over their mass democracy. this broke the old right foreign policy of ice lacism which would have faced communist expansion. those among them proved crucial to the movement by the mid 1950s from the experiences vividly and beautifully described by chambers in witness equipped them with an i want mat understanding of the temptation. liberal politicians defended others and conservatives saw them for what they were and could not trust liberals to prosecutor the cold war. there's huge differences of opinion of course among conservatives on handling the issue in politics. many are different about supporting joseph mccarthy for example, but they supported efforts to support the government age r anded world. the foreign policy embodied best by the america first committee represented a major change in thinking. few of the old isolationists supported america first and experienced no crisis in a shifting ground to defend cold war internationalism. you did not have to be a communist convert to understand the dangers to civilization represented by communism especially after the soviet union acombier qiered the -- acquired the atomic bomb. they learned to like them it became fruitful for the gop winning control of congress in 1946 opposing the extension of government regulatory regimes like the office of price administration, restricting the power of labor unions, and investigating con mew nighs influence in government. .. the combination of continued intellectual development end of act that some proved a potent mix in the eisenhower years. william f. buckley junior was the person who helps recognize the possibilities of unified conservative viewpoint, welcoming conservatives of all different backgrounds to its flagship publication national review. buckley was a feat in a leeds, no doubt with his english affect tatian, aristocratic contention and eccentricities, but he recognized the virtues and at least some of the american people. at times, he could sound like ralph addams cram, arguing against the vote to african-americans in the south has the social fears of blacks and some might in the region were. blacks are not yet ready for self-government he argued, a state which has led some scholars to position the conservative movement buckley created in the george wallace camp. but buckley also understood that politics was the art of the possible. here we support of the most conservative candidate who could win an election. never forgetting that she could not advance conservative and politically if you asked an election entirely on principle. it's quick that quote i would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the boston phone book then by all the two dozen at harvard, unquote, would've been unimaginable coming from the mouth of a conservative two decades earlier. buckley also imposed order to conservative son, tennessee conservative pote, excavating those figures from the movement like ivory and rubber welch of the birch society whose views were too extreme for political success. and welcoming those whose views weren't extreme, such as the neoconservatives in the 1970's. an additional crucial development for conservative political organization in the 1950's and 1960's was the entry of youth into the ruling. armor to row once wrote about the older generation appealing to conservatives, quote, a government fit for their participation would be suspended in the papers of yesteryear, far away in old europe at a time when government ministers were powdered wigs, type thank you hinch her chest up their sleeves and walked with a liquid walking sticks, unquote. bucklew believed some of these things while you play bach on the harpsichord, he was cool. even plain box on the harpsichord was kind of cool. he failed, the spy novels, hosted a television programs, smokes pot, only in international waters he said in presumably only one time. he just added and skied with beautiful people at chris dodd in every way buckley was a modernist. his wits, irrigation, appealed especially to baber pruner college students who wish to model themselves after their intellectual hero. buckley recognize the influence of youth, writing after the founding of the group young americans for freedom in september 1960 quote, was so impressed me with the young people's appetite for power, unquote. he labeled this a difference in psychological attitude so tremendous that it was markedly different from his generations. he was only 35 at the time. who once claimed the mantle of remnick to define their views. if another student oriented groups such as the intercollegiate society of individualists, probably hearing the line of your individualists by demanding society, too many times prompted them to change their name to intercollegiate studies institute, which is what they go by today. provided interaction between intellectual life and political activism and still does. the mobilization of young people helped propel the candidacy of barry goldwater, whose young conservatives who initially for use for goldwater for vice president clubs on college campuses after reading goldwater's conscious of the conservatives in a teen 60. groups like isi and gas helped inspire activists to get involved in a period of causes that the federal and state level, serving as cadres for conservative son, much like earlier generations of students in the young people's socialist league with a communist debut bp to boycott was mobilize the left. the disastrous to speak of goldwater in 1964 did not depress conservatives or even cause it's got this many liberals thought it would. it imported them even more. subscriptions to conservative magazine i rocketed and can ever do spoke openly and fearlessly about their beliefs in a victory over communism in vietnam and a victory over liberalism at home. conservatives proudly and defiantly in the 1960's wave the flag in the face of mounting challenges at home to american peace and prosperity. but conservatives also learned a crucial lesson from the goldwater campaign. it was important not to just say social security should be eliminated as they get the goldwater told to not be in some elderly folks in florida. but to prove why it was damaging. one outgrowth of the goldwater campaign was the development of the conservative think tank or policy institute. at first on the scene was the american enterprise association founded in 1943, which promoted the goals of a free enterprise system. william baroody let aei to its growth area in the 60's, but aei's early work with less explicitly political and more implicitly academic. some of aei's work on issues like deregulation, for instance, had an impact later, but their strategy produced lots of thinking, but also lots of tanking is when the papers to impact policy. one memorable exchange came about when senate staffer paul wyrick received a study on the memo of the supersonic transport aircraft in 1971. restudy, wyrick said. why did we get it sooner quach to which baroody replied, we didn't want to affect the outcome of the vote. why rick pervaded to found a think tank in 1973 the heritage foundation was created. i know it's a great risk is that appear and criticize aei historically, balestra said it got neck to gather and influence policy on capitol hill and elsewhere in society. problems with great society social policy also contributed to the movement of the group of policy intellectuals to the right to michael harrington labeled neoconservatives. in 1966, irving kristol and daniel bell established a public interest to study social policies and to recommend reforms which quote, would improve if not reformed the welfare state, unquote. the intellectual surrounding the public interest to many policy institutes were not libertarians and no disciples of hayek or other free-market conservatives. crystalline sites consistently stated he had never read hayek. they have to rescue the welfare state to make it more efficient, which maybe he can meet face to the hopes of making general motors more profitable. but the failures of welfare state liberalism convince them that this was impossible. by the 1970's, crystal so the virtues of business in america and use the pages of "the wall street journal" opinion page to give a tepid two tiers precapitalist from. hayek would've given three. other neoconservatives like garment potter rest, the combatant editor of commentary move to the right to risk continuing battle with ex-friends on the left over issues like vietnam, the arab-israeli conflict and détente. nixon's détente policies allowed the soviets to expand in the third world. the failure to contend with that expansion along cold war liberals like jackson, henry jackson, hunter is coming jeane kirkpatrick as well as as well as cold war conservatives like jesse helme and ronald reagan who argued for an expansion of the military and an end to détente. neoconservatives developed arguments which impacted both domestic policies on issues like crime, welfare and culture, but also on foreign-policy and defense policy. their entry onto the stage proved crucial in the final push of conservative bent towards political power. the founding of inside the beltway policy institutes such as heritage and the libertarian cato institute in the 1970's occurred during an era of mounting populist dissatisfaction with the inside the beltway political system. this time, unlike the 1930's, conservatives attacked the populism, parlaying it into effect if grass-roots movement led by new rights and religious right operatives. conservatives rejected the cynical strategies of richard nixon to create a new conservative majority based on opposition to liberalism and racial and class division. the new rights, led by howard phillips, richard garay and paul wyrick emerged instead out of opposition to nixon's domestic holiday -- policies and to the rise of social issues like abortion. some concern -- conservatives like the journalist daniel francis savor the nixon approach. the encouragement of what he called the middle american radicalism. francis wrote of an alienated indy race and he racing needed middle-class papering continued political polarization and a new culture were to win back control from the regime. both the left in the right, francis conjectured, were incapable of changing the structure of society and culture. only a revolution from her relic and mythic people would strike some as a bit too close to the evocation of old could do this. his arguments continue to impact paley of conservative thinking about race, ethnic identity and immigration to the end of the century, but it did not win the day that are now. grassroots populism on the right during the 70's was defensive but not radical, traditionalist while accepting of the tactics of protest developed on the left. grassroots activists were also often miss, convinced they could take a culture back from the permissive culture of the 60's. the battle against equal rights amendment is a good example of this type of event. led by one-woman dynamo in the thousands of people she helped to get involved, phyllis schlafly. the lawyer schlafly diddley antagonist or partisan debates i think you are has been for allowing her to speak. before razor-sharp arguments devastated opponents of left him frustrated enough at times to shriek i'd like to bring you at the stake as betty fernandez at one debate in illinois. sparsely proved the happy warrior in verbal combat with their rifles. christians mobilized as well to fight textbook wars in west virginia, just fight against and abortion and to promote traditional moral agenda so long a part of conservatism in america. most of these efforts fail to offer the culture in the remained potent and divisive issues in the wider politics into the 21st century. during the 1970's, conservatives and have become a political, intellectual and activist movement which is optimistic fot on reversing the tide of liberalism at home and communism abroad. it is a remarkable example of shot in for a come as, conservatives and became associate in the minds of the electorate would change anything revolution while liberalism had become static and unbending in its approach to social and economic problems. conservatives published equating jimmy carter with herbert hoover. they took a changing economy such as supply-side economics and tax cuts, political malaise trip to liberalism in the late 70's and position the optimistic movement while to achieve political power, you want that dream finally achieved with ronald reagan. the story of conservatism typically answer. reagan is elected, the revolution begun, the economy revived, the cold war ended. we know, however, that conservatives and moved on after reagan. many conservatives including the religious rites, the new rights, neoconservatives, supply-siders, paley of conservatives, all of them felt betrayed by reagan in some way or another, believing he was not focusing on their issues enough. reagan continued to be conservative, but also pragmatic and its approach to governance and some conservatives never forgive him for spoiling the revolution they thought. splits in the conservative movement appeared almost immediately after reagan's election. some of them developing into quite nasty battles about power within the movement. neoconservatives with their policy experience and connections in publishing and politics one of filling many of the slots in the reagan administration. many paley of conservatives charged that they have hijacked their movement, quote when i can't work gets religion and joins the church conservative historian stephen tonsil wrote. it now and then she makes a good choir director, but when she begins to tell the minister how to run the church, matters have been taken too far, unquote. torrents or what not to argue that if trotsky were alive, then he would be writing neoconservative tracts in the hoover institution. he also claimed that conservatives viewpoint was anglo or roman catholic, seemingly not open to access or jews. john sawyer was defending the conservative movement to join them in the 50's when he was labeled by neocons as anti-somatic, even catalogued much later by david from an article in national review is one among many of him pitcher out of conservatives for not supporting the iraq war which time for turned out to support. after national review public on first essay in 1986 and he was attacked by neoconservatives, he never was allowed to publish a magazine again. perhaps this is what most distresses antenna house about the demise of conservatism. no longer is a movement which emphasizes thinking and ideas of critical figures like edmund burke, nor is the one which any longer has much to learn it seems for a russell curt, henry regnery, richard weaver or even stephen tonsil are. all these figures have important insights about culture and politics, religion and society, but spoke none of the idiom of the policy intellectual craft enough beds which make it them on fox news for a 32nd sound bite. they broke first-tier journals, often repeating the same arguments about the decline of the last as though they were to be learned from history is applied to the present and future. they were perky, and exemplars of the great statesman seo that society has a connection between a living, dead and yet to be born. contemporary conservatives can continue to learn much about reagan such figures, not everything worth knowing has practical implications and tenant house may be correct to lament the decline of this style of conservatives on. the conservatives and is now almost completely a movement of politics and policy and that's not so bad. since the reagan era, the movement is very different and its think tanks, intellectuals and politicians have emphasized ideas from preemptive war, democracy in the middle east, immigration reform, welfare reform, to the growing sense of fiscal hawkishness of today. there are conservative policy intellectuals who can counter every argument developed by every liberal policy expert politician from regulation to health care to global warming. the movement of today is composed of millions more people and there's more out reached another due to fox news, rush limbaugh, glenn back in the drudge report to name a few. conservative intellectuals and pundits continue to focus on the business principles and its ideas and continue to reaffirm his past while focusing on its future. the result has been a true balance between ideas and policies, between politics and principles. if the tea party succeeds in remaking and contributes to the revival of conservatism within it, a fiscal responsibility to prevail in washington, i know that's a big stretch, this movement would achieve something that reagan, gingrich or george w. bush couldn't, the reduction in the size and scope of government. it would be a long drawnout conflict in the tea party may well win the battle this fall, some of them, but does the wider war. what if they do this, it will not be the death of conservatism as a result. it is clear that the crystal list of conservatism is a metamorphosis once again. what emerges will be different from the conservatism of the 30's, just as that conservatism was different from the conservatism of the 60's and 80's, just as that conservatives on this different from the movement today. the ability of conservatives do so consistently altered their ideas and change their lives, the ability of conservative center remained remarkably protean has allowed to remove the to rebound after electoral defeat, rebuild its coalition on the resurrected ideas and parole policies consistent with conservative principles. it is what has made the last century a conservative century and it just might make the current one a conservative century as well. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, greg. very provocative i thought the lively talk. and now we'll turn to your questions. in the back. if you could please identify yourself. >> good evening. i'm founder and chief editor of fair television for the new publication which will be covering global issues. i am an opposite man and i had an education and british policy from the great michael holt. and my question is to you we had one of the conservative century about pretend and are reading this. so my question to you is do you see parallels with every mention of the conservative party and pretend time after time after epitaph has been written, whether it was after 1916, whether it was after the 1920's, whether it was after the accu government or whether it was in the 70's and then patrick came in with the new revolution in 1979. do you see battles between the american story and the british story? >> i can take your word for it without having said that, i'm an expert on british politics. i can't make those same connections. certainly like i said at the beginning of the talk about one explanation is this just a traditional cycle of politics. like schlesinger said that the site is cyclical. activist government come in. they will for a while. they do things may be overstretched their boundaries as i suggested that a group of people, want to challenge them. so that could be all it is. i think in the case of the conservative movement numeric type, which is the only thing i can speak to i'm sorry to say, not the comparative approach, is to say that throughout this period, even at times when they were at this, government from power and everything seemed lost and everybody was saying that the death of conservatism was here, you know, surprisingly conservatives were able to organize in spite of that and to do so at a time when they weren't amenable to the media and to the other institutions in society, which really focused on politics. so i guess my answer would tsn america, not sure in britain in terms of the view. [inaudible] >> third-party like in many other countries and what is the third party here third-party hereunto parties will be going after this new third-party? >> i think the tea party reminds me most as an historical kind of parallel in many respects to the populist party of the late 19th century in america, which was the third-party and which could have probably, if you would've stayed focused on its main ideas and issues, may have been able to disorients enough for democrats to wind up taking it over. and not enough they would've kept the name democrat or populace, but they could've wound up in many respects pushing aside one of those two parties in the 1890's. the fact that they didn't and the fact that the tea party has not yet become a third party, and i doubt it will, shows you the facts in america that our political system, the structure of our politics just works against viable third parties. tea party would have more influence i contend working to push the republican party if that is what he chooses to do right now since that's the more conservative vehicle, more closer to what the tea party itself believed to push the republican party to be fiscally disciplined when control of congress, if that's what happens, or to make sure that they're following through on their ideas and arguments are once again in power. that would be much better suited for them than going off in the third-party track on which hasn't worked at all in modern history and it's much more difficult nowadays i think to challenge even the two major parties than it was before. >> by the hundreds of the center for international private enterprise. thank you dr. schneider for very insightful talk. i wondered what historical lessons are there that you can point to, perhaps from the specific dangers from conservatives becoming, as you said today, a party movements, totally of politics and policy and less of ideology? >> i'm skeptical and dubious really about being called an ideology. i think most of my book is really a counter to that in many respects. i avoid the term. not to say that it can't be used ideologically or the parent element that conservatives and that argues ideologically. that happens all the time. but my viewpoint as a disposition, you have these areas groups of various fractured kind of things and treatment to it at times and so it's a nice stew that mixes together and once in a while can produce a political candidate that seems to represent everything that those people want to wear in the mix. so in terms of it becoming a movement of politics and policy, the start of my book talks mainly about conservatives who were pretty much the users. i mean, there wasn't a movement. you were disconnected individuals. i mean, i talked about more people than i gave you examples up in the boat. and they didn't like democracy. he didn't like politics. they weren't interested in policy. they were interested in the great questions of the new humanists were interested in literal and standards here at the southern grants going back to the soil and so on and so forth. these people have no went just whatsoever in politics. what happens? world war ii, the new deal itself in world war ii, a new generation of young people being born, the baby boomers were much more explicitly interested it seems in power and the elders were the conservative movement. so they kind of push the gambit on bush and conservatism into politics and barry goldwater comes around at the right moment for them. he's obviously not the most perfect candidates in terms of his electability. i said he's crusty for same, you know, you should get rid of social security in front of an audience of old folks. you can also say it's pretty to say that, but that would be the cynical view. i like the fact that he's stubborn and says things like it is. i'm stubborn and say things like it is, too. so in that sense, it's the postwar era type shifts into politics. now, even in the 60's, even in the early 60's, there are conservatives, traditionalists who believe that the movement should really be about books and great learning and thinking in that sort of thing and not so much about politics who are wondering if everything's been said. consort and henry bradbury had a great friendship and it produced a wonderful correspondence which is all available at the hoover institution and some day should be published. and most of what they correspond about was not politics. most of what they correspond about with things like art, german, wine, german books. they were all kind of germanic votes. a variety of other things. gardening, you name it. and one of those letters were bradbury says at one point, we need some new ideas. you know come were saying the same things all the time. so the old ideas are getting kind of scale. it would've continued to be just that, a movement war of ideas come in than it would've withered and died and you would've had no political movement whatsoever. the combination of those two things was crucial through the 60's and 70's. the problem today is once you get to washington if i must like how can you keep the boys on the farm once they've seen paris. we'll touch from world war i. how can you keep the conservatives out of washington and going back to the hinterlands like kansas and doing things there, which are much more important for students, young people, et cetera. that's the constant dilemma i think conservatism cases. but i see it as a positive and not conservatives today are in charge or can contend in politics and can contend in policy. so you're not going to get justin's proposed from the current administration or from previous months without it being challenged in some cases. and that's good, rather than the negative. i think that the vital thing for the functioning of conservatism. there's certainly plenty of conservatives to which poetry mattered and things of that sort, too. i guess my -- that answers your question. i'm not sure if it does. >> thank you, dennis klugman, aei adjunct. what would you say to arguments of those who suggest that basically demographics to have conservatives on. this is your midterm election. the economy is not doing well, so we expect the conservatives to do better since around the outcome of that that the bigger pattern is that typically with immigration, new groups of the conservative, their background as alien to their concert. they benefit more directly from robert programs. in your study of history's hopes those thoughts to expect of this conference. >> not directly. i mean, in a sense the early 20th century were hostile to immigration. these are the people who were bringing in the virus of bolshevism, the different ideas and religions and faiths which were challenging to the protestant kind of nativist majority. so those who call themselves conservative or who i applied the label to work correctly for very few people did walk around saying i'm a conservative in the twenties or 30's look down on those sorts of individuals. and certainly in the current movement, there still a lament on the right who has continued to it out on those sorts of groups for a variety of reasons, be because of illegal immigration, but where the elite was coming from mexico, so as to race involved to not? there could be for certain elements. reagan and some of the more optimistic conservatives i think had it right. i mean, jack kemp is i think had it right in some cases. you can see where your votes are or you can find other ways to reach individuals and groups who are outside of where your votes are. in other words, you can be content to win the suburbs, the affluent suburbs and you can be content to win the south and the southwest and the plains states. and you can be content to an evangelical christians. but you can also seek to bring african-americans. saw them on what conservative can do for them. and i think what needs to be done in many cases is for conservatives to get beyond fair kind of safety net, where the vote part and try to reach out to minority groups, immigrant groups and others who probably would find some appeal to a conservatives argue. that's all he can answer. [inaudible] >> utah about how it's not all bad that the conservative movement has become more focused on power and not policy in its latter days. but is there sort of a -- [inaudible] >> er. >> is there a template for renewing the intellectuals were philosophical spiritual roots of the conservative movement while at the same time not, you know, regressive in terms of, you know, not regressing in terms of political engagement? so it seems a lot of times you'll see sort of an inverse relationship between engaging with the life of the mind and interest in partisan or political or committee among young conservatives. so how do you keep it -- maintain an interest in the conservative movement in engaging here while at the same tired not allowing the intellectual and philosophical roots to whether? >> is plenty of organizations obviously they do this already, groups like isi who i think young people and students should be exposed with her interested in conservative ideas and conservatives who also crossover into activism on campus sometimes in various ways or his membership in a group like isi might translate into the membership of the young republicans which are now pretty conservative on most campuses are groups like young americans foundation for young americans for freedom, some of which still exist on college campuses as well. so you can have that transference, which existed in the wider movement in the 50's and 60's. i mean, when the founders of young americans for freedom, that organization in 1960, they were both of the perspective that the life of the mind mattered as well as the political activism, which sharpened thayer's attitudes in the 1960's and moved them into the various positions later on in the reagan years than in the federal government, it addressed. i always start out with trying to get students to understand both at the college level and at the high school level. i talked to a great high school class in lawrence, kansas, lawrence kansas is about the only county of douglas county in kansas is one of the two counties that traditionally votes democratic because the university of kansas is there and so you have a lot more liberal minded folks. and so, these are children of lots of children of college professors from ku, were fairly liberal and they like obama and they don't have a really good understanding of what conservatism is. so i would start at the same way. i ask them who's a conservative to you and they name rush limbaugh. any of the people i know, the media people, the people they see on television, the people they hear the radio. and then i get that you think about what about these people? and i put up slides and show them the new humanist. and i show them richard weaver in a talk about what their idea and this is the type of conservatism, too, which you don't hear much about. i think of the teaching of it in the instruction of it and i talking about it with student, there is this desire a thing to talk about both sides of the movement. the problem is, are we losing not and circulation of various conservative magazines which are traditionalists, are not great. his are becoming more and more kind of sub subfields of conservatism in many respects and that threat made to that kind of sense to wear the movement is going in the future. and so come i do agree with you. i think this is a potential problem. but i think the only way you can handle that problem is to try and educate the younger generation of conservatives about the earlier groups. and they really don't know much about them. if that's an answer to your question. >> jogs holiday, independent congress. as the culture swung to the left and in some sense is moral relativism become an issue, i'm questioning whether this is a cyclical process or whether indeed were facing a more secular shift against fundamental principles. and it may be a harder slog to get back -- >> will come i think even the conservative culture is one further away from where its basis was 50 years ago. no doubt about it. overall, david cortright who is an historian at university of north florida has a very excellent book just now called no right turn where he talks about this very issue. it's an examination of the past 30 or 40 years of american history, looking at the culture more explicitly. and it says even with the rise of conservatism to political power comes the left won the culture. and it became very difficult, i'll most impossible for people who i call happy warriors of this talk in the 1970's to stay happy warriors in the 1990's than they were becoming ready bitter disenchanted with were the culture was heading. and of course today on a number of issues as well. and they begin to speak in terms of coming in know, the machine should be changed and they speak in terms that more left-wing kind of revolutionary groups could have spoken up dozens of years ago. you know, so in that sense, the culture warriors on the right are frustrated today because the culture has sharply turned to the left in many respects. but young conservatives growing up in a culture apart around the deeply kind of evangelical or fundamentalist schools and traditions in the homeschool movement, which might keep them away from the worst aspects of that coulter. traditional catholics, et cetera. these groups are little preserves on the right for the traditionalist culture that existed on the right 50 years ago, which has now moved pretty far to where the left is as well over well. >> will take one more question if there is a final question. greg, i'd like to thank you for a wonderful lecture. i hope you all a joy this. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] vi president biden's wife, jill, herself acommunity college professor. this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> my name is albert, a graduate of the mountain community college and current student at izona state university. it is my honor and privilege to stand before you today as we focus our attention on the critical role community colleges play in the realm of education and in the global workforce. i first met dr. biden last spring in in tempe arizona during a listening session focusing on community colleges and transfer students to the fourth year university. while i was there i told her my story how i stumbled upon the freshness of community college and today she asked me to share that story with you. i was born and raised in phoenix arizona to a family of migrant farm workers who work alongside the united farmworker feige of five my father passed away at my mother with no education dillinger a lifestyle of addiction. at the age of 6-years-d and after running from place to place and with no stable home me and my brother and sister decided to call my aunt and uncle to come pick us up and without hesitation the immediately took a seat despite their young age and another to the tough financial responsibility they have to endure. and in that room i was installed in the fall use of respect, service and the believe if you work hard enough at something you can accomplish your goals and they are here with me today. pplause] as high school graduation smeared and my time and attention began to shift away from my education and i was more concerned about having fun and thinking i knew everything in the world as a buy even adult, a college education was not a priority of my life. but i began to see my life had been in the direction i told myself i would never go so one night about 2 a.m. in the morning and without anything productive going on in my life i came up with the idea to register for classes at estrella mountain community college and i just completed the online plication and when i started at estrella mountain college i knew that my thought process began to be challengd and my passion for education was reunited. i began to see the world and a whole different perspective. estrella mountain will only provide a place to study and learn that provided an institution that truly cared about my future. the advisers, the professors and support staff ofmy community college work hard to develop relationships with their students and a genuinely care about the academic success. so i stand before you this morning a product of community colleges, a trend estimate of the significance of these institutions play in our communities and country and ultimately in the world. so without further ado it is my honor and privilege to humble the introduce a woman who truly has a passion for higher ucation, a woman who knows the ever so valuable role of community college, a woman who invested in my life personally and why add ear and respect so please help me welcome the second lady of the united states and community college chair dr. jill biden. [applause] >> good afternoon. welcome to the first ever white house summit on community colleges. i am jill biden and i'm proud to stand he today as a community college professor. this is a historic and exciting opportunity for all of us in the community college world. for years i have said that community collegesare onof america's best kept secrets. well, with the president of the united states shing a light on us i think the secret is out. at today's summit is an important next step in our efforts to meet the president's goal of having the best educated most competitive work force in the world by the end of this decade. as we meet here today, families all across our country are struggling. we see that struggle firsthand in community colleges. we see people who are determined to build a better life for themselves and their families no matter how hard it is. today community colleges are the largest and fastest-growing, most affordable gment of america's higher education system. for generations, these schools have been an option for many students who didn't have other options. recent immigrants, working adults were studts who cou not afford or were not quite ready for a four year institution. community colleges are uniquely american. places where anyone who walks through the door is one step closer to realizing the american dream. these schools are flexible and innovative. for that reason, countries around the world are looking at communityolleges as a model to increaswork force preparedness and college graduation among their own citizens. community colleges are uniquely positioned to provide the education and training that will prepare students for the jobs in the 21st century. schools are forming partnerships with communities ensuring that students are trained for job that need to be filled. getting americans back to work is america's great challenge to read and community colleges are critically important to preparing graduates for those jobs. we are here today because community colleges are entering a new day in america and here's why. for more and more people, community colleges are the way to the future. they are giving a real opportunity to students who otherwise wouldn't have it. they are giving hope to families who fought the american dream was slipping away. they are and equipping americans with the skills and expertise that are relevant to the emerging jobs of the future, their opening doors for the middle class at a time of the middle class has seen so many doors closed to them. as the president said, the nation's that educate us today ll compete with us tomorrow. that is why he is committed to increasing the number of college graduates and america so that we will once again lead the world in the percentage of our citizens with a college degree. communy colleges are absolutely critical to reaching this goal and ensuring our country's economic prosperity in the future. that is why the president has also challenged all of us to graduate an additional 5 million a community college graduates by 2020. reaching the goal will take the commitment on everyone in this room and all of the hard-working community college leaders, faculty and students we represent. community college students and graduates across the country are working in jobs that will enable laws to expand our grain the economy, provide americans with the excellent health care they deserve and rebuild our country's infrastructure. these are the students like the ones i visited in their state of the art radiology lab last spring at delgado community college in new orleans o the woman i met who after 16 years as a lab tech came to king several community college in new york for retraining and graduated in a nursing with a job offer waiting. i arned that industry partnerships on every campus life is it that reinforce what we in this room know. community colleges are at the center of america's effort to educate our way to a better economy. i have been a teacher for nearly three decades and i've spent the past 17 years teaching at a community college. i know the power of community colleges to change lives. i have seen the wisdom of yates who said, quote, education is not the filling of the pale, but the lighting of a fire. all of the teachers here today know the magic of lighting the fire in the soul of a student. but as i work hard every day to inspire students, it is ultimately they who inspire me. i'm inspired by students to overcome significant odds just to show up. workers who have returned to school to improve their job prospects, mothers who juggle jobs and child care while preparing for a new career and students who spent two years at a community college before transferring to a four year school. at the president's request, i have visited a community colleges around the country to see innovative job partnerships in created students of work programs. at each school i hear stories about the perseverance of community college students to make a better life for themselves and their families. students like albert who inspired me and who i am thrilled to welcome here today. you are amazing, albert. the programs are different, the students are different, but the aspirations are the same. these students are working hard to get the training and education they need to make their live better. they know that education can open the door to a world of new opportunities. they are students like the mother who share her experience with us on the white house website of working towards a degree while raising three children and straddling financial challenges. now employed and the holder of a bachelor's and a master's degree she wrote community colleges didn't just change my life, they gave me my life. community colleges do that every day. when the support and the attention of the people in this room we can serve more students, and serve them better than ever. our challenge is not just to get students into college, but to keep them there and to graduate them faster with the skills they need to succeed in in the american workforce. this is the moment for community colleges to shine. teaching is my life's work. i am grateful and tremendously proud to work with the president and vice president heuvel you that work. president obama is committed to restoring the progress -- the promise of the american education system. he recognizes the value of community colleges and is investing in them so that they are the best that they can be. his leadershiis inspiring to all of us who believe that each and every american deserves the opportunity to realize his full potential. i am honored to introduce a leader who shares our belief in the power of the community college, president barack obama. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. thank you so much. thank you, everybody. everybody, please have a seat. thank you. i want to acknowledge some of the folks who are here who are making an incredible contribution to this effort. first of all of our secretary of education, arne duncan is here. [applause] for secretary of labor combat hilda solis is here. [applause] someone who cares deeply about our veterans and education date received, our chairman of joint chiefs of staff, admiral michael mullen and his wife, ms. mullen are here. [applause] representative brett guthrie of kentucky is here and obviously i am thrilled to not only see jill biden but also albert ojeda who introduced her because his story represents thousands across the country. i am so grateful for jill being willing to lead today's summit. first of all because she has to spend time putting up with joe and that is a big enough task to take this one on behalf of the administration is extraordinarily significant. i do not think that she's doing it for the administration. she is doing it because of the passion she has for community colleges. jill has devoted her life to education. as she said, she has been a teacher for nearly three decades although you can't tell by looking at her. [laughter] a community college professor for 17 years. i want this on the record, jill is not plying hooky today. the only reason she is yours because the college president gave her permission to miss class. this morning between appearing on the today sow, receiving briefings from her staff and hosting the summit, she was sexually grading papers in her white house office. -- she was actually grading papers and the white house office. as she knows personally, these colleges are the unsung heroes of america's education system. they may nt get the credit they deserve, they may not get the same resources at other schools, but they provide a gateway to millions of americans, to good jobs and a better life. these are places where young people can continue their edation without taking on a lot of debt. these are places where workers can gain new skills to move up in their careers. these are places where anyone with a desire to learn and grow can take a chance on a brighter future for themselves and their families, whether that is a single mother or a returning soldier or an aspiring entrepreneur. and community colleges are not justhe key to the future of their students they are also one of the keys to the future of our country. we are in a global competition to lead in the growth industries ofthe 21st century and that leadership depends on a well-educated, highly skilled work force. we know, for example, that in the coming years, jobs requiring at least an associate's degree are going to go twice as fast as jobs that don't require a college. we will not fill those jobs or keep those jobs on our shores without community colleges. so, it was no surprise when one of the main recommendations of my economic advisory board, who i met with yesterday, was to expand education and job training. these are executives from some of america's top compnies. their businesses need a steady supply of people who can step in to jobs involving a lot of technical knowledge and skill. the understand the importance of making sure we are preparing for jobs for the folks in the future. whenever we face economic challenges we have responded by seeking new ways to harness the talent of our people, and that's one of the primary reasons that we have prospered. in the 19th century we felt public schools and the land grant colleges, transforming not just education but our entire economy. in the 20th century, we passed the g.i. bill and invested in math and science, helping to unleash a wave of innovation that helped forge the great american middle class. but in recent years we fail to live up to this legacy, especially in higher education. in just a decade, we have fallen from first to ninth in the proportion of young people with college degrees. but only not represent a huge waste of potential in the global marketplace as represents a threat to our position as the world's leading economy. as far as i am concerned america doesn't play for second place and we certainly don't pl or ninth. so i set a goal. by 2020, america will once again lead the world in producing college graduates, and i believe community colleges will play a huge part in meeting this goal by producing an additional 5 million degrees and certificates in the next ten years. that's why last year on launched the american graduation initiative. i promised that we would end wasteful subsidies to big banks for student loans and instead use that money to make college more affordable and to make a historic investment in community colleges. and after a tough fight, we passed the was reforms. and today we are using this money towards the interest of higher education in america. and this is helping us modernize community colleges at a critical time because many of these schools are under pressure to cut costs and to capital influence nd scrap courses even as the demand soared. it's going to make it possible for the colleges to better harnessed technology in the classroom and beyond, and it's going to promote reform. as the colleges compete for funding by approving graduation rates and matching the courses to the needs of local businses and making sure when a graduate is handed a diploma it means she or he are ready for a career. we held by making college more affordable suite increased student aid by thousands of dollars. we've simplified the loan application process and making it easier for students to pay back their loans by limiting payments to 10% of their income. but reaching the 2020 goal that light set is not just going to depend on government. it also depends on educators and students doing their part and it depends on businesses and nonprofit working with colleges to connect students with jobs. so that is why we are holding the summit and why i am asking economic advisory board to reach out to employers across the country and come up with new ways for businesses and community colleges to work together. based on this call to action yesterday we announced a new panership called skills for america's future. the idea is simple. businesses and community colleges work together to match the work and the classroom with the needs of the board room. and already, business is from pg&e to the upc to the gap have announced their support as have the business leaders like my friend and the aspen institute's walter isaacson. the company schools and nonprofits that all of you leave will take part. today we can also announce the gates foundation is starting a new five-year initiative to raise counity college graduation rates. this is critically important because half of those who enter the community colleges fail to either earn a two year degree or transfer to earn a four year degree. so we want to thak melinda gates who is here for that contribution. and the aspen institute and several leadin foundations were launching a competitive price for community college excellence. it's going to shine a spotlight on community colleges delivering truly exceptional results. places that often don't get a lot of attention but make a huge difference in their students' lives. so we are investing in community colleges making college more affordable andbinging together businesses, non-profit and schools to train folks for the jobs of the new century. all of this will help ensure that we continue to lead the global economy, but only if we maintain this commitment to education that's been central to our success. that's why i so strongly disagree with the economic plan that was released last week by the republican leaders in congress which would cut education by 20%. would reduce doherty eliminate financial aid for 8 million college students and would leave community colleges without the resources they need to meet the goals we talked about today. instead the money would help pay for a 700 billion-dollar tax cut but only 2% of the wealthiest americans would ever see an average of 00,000or every millionaire or millionaire in the country and that just doesn't make sense, not for students, not for our economy. think about it. china is and slashingeducation by 20% right now. india is not slashing education by 20%. we are in the fight for the future, fight the depends on education and cutting aid for 8 million students scaling back our community and commitment to the community colleges. that's like unilaterally disarming the troops right as they head to the front lines. we have to get serious aboutour deficit. that's why after decades the report pay-as-you-go rles proposed a three-year freeze on non-security spending. it's why we informed the bipartisan deficit commission. but what we can't do is funded those by slashing education for those who do. there's a better way to do this and i want to work together with everybody concerned. republican and democrat to figure that out. to use an expression familiar to those of you who are from the midwest, do don't eat your seed corn. we can't accept less investment in our young people if our country is going to move forward. would mean giving up on the promise of so many people who might not be able to pursue an education. like the millions oftudents at community colleges across this country. so, i just want to use this example of derek who is here today. where is derek? right there. he spent six years in the air force, three of the planets in the afghan, putting his life at risk to keep this country safe and when he returned he started classes at the local community college in northern michigan. now apparently what i'm told us he was unsure whether he was smart enough to do the work and he also was concerned he wouldn't get the support he needed and he was wrong on both fronts. this professor not only help to transition from the military even as he continued to serve in t michigan international guard, but also helped him earn his associate's degree with honors then he transferred to the university of michigan, goebel -- go blue, where he graduated just a few weeks ago and he co-founded student veterans of america to help veterans like himself. [applause] >> or we canlook to the example set by albert ojeda who just spoke to you. he didn't have any advantages in life. grew up in a tough neighborhood in phoenix, lost his father to violence, lost his mother to prison, but that didn't stop him from pursuing his education. it didn't stop him attending community college, becoming an honor student, becoming the first member of his family to graduate from college. there's so many folks out there like derek and albert, and i think that the many community college students or e-mails through whitehouse.gov about how important domenici, which has been. one person said he had been laid off and decided to return to school after 17 years and attending community college literally helped save my life, that's what he said. i can not only see an associate's degree next year but a future filled with possibilities for the first time. a new future filled with possibilities. that is why we are here today. that's the promise of an education not just for any one student but our entire country. that's why it is important that we work together on behalf of community colleges. and an education system that harnesses the talent and hard work of every single american. so, thank you for the incredible work that each and every one of you do out there and shools, business folks who are supporting these community colleges, the students who are doing so much to contribute to our country. let's get busy. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, mr. president, for your steadfast commitment to community colleges and for the millions of students they educate every day. i want to acknowledge and thank all those individuals and schools contacted us andare watching this broadcast live on whitehouse.gov. we appreciate your participation and will continue to incorporate your comments and feedback into our ongoing work. i also want to take a mome to thank the members of the media for joining us today. you have the power to engage americans in these critical discussions. so thank you for making education a focus of your reporting. we have so many outstanding participants here today lik albert who honored me with such a wonderful introduction. he's a great example of a student who has seized the opportunity offered by a community college education. i would now like to introduce an extraordinary woman, who along with her husband, is committed to ensuring that each individual has the opportunity to live up to his or her potential. the gates foundation recognizes that education is the great equalizer, and they are putting their substantial resources behind efforts to prepare students all along the education spectrum. i would like to introduce a woman i really enjoyed getting to know, melinda gates. melinda? [applause] >> thanks, dr. biden, because you not only stand up in front of your class in northern virginia community college, the new standard for students here at an evt like this, a i feel that is really incredible. you know, for me it is a great honor to be here today. bill and i have been at work in the keefer 12 kurdish the education system and i have to say as we would travel out and try to learn about the issues with the students in k-12 we pt hearing about this difficult transition on to college, community college, and we started visiting community colleges and bill and i said to ourselves, these are these hidden gems of the society that makes the society tick, yet every time there's a conversation we seem to talk about the elite for year institutions, so i am thrilled today to be here at this event to have this focus on community colleges. i think president obama and dr. biden understand the community colleges really create opportunity, particularly for the low-income and minority use in our country. the understand over society has changed. the so-called traditional students really are not the basis of society now. it's the nontraditional students, the students who are more like 26-years-old and holding down to jobs and have a child at home, those are meeting of the majority of our education stem today and so i'm thrilled that that's what we are here to focus on. .. albert's tenacity to get through but he's gone there is so off from the story i hear from other colleges students. what they're doing to even drive themselves to make community college today or raise their young child while they're getting a degree or hold down a couple of jobs it's really something. when i was growing up, the u.s. lied and colleges. now were 12. times have changed and we've got to change, too. almost half of americn college students attend community colleges. but a relatively small percentage of that actually graduate with a certificate or a degree that helps them get onto a good job. so our task as a society now is to get that percentage up. we have to have a conversation that's about college completion and make sure that all the incentives are in place so that students o walk in the front door of our community colleges complete with a degree or certificate they set out to get. or if there goes to transfer to a four-year institution, that's great, too. but let's talk about completion. such data may bite to discuss the gates foundation code completion by design. our investment is to hope trinity college's redesign every aspect of the student experience to help students reach that ultimate goal, which is a degree or certificate that matters in the job market. there are over 1000 community colleges in e u.s. and most of them, when you talk to them, they are doing incredibly innovative things around their students and around jobs. some have figured out how to streamli the enrollment process so it's much quicker for a student to enroll in to get the financial aid they need. others suspect that the remediation process of students don't have to spend a long time we learn any subject they were in high school. just remediate the parts they wouldn't have scored the fun. other have simplified the process so the next step for community colleges is to put all these pieces of puzzle together from enrollment to guidance through corso action to remediation if that's what's needed and also to link technology. if we link technology in a hybrid learning students won't have to always try to be be communicable at campus to get the class they need. they can do some of the work away from the community colleges. so i think we can even help you learn and heassociates can make progress towards their credential while they're also holding down a job. throughout the foundation, were committed to collaborating with community colleges as they do this hd work of developing the courses and changing things in the committee colleges so they can significantly increase the graduation rate and so they can disseminate the best ideas of what's actually working for them in their community. in this country, hard work is supposed to pay off. and i'm excited to see that there is a dynamic group of people who have come here today to guarantee that it pays off for young adults who attend community colleges and who work so hard, like albert, to make their dreams come true. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, melinda for the important work you are doing and for joining us here today. i would now like to welcome to stage another amazing woman who has worked tirelessly on behalf of the president to bring together businesses and communy colleges to dramatically improve rtnerships between them. skills for america is a national initiative to encourage employers and labor unions to work in partnership with community colleges, to maximize workforce development strategy, job training programs and ultimately job placement. please welcome a member of the president's economic recovery advisory board, penny pritzker. [applause] >> thank you, dr. biden. it is a thrill to be here today. as melinda reference, our community colleges are wonderful assets. yesterday the president's economic recovery advisory board proposed and the president endorsed a new initiative that is designed to make our community colleges even more fective. the initiative is skills for america's future. it's a collaboration of business, labor, the federal government agencies and community colleges. its goal is to better educate students and workers so that they can earn a credential or a degree with with a girl economic value that can lead to a job into a solid career pathway. during this past year, the presidens economic recovery advisory board convened meetings and heard leaders in many different industries, health care, financial services, small business, energy and utilities, service and retail, technology, manufacturing and construction. the pew wrapped subcommittee on communication and training identified public-private partnerships as one of the best way to improve the skills of america's workers. we also learned that the area is eager and willing to help. five major corporations have her be joined this effort. they are accenture, ga inc., mcdonald's, pacific gas & electric and united technologies corp. and we're just starting. skills for america's future will be part of the ecomic opportunities program at the nonprofit aspeninstitute and will work closely with the president's new interagency task forces. some of the initial goals are one, to recruit additional during labor leaders to build a national network of higimpact partnerships of community colleges. basically bringing the program to scale. second is to create a certification for best in class partnerships. we want to also provide a national voice for effectiveness of those partnerships. we'l work with the interagency task force to align workforce programs funded by the department of labor and the department of education with market forces. and work with the task force to delop stackable credentials as well as a better use of technology as melinda referenced. our initial -- our last initial goal is to ensure that every state has at least o high impact partnership between industry and a community college. our real goal is that every state has multiple partnerships. we can't begin soon enough. we hope to spark a movement nationwide to strengthen america's sport fours, putting resources into the skills and development workers is one of the best investments that are nation can make. thank you, dr. biden for inviting me to be here. [applause] >> thank you, penny. i'm so grateful to see leaders from so many segments of our society coming together to express their compliments and the ability of community colleges to lead the way into the next century. our work here is so important to identifying what is working and what areas need additional attention. we're going to break up into smaller groups so that a robust exchange of ideas can be easier. we are looking at sixth specific areas today: industry partnerships, college completion , pathways to baccalaureate degrees, financial aid, military and veterans programs and community colleges for the future. at the conclusion of these breakouts, we will reconvene to share our work a to utter our next steps. please follow members of our stafwho will direct you to your breakouts. i'm planning to stop by each one of them to listen in and i will look forward to seeing you again at the wrapup section -- a session. and since iowa teacher -- [laughter] don't think you're going to leave without hallmark. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> well, welcome back. i hope your sessions were days. i went to while six and some of the buzzwords that i heard were wedge points, veteran support services, standardizing transfer credit, training ground and my favorite was solutions. so what we'd like to do now is we'd like -- i'd like you to hear and i'm sure you'd like to hear from two of the administration's driving forces in education. our secretary of education, transfixed and secretary of labor, it hilda solis. so, would you like to come up and give your report? >> first of all, commit huge round of applause for dr. biden. [applause] it's a pretty remarkable day and i had about a 90 minute speech at the end of the day a state requite things and move on. first of all, this is a day and historic day. we've never had this kind of attention at the white house nationally on community colleges. i don't think dr. biden for two minutes later she appeared on to thank mark for cancer and certain extraordinary job. i think folks feel and sense that there's never been a greater spotlight. there's never been a greater sense of urgency and a greater sense of opportunity. community colleges are absolutely essential, desperately essential to beating the president's goal of college graduates in 2020. we can't get there with veteran leadership and hard work. we can't educate her way to a better economy without which are doing every single day in the lives of students. so the urgency comes a sense of importance on the opportunity i can't overemphasize. secondly, for all the success stories we would have to be very generous of them at the end of the day we have to get a lot better at what we do. everyone here knows it's about a quarter of coming in now, younger students, older students. he heard about 82-year-old going back to school today and we love it. at the end of the day, a quarter of folks who enroll in 20 colleges graduate after three years. and we have to find ways to be creative and drive the number up significantly. there are real challenges. what a great conversation this term, nontraditional student is probably the long-term. but nontraditional as the new norm, the 21st century. we can work on the definitions. the fundamental questions are our institutions had to deal with 28 euros raising three children and trying to work a job in trying to better their life. in some places we are, some places were not doing enough. for all the charges were all facing and the need to get canonically better at a very rapid rate in a time of declining resources so for every challenge we heard example of example of success story. i think a big part of our job is to better share those as practices. all these challenges should be installed for this country. i'm not fully convinced we have to do is to scale up working. whether it's a clearinghouse, website, way to let folks know here's where were struggling, here's the match, here's a set of metrics, here's how we know we're getting better. we think we can do a much better job of sharing those practices. it's a time of real challenge and amazing opportunity. and as community colleges help families get back on their feet, you're going to help the country get back on its feet. i can't say how much i appreciate your hard work. it's not my honor to introduce my partner in this work, secretary solis. she's doing a extraordinaire job with france, making fast form and simpler. worst time ever, $2 billion coming to her agency with the spotlight solely in committee colleges and that's coming out very, very soon. please give a round of applause to secretary solis. [applause] >> thank you. when i started, good afternoon. and i also want to do a shout out to.your jill biden for convenient this white house committee college and give credit to our great president for having the foresight to do this. it's wonderful to be here and also to be among leaders like melody gates and penny pritzker in our training programs. i'm a big believer in community colleges and i know how important a role they played in higher education. i had the privilege many years ago at serving eight years on a local community college board. and let me tell you i learned quite a bit and it is coming into play. and i am just excited to see the enthusiasm, the thoughts and words i heard from some individuals in our own panel discussion about industry, the fact we really have to reach out far beyond what we traditionally are used to doing. and it is about looking at the new noun. the new nontraditional student, so to speak and also the new elements and crisis that confronts so many of us. i can't only think about the people who are unemployed good to think about the dislocated worker who isn't just a 17-year-old, the one looking for the first summer job or first job, but the 45 and 55 throughout individual who's having a tough time. baby -- is completed a high school education years ago, have never been in interview because they've been employed a lifetime and now they have to somehow get with the program and get some skills and get some confidence. and having all those challenges ahead, we have to have good services available for them. so i know how important that is and i am excited that dr. biden i believe mentioned earlier that through the recovery act, reinvestment programs that we have amended the 2009 bill to allow for a trade adjustment assistance program to establish a community college training initiative. and this is a health care and education reconciliatory signed by the president, which included $2 billion over a four-year period. and it's a new initiative and it's going to be targeting -- targeting those students i talked a little bit about -- dislocated workers, taa trade adjustment assistance, doesn't have lost their job because of trade issues. i think the important element tears that were all going to strive to produce smart people that have an experience at a community college. so whether it's for a one-year or two-year program, those are things that we currently know that we have to devise. and it's about capacity building, it isn't just about acquiring, you know, or classroom space. it's about developing programs and curricula and making sure we can build out these programs. they last longer than the funding does not utter a temp is going to be here. were going to providing the first rollout over this next redouble started about $500 million. will be announcing the grant at the end of the month and were going to also make sure that we provide services to puerto rico, district of columbia. and we hope these grant awards will number anywhere from $2.5 million for each state. so states can work together in a consortia with other community colleges and hopefully partner with all the industry folks and things that we've talked about today so that we have a more robust program. so i'm very excited about that opportunity and know that we are going to have good partners here. so i just want to lasley say to you that one of the things that i've come to learn in the last 18 months on the job, people want to know where jobs are. people want to know if they're ready with their skills. and if they're not in that appropriate place because their skills have to be improved upon, where can they go for help? so we just launched a program to the department of labor called my skills, my future.org good knife skills my future.org. you can go win, putting your current job occupation, find out what skills are needed to upgrade. and you can also identify the nearest place where you can get the training, but also where the jobsite is. that's great. that's a start. on the second day we announced the program, we had over 200,000 hits. so i'm excited there are people out there who want to get more information and i think were on a perfect base to be able to make that happen. so again, thank you so much and isolate all of you for being here and enjoy very much her panel discussion. thank you. [applause] >> secretary solis and i'd moderated the panel discussion between -- on community colleges in industry. and i just want to focus on two things that we discussed. we really talked about what's working in those partnerships. and it's really a number of things that are working very well. formal partnership that exists existed of reciprocity between the company and the community college are being really successful. partnerships were the cities and states are not only -- they're part of the coordination and development of the program, but are also lending support, particularly tuition support. programs were partnerships and a flexible delivery, whether it at time of day the curricula is delivered for the vehicle, whether it's at the word ways, the school or online or using different types of technology. our group also felt that what was working and public-private partnerships is if there is a clear and accessible pathway. and on the words the career path for the individual is clear what the training that they're going to be receiving or are receiving. partnerships that also include apprenticeships and internships are very highly regarded and have been very successful. and obviously, it's extremely important that the delivery is recognized as better workforce that is often taking courses needs to have courses offered at a flexible time because oftentimes our student are not available at our regular nine to five if you will. but we also talked about what are the challenges and what are the issues that partnerships or the community colleges are facing in working together. and we heard about the issue of remediation, what a challenge it is that 60% in philadelphia cannot pass the letter c. test to get placed into community college. 90% of the students in chicago needs some form of remediation. these are real challenges that are community colleges are with. the community college leaders also talked to us about the need for dollars for capacity building so that they're able to engage with corporations to deliver the kind of training and skills delivery that we were talking about earlier today. there's a complaint that each state has its own funding vehicle. and that makes it very hard for a company to take a successful partnership with one community college and replicated to others. there was much discussion also about credit and how do we streamlined credit or recognize credit. it seems that the ac sometimes recognizes credit for apprenticeship some of the community colleges don't. or it is unclear if one gets enough credit or credit for technical training such that then the worker can begin to advance their education based upon a level of training that the authority received. finally, we talked about the perception of community colleges. and there's a real feeling that community colleges are undervalued. in that we need to do more to celebrate the great work that's being done by the community colleges. you know, corporations talk about the number one biggest concern is talent. and when they wake up and they really look at their workforce, they realize what a large percentage of the workforce is either in the community college system or has come from the community college system. and so, this is a real opportunity as we see it. and it's not all about money. many of the committee college leaders said two sa blakemore mind share of the business leaders in their communities because they want to reinvent themselves to be more relevant to various businesses and their communities. they want to rethink how they deliver their product. and so there's a real -- what was so encouraging is this a massively positive attitude about working together. so thank you are much. [applause] >> good afternoon. i accept three with the white house domestic policy council and had the pleasure of call monitoring the panel on the importance of community colleges to veterans and military families. and we had a really rich discussion with some students veterans, military spouses, some experts in the field, committee college is president of administrators and the distinct honor of our co-moderator be the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and somebody was quite engaged in the conversation and not able to be here right now because he had an appointment with the president. so, it was a great conversation. i tried to distill it and i hope i didn't leave out any critical point. we affirmed the importance importance of the committee college is played in the education of veterans and military families. and then a few of the to that. one challenge in particular was the need to ensure that there is a transition -- a system of support from the active duty into education and the process of leaving the military affairs higher education, most notably community colleges. in addition we talked a lot about the services and supports that are necessary on campus. we had derek for the president referenced talking about forming a vets group on campus at a community college in the importance of having that support and also institutional support so a students transition out, go to for your colleges to complete their two-year degrees, these groups can sustain themselves in the importance of that. we also heard about the san diego district in the intensive comprehensive sets of support that are necessary to help veterans. it's about the disarray discussion about what are the best practices in this space. and while we were able to talk in a tone a play about some notable and successful programs, we identified an important need of collecting data and performs analysis and not to understand what could be replicated. i think the most important was the establishment of the process that a federal level to understand and analyze -- collect, understand and analyze data and be in a position to disseminate that two institutions to the military. and we talked about the department of education, department of defense and department of defense and veterans administration coming together to support that work. the admiral mullen made a point that everyone agreed with witches while we need to more systematically collect data about these programs and under -- understand the best practices, we also know there are several things we can do that are working and very important. and once again we highlighted the veteran to veteran support, the importance of priority placement in some campuses so veterans are admitted into the school on a priority basis and given the support they needed. the military spouse crew advanced is quite popular in the room and obviously across the country. company to really examine our maximizing the g8 benefit to ensure that were providing the resources and support to the veterans. so one other thing and pay me just that came up a lot in our discussion with the stigma that is sometimes associated with community colleges money sometimes an obstacle for members of the military and veterans out there leaving. and that is something on all sides, both from the defense side of the educational institutional side people talk about grappling with. thank you. [applause] >> and jim's call with the department of education and secretary and duncan and i had the opportunity to join the discussion group around college completion. i've already apologize for the many worthwhile comments that i'm not going to be able to repeat because it's really terrific or put a lot of perspective and a lot of expertise. so i hope no one will take this personally. one theme that did come through very strongly was the fact that the committee college students are different from those in the past. most of them are what we used to consider nontraditional. 75% of them either working or they had children of their own or their attending part-time, they aren't living on campus. and the need to pay close attention to this population. someone to discuss the restart car than 21st century students from the vast majority of students attending our colleges are nontraditional, the term may no longer has meaning. some of the things we talk about in terms of being important for serving as time is the enemy. it takes a very long time. someone decided to take siders on average to earn an associate degree. it's a very long time for something to go along. people talk about the importance of communicating the value the credentials of people understood the reason that they were working hard and the reason the light at the end of the, what's important. and people also talked about professional development for community college instructors which is something that's often overlooked and is particularly important. another topic we spent a lot of time on was the need for developmental education. people talked about the diverse backgrounds and skills that people bring to community colleges. some of them need touching up in a particular area, even if they just finished high school, some of them are adults who need refreshers. some of them are people who need a great deal of adult basic education for english as a second language. some of the things that have been identified as being promising in the area of developmental education. there's a number of programs that integrate developmental instructional technical and academic courses. those seem quite promising and partly because they do help students see the value of what they're learning and because they do destigmatize those classes and help people understand there's some important content and skills that they're learning. another thing that was mentioned was this technology as a way for help people master the skills are particularly. not technology on its own. i'm hoping the tone of the conversation recognizer was a great deal of challenges that community college's face. but as other speakers have mentioned also a sense of hope that a lot of these challenges are being met in different places around the country and the real question for us is how do we identify the solutions and all learn from them? [applause] >> good afternoon. i'm cecilia rouse and i'm a long-time fan of community colleges. i had the opportunity to call monitored the session on financially. so just like the other breakout sessions we had representatives from all levels and that proved to be very interesting for a breakout system. the first week and about it from the individual side and we can recognize the many challenges. one of the great virtues of the community college is the low tuition that typically come you know, tuition is much less costly than a four-year institution. however, we also know that the tuition cost is not the full cost of attendance. i see a lot of heads nodding. we also have to consider not only the few students are paying at the institution, but also the fact many are working but nonetheless they still have to while they're in school have other bills to pay, et cetera. so there's a full cost tuition and it's much broader. it will go ahead and go with the 21st century student. we said many of these issues were important for the 21st century student heard and many of these students are not aware of the financial aid opportunities. many of them are first-generation college students. we talked about the need therefore to simplify the financial aid process, simplify the forms. and we also talked about -- i mean, we typed about how important it's been. one of the things the president did last year was notify financial aid officers that they could go back and we evaluate incomes for individuals to been dislocated and home portion of them for family spoke of independent units whose spouses may have left their jobs or for dependent students whose parents have lost their jobs. we also talked about the challenge of financial aid when you're talking about development education. so in terms of -- i'm going to talk about the individual student. so the challenge we had a little bit of discussion for the 21st century student. i think one of the things for consideration here at the federal government is whether we should be rethinking the work disincentive for eligibility for the pell grant. therefore independent soon as there's big penalty to keep working and it reduces the amount of pell for which there eligible for. in addition for consolidating the forms and to just somehow simplify the whole process. in addition on the individual side, this is a bit like the institutional level, yet we were reminded of financial aid. and we will think matches of the monetary aid, but in terms of child support or assist. for child care services, transportation services and other family services. so while the support services are important for the financially also. ross reminded us we were considering how expensive it is for the students that the institutions have to consider their affordability as well. and institutions are right now and the perfect storm, which is on the one hand a happy storm, where enrollments have been increasing. on the other hand we have -- we have at the state level decreases in public funding. so it decreases in revenues, which has meant especially for financial aid office, cuts in terms of financial aid officers. and if the other had nodding. and so as a result, we're financial aid officers who are overworked, overwhelmed. he heard a story of a financial aid officer who represents the state, working on a sunday afternoon, gets a call from a financial aid officer who just can't take it anymore, who ends up quitting. this is at a time and enrollments have increased, the need has increased any of the services have been cut back on the institution and the institutional site. but just what we all thought we were the debt of despair, we had a solution from the kinetic committee color system, which has been really basically a virtual financial aid office. and some of the virtual financial aid office at two aspects which they believe is the most important. one is when they work with the student, so if the information is up on the web and it's very accessible and that's not to have languages a successful to the low-income students. students can therefore follow the entire financial aid process and know where they are processed, how much money they've got, how much they're eligible for. in addition, they package their students as full-time students. so the students can save him a full-time student this is what i'll be eligible for. if i go have time they can see how much less elegant. this is important because students from the come in and don't really know what level of service they want to be, what intensity they want to enroll four. so what is then the results of the virtual financial aid office, we have application -- financially but kate applications that the words have been to one of 50%, the pell grant recipients are up 176%. in the pell awards are up 400%. in all of this or that an increase in the financial aid offices and without having other overwhelmed financial aid officers either. they also point out this is when enrollments have gone up 46% and the full-time student enrollments have come up 105%. so we had a really nice solution we had for what i think is a very systemic pattern which i'm sure all of you can share and it was a wonderful conversation i hope we will continue. thank you. [applause] >> i don't know if you can see me. our session was on pathways to the baccalaureate degree. by martha cantor, undersecretary for the department of education. and we were fortunate to have alberto had a in our session the whole time. and he kicked it off by telling us about his pathway. in his pathway included a couple of things that sort of guided the rest of the conversation from challenges to solutions. and what he said was that when he got to australia, he got into the mentor program. and he immediately connect it into a learning community, which i thought was very struck that because that institution with using other than that learning communities work. further, he took classes at transfer to the baccalaureate degree institution. he knew he wanted to go to asu. he reminded us many students don't know where they want to go, which led to another set of challenges that we discussed. and then he concluded by telling us that the maricopa community college district has an asu arizona state university pathways program now that caps tuition for four years so students know what the cost is going to be for tuition. and there were some other incentives for room and board and so on. so it kind of sample i think it is very struck different sort of died at the best of our conversation. a big set of challenges obviously to the baccalaureate degree, too many choices for students. this is sort of taking the student from a perspective, a lot of inconsistency and that the advice depending on who they talk to, lack of clarity about the credit hour. many students are undecided and there are disincentives for students who are undecided about their pathway. and of course when they think they're going to be able to transfer the units that they took, the courses that they took, they found out that some institutions will accept them and other small. and we also know that the course numbering system are buried across the country. and finally we had another student in our group had talked about the fear of even filling out an application and how do i do that and how do i figure out where to go and get that done. and of course there's lots of solutions to these. but bottom line, the college information isn't easily understood and isn't easily accessible to students. so we have a lot of work to do there that students reminded us about. this lack of clarity for students is a major -- a major challenge for us. inconsistent requirements, and consisted of icing, nonstudent friendly as i said. in the good news is we had a student from phi beta kappa that taught us about college fish, which is a website for you to any student in the country or prospective student that can look at institutions and gives you a pathway that you can sort of self-guided. so it's innovations like this that we want to shine a spotlight on. we also talked about lack of institutional consistency and, you know, a lot of concern about affordability and capacity. what courses, can an institution, how hard or easy is it to get the faculty from the four year institutions in the two-year institutions together to work it out. and i think pat callan reminded us that this is a job that states can provide leadership on. there was some discussion around we really support governors to do this kind of work or is it just part of what state policy needs to get done? but really how to get from a two-year tour for your institution is really a matter of state policy and the federal government can support those discussions in a variety of ways. i talked about the articulated pathways. there were many examples for many people in our session about state that have clearly articulated pathways to the baccalaureate degree from two-year schools. another challenge that came up was how do we create the pathways from career technical programs, vocational schools, training programs the baccalaureate pathways. that is again a challenge for us. finally, a big solution, use what works. we know many things that were good at it and mentioned that at the beginning. there's lots of innovations across the countries that are tried and true. i think that connecticut is a good one on financial aid and pathways to the baccalaureate degree. we need to institutionalize what works and really shine a spotlight on those high-impact practices that are both practices that states can learn from and to two shoes can do of. so it was very exciting and i want to thank all of the members of our group for a very lively conversation and we have a lot more to do. thank you so much. [applause] >> well, good evening everyone. i melody barnes, director of the domestic policy council and i had to opportunity to co-monitor with melinda gates. our session was called community colleges in the 21st century. one of the interesting comments that was made that served as a backdrop for a discussion with the fact that community college's record is that they're an important part of higher education, but at the same time they recognize they play a very distinct role in higher education and again about the challenges and solutions given that particular back drop. when we talked about challenges, there's a broad grouping that we've referred to as culture, something that we came back to a couple of times in our conversation. and one of the first things that we talked about -- or just to back up for a second, this is a conversation about rethinking culture and also thinking about some of the challenges to culture as community colleges confront some of the 21st century issues that are facing them. one of the issues we talked about was the role of alumni and the fact that many community colleges, not all, but many of them have not secretly kept in contact with their alumni. and for reasons some of them financial and ultimate financial base, but also because we recognize alumni over time will have additional training needs and the community colleges can provide additional services to alumni, building and sustaining that my work is very, very important. we also talked about the importance of deployed to knowledge in the challenges that surround that the use of data that would allow us to again trek alumni, track students, track transfer of credit. cannot be one of the challenges that face community college. we talked about the role of faculty as well. an important role that full-time faculty obviously plays, but also the role that adjuncts plan the community college campus. and the importance of incentivizing and supporting faculty as they're trying to take on new innovations. you know, one of the things we talked about is the fact that faculty are up for about anything. if you say let's, you say go. very noble, very flexible. at the same time we had to be practical and real at think about providing support and incentivizing them. finally one of the things i think many people have touched on is the issue of retention and not be one of the biggest challenges facing community college -- community colleges. the second challenge we talked about and others have touched on this afternoon espial is financial challenges, both to schools and for students. and in particular, given the population that community colleges are often serving in very proudly serving, you know, we talked about single mothers are no pairs, the need for childcare, a whole range of other issues that put downward pressures on students and downward financial pressures on student, not to mention the fact that communications country and trinity colleges are doing a whole lot and not necessarily to win a a lot with a whole lot of resources. then we talked about solutions in one solution i think almost everyone here has touched on it is the important role that what she plays. and there are several different components of that. we talked about the transformative use of technology to build on competencies in the shift to think he is not just front seat time, but as i said to competency. an important way technology can help solve that problem. accessibility, which some issue many people have talked about in the crowded online technology being away to increase the course offerings that were available to students. also, this problem that we talked about with regard to tracking students transfer of credits. technology have a second plan important role there. student centered learning, some ratings events where they are, were students really have or adapt in a particular piece of information in a particular course offering, letting them move along. but when they had a point where they need or instruction, more training, the role that technology can play there. also, imagine the collection of data as a challenge. technology obviously plays an important role in the solution, particularly as we look forward to developing practices for education and also supporting faculty. as many faculty have any number of horses, five courses they have to teach. and that can be a first burgundy kids willingly and prevent people from play an expanded willis mentor, but technology can play an important role in lifting a lot of that, so faculty can play in addition. and finally and this is something that both secretary solis and that penny mentioned earlier, the partnership role, partnerships between community colleges in the private sector and also public public partnerships that were discussed and the importance of learning within context and also that been an important and available for retaining students, but it's much more enjoyable and part to pull experience and they really feel like they're moving down the road that they started in moving towards the goals that they set out for themselves at the beginning of the process. and i would just conclude by saying, and this is something that many people have touched on. usually when you speak you shudder whenever one has said something you've written down. but in this context, i think it's reassuring that we do have a great sense of what we need to deal. and this point, it's about dissemination and it's about scaling these very, very important solutions to the kinds of challenges that we face. so thank you. [applause] >> so, i'd like to thank you all for joining us today on this national conversation on community colleges. so i'd like to thank admiral mullen who have their set had to leave. i like to thank everyone on stage here, all the cabinet secretaries. to my friend, melinda gates, thank you for being here. to the press, a special thank you for getting out the word about how great many colleges really are. you know i mention that homer, so you ought homer to go back to your communities, businesses, goals and start the conversation again and talk about what she learned today. this is our moment in history to make a difference, so let's grab that opportunity. i have one more quick announcement. let's see, going forward, we have the federal grant that are scheduled to begin this year. we have the skills for america's future business partnership. we at the gates completion grant and the aspen prize awards. and then armed is going to have a virtual community college summit, which will be next year, right? so, i know you are all tired, but i have one more announcement any of you know my husband, joe biden. he's always supported me. i could not do -- have his career if it weren't for him. he's always supported education. he has always supported educators. so i told him -- he knows what i've done. this is my life's work. and so, we're having a reception at the blair house. and he's heard about this for days and days. so i'd like you to come over and say hello. so i hope do we see you out >> next, stem cell research. >> today, current and former bank officials discuss monetary policy and the state of the global economy. speakers included christine that and paul volcker. coverage begins at 12:00 eastern on c-span. >> now, remarks from the company's president and ceo on the research and treatment for those with spinal injuries. dr. thomas okarma recently spoke at the world stem cells summit in detroit. >> will everyone take their seats, please? are we ready to go out there? thank you. my name is bernard segal. i am the executive director of the genetic policy institute. i am delighted to welcome you back to the session today. we are very pleased to have our next speaker providing the industry keynote address. as you have been networking through the first day at the conference and into the second day, i am sure you have seen many companies in the exhibit hall -- part of the burgeoning industry. surely one of the past binding companies in yemen embryonic stem cell research is an geron corporation. we all have great hope for stem cell research as a way of discovering the root causes of disease, drug discoveries, and one day leading to self therapies where we might not need drugs for surgeries, but we can regrow damaged tissues and organs. is geron corporation has been present at the creation of this. under the very able leadership of our keynote speaker, dr. thomas okarma, they have moved into something that is so exciting, so new, and holds so much promise that they have engaged in the first approved clinical trials using human embryonic stem cells. dr. okarma is on the board of directors since july, 1999. i first had the occasion to meet him when i was emerging as a stem cell advocate in 2003 at the bio meetings in washington. i have had the privilege of speaking at many conferences with dr. okarma. he has always been engaging, always informative. i would like to welcome dr. thomas okarma. [applause] >> thank you, bernie. it is a pleasure to be here. as most of you know, gironde recently received permission from the fda to begin the first clinical trials to -- for a product made of human embryonic stem cells. with that of thomas -- which that accomplishment comes the burden to do it right. that means the right cells in the right place at the right time in the right patience safely. i would like to share with you the highlights of our 28,000 page item that underscores the safety of this approach and, secondly, which gives some reason to be optimistic for clinical impact. geron was here at the beginning. we funded the three labs in the united states that successfully derived human cells. we got the leg up on ways to turn the embryonic stem cell lines into a variety of differentiated cells for different therapeutic purposes. while i will spend time today all in the pot of for spinal cord injury and mention some line extensions of that same cell, it is important that you know that we are making terrific progress. we are into large animal efficacy studies. we are doing a large animal advocates studies in the u.k. for arthritis. the lessons that we learned that i will share with you today on obc1 or applicable to all the cells that will follow. we hope the second will be cardio my sights for heart failure. i have to come back and tell you that story a year from now. for all of our programs -- this is very important for the commercial potential -- or produced and distributed. we are not doing patient therapy. we are borrowing from the time tested truth of recombinant dna production to do multi dose production lots. the product coming out the door is frozen. we have invested in process development technology, including a relationship with corning. the results in a surface that is sterile and incorporates a synthetic peptide that substitutes for cells in the expansion phase of the embryonic stem cell work. we are also working with g e health-care. the technology shown here, which also incorporates that synthetic peptide, is exactly what we need to scale up the production to bioreactors. that is in the works. all of our products are manufactured according to the general scheme shown here. we use master interworking sell banks as the starting material to assure product uniformity. all of the events undergo the expansion phase. it is a process that is in uniform for all of our differentiated cells. here is where the uniqueness takes place, with the recipes to create cardio myocites differ from one another. they are all put to the same formulation for cryopreservation. all of our products are manufactured in this schema. we take the role of tissue engineers and we jump into the path of physiology of the disease we are trying to treat. in the case of spinal cord injury, this cartoon shows you the problem we hope these cells will serve. this is a cartoon of a human spinal cord injury. these injuries are rarely a chance sections. there or contusions or bruises that create a result of the initial damage, but then enlarges overtime because of the inflammation that occurs as the result of the injury. most of the axons of around the periphery lose their insulation. that is the prime reason for the chance mission from head to lower body. our initial idea was to learn how to make the cells that produce insulation, inject them into the site, and hope they would we insulate the axons and restore function. here it is. this is a frozen of weil of opc1. it is a well-characterized composition. all of our products or progenitors. it will become clear what we do that in a moment. what we have learned is that these cells do -- these cells induce neo bachelor's asian in the tissue. that has huge implications for what the cells may be used for in addition to spinal cord injury. the first thing we did was learned how to make opc1 cells from a embryonic stem cells. there are factors that resulted in the expansion of the cells and their differentiation. that was a great step forward, but it was not sufficient for entering a human clinical trial environment. we have to take that academic process and industrialized it, create a system that is consistent with current, a good manufacturing processes. all of the materials that go into the process have to be highly characterized. many of these agents do not come with a certificate of analysis. we have to invent and discover appropriate criteria to accept or reject a particular lot of starting material. we regenerated the specs for the agents. if a particular age it came into contact with state serum, we are obliged to screen the product. then there is the operation, which has to be codified. they are all written down what steps at which time quality control results or permanently recorded. the batch record for every production lot is a permanent record that enables us to certify the utility of that manufactured lot. at the end of the day it goes into prior preservation. the biggest difficulty is characterizing the cellular composition. because these cells do not come out the doors with little signs on their surface that say they are the right or the wrong cells. they are projectors. they are obligatory destined. we have to invent the appropriate specs. that requires us to do a dive into the genomics. the signal we get is amplified by something. we used rpcpr and chemistry, not only for the purpose of assuring the product is appropriate, but also to do analysis correlating the release specifications with the behavior of the sales in efficacy and toxicity studies. the correlation between the characteristics of the cell and the behavior in an animal model were paramount. many of our assets or flow cited metrics. they assured the -- in addition to the process, we have to have a facility for gmp. we have in california the only state licensed facility for manufacturing human stem cells for use. there are 10,000 clean rooms. there are protocols. there are maintenance requirements. the rule and the people in it or quality control as well as the process. once you are done with all of that, you can start delving into the enabling studies. you have to demonstrate that the cell but you make is safe and effective in animal models. one of the animal models we use is the sugar malice which is in capable of making myolin. you can see the absence of multilayered mylolin. an injection of the human cells result in a compact myelin. the cells mature. withan't labeled them fluorescent pertain. you can see the physiology of these cells in our spinal cord injury model. you can see that it myelinates multiple axoms. that is what they did in our courts today. these cells, manufactured in a facility, absolutely replicate the physiology of human cells. they do more than this. this is where the excitement for future applications comes from. proteins that enabled nerve cells to withstand stress -- we can essay this by taking in the media in which we are producing the cells and exposing them to a rat sensory neuron estate. we can quantify the murals belting out that occurs because of this secretion. lastly, these cells create new blood vessels. this is shown in animals and adults. here are the human nuclei. they are surrounded by multiple blood vessels that are of post origin. nearly all the animals developed new blood vessels. all of this is good for spinal cord injury. it has implications for other central nervous system diseases. in short we discovered that the cells or the nurse made of the central nervous system. that could not have been discovered if we had not had a high purity of cells. the system in which we tests is shown here. under anesthesia, our board it has a spinal cord opened and a device delivers eight blue to the spinal cord. we do that i in the thoracic region, the bilateral region, and the serb region. the cell for the controlled vehicle has been injected within 14 days of the injury. we did follow that animal through a variety of endpoints. here as -- here is an example of what the cells do it what the injury does to the animal if untraded. this is a control animal. you can see the injury. the animal walks by dragging its still on the case for. piquancy it is abnormal. it has muscle weakness. they are unable to stand on their hind legs. the animal on the right received a single dose of human cells. while it is not normal, you can see detail is all of the case for. there is some return of muscles, all the animals are still in continent. this can be quantified in a number of ways. there is a score of the upper right. this is the level of improvement that is incurring in the control animal. it has signa big-league improved permanently. we can take movies of the animal and deleting in its cage. that is shown here on the lower left. we concede the on injured control is almost indistinguishable from the animal receiving the embryonic stem cells in regard to stride land and stride up with. there is a significant and durable improvement in the animal that received the single injection of cells. why is that? remember the courts and i showed you at the beginning. on the left is what you see in the injured animal nine months after the injury without treatment. there are some mylinated axons on the periphery. it is a very good model for human condition. in contrast, all the right panel is a animal nine months after injury with a single dose of human cells. it is filled with human cells that are mylinating axons. this is what regenerative madison promises. a permanently resource structure and function of the tissue that has been damaged by disease or injury. we share the same kind of data in cervical injuries. here is the control months after the injury. in contrast, animals that received in the circle -- a single injection of cells have sparing of the great matter, which is the cell body. that is due to the secretion of the merger opens that we talked about -- neurotropins that we talked about. let's jump into the spinal cord and get the sense of the mechanism of action of the cells in the progression of differentiation from progenitor on day one to mylinating after several weeks. this is six months after injection. you can still see some progenitors. there is very little mycodic activity. six months after injection you do not see many exclusions of normal human [unintelligible] this is after six months. compare that on the bottom to an animal after six or seven weeks. this is the border with iraq tissue and this is the border with the human tissue. there are not too many mature after six weeks. this is a lesser differentiation that occurs after the cells are injected. an important question the fda asked us is where do the cell's ago? we have learned exactly that. we have to indents a new essay. -- in fact a new essay. what this graph shows is the progressive migration of the cells from the point of injection. if you are looking at a low or high a dose of two days after injection, low or high dose two weeks after injection -- not too much difference. after six months, you can see the cells migrate north and south from the point of injection. we know that the cells remain within the site. they do not go beyond it. they do fill the legionwhich is an important consideration for the design of the trial. this is an important slide that makes two important points. first, the cells remain in the thoracic corps. we are looking at the quantification of the dna. you can see the low dose of sales in the to russet cord -- thoracic cord. the cells divide. you inject one cell and months later you actually get six to 10. piquancy a response curve here. here is a high dose. hear, six months of the higher dose generates many more sales. that is the first point on the slide. the second is that the cells remain in the forensic -- thoracic cord. if you look in the cerebellum after eight injection, you do not see any. these cells remain where they are injected. the key word, serotonin. this is a huge issue. most academics that do not go to the labors i shared with you have contaminating undifferentiated stem cells. that is to be expected. there is this notion that one of the problems with in reality stem cell therapy -- we study this rigorously. these animals were kept alive for 12 months after the injection. we found a zero serotonin out of over 400 animals injected with the cells. the serotonin notion has been put to rest. what we do find it for these microscopic cysts, which in the beginning had an acceptable frequency. we had a steady occur in the circle region shortly after we were given permission the first time to start the trial. that was last august. we were put on hold again because that animal study questioned the precision of our text. we did studies to show that the new specifications accurately predicted eight assists -- a cystless animal. we are confident in the absence of any kind of tissue. there are -- there is no evidence that desist were horrible. they did not get anywhere. there is no evidence that they impacted the animal. there is a list of more standard toxicology studies that i will not bore you with in terms of detail, but you go to a lot of different parameters to demonstrate in a more standard way that the injection of these cells does not interfere with the organ systems of the animals. particular attention was paid to the artificial sensations of paying that make spinal cord injury the jig that many spinal cord injury patients suffer from. we tested that in hundreds of animals with a mechanical, cold, and he stimulation. we found no difference in the control. it also appeared in the literature that is it -- that it is an allergen. you will have immune rejection issues. we actually do not find that in bureau. -- do not find that in vitro. they are not recognized by the human immune system. none of the cells recognize it -- recognize the cells in each row. the mother's immune system does not reject the and placid -- reject the implant. we figured out how to prevent that from happening. there are characteristics on the surface of the cell that prevent the return of t-cells from activating. those traits or inherited by the in differentiated it really stem cell, which is derived from those cells and is passed on to cardiomyecites. the summary of this is we did some protocol studies involving over 2000 spinal cord injured rats. the list of findings and come up most of which i discussed with you, appear on the right. we were not done after that. we need to provide the neurosurgeon with eight reliable delivery mechanism. we invented a syringe positioning device, which is a device transported to the operating room in a sterile pack. the surgeon has to assemble the device within 15 or 20 minutes. it hooks onto the frame of the operating room and provides a free-access drive to enable the neurosurgeon to precisely place the needle in the area of injection into carefully controlled the plunger. once the package was put together, we had to engage a variety of people and committees to devise the clinical protocols which had a patient safety as its foremost objective. all of these bodies come from the institution, some from the agency. they had to make sure that the way in which we were designing the child maximize patient safety and gave significant risk and benefit. all the conversations resulted in the clinical particle ec here. -- clinical trials you see here. the rest injuries or -- thoracic injuries or more common than cervical injuries. the toxicity has to be manifest toward my head. if i had that progression, while not desired, it does not significantly impact might long- term care. consider if we get started with surgical patients. -- with cervical patients. even those these are rare patients, we have agreed to do the first studies there. we will have temporary immune depression. our primary points or safety. in terms of imaging, there are s.ne full scan m r ri this is a partial list of the physical examination algorithms. they have all been validated. we have to train all of the podiatrists and nurse practitioners. after the patient is discharge to home, we follow these patients for a very long time. the providers have to drive up to 500 miles to the patient's home. this is a time schema. all the inclusion, at the exclusion information is here. date 0 is when the patient is injected. it is usually after spinal stabilization surgery. it requires a second trip to the emergency room. there are actually several particles. there is one intended particle for years one. there is a yearly follow up for 60 years after injection. this is one copy. 22,500 pages. it does not help the additional information that has occurred since last august. it is the largest that the fda has ever received. it's the to the on sustainability of this whole process. whether you are a one of the -- whether you are a wannabe company or a pfizer, it is an exercise to enable a safety study. it is difficult to reproduce. we hope that as the agency gets better and more comfortable with this approach, our line extensions are easier and less expensive to achieve. that is without compromising job #1 which is a patient safety. the last slide is a forward look. we are screening patients in two medical centers. havear's end, we hope to four to six. these cells secrete dozens of neurotropic cells. they spare tissue and they allow tissue to be repaired. that opens up some very exciting line extension possibilities in addition to spinal cord, including stroke, alzheimer's, and multiple sclerosis. we are now engaged with a collaborator working on animal models of these diseases to try to create a rationale for spending the current imd into some of these devastating disorders. what did you have here is chapter 1 of what we have to be a very exciting story of va to of medicine. -- it is a high value paradigm that we think deserves the attention and support of the u.s. federal government. if you agree with that, please write your congressman and women and get them to understand the significance of the decision on this kind of work. it does not just affect a juror on and dark -- it does not just affect geron. most of the funded grants have a control form of embryonic stem cells. it is the standard in vitro. all of those grants are threatened by this landmark decision. it is not just the voice of industry, it is the voice of groups like yourselves -- patient care advocates, academics, where people who hope that when bills and scalpel's or no longer effective for your disease or the disease the people you care about, that there is something more potent than just pumping bone marrow into your heart after a heart attack. the job is yours as well. thank you very much. i will be happy to answer some questions. [applause] i am blinded by the lights appeared -- i am blinded by the lights. >> the spinal muscular atrophy -- you not bridge that effort? >> could you repeat the question? >> spinal muscular atrophy -- is there a connection? >> we are not currently exploring the alternative, but it is a fair one to ask about. i think there is a question in the middle. >> dr. okarma, i just want to say on behalf of many of us who are here today with spinal cord injury, thank you it so much for what you are doing to make our lives better. we truly appreciate it. my question is what do you think -- one of my big issues is for all of us to come together and put pressure on our legislators in washington. it would be helpful with engines -- with industry leaders like yourself if we could get to washington as patient advocates, scientists, and industry leaders. i just wanted to know if you would be in favor of getting involved in that effort. >> that is very well said and i thank you for the compliment. all of us owe a great deal of debt to the

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