Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth 20140208

Items, finalists for the Nonfiction Book award and the winner of the finishing line press jet boat competition is also the author of six nonfiction prose books including revenge of womens studies professor, reel girl and womens history for beginners. Author Bonnie Morris, in your book revenge of womens studies professor, revenge for what . The title is not meant to be provocative or roots, it is about having the opportunity to talk back to many people this stereotyped my fields or asked unfair questions. I have a lot of terrific students who are intimidated by the idea of taking the basic class in womens history. They come to me and expressed doubt or concern, they are afraid of what people would say, what does it look like on their transcripts of those experiences lead me to a keen awareness of how many people feel there is something wrong which looking at half of the worlds history and i negotiated many of these routes conversations throughout my teaching career. The idea of revenge of womens studies professor is i wanted to talk back in a cheerful, playful way, to be the smiling face of womens history. As a diplomat from academic feminism, i am not scary, i am approachable, i love my students, but not being rude to the professor. People who come by and say i love your class, you are not the femina feminazi, thank you to Rush Limbaugh for putting this out. The class will not hurt you, this will only improve your life, what is it like for those of us on the other side of the desk who have to deal with a whole range of our work being impugned by people who are fearful . Host where do you teach . Guest George Washington university and a parttime at georgetown and hello to my terrific students. I teach everything required for the minor and major, introductory womens history, specialized class on womens boards called athletics and gender. Overand rolled since 1996. I teach a big survey course in womens history which has 120, first year students. Right now i have athletes from every sport. A lot of people in their first year and graduating seniors who have waited all these years with a different major. Host what is womens studies . Guest womens studies has been a department or program at american colleges since 1969. The first was San Diego State in 1969. An opportunity to look at all of the humanities for the perspective of how womens lives have been shaped, that is material that is often neglected. Many people go from kindergarten through law school and never learn how to be considered an educated person. If you want to put women at the focus and look at the different experiences women have in every society because of work conditions or warfare and Education Opportunities as well, this is but chance to make that the center of your research and we cover just about everything and it is just like any other class where you take exams. Host would you do with the womens studies major . Guest there is law school. Many of my best students have become lawyers, title 9 lawyers, women worked on development, many work abroad and work with women Birth Control, the issue of violence against women in regions ranging from Northern Africa to bosnia. Many students do development in terms of profits, programming for everything from planned parenthood to organization that work with women and girls. A couple students who have gone on to med school and specialty womens health, quite a few nursing and a lot of students who are also as athletes involved in furthering womens, some were athletic trainers. Want to deal with the olympics now. Already medalist from the last winter games and another student who is interning at the winter games, helping to do some reporting on the situation of homophobia in russia. Thdo men take their classes . Lien 99 have guys in all my classes and also guys who were majoring in womens studies and at George Washington the chair is a guy. My brother took a class when he was an undergrad at maryland. The average guy who takes womens studies classes often, and maybe he is the son of a single mom and i have a few percentage of International Students who are really perhaps this is the only chance to take a class like that before they return to korea or kuwait. I have guys from iranian, Saudi Arabian backgrounds, many i recently gave a guest lecture and i have a lot of students who are curious or heard someone else say i am nice. One of my classes, they take more so they repeat. Once i got them i got them. Host what was that experience like . Guest was distressing in a lot of ways because i felt very much like a third sex. I was not obligated to address in a full head cover, body cover, down. I was not expected i was willing to cover my hair. I was startled to find a large percentage of women in the country who cover their faces and many are not qatari citizens. Many women were not visible and i am used to making a eye contact. You didnt see womens faces or mouths moving, and a sense of there being silenced with magnified much of this is a tribal. It is not mandated in the koran. The experience i had was i was surrounded by western men in suits, arab men in beautiful, crisp, white gowns and women in black who were very much coverage and it was me in a western suit. It was an eye opening experience but i also found the opportunity to interact with women from all over the arab world with what i want to do. I moderated a panel on discrimination in sports. It ended up being very much on racial and ethnic discrimination. Host read from a basic history books. A textbook intended for middle school classrooms. It was left with the impression that all of Human History was achieved by one sex. Guest unfortunately that continues. The biggest challenge for me as an american educator, womens history and womens studies from people because the assumption is all womens issues are about the body, all womens history will be somehow about sex and Birth Control. Therefore it is not appropriate for kindergarten or middle school class, education boards, ptas, people who approved textbooks for texas that is controversial. My argument is there are plenty of womens history that is age appropriate that encourage girls to consider the possibility they can run for office or look at where women have come from in terms of being close out of political life and schools and juries. It is easy to look at female achievers in history and had it been not controversial and not sexual but we dont do that. We dont do the research on the astronomer or lessons that encourage girls to think beyond the imagery of the woman in the private sphere. As a person who also leads a pee u. S. History exams for the college board, putting womens history into something that an honor student should know is gradually becoming a successful mainstreaming of womens history. Now you have to know womens history from the ap exam. It was a process but also possible to have text books that dont reflect the range of what women have done or the focus will be women and minorities and you have white women and black men and get to get left out there . Africanamerican women. That is why i insisted that the cover of my book would be a majority women of color because they have written out of the american curriculum. Host baltimore from those very differences tell us more about power, citizenship and democratic ideals. We may acknowledge our foremothers held different but equally important functions in Human History. Still most of what is described in history is indeed his story, the lives and writings of great men. When i was in graduate school, what is history . His argument was even if you rely on documents they only tell you what the author of the document wants you to know about the fact is we look at the constitution, the magna carta, the writings of men, women were usually illiterate, didnt have access to education, didnt have the leisure time or studio space to be artists and writers, didnt keep journals as i am so privileged to do. We only have stories and narratives which we have historically put down as old wives tales and we tend to think what goes on in the womens fear which is the private sphere does not count as history. Making beds, raising kids. That is important but history is made somehow in the publics fear of men. The fact of the matter is most life is lived in the fry that sphere. Host from your book revenge of womens studies professor 11 you write oppression of women is a universal norm and where theres a male standard women become a special interest group. Every country has policies to protect womens rights but they are not enforced because women are not the enforcers. Guest that is correct. The biggest example of that would be the taliban continuing to wield influence in regions like afghanistan, pakistan, where technically girls have the right to go to school but they are threatened and in the case of malalla even wounded in their effort to get an education. Most countries would say we permit schooling for girls, the safety in that process is not guaranteed and the backlash against educated girls is really an issue in more places than we care to examine. That is just one example that is very painful. Host in your book womens history for beginners why didnt you use the word story . I love that i wanted to avoid anything that would sort of pigeonhole me as a certain kind of old School Feminist who was going to insist on altering language. I want this to be as accessible as possible. I love the for beginners series because it offers an available introduction to subject matter that everybody is curious about that maybe is intimidated by. I used herstory in casual conversation. It is a reminder how we dont expect to have women at the center. The first day of my classes i explain you dont have to have a specific political viewpoint to get an a. That would be wrong. You have to put the women at the center of what we are studying. That doesnt mean we hate men. Host you talkedabout old school feminism. What do you mean by that . Guest i was influenced myself by the women who shaped 70s feminism. Radical feminism which supported the idea that there should be women only spaces where women can gather. The whole cultural movement, womens bookstores, independent presses, recording companies, all of that shaped me and it was all in place by the time i was 16 and 17 so i came into a cultural feminism very much of which was shaped by lesbian activists and my opportunity to do advanced work in womens history, i owe a debt to everyone who came before me. In graduate school the ricans turned that was expressed was how to make womens history credible and academically coherent when so much of the Womens Movement had been political grass roots activism. How do you roll that over into a field of study . My position is you have to look at the grassroots, you cannot simply use theory, you cannot use theory in language that is going to sound so difficult and arcane. I like the post modernists as as. I tend to focus on social history. Part of what i mean when i say i am old school is i think you have to look at the activism of everyday people and not just remain in the ivory tower. That is because i came out of a family that was involved in the Peace Movement. It was natural for me to go from participating in that to participating in feminism to participating in the lgbt movement. Explaining the history of how to get from a to be in all those movements is what i do. Will this start there or earlier . What is the thirteenth amendment . 14, fifteen, 18 and 99 very important also. But if you dont know the history of enslaved women and women who owned women, you will never understand why we dont have a unified Womens Movement now. Host can you be a conservative and womens studies major . Guest absolutely. That has changed. I used to have the assumption that people her major out of a certain feminist standpoint, what is interesting now is as women advance they certainly do so because of the feminists who came before them but women are now up position where they can distance themselves from earlier issues and be a leader as they define. It is challenging because i will sometimes have students be hostile to the women who went before them who enabled them to have the opportunities they have now. I also have students who will be very engage in the classroom but they lie about it to their friends and associates. At one college where i taught, the women in my class were hiding in a better reading a book on how women got the vote because their sorority head said it was giving the wrong message to have my textbooks on the coffee table when young men came to call. Really . How does that intimidate your future husband . Doesnt want you to vote . That was an unusual place but my position is everyone is welcome. Everyone is a walking narrative text. What happens to you the forms your viewpoint but lets just look technically at what the law limited women to in the past where you truly could not attend a university, you could not go to med school, you could not play sports, you could not control your own money, you could not own property, you werent allowed to train guide dogs. There were all kinds of things girls could not do. And when i was a little kid, i was a fair the brainy little girl who on the one hand was told you can do this, skip agreed, do whatever you want. To get these messages, actually women arent allowed here and there. That was a big condom dissidents blast in my developing mind. I knew girls could do more. I was in classes with gifted girls and i was surprised if they werent more outrage. I was outraged in a way that makes a person bitter, angry, etc. Whenever the wrong stereotypes of a feminist is. I am really going to do what i intend to do and it is illogical to hold back half the nation. We need to compete on the global stage. Doesnt america want the brainy girls in the drivers seat . Dont we want to keep up with other nations in math, science, physics . Host how do you define feminism today . Are we opposed feminism period . We are not in a postfeminist year of. I am very concerned about the, quote, war on women. We are rolling back access to reproductive rights, there is no end to the regrettable statistics on violence against women. We have not stopped shaming girls about their bodies, we have so much sexism in the media which implies you have to have a certain shape to be loved or popular. The problem in terms of feminism is it is true what unifies a lot of women globally is what is done to women and i dont want to identify feminism as about victimhood. You dont want victim feminism. Empowered feminism says that women should be equal in their rights and opportunities, period. Where we dont see that, we want to push forward to make that possible. And the statement, there is so much work to do, and globally the statistics are frightening in terms of womens lack of access to everything from education, to health and information about their information about their options. Host do you think sexism plays any role in Hillary Clintons president ial chances . Absolutely. I use misrepresentation in my classroom. One of my students is in it but the film looks at media bias in terms of how women are observed as they pursue a political candidacy. Inevitably they are their tone of voice and their hair is addressed. Hillary has been absolutely maligned by different commentary with respect to men dont want a woman telling them what to do, they dont like the sound of her voice. Represent hectoring stance, very much based on the dilemma should women ever tell men what to do at a macro level . The same when we were trying to get the vote. Went didnt want women making policy decisions because they felt the influence of the mother figure should stay in the home. We dont want women of childbearing age running because we have in sane myth that you shouldnt be in the oval office if you might have your period. If you are post menopausal there is a bunch of stereotypes for that too. You are too much like an older woman mother figure shaming men. You cant win. I see that in lots of campaigns. Watching the news is important, it is painful and i think it is in part because there is a long tradition whereby men define their independence by leaving home and no longer having to do what mommy says. So the psychological aspect is can you have mommy running the country . Of course because we also ask women to be multitask years and make all the decisions that keep private life in order. Applying those skills in public life, there is a lot of concern about what that means. Would it means that a woman would miss work because of child care . Usually when women are act candidate there as how can you do this and raise kids . Very familiar with all those issues. Each semester students are encountering for the first time how we analyze that, why does this keep happening when women are such High Achievers why do we find these old ideas . And it is sad for me to see students alarmed and feeling pain that their mothers feminism did not eliminate these issues. They are still there. Host who are your personal heroes in the womens Rights Movement . What a long list. My personal heroes would definitely include all of the women who started womens bookstores. The women who started womens Music Festivals, the women who made title 9 possible, furthered title 9, Bernie Sandler who looked at sexism in Higher Education. Olivia records, at the field of Academic Studies in lesbian history. My friend and mentor Tony Armstrong jr. Who started a magazine called hot wired to look at women in rock and the women Music Festivals of the 70s. Obviously people the labor around them, womens reproductive rights, the olympic champions who broke barriers, making it possible for women to do ski jump for ice hockey or run a marathon. Everyone who started the w. Nba, all of the folks who were the first to be in a class act and Ivy League School or who broke the gender barrier in the service academies. It is a giant range. I am leaving out people in late arrival feel badly about that but i admire her everybody who pushed for word womens entry into closed occupations. Host this is the first time in the olympics that women are doing in the ski jump. Guest why dont we worry about the guys . Interesting question. Why do we allow men to be injured and forbid women . Theres a lot of drama about women as child bears. None the less we do allow women to get hurt all the time. If we are been concerned about womens physical safety everyone should be on the front lines of dealing with rape and violence against women but instead we hear only an olympic occasion or a woman who wants to play football or rugby, womens ruggedly. Those ironies are intriguing but i can certainly say i gave a talk to my nieces girl scout troop when she was younger and wanted to know is there still bias against girls . She was in a ski resort town and all i had to do was point out the window and say you see that mountain, those women skiing down that mounting . Cant do ski jump in the olympics, they were appalled and i am delighted that his change. In her lifetime complete reversal of the ban on womens key jam. Host welcome to booktvs index program. This is our Monthly Program with one author and his or her body of work. This month professor and author Bonnie Morris is our guest, she is the author of six Nonfiction Books along with some poetry books. Here are her nonfiction beginning in 1997 with voices from west l. A. Up identity and activism in the postwar era 1998, eden built by eve in 1999, girl real, her memoir, 2,000, revenge of the womens studies professor 2009, her most recent book just came out last year, womens history for beginners. Is there a danger in womens groups, womens bookstores, womens studies, kind of a get was asian and a sense . Guest very good question. Unfortunately you the answer is a lot of that separate culture has come to an end. We have integrated a lot of what used to be separate into mainstream bookstores. Now they are going out of business too. Some of what would be a natural change as you bring womens work into the mainstream is being affected by technological changes so that the internet and other sites now permit women to find support groups and communities that before they had to go to a physical site. The issue of the elevation is intriguing to me because people say why do we need a womens studies program . Should we have a mens studies program . It is important for women to have places together in groups to Exchange Information and to have a sense of what it is like to be the majority even if only temporarily. Many of my students to take engineering are still the only woman in the class. They dont know what it is like to the and a classroom with majority female, it is a very good experience. In contrast i have a lot of students who come out of a singlesex private high school, they are very familiar with female leadership and women being the majority and they are not selfconscious about being athletes and leaders. One of the things that is very moving to me is in the u. S. As we have forced the kind of integrated we lost some traditional womens spaces that other countries with strict customs do have. For instance when i taught one semester at sea and took students around the world we went to a traditional womens bad house in turkey and south korea. These are communities where women gather traditionally because they didnt have a bathroom in the home but they exchanged a news and gossip and would sing and scrub each others backs. A very welcoming and intimate and authentic culture. I was deliriously happy to experience Something Like that but my womens studies class that went with me, these young women were terrified. They were uncomfortable getting undressed and participating with local women. Everyone of them said the same thing. I am too fact. I cant do it. I hate my body. That american aspect of being unable to participate in traditional womens culture because you have a western bias self hating view of your body, everyone on the ship wrote a paper about that. What does that say . We are advanced in terms of some womens rights, but we expect women now to have it all, be ideal the wife and mother but career woman come athlete and look perfect. No one can do all that and trying to control some elements of those self scrutiny for perfection, my College Age Students as opposed to my older friends very much feel the burden of trying to look perfect and it takes a toll on your focus and your attention, review should be reading a book, not worrying about your body all day. Host you can bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and lebron let him know he is the man. Right, exactly. Host if you would like to participate in our conversation with author Bonnie Morris we are going to put the phone lines on screen. 2025853882, for those in the east and central time zones, 5853881. For those of you further west and if you cant get through on the phones and lights to make a comment or ask a question you can do so via social media booktv is our twitter handle. You can send an email to booktv cspan. Org or you can leave a comment on our face book page, facebook. Com booktv. Where did you grow up . Guest i was born on mothers day in los angeles and i lived in west l. A. Until 6171 in july was 10. A great time to live through the piece marching 60s and Peace Movement parents with a peace sign in the front window. Every christmas. And i went to a very International Elementary school that was sort of the cedar school for kids, parents were married grad students at ucla. A lot of people who were on scholarships from all over the world and at various times i was one of the handful of americanborn kids in my classroom and i thought was normal for everybody came from japan and india and the philippines and uruguay and when i was 10, we moved to North Carolina and whats a wakeup call. I was in durham, n. C. My dad left his job because he was asked to design an antiaircraft missile and he didnt want to be an arms designer. He was very much against the war, and he went back to grad school and took a position with the Environmental Protection agency. Next thing i knew we were in North Carolina in nearly 70s when the state had barely integrated and after a year of pretty Abusive Local Public School my brother and i enrolled at Carolina Friends School which was the first integrated school in the state, private Quaker School where we were very fortunate to get a wonderful education with really dynamic and caring progress of educators and i ended up graduating from high school, and my parents. I went to American University in d. C. The first grad to have graduated with a womens studies minor. Was established the year i was a senior. I did all the credits in one year and i was the jewish history major, an undergrad, spent a year in israel. I was interested in looking at womens communities. When i went to grad school i looked at women in the allpro Orthodox Jewish community, the Hasidic Community and there was one particular community in brooklyn and i was interested at that time in examining jewish fundamentalism. Everyone was looking at christian fundamentalism and islamic fundamentalism. I was hardly raised in an orthodox way in any definition and it was fascinating to me to see what it would be like to live as a very traditional jewish women but in the feminist time of our lives so i looked at healthy women in this one Hasidic Community had taken the language of american feminism and applied it to their lives. I finished my doctorate at binghamton which is upstate new york, where i had a great education. Host identity and activism in the postwar era, you write no group of immigrant women committed to reducing the spiritual vision of womanhood should be marginalized by the feminist historian. Instead of feminist historian has an obligation to acknowledge divers contexts of ethnic and gender identity. My friends in grad school were looking at women in history and where leaders for womens rights or who were radical revolutionaries and a lot of the feedback i had, why would you pick this group of extremely rightwing the women who live in a community where women are not permitted to participate as men do but my argument was you have to look at the whole apple, the whole apple of womens communities globally instead of spending a lot of time saying why would any woman live like this you ask what do these women do with their permitted agency . What do they do within their permitted sphere and is interesting. I have found many women wear the breadwinners, the men were scholarly and the women had jobs. The girls were very empowered to the point of being fresh and rude. There was no selfesteem problem is there. I looked at that committee in parts, it could have been me. My ancestors lead poland and russia, could have been me that if there had not been the tragedy of the holocaust my roots could have remained in Eastern Europe but i would not have been able to be a scholar because i am a girl. The whole yen full thing. I wanted to know what if you are a brainy girl in this society where the men get to be rabbinical authorities and Brilliant Minds and the women are expected to be informed but domestic . And i went right to the women themselves and in fact if they were outspoken, will published and touring quite frankly whether an agenda. Women who travel around the world telling other women their job is to stay in the home and what interests me with conservative women is you have multiple figureheads who are similarly they write, they publish, they speak, they it for, the content of what theyre saying is different but when you have women traveling around the world telling other women their place is to remain uneducated, that is hypocrisy. Im interested in that. Host talking about roger and myra, your parents, your mother is jewish, your father you describe as a surfer dudes and you write in that book we dressed up like our parents, went to formal dances like our parents, at fundraisers like our parents. Everything we did was a rehearsal for what we were going to do later. Get married to someone of the right ethnic and social background, no other possibilities were discussed. Dont know if that is my mother or father speaking. I interviewed my parents because i believed there intermarriage itself is a terrific story. Finally occurred to me after a lifetime of listening to their stories at the dinner table to turn on my tape recorder probably during the year i was visiting scepter harvard and started interviewing my parents. They broke all kinds of social taboos by intermarrying in their day and at that time they went to a high school that had segregated clubs, jewish clubs and gentile clubs and jack kemp was a gentile and my dads school was in the christian club. But my father pledged a jewish club. He joined basically a jewish game, the cardinals, and he was the second boy. My parents thought this whole business was just ridiculous and they actively worked if they didnt dismantle all together they took the stand by challenging some of the norms and having this radical wedding at a time when you werent supposed to marry outside your group and their example put me on the path where i am now, that everybody should be able to get married, choose your own partner. They were very much the people who made me what i am in terms of concern about social justice and as much as we were an unusual family in terms of involvement in various progressive causes, they were extremely responsible with that time. I think peoples image of a progressive family is somehow a chaotic home. I did not get sent to Hebrew School but i ascribe to honor my mother and father and i have written a great deal about my parents. Host are they still live . Host guest life mother is, my father passed away and i miss him very much. It is a very important figure and he is the guy locally in d. C. Who built the volleyball courts at the lincoln memorial. His contribution was to create a free, accessible recreation space for all citizens of the District Of Columbia and there are tournaments going on on those courts now thanks to his vision. Host by the host 70s the Womens Movement in the u. S. Had grown enormously making gains in some areas of legal and economic change that still divide along the lines of race, class and sexuality. Members of political groups such as now, faced off over the question of lesbian disability and over the question of whether to condemn male supers of the structures such as organized religion and the military or to demand womens integration into those existing halls of power. Movement leader Betty Ferdinand declared lesbian rights were a lavender herring, a distraction from and an embarrassment for mainstream feminists. Okay. Yes. I went from describing women in one sort of women only space to the other end of the spectrum, radical womens Music Festivals. This is the link of all my work. I interested in womens communities on all ends of the spectrum. Eden built by eve, a history of womens music and festival culture which were a dynamic part of the 70s, 80s and 90s and i wrote it because i was participating by than in womens Music Festivals that were not being described anywhere else in mainstream rock journalism. This is certainly what gave us Melissa Etheridge and the indigo girls and Tracy Chapman and many other performers who are not household names and i wanted to document something that i felt was a very important aspect of my culture. I was in graduate school doing womens history but no where were we being introduced to the history of lesbians and i was out of the crowd at age 18. And i had the impression even in an Excellent Program in womens histories that there were no narratives or histories of lesbian groups that were considered worthy of scholarship yet. That was about to change and by the time i finished my ph. D. Program students of your years younger is and me were looking at different womens communities. I went back to binghamton this past spring after 30 years and gave a talk and said we all lived lives when many Doctoral Students were on campus and the rest of the time we were involved in a lesbian bar called horizons. We knew our lives matted but we werent being made to feel the they were worth writing about. I felt very keenly that i had an almost moral obligation to describe what i was participating in which was women creating spaces for each other when they still have limited rights and opportunities. One very important subculture was womens Music Festivals where artists were making the music that enabled women to see their partnerships as valid and decent and loving and nobody else was feeding that allegation came from artists including comedians and dramatists and festival culture impressed me because women did all the jobs. If you wanted to have a space for performances that nobody else could stage you needed people to run a stage. Techies, lighting designers, sound engineers and these are some of my favorite people. Take the women who enable the sound to reach an audience. I am sitting in the audience doing multiple documenting, listening to my friends performing on stage but im also taking notes in my journal and tape recording speeches that being made and taking photographs. I have one of the best archives of womens music in america today, all in my front room in a giant pink dresser. Didnt plan on it being. Something i inherited from my parentss based in. My mother could dance costumes in it for a long time. Host grant says i dont hear much anymore about the equal rights amendment. What would its ratification in the u. S. Have done for women. Guest what a great question. I went door to door for era as an 18yearold. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. That is all it says. That equality of rights was misunderstood by so many people who feared it would mean mandating unisex bathrooms which we now have. Going door to door in affluent Montgomery County where i often knocked on the door of senators and congress men i would hear from everyone oh my god we cannot have the e r a because it will mean everyone using the same bathroom, mandatory game marriage, all about abortion, wrong, wrong, wrong. It is about equality of life. I believe if it had passed we would have then had found it was easier to attract women into opportunities that remain closed for quite a while. We had piecemeal and do a lot of sexist legislation but the feeling that equality was that controversial was so strong that in 1979 when i was going door to door i had people threaten me. I had people sick their dogs on me, quote from scripture, tommy always going to burn in hell, order me off the lawn, scary, quite an education and i was right out of high school. I believe that many women devoted so much of their energy and their lives to getting the era past beginning with alice paul who introduced in 1923 but we forget that that consumed the energy of so many women for what the 70s up to 82 and the fact the we never got 3 5 of the states to ratify equal rights is just chilling and i know a lot of women did everything from fasting to putting all their savings into the hope that we really would amend the quality for women in this nation. Host lets begin with paul in morristown, new jersey, you are on booktv. Hello. I wanted to ask, in august and september of 2008 when the nation was getting to know sarah palin did you regard the governor as a powerful symbol of success of feminism or an icon given the fact the she built her political career pretty much all on her own in opposition to republican establishment in alaska and she was not the daughter or the wife of a powerful man . Very quickly, how do you feel about sarah palin . Are you a supporter of hers . I am one of the original supporters because i thought she cleaned up the corruption in alaska, put a lot of people out of their jobs. I like her crusade against corruption. In many ways she was elected or selected to be an important symbol for not just a woman politician who had already been empowered as a governor. Her representation as a person who was a family woman who talked adamantly about her kids and presented a certain kind of mainstream femininity was intended as an opposition to the qualities that people feared about Hillary Clinton or other feminist candidates. I think any woman who wants to run should run. When a woman is in power to make policy and is not necessarily supportive of womens reproductive rights, i get very anxious, so i was not a supporter of sarah palin. Obviously at the time the question around the country was if you support womens rights why wouldnt you support any woman running because by the time you are voting, i think there is a difference between a female candidate and a feminist candidate and i do remain a staunch feminist. If you cant get through on the phone lines you can email booktv cspan. Org, you can make a comment on our twitter feed tv or make a comment on our Facebook Page at facebook. Com cspan. Cc is calling from portland, ore. Im interested in your thoughts about feminism. Im concerned about the term womens history. Often times for me it, the states white women of a certain class and oftentimes i dont hear about the experiences of women of color but particularly africanamerican women within the context of that it seems to be just subsumed that when we say the word womens history that it encompasses the experiences of all women which theoretically it should, but in practice i think it really talks about experiences of white women and the concerns they had in dealing with white men. Host adjust want to ask do you consider yourself a feminist . I consider myself someone interested in equal rights for all women, particularly women that are marginalized. I dont mind the term feminism, but as far as the issue of e quality that would make me a feminist and i dont mind that term but i am concerned about the way in which i hear it used and the way womens history, being equal for all women when people who subscribe to feminism, talk about womens history rarely talk about women of color and their particular issues and just assume those issues will be taken care of as we take care of issues of white women. Guest you are absolutely right. This is the biggest concern in my teaching. I hope you would find i absolutely represent the history of africanamerican women. We look at the position of women of color in feminism, how has feminism made mistakes, one of the critical turning points wear white feminists had the opportunity not to discriminate and unfortunately alienated black women in america . There is a very important book on studies with the title all the women are a white, all the blacks are men but some of us are brave, black womens studies, that textbook has been reissued. In those ridings and in other books that i assigned, one thing id do is where do we see the invisibility of black women in American History . A big turning point is on the fifteenth amendment which gave black men the right to vote. White suffragists went to the black leader Frederick Douglass and said we supported you, will you support us . What is going to happen with women getting the vote . And he said, do you desire what is necessary . Who is missing in that statement . Black women are missing in that statement. One example of a turning point. We also have women who wear black separatists being asked not to march in the suffrage parade down pennsylvania avenue that alice paul lead because a number of white suffragists were hoping to get southern male senators to support womens suffrage. These are all examples of what alienated folks from each other in the movement and the fact the white woman, slave owners, if you look at the current film 12 years a slave or even you see examples of women doing injustice to other women so it is the agenda of every decent womens studies program in the country to make sure that it is not just white feminism that is being instructed and i really appreciate your call. You can count on me. Hart Senate Office building your book womens history for beginners you make us take a quiz at the beginning of the book and we have some of our viewers take the quiz as well. Question no. 12 in your jaques, in what year word the first African Women brought to colonial america and as slaves . I will say 1700 . It is a little earlier than that, 1619. That is the beginning of the scenario in this country where we literally control womens bodies both as property and sexually and i think again the film 12 years a slave is reintroducing people to what this history looks like. The biggest dilemma i have is as a feminist professor i am often exposed in the media to criticism from different conservative religious groups that call on family values, traditional family values are supposed to somehow be an opposition to what feminists stand for but lets look at what real traditional values are in the United States. Something like 244 years of legalized slavery, we had people moaning womens bodies, selling their children, slave owners had every right under the law to impregnate slaves. We had no rape laws protecting those women. We violated the mother child bond by separating mother and baby for profit. Many women were forced to have as many children as possible to pay off their own aerostats. That is the tradition we dont want to look at and that only began to change much later in American History so as much of womens history is painful i tell my students here is that they when the subject matter is excruciating by which i taught the history of baking but nonetheless we have to know. Host in your book revenge of womens studies professor womens history for beginners for most of his real woman was her body, and dangerous equation. Host guest was regulated was based on the modesty of her appearing in public. What was considered dangerous for her because of her childbearing capacity. There were a lot of misinform doctors in the Nineteenth Century who believed women lost energy every month and therefore shouldnt do sports and shultzs study. They fought learning latin and greek would direct blood away from the womb into the brain and make women in fertile. The whole range of issues, we have one view of the Nineteenth Century that women should be delicate and pure and stay away from dangerous work or too much strain would hurt your womb and then we have enslaved women doing difficult work and not only did it not damaged their fertility but their fertility is being exploited. What is the real truth . What do women do when we need them . That is what i mean by womens body is her story. Host in missouri, are you ready to take a quiz on womens history . Question xli from womens history for beginners. Bonnie morris asks when will women first admitted to west point and the Naval Academy . I would say in 1996. Guest it is actually 1976. They were brought in by a bill signed by president ford and women who were the first class at west point, very small group, really not able to learn from each other. They were broken up and scattered in 2 different units. In part to showcase that we have all woman in each unit but they had a very difficult they were of course the subject of a lot of mia attention and that made the other men a angry, that they were all running the same five miles and the guys were not getting cameras. The women had a hard time proving they were one of the guys because they were not a subject special interests. Host go ahead with your question and comment for Bonnie Morris. Caller our daughter went one year and decided to be a pharmacist instead. I had been a pharmacist for 40 years. When i started out i had 15 women in my graduating class and now they are 85 in the graduating class. I live in a family of five brothers and four sisters some my perspective is this. We must make certain that women and others who are now in a minority have government that these people be qualified and able to stand on their own feet and not pushed into leadership roles and prepared. My main thing is they must be prepared and we all know what that is. That is a problem in our government, suffering miserably for it. Thank you. Host we have this email from sophie in l. A. I would like to ask for Bonnie Morriss perspective on female characters in film and it should point to a recent wall that illustrates women positively. Guest a terrific question. In my book girl real one of the things i talk about is what it was like to grow up in the 70s with an increasing range of good female roles and movies that my parents took me to that made a deep impression on me. My goodness. What have i seen recently . It blows the lid off of the laundry and homes for girls in ireland when unwed mothers were separated from their families do to shame and force to do unpaid labor and had to surrender their children without their consent and we are learning about that now. That is the true story and her perseverance and courage and she is a great actress, i am very much a fan of the film a league of their own. I was able to meet Penny Marshall when she received an award in d. C. One of the few films that shows the true history of womens sports and the allamerican Girls Baseball League is one of my favorite topics. I had a friend who appeared in that film but Penny Marshall made a point that she was really not well funded to direct a film about women in sports, she had to cast her brother, her daughter, the guy who plays an umpire, camera man or what ever, so we still have a really regrettable lack of women behind the camera. It is startling that my students who think hollywood is very liberal that infected is one of the most job segregated areas in our country. The number of women directors and those who do lighting is very small. I think we can do much better. I remember when Barbra Streisand directed and appeared in, she is difficult and pushy and other euphemisms for being a strong jewish woman and while she was being reviewed as head director in the Washington Post i was also appearing in a movie at the same time. I was an extra in contact which was filmed in washington. On the set of mainstream hollywood film, thinking about the future of women in film and i was able to see if this was 1997, everyone working on the movie was a guy. Makeup woman, and somebody who brought in catering snacks and everybody else was mailed. Very different than my experience that womens Music Festivals where everyone doing the plumbing and the sound tower is a woman. Not only was i startled by how masculine the job occupant told thing was very impressive, and meanwhile these guys were all saying get out of the way, sweetheart or move, honey, when they were moving cables around and ironically i was playing and naval lieutenant. I was in uniform as a woman in power. Lots of thoughtprovoking material and i took notes in my journal when sitting in jodie fosters chair, really good accounting of what it was like to appear in of film while looking at how media treats women directors and thank you. Host another question from the quiz. Before you can ask your question, in what year did american women win the votes and can you name the amendment . 1919, forget the name of the amendment. Is that close . Guest pretty good. 1920s, the nineteenth amendment. But thank you. And the eighteenth for the record is prohibition. That is important, a lot of people were afraid to give women the vote fearing women would ban alcohol. Probation passed before women had the vote. A good piece of trivia. Caller just a wonderful subject today. I was born in the 40s so i saw this hole evolve in women coming into leadership and getting into Higher Education. When i was in college in the 60s and my accounting class there was one woman, the same college today is 60 women. These things are moving in a wonderful direction. The question i have is globally, what percentage of Higher Education enrollment today are women versus men . Great question. I dont have the answer globally. In the United States, women are the majority on college campuseses and the point you bring up about the shift in accounting and the previous caller about the shift in pharmacy this is very important, great questions. No one ever planned for women to be enrolled in colleges in equal numbers and the fact the women have now surpassed men in enrollments, this is not in any ones plan and it is alarming to some people because so much funding has been set aside for womens sports, that was never planned on. When title line was passed in 1972, which said Higher Education receives federal dollars, may not discriminate on the basis of sex, women were very small percentage of College Enrollment so it didnt seem as though a lot of money would be shifted over to womens sports or that women would be as large a presence in Higher Education as they are. Now in education is being feminized because there are so many women and there have been changes necessary because women do attend College Classes in larger numbers and so on. Is a huge contrast to the situation for women again in places like afghanistan, pakistan, globally a challenge for a lot of girls, africa and not being able to afford school fees, not having shoes, not having clothing, not having sanitary products, things we dont like to think about that prevent the 12yearold from going to class. The more women take courses which we once considered masculine, the more that field starts to be seen as something women do like pharmacy. The fact the we have women in medical school, law school, graduates school, they were quoted for years to keep women out of the ivy league and harvard and yale had a quota for every two women admitted, three men had to be admitted on campus. So women had to be much better in terms of their test scores and so forth. When i look at campuses where i teach there is a majority of women but that doesnt mean that the women are going to take womens studies or have a lot of female professors. It means the undergraduate enrollment is majority female so you can still have a female environment but not learn womens history or have female role models. How about that . Host how do you see marriage continuing as an institution if women are going to equal or surpass men in society . Host i will take this opportunity to say on national tv i am an advocate for gay marriage. Guest and as the daughter of an intermarriage i have seen the possibility of a lasting marriage where people predicted failure because of difference. I think that marriage can only be strengthened by the equality of the participants. I believe what is challenging in our time is that much of the law of round marriage in households is based on the idea of there being a head of household and the support net so the fact the we legalize both parties in terms of their access to controlling money, making decisions, as that is hard to adapt. We come from a position where the woman, everything she brought to a marriage became the husbands property. Back to ancient greek and roman law, a woman was a child bride treated as a child and all of her concerns were taken care of by the husband because he was older and more educated. She never became an adult. Was a perpetual minor in the eyes of the law, never participated in politics or the economy. That ended up all the way through history affecting english law and colonial law and early american law and right up to world war ii. Technically the decisions have been made by the husbands, and women could not operate separately. Moreover a married woman is distinguished from an unmarried woman by her forms of address, miss and mrs. Ms. Was a huge big deal as an effort to mask the womans marital status. We ask a mans. A lot of people dont know that ms. Was adopted in spanish so you are not senorita or signora. Wonderful piece of trivia from mexican feminism. Host is that a quote . Guest i dont really know. I was aware of these issues early. Much at carolina friend at School Subscription from the minute it began publication in 72. I read in our library and womens studies classes from 72 on so we introduce womens studies, the middle school and 10yearolds were taking and i participated in a class theyre based very much on articles i read in these magazines that interested me, then i had my own description as a gift on my 14th birth day, that covered the range of the same questions the caller was interested in, the changing nature of marriage, how the law reflected women as an independent agent in any love relationship. Host roger from pablo beach, fla. Here is your quiz. When where women first allowed to participate in the Olympic Games . Caller 1960s. Caller actually the 1920s, either 22 or 28. This was a big part of the problem whereby we had the modern olympics introduced in 1896 but the gentleman who was in charge for many years did not support women going to the games. He felt women in sports were unappealing and it was improper. There was a womens olympics held in france. When women were permitted into the olympics there was a famous event where a ran a race and critics were frightened by the image of women being tired and lying down on the track and women were banned from doing any kind of distance running right until the 1970ss and women were banned from the Boston Marathon until Catherine Switzer ran entities changes of all happens quite recently but women were at the olympics in the 20s. Host go ahead with your question. Caller i failed miserably on the quiz so i am not sure i am qualified to ask the question, but if you will permit me. I am writing on successful in the american when. My question to the professor is have you done any study or research on specifically the Indian American woman . Guest you bet and hello to my friend out there and various others. I lived in l. A. In the 60s, many families from india. I was very aware the lives of indian women in first and second grade, quite a few friends who were from india, learned to speak it. Was interested in the of course when youre a kid, the holidays and the language, but i actually incorporated those images into the stories i wrote as a little girl. As i grew older i became much more aware of the dilemma of women in terms of the caste system and troubles based on tribal practices and so forth. What it utilized today was text book called women, the unfinished revolution, which, of course, presents viewpoints of women globally and has a lot of material about women in india. On semester c, where i work as a visiting faculty, on two global tours, we went to india. I took my students to bangalor to the womens book store and we were able to spend a wonderful afternoon there, also met with a national cartoonist, women writers. That was terrific, and the week spent in India Remains a central part of the semester 2 curriculum. For my students it was very moving to meet with women who were working on behalf of womens rights at the time, and were directed to look at that again with recent concerns about violence against women in india getting a lot of media innings the country. But Media Attention in the country. Is was affect by writings by indian men as a kid because the School Library had a lot of becomes donated. He who rides a tiger, and books about untouchables or the caste, so this is one of my favorite subjects. Thank you for asking. Host we are talking today with professor Bonnie Morris, who teaches at George Washington university and Georgetown University here in washington, dc. Also the author of six Nonfiction Books beginning in 1997, with the High School Scene in the 50s, in 1998, mature women in america came out. Girl reel, revenge of the womens studies professor came out in 2009, and her most recent book, womens history for beginners. And i should mention that womens history for beginners is the booktv Book Club Selection for me month of february. Guest woohoo. Host go to book of. Org and theres a to be that says book club and you can participate in our discussion at booktv. Org. Well be posting video and reviews and articles up there tomorrow. So the discussion will begin tomorrow. Well also be posting on a regular basis discussion questions. So, i hope youll be able to participate. Bonnie morris womens history for beginners is our february 2014 Book Club Selection on booktv. Next call from jan in North Carolina. Jan, back to the quiz. When were women first admitted to Yale University . Caller i believe it was also in the early 70s, 73, 74. Guest somewhere there around. I cant remember the exact date. You could take classes before then but integration into the ivy league comes after title ix. My husband graduated west point, and several years before women were in enlisted into west point, he always wondered how they did all the things he did. Always amazing to him. My basic question is, how do you answer whether the feminist woman against a conservative or conservative woman against a feminist. The opposite contrast of allowing them to believe their beliefs, whether the woman is a feminist and she doesnt believe in guns or war, or she is a conservative and she goes out and handles rifles or does hunting or camping, or stays home and does the knitting and crocheting. Why do they tear each other apart and not get together as women . Guest what a great question. Got a couple of years . Well, okay. Youre raising the question, do you have to subscribe to one set of political beliefs to be a feminist, and another question youre raising is, why do women in failing to unite, waste a lot of energy tearing each other down. Theres a lot of trashing that goes on in the Womens Movement. No doubt about it. And i certainly experienced some of that myself. I believe, though, what youre bringing up is very significant, and that is how many issues do women disagree on where you have more than one stance, as moving women forward. For example, the we of women in the military the question of women in the military is complicate. One filmist viewpoint might be, yes, women have every opportunity, including combat if they qualify. Close no occupations to win. Everyone should have access. Another feminist viewpoint might be, women shouldnt kill. Women shouldnt participate in militaristic enterprises. These are both womens viewpoints and theyre both very significant viewpoints. Another example would be, does it empower a woman to participate in football or is it violent . These are issues where theres a lot of dissent. I think theres space for disagreement. Where i become concerned is when a woman is empowering her viewpoint, voting or giving money to causes, but take opportunities away from other women or going to forbid women to get services they need. I think that among my circle of friends theres a lot of disagreement on different issues, and i think in the classroom its very important that i create a climate where everyones viewpoint is welcome. I think i do that reasonably well. The fact i also have office hours and email where students can disagree privately with something somebody else might have said and they dont have to engage in a public debate, thats helpful. I think it takes a while for students to bring up the kind of confidence that i just have naturally. And its very hard to argue in a public forum when youre in your first year of college. It takes a while for a student to develop the skills and maybe arguing with someone in the next seat. I dont have an answer to your question in terms of how women discourage one another from following their own goals if to the goals feel right for them and a great criticism of feminism, it made women feel like if they didnt have a career they werent valuable. Women said, im just a house wife. That is a problem because it was supposed to be about choices. You choose to be a stay stayate mom, rock on. But, yes, those different approaches to empowerment should be honored. Host what wave are we in now . You said the second wave guest theres a lot of disagreement whether its use toll continue thinking in wave. The third wave was seen as a moment by young feminists of color to look at intersectionallity. Race, class, gender. Your it neck heritage, racial standpoint, inform your feminism, i would say that right now, the predicament is everyone is reacting against their mothers feminism. The students i have now are the daughters of moms who were activists in the 70s and have to make their own definition. As radical as our mothers were in the 70s, the fact they were mothers makes what they did square, if you follow. In other words, i understand its normal to rebel against your parents. Im close to my patients but the idea you have to come up with a new definition understandable. What everyone is still interested in are these issues of the body, the majority of papers my students do are about images of women in the media, how women are made to feel negative about their bodies, excessive dieting, girls being pushed to dress very sexually at an early age, that toddlers and tierras program where little girls are pushed into beauty pageants as age three. All of the ways in which we sexualize kids, which is a big problem in a country dealing with a pedophilia scandal here and there. Those endlessly interest my students. Theyre also very interested in International Issues of the body. How do we evaluate Something Like female circumcision, what do we do with issues of women who are expected to have what another definition might be, genital mutilation . How do you control that . All of this is material that speaks to my students who are dating and reproductive age. Theyre not as quick to want to look at property issues of the 1850s. And that also is a reminder that each wave of feminism is addressed Different Things based on who is participating. Host from revenge of the womens studies professor, you write when student dont like the grade on their exams and blast off an email my first caution to them is always, stop, think, would you speak to a male professor this way . Guest yeah. I now am very familiar with ambitious students who fall apart at the sign of an ayeminus and thats a haulmark of our excellent universities here in the district. But i know that on some occasions ive had students confront me in ways i dont think they would in an older male professor. When i first started teaching, no one believed i was a professor. I had several appointments in places where there werent a lot of women faculty and i would be challenged if i went into the faculty room or would have actually i had some students say youre in the wrong place, this is a women in war clarks on the first day. I said, thats right, im the professor. So stick around, okay . I was asked at harvard to show my i. D. When i entered the english departments faculty lounge. I was meeting a colleague to have lunch, and then the embarrassed guy who confronted me said, oh, well, but youre too young and pretty to be a professor. And im like, really . What does that say . That the image of a woman professor is some kind of angry hag . And these are these all of events and encounters that made up my onewoman play, revenge of the womens studieses professor, and the book is based on what it was like touring with a play that engaged audiences to look at what is going on in schools. Host dana, twitter why are liberal feminists so antisecond amendment . Paraphrase. God created humans but sam colt made them equal. Guest well, i think that the problem of gun violence is a very significant one. I think theres a lot of women who come out of the Peace Movement and the movement that looks at violence in all its forms. I think a lot of women do feel safe if they have been sexually assaulted and are experiencing post traumatic stress. Often proficiency with firearms gives that kind of the recovering victim more confidence. I also say that women are on the front lines of seeing how gun violence affect communities. Theyre in hospitals. Because women still are the majority of nurses and teachers, the issue of gun violence in schools and how its affecting how kids are the psychologically terrified. I think thats a womens issue. Host Bonnie Morris do you have any male heros in the womens Rights Movement . Guest oh, sure, you bet. My gosh. Okay. Burtch by, of bayh, behind title ix. Now im going to race around memory. Host you do that. If you come up with one throughout the program you can added in. That as a little bit of a curve ball. Bruce in laurel, maryland. Bruce, which black woman ran for president of the u. S. In 1972 . This is from Bonnie Morris quiz. Caller her last name is davis . Guest no. Shirley chisolm. She poke at duke university. When i was 11 my mother took me to see her and that had a big impact on my life. I had show a film about her campaign in my class. Host good ahead, bruce. Caller when you say women what, i apologize. Bruce, that was me who cut you off. I was moving on, i have no idea why i did that and it was inexcusable. And i apologize to you. Dep bra in detroit, michigan. High, debra. Caller good afternoon. How are you both and a special greetings to professor morris. Enjoying your show. Wish id gotten that question because thats my statement was going to start off with three of my political sheroes, and Joanne Watson who went off council in december, and have something experience working on campaigns as well as going through a lot of respect of he woman lea wilson about closing the leadership gap. I had the opportunity to meet her and to go through one of her programs here in michigan. One of the things you see ones that it women are very unrepresented, but the other is just how that intersects with race, and gender, and for africanamerican women, just seems to be you have to transcend the issues of class, race, and im wondering if you have given any thought to looking at how this plays out in terms of the kinds of policy that were seeing. To me theres an attack on the working class nowdays. Guest absolutely. Host professor, if you can hang on, debra, i wasnt prepared but now i have your quiz question it you would like to take one who is the first black woman to win an olympic gold medal. Caller that would have been she ran track will ma rudolph. Guest actually, i think Alice Coachman before, but Wilma Rudolph then, yes. I have posters of both in my office. So let me answer you question. My great privilege is to occasionally work with donna brazil at georgetown. She is on the faculty of womens studies and i defer to her in terms of her class on women in american politics addresses many of these issues from her perspective as a longtime campaigner and critic. In terms of, yes, could we have better representation of working women and women issues if we had more diversity and representation . Absolutely. And what is great about shirley chisolm. She was put on the Agriculture Committee as a freshman representative, and she refused saying, you know, i represent Bedford Stuyvesant and we dont have a lot of agriculture trip. Need to address my constituent issues. I just love that. By the way, my grandfather lived in Bedford Stuyvesant as a little boy as a jewish immigrant kid. Anyway, the idea that we dont have a full representation says a great deal. First of all, it means its very difficult for women to run and a lot of women are reluctant to do so. This is often credited to women believing theyre not prepared or having difficulties fundraising. And i think theres a lot of reluctance on the part of many women to subject. Thes to the criticism that comes when you run for office. I also believe that if women like chisolm run, their campaign is less of a focus on gender than on race, and we see that in the story of shirley chisolm. She was not primarily seep as a female candidate but as a black woman, and she was treated very differently than the way hillary and sarah palin were evaluated in terms of femininity. Host guess what, bruce is back. They i cut off. Bruce, hi, thanks, i apologize. Caller thats all right. I was saying, a book by Sheila Rothman about feminism, she went into detail about how the reason women wanted the vote was two things, theyre morally superior and wanted to limit womens participation in the work force, and she goes in detail how they did that. My point i wanted to ask about, she talking about title ix. She says title womens studies courses, and theres no mens studies. Ive been told its actually there are mens studies and the reason she said theres engineering is dominated, one woman in the class, and obviously women in most colleges, more women in college, you see more for women than men, and all sorts of things you can have in a mens studies course that have never been brought out before. Guest actually we have a lot of classes that look specifically asthmas christianity at masculinity. There are classes now that are more likely to be defined as gender studies and look at sexual limitationses, experiences for men and women, and theres obviously great deal of interest in transgender identities. So actually looking at men is found in womens studies where it might not be found elsewhere. In my sports class we begin with mens history because i like to point out that its not true, men always played sports. Men as well as women were banned from sports by our puritan an an zest are sos who thought it was the devils pastime and only later did men become involved in football elm issue that not having mens studies violates equal rights, its an interesting argument. Ill take you on. I think what happens is in the same way when you have a black Student Union and white students say we get to have a white students union, programs, groups, institutions, that begin to rectify invisibility or lack of opportunity do not necessarily then impede other students rights to see themselves as a majority all the time. Students will get mens history in every class they take. They will not often be told, oh, bill the way, this didnt apply to women. Oh, biffle oh, by the way no women were allowed to do this. And womens studies is an elective. No one is required to take it. It is a part of an option for furthering indepth study in our field. In Higher Education you get to specialize. Here is a chance to specialize and why were women in the past forbidden from sports, the military, medicine, Higher Education, diplomacy . Why are so many schools still closed to girls . Why do we see these statistics, one in three women will be raped in her lifetime. Often times these are uncomfortable questions. A classroom is a good place to negotiate, hough do we know what we know about womens lives. When have women been empowered to tell their own stories and back to the question about mail feminists i admire. Jon Stewart Mills who wrote, on the subjects of women in 1869, he was an early proponent of, quote, women telling their truths to men, and was one of the first guys to name the problem of Domestic Violence, he said we dont know womens truths because women are afraid. They often live in context where theyre physically intimidated. So we have gentlemen addressing these questions in the 1970s. We did not get the first Rape Crisis Center until 1972. So 100 years later. So for all of these reasons in some scenarios, its necessary to have a faith base to provide backup info on women. But, yes, most universities also include courses on masculinities now, and i address that in one of my classes, too. 202s the area code, 5353882. If you cant get through on the phone to talk with Bonnie Morris you can send a tweet booktv. Or an email, book toe toe cspan. Org. We have a little over an hour and 20 minutes left with our guest this month. We like to visit our authors in their work places or homes to see how they write and where they write. The producer of this program, tawnya davis, visited with professor morris at George Washington university. As i will write my first ideas for the next project usually in my notebook in maybe the back section. So making it separate from this is my day exheres what i want to do next. And i start with a title and an outline. I almost mete immediately break it into how many chunks are in this idea and with that encloses bond to like chapters, and then some chapter i can flesh out. When you send a book proposal to an editor they want content, table of contents and chapters, so i automatically think in terms of what i can show a publisher. You have to boil everything down to not a sound bite but a very succinct chunk. Usually in writing almost all of the books ive pressured, die the middle chapter first. Maybe an introduction, and then Something Like chapter five or chapter seven, because often the thing im best prepared to write is building off something i might have written even ten years before or i kind of pirate off my own past work. I write in the middle of the day because thats when my office hours are. And what i have done is, of course, i have quite a lot of time in my office when students can come and meet with me, but they dont. They really do prefer to email, and its a couple of year ago i recallized i was using the time waiting for students to come in to work on chapters, and now most of my productivity seems to be between, like, 10 00 and 2 00, and the downside of that is that when students come to see me, know my greatest fault is sometimes i will show on my face that im annoyed at being interrupted and that was the biggest sin, and then i immediately cringe and apologize, no, please, come in, sit down. Let me take this off the screen. The fact is, i have a very comfy office with a great tape player and im dating myself but i have mixed tapes of womens music. If i come in here on the weekendses and no one is around in the building, man, i will make the coffee, blast the music, and i am just so happy. Host Bonnie Morris, what is it about harriet, the spokeswoman, and louise fitzhugh. Guest its the answer to every question about my life. When i brought my ancient tattered copy earlier i showed it to some other folks here. Well, hairest wants to be a writer. I knew i wanted to be a writer from the age of five or six. I know that when i was six, when adults asked what i wanted to be when i grew up, i said writer. The book is unusual in that she is a knowsy little girl who is not just writing about dogs and bunnies, but is spying on adults and trying to figure out, frankly, their mixed messages, even their hypocrisy, their variety. She is independent. Her parents are somewhat absent. She is very attached to her caregiver. A lot going on in that book. That was the book that all the girls in my generation were reading by the time we were eight or nine, and the fact that here was a role model, some young girl who wanted to be a writer, i didnt know at the time that the author, lewis louise fitzhugh, was gay, and i only found another after a search. But fitzhugh lived in greenwich village, was a contemporary of a lot of other women who are influential in the arts, and harriet struck me at the time a little kid in sneakers and blue jeans, writing stuff down, why i wouldnt identify with that . And many of my other friends did, too. Host you also talk about Tony Armstrong, jr. Guest my friend who is a womens music journalist, and who brought me into writing about womens Music Festivals with an editorial eye, and made me a much better writer. Im very grateful. And also a friend i love. Host right below that is thing my womyns Music Festival. Im 0 coordinator for the Community Center in michigan. I try to live yeararound as though im in festival culture, meaning its a place i identify as a home and where most of my most beloved friends return annually to create a city of women once a year. Writing about that experience can be very personal. One of the reasons im grateful tony is she was that is her own basement, running a womens music magazine, and he invited me to write for hot wire and was an editor, get to the point, what do you mean . I think everyone requires an editor if way dont be a writer, and i came out of academia and can be quite longwinded, as you see, so its a different kind of writing and also wanting to create an accurate record about what women musicians were doing. So, yes, festival culture, not just michigan but camfest, National Womens Music Festival, sister flyer, the new england womens music retreat. My mother went with me to nine different festivals and my father went to one, sister fire, which had men as well as women in the audience. Those are the most valued memories for me in terms of taking in as well as reproducing womens culture. Host men were welcome at some of those . Guest yes. Quite a few are in public venues. National was at a college campus. Sister fire was held for years at tacoma park in a middle school, which is an open lot. And theres a couple others as well. It just depends on if its a day event or a privatelyowned lan. Host from revenge of the womens studies professor, thick youre talking with either a book editor or chairman of your department and you were told always make the main character of your book a boy to increase sales. Girls will read books about little boys but boys wont pick up a book about a girl. Guest thats actually a Job Interview i had in the midwest, where i was brought in as a candidate for a womens history position, and the gentleman interviewing me was the head of the history department. Looked at my syllabus and said, well, i think theres a problem here. All of these courses have the word women in the title. I thought, yeah. So i dont think youd say to he specialist in chinese history, we take the word china out that might stop some of our students. And im told to my face in an interview for womens history, professorship, the word woman will turn off the male students. This was recently, in the span of American History, and anyway, in that session im reflecting on, when you market to a general audience, the main imperative is not to offend the male readership or male students or whomever, and i found that was a message i got in a job situation that i really didnt expect. Host George Washington and Georgetown Professor Bonnie Morris is the author of six Nonfiction Books. The High School Scene in the 50s. Women in america, 1998. Eden, built by eve, 1999. Girl reel, 2000. Vaccine of the womens studies professor, 2009. Her most recent, womens history for beginners. Are you working on a book now . Guest i certainly am. Im working on several. And in fact i should add i also had three other books that were supposed to be in present, all of which experienced the press going bankrupt just as the book was going to be published. Thats a sign of the times. Im working on a womens sports textbook, to correspond in my class, international athletics, and im also working on a book about the erasure of recent womens culture, the disappearance of womens book stores and events, and why that is happening. That is very much a look at how weve built lgbt history into many of our universities now but the l is being written out. Theres less of a representation in terms of classes that look at the female experience. What i want to do is talk about what its like to live through an era that ises shifting, and are we going to lose information about womens lives which we will have later on, in the same way that poetry was celebrated and then burned, fragmented, now we wish we had it in front of us. A lot of contempt for the kind of achievements that were really centering around lesbian activism, which impelled feminism forward. Now its the stereo type of the birkenstock, eating grandknoll la, and i was happy to be that person i did a lot of work. Who was safo. Guest greekpot. Sixth century. You can she wrote in a way that simultaneously described everyday life for young girls who expected to mary as child brides and were terrified of dying in child birth. A lot of that its their fear of losing their maiden head. And she had women lovers and wrote about those relationships in a romantic way. One of her most moving pieceses, you may laugh but some day someone will think of us, and i think that has made my really committed to ensuring she is remembered. Host dan in bridgewater, new jersey. You have been very patient. Please go ahead with your question or comment for professor Bonnie Morris. Caller yeah. I had the unique opportunity to see the feminist issues unfold in my grandmothers generation, before world war i, my mothers generation. My own generation in world war ii and this was in Eastern Europe and coming to america and being exposed to feminism in the 60s and 70s while i was married. I had a chance to see feminism unfold in asia, and i had a chance to see it unfolding in my daughters and my granddaughters. So, its a sort of spectrum there that shows many variations and complications that women feel no matter what kind of support or nonsupport the family host what some observations particularly maybe about your mother and grandmothers generation in Eastern Europe . Caller this was in Eastern Europe, where you would think they were much more closedminded than in the United States. Women were in quotas to be sure, just like jews were admitted in quotas to university, but if they made it, really pushed them to excel, and when they excelled. Like madam currie, they were totally recognized for their position, but i what im really interested in was a complaint that ben friedan had about a certain switch of feminism that was going from women in general, into the lesbian area, which was something completely different, and as a grandson to a grandfather of girls who may or may not go into that area, im deeply concerned that were being distracted from the real issue of the woman fitting into the new society by some of the particularities. Host hsu to much. Caller one more thing. Is that as a physician, and coming from a family of physicians who in those days there were no female physicians so we had to do the still had to do the medical care of women, we find that these kind of social notions that are going on today and not dealing with really medical crisis that women face, the high price they pay for child birth and all these things, and it just seems to me that not talking about women in a normal flow of situations, given how much we know, just like talking about men in the normal situations, and getting kind of stuck in the lesbian homosexual environment. Host i think we got the point. Lets hear from professor morris. Guest a very get subject. First of all, i want to refer to a very good book title by suzanne far, homophobia, a weapon of sexism. One of the reasons there is a focus on lesbian identity in womens studies is not only to cover the full range of womens lives and experience, but also as long as a woman is shamed for not getting married or not being attracted to a man or expected to put all of her energy into attracting a man, that is behind a lot of the limitations on what women are allowed to do. As long as a woman can be pushed into a relationship with a man because if she wont say yes to him, someone is going to call her a lesbian, that is an issue. Huge issue in terms of Sexual Violence in the military. Prove youre straight by going out with me. So, its very important to look at, if lobesandthe worst thing you can call somebody, how does that affect women then submitting to forced relationships with men or foregoing other opportunities or what have you. So thats very important to say. I agree with you that the majority of women around the world do marry and become mothers and, therefore, we have to look at what are the conditions and emergencies, frankly in Reproductive Health care. Absolutely. But we also see lesbians as mothers. Thats very important, and we see how shabbily theyre treated in the healthcare system. Are their partnerships even recognized . We have a really checker boarded legal system in the United States. Statebystate, theres no guarantee if you go into an emergency room that your partner is permitted to see you. That you have say so over your partners kid that youre allowed to adopt as a second parent. Your partners kid. That can result in everything from death to the complete alienation of lesbians in the health care system, which then but again, it depends on what region. It would be very different for somebody dealing with famine in Northern Africa versus the needs of, you know, a young Soccer Player in northern virginia. All of those issues can bee addressed in womens studies, though, and thank you for letting me talk about them. Host Bonnie Morris, on your quiz in womens history for beginners, who founded Bryn Mawr College . I wrote mrs. Mawr, but i dont think thats the correct answer, is it . Guest no. You know what . I know who it is, but im so distracted by the this lastdi discussion. So, boy, am i going to hear about this. Forgive me. A really dynamic woman. Looks at the founders and activists of womens colleges. Host paul, hemlock, michigan. Paul, who was the first woman admitted to medical school in the United States . Caller you know, im drawing a blank. I do not know. Host that makes two of us. All right, go ahead with your question or comment for Bonnie Morris. Caller violence has been used im a father of three daughters, and ive got three granddaughters, and violence has been used against everybody on this world walking this lynch has been used against everybody in this world walking this earth but when it comes to my children i would lay down my life for them but my question is why culturally do we have people abusing women in the middle east and the eastern bloc of europe . It is a cultural thing, in the south pacific, women should be held in higher regard. My mother was held in high regard. I dont understand how cultures have formulated their idea of keeping women down. Address that. Hans riemer you consider yourself a feminist . No. I believe in equal rights for everybody. That is not feminists, that is just humanism. Guest the answer, Elizabeth Blackwell was admitted to Geneva Medical College as a joke. She applied and it was put to a vote of the male student body and they thought was so hilarious and she would surely fail and they were amazed that she actually showed up and completed the course. Why is there violence against women . It is local as well as global. It is not limited to any nation. Is an issue in every country and the fbi can offer all kinds of better statistics that showcase how much it is up part of American Culture. Load will to keep women limited or to greet women as property which is supported by custom and law since time immemorial, a lot of it is simply a part of patriarchy which enables men to control women and anyone in their households, that included in ancient history servants and slaves and concubines, a man was empowered to punish anyone. The released code of laws we had, the code of hammer robby shows that there were already dozens of laws about controlling women and how to punish them and distinctions between good women and bad. It gave men the right to put their wives and children to death if they disobey the. It begins with scriptural support of violently controlling anyone who is disobedient, and the absolute authority men had over wives, and it moves into the controlled families permitted over their kids and some people take that to a violent extreme. It has only been identified as pathological behavior in my lifetime. Host i just got the answer, in the control room, the writing up words, martha carey does that ring a bell . Guest somebody else. Host chris in seattle, please go ahead with your question or comment. Chris williams calling. Hart Senate Office building host is this a friend of yours . One of the most important figures in womens music whose albums should be known and put forward the future of bolivia records, the bestselling album the changer and the change. Caller i called because i am so proud to see you on the show. I watch it regularly to see who is writing about what because as a writer myself i feel it is my job to lean into the wheel and i love that you love perry at the spy because i think musicians and writers are all spies. It is what we do. It is where we get the pulse of life by listening and you are such an avid listener and your embrace is a huge. I have seen it get wider and wider. I want to thank you for keeping the heart because you know when i came in there just werent any courses in this at all. So i learned by heart and at the feet of mostly really intense women who were intent on changing the world bit by bit. So i wanted to show this in. The cheyenne nation has a great saying, they honor grandmothers like crazy because they are the keepers of the story. The greek word history means the story. We are in charge of the story of our lives. The cheyenne nations says when the hearts of women are on the ground a nation is finished. So i think the work you are doing is just imperative to keeping the heart of this world up there where it needs to be on the high road and i love the one of your influences was you enter the wave and always have, you are entering the second wave unafraid. Host how did you get involved in the Music Festival industry . Caller i wouldnt call it an industry. It is a way of life is what it is. I have been a musician all my life and i have been involved in independent record companies, three of them three different times. And olivia records which i helped invent in d. C. Around a roundtable which is how women gather their ideas circular early. They asked about sexism in the industry. I had a major label for about a second. Then i was thrown back into the pool. The big gene pool of musicians. There are a lot of us who are invisible. I know you have been addressing the invisibility of women. You bring it forward, you bring it forward, look at this, look at this, the names, the history, all of it so that we are not in visible. What i have done is mostly without offering any pronouns honestly, a few at the top when i wrote sweet woman which was a love song to a woman by a woman. Women wrote to me and said i had to drive off the road because i was weeping so hard. We addressed the heart of the thing, of the matter. Honestly the man who said he was a key ministers, probably not a feminist, if you embrace this wider you will see that with all due respect feminists are humanists. This is the human condition. We are born, we have this middle period where we can do some good work and we check out at the end like a grand hotel. Bonnie morris has been there at the hotel desk checking people in, checking them out, noting their passage through life so thank you. This is just me calling to say how proud i am. You are the era we shot from the boy in the 70s, we shot it high and far as we could and you are still flying the. Guest nothing like having a role model calling with a complement to make you feel like you can die happy. Chris is on the cover of my book. She is one of the musicians who is featured and that is one of Tony Armstrongs she is right there in white and of course i have every album chris ever recorded including the first one on a different label and we worked together on a libya cruises. One of my best memories is chris singing in the kerrimac at the temple of diana, also a very famous place where pauls letters told all women to submit to their husbands. The womens music tradition predates the 70s movement. I am writing about that now. There were of course womens songs in every culture in the oral tradition, what made women at stories possible when women were illiterate but i want to credit chris for something related to an earlier caller who asked me to remember the story of women of color. Chris has been very good about foregrounding native womens stories and her music, grandmothers land is one of my favorite songs and it has been very important to me to incorporate the histories of native american and native canadian women. Aboriginal women of all backgrounds. When i lecture in new zealand, the historical oppression and survival. One of the things i am proud of now is i am helping the Womens Basketball team get to the all native basketball tournament in British Columbia and these are women and come from used to be called the Queen Charlotte islands, off the coast of British Columbia. As far west as you can go and it is one of the oldest not affected by the ice age sights of north america. Their you find women who were members who are trying to preserve ancient ways as well as participating in modern life and that story also is often left out of womens history, or focus entirely on black and white women and struggle and the experiences of native american women, not having the right to be an american citizen until 1924, lets start there. Highest degree of sterilization without consent, many reservations on the other hand stories of leadership as well. Women with great names like wilma man killer but also great traditions of poets and writers. All of that is important to me and i appreciate that what i found in the womans music moment is women like chris who are not leaving that out of the story and other women who bring in a diverse perspective of womens lives in song and performance. Host berkeley girl 63 tweets so excited to hear from chris williamson, the changer and the change is a must have in every collection. Next call from akron, ohio. Womens history for beginners, what is griswald versus connecticut. Caller i have no idea. Guest 1965 case that says that married couples have a right to get Birth Control prescriptions from their doctor. They were a couple in connecticut who found they couldnt even as a married couple get Birth Control and it became reinterpreted as a right to privacy issue. Caller i will do my best. So much is going through my mind. I just ordered your book. When you have a discussion about the first African Women and the americas that piques my interest in what a valuable writer as you probably are, had to have your book, when i considered the history of slavery and domination and oppression of africanamericans, women in this country by whites, i wonder, do you write about in your book about the identity struggles black women have in trying to align themselves with a movement throughout history . And what to take seriously and what do not take seriously, black authors that you have encountered, do you feel they have made an adequate attempt to try to put forth the chronological and realistic history of our struggle in this country . Guest yes. Thank you for that great question. Obviously i was very affected by the writings of alice walker, also the work of bell oak. A lot of really dynamic critics. I have a very good library related to black feminism and a lot of literature and i would say that d. C. Is definitely a place where you hear those voices. A location where the best writings by black feminist critics can be bought. I was part of womens spoken word stage for 14 years which was a very diverse then you for women to read poetry into the microphone about identity, and participated as well in a lot of readings and workshops at the universitys. Georgetown actually had in spring of 89 a very intense three day conference, ethnic identity and feminism, very contentious as these things go. Definitely one of the issues is to what degree anyone identifies primarily with her Racial Ethnic Group and when the focus shifts to being a woman in that community. I will joke that in a group of women, i am a woman and if someone makes an antisemitic jokes than i am jewish and so forth. What i find is the difficulty of bringing this material into the classroom where you might have 20 white students and three black students and the black students are put on the spot to represent everything about black womens history that they might be reading about for the first time and white students will assume they should be on the defensive and cant participate in the discussions. Those are real issues, how each generation transmits important material to the next. I would definitely say that we are not given enough information in particular about the lives of black women and slavery but it is difficult to put a focus on that or someone like rosa parks without keeping a kind of feeling of violation at the forefront. This is an issue in feminist studies. Where do you draw the line with history that paints you as a victim and history that makes you feel truly empowered. You have to look at the violations, and empowering women to survive. What with the songs of slavery. And escape maps through the underground railroad. And acts of revenge, who did run away concern newly to be reunited with the child and a white woman who hit the runway, and turned her away. And that picks us together. I credit my mother for cutting me on the path to studying racism. And remembers as a toddler sitting on the front steps explaining why the trash collectors were black. I became very involved in looking at these issues from a young age because i had a short story i wrote in second grade on Martin Luther king, the language of slavery, very unusual little kid but that story there, in that story i was able to relate the struggle for black identity with my own understanding of having the jewish identity. When you start a conversation with a kid it will flower but a lot of people believe you have to delay those conversations until you are in college. A lot of people dont go to college. We have to get womens studies, black history, everything into icicles and middle schools. Kerri thomas, the person who founded green mana, came to me in the synapse just now. Host that was my next thing, gave me that information. Ive been tweet in to you please ask professor morris to narrate her story about asking president clinton to watch the Womens Basketball game. Guest sure. Okay. So, already a womens sports fan and a basketball fan, when i start teaching that gw in 1994, i went to a double header, this is when they would have one ticket, the mens game one afternoon. So i was going to see two games, surprise to have to go through a metal detector which it never happened so somebody said the president is here. President clinton had brought chelsea to the game. Very accessible, you could go up and shake his hand. He went up and met folks so the men began the play, they went and the president got up to leave and i was startled and outraged. The commanderinchief is supposed to support title 9. At that time, by the way, womens team had a better record than the men and he was going to walk out with his daughter when the 0 women took the court. I didnt think so. I pushed my way through the crowd, stuck out my hand and said mr. President , i am a womens studies professor here and i would like to ask you to stay and support the womens team please dont leave now that the men had won. It would be important to the women of america and your daughter to show your support for womens course. He shook my hand and said i would love to say but i have but meeting at the white house. I look at my watch and said you can watch the first half of the womens game, please sit down. He went back and sat down. When i got a direct order to the president of the United States he became the first president to phone in congratulations to the womens team of the n. C. A. A. Championship. I like to think i had something to do with that. Host gordon in delaware. Caller can you hear me ok . I appreciate the great passion coming from your guests. I am coming get it from a completely different perspective. There is the argument that the left and violence for so long was not handled in an appropriate manner by the system. I would like to speak to the whole issue of, quote, womens subjugation and being the victims of violence. With everything that has been done now throughout history, i studied history, when you confront a social ills that is on one extreme, inevitably you go to the other extreme. We have the axiom the pendulum effect. And in nbc sponsored it is going to highlight from my experiences was arrested nine times which have been expunged and it was based upon allegations of vote was proven to be an emotionally disturbed individual. Because there had been from one extreme to the other. At and the system instead of going by the rule of law for Domestic Violence issues, but to more of an air on the side of caution. I would like to get any kind of feedback regarding guest it is an important question. You are quite right. And the problem in terms of families being charged for potentially abusing kids if the kid shows up expelling kids for bringing aspirin or fork because of our anxiety about weapons, these are aspects of the system that is adjusting to responding for things no one ever responded to before. I dont think that there is that much of extreme pendulum swing. There are more examples that we are horrified to see what was accepted as normal all along. In the past for example our double standard since women to prison for longer sentences when they committed crimes because we were so shocked that women would break the law at all. There is room for adjustment in the justice system. I am sorry for what you experienced. I would say looking for evidence of Domestic Violence is part of a patrol cars response in a scenario, that is a good thing and what i have found is when women are paired with men in Police Partnerships they often get a better story or fair story in a call like that. I would also add that having discovered the huge problem of assaults on girls we have rapidly moved into an almost total focus on assaults on employes. And penn state and altar boys and so forth. It makes it more egregious if aa is violated than a girl and we respond more rapidly. I dont have an answer for how to prevent false accusations and i certainly do know women who have abused the system by making false reports. People do that also with inventing hate crimes. We certainly know there are women who are guilty of abusing their kids who blamed an outside party. All of that is a part of people abusing the system. Host just about half hour left with this months in depth guest professor Bonnie Morris, she teaches at George Washington and Georgetown University. The author of six Nonfiction Books and poetry books as well. Her most recent is womens history for beginners womens history for beginners which our booktv Book Club Choice for february. If you go to booktv. Org you will see a cab at the top, you can participate in the conversation. You will be posting everything tomorrow, this video from this program as well as reviews and articles and posting questions, discussion questions throughout the month of february. Pick up a copy and we would love to have you participate and interact with each other. It is an online book club. So much of the world is on line anymore. Our next call comes from san antonio, texas. From women from womens history for beginners, who was the first female member of congress . Caller i dont know if that. I am 80 years old and i cant remember dates anymore. I was an activist in the Womens Movement in the 1970s. I am a feminist bookstore, National Tennessee called womankind. And womens music, i have been a jazz musician all my life. That is what i want to talk about. The impact on my life the most negative in terms of jazz musician, and intended pregnancies because Birth Control was not in sight. He was not in the media. It was not available. It was not legal. I have been a jazz musician all my life. Since last year, a lifetime in san antonio. Guest the first woman elected to congress was genet blank and. There is a statue of her in the Capitol Rotunda now. Thank you for everything you have done. I am writing the chapter about womens bookstores and i will let you. I am delighted to hear about your car rear in jazz. I right about that as well. I played the music of women who were in jazz for my classes including the International Sweethearts of rhythm in world war ii but also many other women in jazz. Margaret sanger, yes. Personal hero to my grandmother, my mothers mother, one of the first young women in the United States to go to Margaret Sangers clinic and held her in the highest esteem. I regret seeing Birth Control reemerge as a controversy almost 100 years later. Sanger was forced to leave the country in part because she published a magazine called the woman rebel at a time when it was illegal to send information including discussion about Birth Control to the u. S. Mail. Postal authorities seized her magazine. She had to flee, basically steady in europes first Birth Control clinic in holland. And returned with information about the diaphragm for american women. What most people dont realize is Birth Control became legal because men were at risk. Condoms were legal after world war i because more men returned from Service Overseas with specially transmitted diseases and actual bullet wounds, embarrassing uncle sam. As a result we made condoms legal when they were sold with provision for the prevention of disease. We protected men sells through legalized contraception before women had access to for prevention of pregnancy. This is vital to the material my students are reading. My students are reading delinquent daughters, the body project and the girls who went away which are all books that look at the lack of information about Sex Education and Birth Control and how that created pain and suffering for unwed moms and as you indicate, interactive opportunities. Great questions. Host the next call maryellen in livermore, calif. From Bonnie Morriss book womens history for beginners, who was the slave who bore Thomas Jeffersons children. Caller i cannot not quite getting it. Guest sally hemming. Host go ahead with your question or comment. Caller thank you, booktv, this is fabulous, i want to be in the book club. There seem to be some really strong voices in pop music today. Katie perry has a huge following, pink, i turn on the radio and hear powerful women and then there is miley cyrus and lady gaga and i am wondering if you have any comments about that. Thank you very much. Guest not all of the music that i listened to was recorded in the 70s. I am a big fan of a lot of contemporary musicians. One of the things we are looking at is how women present themselves. Do you have to present yourself in a sexually provocative way in order to be commercially viable . Do you have to appeal primarily to the male audience in order to get a commercial contract . If you dont present yourself as attractive in a certain way will you be dropped or reduced . Sinead oconnor saved her head because agent told her to look more feminine. My students fact concerned that lots of little kids want to be famous or appreciate celebrity. Looking up to someone who dresses provocatively the wrong message to send a little kid . One of the things i studied is when you are not worrying about making a good impression on guys who might want to date you you can do whatever you want to end it brings out a lot of talent, women who might not fit the bill when someone is looking specifically at cover girl looks. Right now big issue, i would say, is definitely the degree to which performers generate millions of dollars and have so much opportunity to say useful things at the microphone. Do they take advantage of that opportunity. What could they say to young women that could inspire them . How could they help women recognize themselves . How can you be a role model for young women who dont fit what they think is the american ideal of appearance . That could be racial, ethnic, size. It is important that you not just be successful but that your message contain elements of empowerment. About of Young Artists are doing that now. There is more that can be done. Host next call for Bonnie Morris comes from karen in new york. Here is your question, who warned her powerful husband that he better, quote, remember the ladies . Caller abigail adams. And i partially know that from reading Bonnie Morriss book, womens history for beginners, which cspan booktv brought her work to my attention when you included her interview several months ago so i read womens history womens history for beginners from my Public Library and i am currently reading at the 11, i learned a lot from both of them. My comment is i wanted to say thank you to cspan booktv for bringing this to our attention, the point of view that are so marginalized in other media but you are devoting three hours that we can learn from Bonnie Morris and i am thankful. Host tell us about yourself. Caller i am a feminist, i am dr. Morriss age and a graduate of womens college. Guest i can thank you enough and i spent many happy years in a story and i hope you use the Public Library that is around the corner. Many good memories of my friends in a story of. I would say, thank you again, i want to also thank cspan, thanks for giving me an opportunity. Doing this kind of work, many people doubted me when i announced my intention to become a womens studies professor. My family had concerns, my friends, they were supportive. People worried about how i would earn a living, if i would find a job. I think it was such an unusual occupation to be interested in. No one was sure how this would work out. It has worked out wonderfully. I have managed to carve out a job for myself. I manage to do the things i want to do with in feminist action and also as a citizen of the global world. I would add that for people who are considering going into womens studies, do not let anyone tell you it is not a good roll, occupation, profession. When i see how students respond and how lives are changed right now i am one of the scholarly advisers to the National Womens History Museum we hope to build in d. C. We dont have one. We dont have the National Museum of womens history. When i see how my students are out range, we dont have one, dont have more monuments to women in the capital. What does it mean if you dont see your life or your sex represented in statues or in the architecture of the city . There is much more to be done and we need everyone, architects and painters and pharmacists, to remember the ladies. Host all the womens studies majors i knew in college or in school five years later getting business degrees. Guest in business schools, we are doing where as future wall street women, running nonprofits on the agenda. Something that may not necessarily be what they are working later on. I wouldnt discourage anyone from pursuing it. I would also say what is interesting is we have more majors in womens studies than in math and physics combined. A lot of people who minor, and the huge number of students who take the courses. Dont necessarily major. Working with athletes on both campuses is such a privilege and many athletes i just discovering the history of women and sports for the first time, they are thrilled, uplifted, i go to all their games and i think that making the Information Available to people you might not think would take the class, football guys are incredible, basketball players, track stars, everybody, women in sports. Having everyone together creating a climate in the classroom is what makes the study of women a successful enterprise for everyone because they can connect to each others lives and right now students from all over the world in all my classes, off the top of my head, haiti, hong kong, vietnam, one thing that i allow students to do is to write from their own cultural perspective. What has it been like to observe changing status of women and society. So we are engaged in global perspectives, working on the development of different countries, a lot of students as well who are very excited about the possibility of doing work in health that is going to prevent the illnesses prevent them from participating more fully and in terms of womens sports one of the things i really love is cheering on my players. Host Audrey Williams emails, is Margaret Chase smith, republican of maine, senatorial experience ever discussed when the issue of women and politics is raised . And do you consider Christina Hoff sommers of feminist colleague . Guest good lord. I include the history of women who have run in my classes absolutely and we spent a lot of time on women and politics. The first, the unknown candidates. Christina of somers is critical of womens studies in a lot of her books, very hostile to the field. I am happy to talk back to that viewpoint. I think that the field is the academically viable, scholarly, sound in a scholarly way, very mixed stereotypes about women studies. One is we are all axe wielding, castrating man haters, a very harsh image and there is the opposite which is we are tree hugging, nothing goes on in the classroom, it is all ferries and sullen. What is startling to my students is just like anything else you can flunk this material. Do the reading, take the test, turn the work in on time or watch your grade go down the tube. Isnt that a wakeup call . People who enroll thinking this is an easy class or i just had to agree with the professor and i will get an a or we are going to surround and give each other pad smears, wrong, inaccurate. So i have to be fairly tough on the first day and scare away anyone who is not going to work seriously and you have to do that. I have to interrupt students who are shaming other students whether it is an intentional, someone who make sweeping generalizations about anyone on welfare, unwed moms, so suppose somebody is, check out who is in the room. This makes the material personal. It is personal because it is about the body and set quality and life giving and so on. At the same time i am very clear i am not a counselor, i am not a rabbi. I am not your therapist and students who need support i can refer them to the appropriate places. I have students who have cheated, had to deal with plagiarism. Obviously it is a sign of the times that a lot of students are unfamiliar with how you quote correctly from the internet. What this says is womens studies is mainstream. It is like any other class in terms of the academic aspect. What brings students in is a variety of motives and being ready for each of those is also a very demanding aspect. At the end of the day i come home exhausted. My replenishment very much comes from being able to write in my journal about my teaching day and i find i write more and more about teaching and less and less about others things because i am concerned with doing the of good job and also these interactions raise so many questions about our current moment historically. Host mary jo emails in to you from dearborn, michigan. My question deals with the novel the help. White in a womens studies professor at a Small College in kentucky, she assigned this book to one of her introductory classes and was criticized by black colleague for using that book. I remember there was a lot of controversy surrounding that book and wonder what you think of it. Guest my mother gave me the book and i read it. I use a number of other books as well. The made narrative which is a very useful book because is actual interviews with women who worked as maids, also interviews with women whose moms work as maids and women whose moms had maids, both white and black women, everybody involved in these intricate relationships. I understand the criticism of the help was it was written by a white author. At the same time i think it is useful in getting students to think about really complicated problem in womens history. Segregation kept people apart in housing, schooling, public accommodation but women were with one another intimately because black women worked in white womens homes and were assigned to do the intimate care, the daily intimate care, child care, nursing white babies with their own breast milk. All of that, there is an intimacy that sounds strange when you look at how segregation is supposed to keep us from touching. It demonstrates a whole lot. One aspect delegated to child care and for those that are less socially important. The history of aristocratic women always had wet nurses and servants. In the history of certains as well as racial history all of that can be summarized in a novel that can be supplemented with real stories from women who lived through the experience and there is a way to do that in the curriculum. Host robert in atlanta, georgia. In what year did a womans bathroom finally have to be added to the Senate Building so that new the elected women would not miss the rollcall for votes . Caller it would probably be 88. Guest actually 199293. They were after the anita hill hearings. And to get to womens facilities this is another example. What does this do through architecture. The georgetown Science Building to Anne Hathaway mans bathroom until quite recently because there were never any plans women work to major in science, make a broom closet into a womans room. So the history of segregation through toilets is something i talkedabout and it is okay to laugh at this. Host ask your question or make your comments. Caller i am 58 years old. I have seen the recent events, archie bunker, i consider myself a feminist but duplicity is the subject and that has bothered me. Camilla, i propose this question, if you have a group of women and asked them to take a vote would you prefer your future husband make more money than you or less money than you . That was an interesting answer considering what it would be take. Tell me how you feel about that. Guest part of what she was anxious about with her work was empowering women or reclaiming in her book sexual persona the agencies that women had, they shouldnt jettison that or that they should feel they should use differents to attract and that was not a negative thing. She was hostile to the concept of victim feminism which many people have argued but feminists in a bad light in emphasizing negative aspects of womanhood. The question about earnings, that was all so addressed in a great tv interview about when in breaking into womens sports. I am very familiar with that question. The idea that women still expect to be supported by men in some scenarios and want equal pay in others. Part of the problem there is if a woman takes time out to have kids, if she doesnt get Maternity Leave or doesnt have Health Coverage and so forth, to what degree is a woman really compromised financially by giving birth or kneading time for childcare. She doesnt have a partner to can assist, one of the reasons why we find women are more likely to live in poverty than men, women who expected to be supportive emotionally or financially by a loving husband who abandoned, need to go to work in as an area where they will be paid wages they can live on and one of the reasons the 70s saw so much changes many women were being divorced and discovering without a husbands income they were very badly off but they were not being offered fair wages if they entered the workforce in their 30s and 40s. I would also add a unique issue here of course is we have a work calendar built around the idea of one person working and a partner being at home. Now we expect everyone to work so we have everyone out in the publics fear, Million Dollar housing with no one in them. Concerns about taking care of the children. I understand where it comes from. We now have the ability for everyone to work out of the home again because of computers, you dont have to go out in the publics fear to be a businessman or woman. These are all changes we look at in my classroom. Wonderful discussion. What do we mean when we expect everyone to have a primary identity outside the home. To be more and more expensive and invest all that in a home that you will want to be there some of the time. I ask about a nice apartment that i am hardly ever in and this winter i have been enjoying the being in it in the cold weather and looking around at my 1500 books and galling yes, i lived somewhere, live in Dupont Circle and i am happy. Host iman academic at Marist College but i ask if there is any actionable focus among feminists on behalf of women in prison . Guest yes. Terrific question. I to my two colleagues in grad school. I am fortunate to teach at George Washington, chaired by women in prison, a woman in the prison system. We offer an excellent curriculum on this topic. I show the film, what i want to do to you, it teaches writing class at Bedford Hills prison in upstate new york. My students then address the issue of not only women at subject of violence but women who are in prison for crimes, and read a series of papers by women who experienced living long term in prison. Much of that the richer covers the way women are rewarded or punished with access to their own kids, what to do with women who become mothers when behind bars, how we accommodate access to child rearing and other conditions but we also examined the fact that many women are in prison because of intimate violence. They take the rap for a boyfriend, they fight back, if they are battered they turn to prostitution because they are addicted and all the other social ills we are familiar with. That is very much on my shoulders. Ben riley emails in male chauvinism bad, female chauvinism good. A significant part of my weekends watching this generally excellent tv show. This morning at segment is pushing the limits of objectivity and honesty. This should not be the place for political propaganda. Thank you for your comments. Appreciate that. The next call for Bonnie Morris comes from any in pilot hill, calif. Caller this is a terrific show. You are running for i grew up in the 70s and it seems like it was the first era when girls were asked what are you going to be when you grow up instead of assuming everybody was going to be a mother. This dovetails on a question earlier about katy perry and some of the people in the entertainment industry. Just wondering what your comment is if you think theres promise in the fact the we have everything from women who choose to be a professor or an astronaut or even god forbid the start of a reality show where your job is to dress up and fight with other women. Do you see that as we have made progress . That women can basically make choices like that . Do you see that as backsliding . Guest great question. I do think we have made progress. I would say it is very limited to a small section of the western world. I have traveled widely and in much of the world women are living in traditional villages, subject to tribal law. They are not permitted to advance education, permitted agricultural the doing hard work in fields, throughout china many women are working, factories making our stuff. Conditions for women very from place to place. What we experience in terms of progress is a mask for the work that still needs to be done but within American Culture one of the predicaments we have is we value people based on how much money they earn, something i resent bitterly because i am infamously underpaid. There is a sense that to be provocative, as long as people see that you can make money controversial we have hate radio and reality tv and women fighting each other in a public forum because it will approve ratings or generate income. I dont know how much of that is going on when it wasnt compensated. Part of it is to what degree to people look to become rich as a motivating factor . I never did. I am issue driven, a lot of girls as well as boys are pushed to identify with material gain and comfort so that is going to affect the choices they make in terms of how they can be rich and famous. Host in your favorites list that we ran for you at the break you listed writing in your journals, 168 of them. Will they ever be published . Guest i am proud to show off the last journal and i am ending this one. Here is the last page. I am ending my journal on national tv. I am starting the next one this night. I have been keeping a journal since i was 12. I dont know if they will ever be published. My handwriting has gone i write on a keyboard more and more. My hand cant keep up with my thoughts with a pen but i still use a fountain pen. I love the feel of paper and the journal in my lap and the physical act of writing. Fountain head gliding over the page. I dont want to lose that. Ive tried to write historically and write about what its like, you know, to be a lesbian in late 19th, 20th century america. Those accounts will be instructive to somebody someday. I do have an archive that has requested all hi papers, the Schlesinger Library at radcliffe, and theyre going to get all my journals and recordings in womens music culture, interviews and narratives and so on. Ive tried not to write anything unkind, and ive tried to be honest about my life. R weost bonniejmo. Com host bonniejmorris. Com is her web site. Thank you for being with us on in depth. Guest thank you, sir. And welcome to booktv on cspan2. 48 hours of Nonfiction Books and authors every weekend. This weekend the cias former Legal Counsel discusses his 30 years at the agency. Watch him discuss his followup book to a long way gone, and watch programs on reconstruction and the relationship between the pope and mussolini. All this and much more on booktv on cspan2 this weekend. The full schedule is available at booktv. Org. Next, robert gates at the National Constitution center in philadelphia. He discussed his memoir, duty memoirs of a secretary at war. In the book mr. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under president george w. Bush and president obama, talks about his management of the wars in afghanistan and iraq, and he shares stories about his relationship with the white house and congress. [applause] secretary gates, i also want to thank you for being here, especially in light of the fact that youve recently had an injury. I know youre making a robust recovery, but having to wear a neck brace is surely complicating your being here and getting here, and we thank you for making that effort. When i, until i became secretary of defense, i had never broken a bone or had a surgery. [laughter] february of 2008 i fell on the ice and broke this shoulder in three places. Ten months later putting a snowplow blade on a tractor, i pulled the bicep tendon off this arm. My security guards quickly came to the conclusion that alqaeda was no risk to me at all compared to myself. [laughter] and before we start, id like to say it is good to be back here at the center and to apologize to audience on my right for not turning in your direction. But the result of a broken neck is somewhat limited mobility to my head. Well, lets that being said, lets get to your book, duty memoirs of a secretary at war. I found it a most striking account of your time under both president bush and president obama, not the least because it gave what i would call an almost realtime account of your interchanges with president obama and the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. As you and other very top members of the nations security establishment. As you wrestled with the difficulties on the ground in afghanistan. And id like to talk to you at some length about your impressions of president obama. But before we get into a that, i wanted to focus on a part of the book that hasnt gotten that much attention, but which i think is equally important. And thats your description of the situation in the government, in the white house when you took over as secretary of defense in december of 2006. You describe a dire situation in iraq. American troops are dying at increasing rates. The insurgents are gathering force. Theres extreme, explosive sectarian violence and no apparent plan on the part of the United States government for coping with that. The takeaway from that part of the book is that we hadnt planned properly for the, for the occupation and that, indeed, it never occurred to military planners that we might be there as long as we had. Why were we so mistaken on that point . Why did we miss that . One of the concluding sections of the book is, in effect, on lesson ises learned about war Lessons Learned about war. And one of the things that youd think people would understand would be how frequently people who advocate going to war and people who make decisions to go to war almost always are convinced the war will be short. This year well celebrate the centenary of world war i, which is a classic example of where everybody thought the war would be over by october or november 1914. The problem in iraq in particular, and it really is true of both iraq and afghanistan, that what began as swift military victories quickly degenerated into long and grinding wars. In the case of iraq, it was always believed that a it would be a shortterm commitment, i think. It would be interesting to ask those who were participants in the Decision Making had they known in march 2003 that the country would be at war in iraq for six or seven more years whether they would have made the decision they did. But this assumption that the war would be short or that its end was right around the corner afflicted the department of defense as badly as it did the Decision Makers themselves. And because everyone assumed that the war would be over quickly, there was a great reluctance inside defense to spend significant sums of money on equipment that might be needed to protect the troops, but that might be useful only in iraq or afghanistan. As i describe it in the book, the department of defense is organized to plan for war, not to wage war. And so the services dedicate all of their efforts, pretty much all of their efforts to developing their longrange procurement plans and then defending those plans in the budget process regardless of what comes along. And so, and so people were reluctant to, for example, fund, develop and fund the mineresistant ambush protectant vehicles that saved so many lives and limbs because that particular kind of vehicle was not in any plan for the army or the marine corps. Id like to ask you about that in just a moment. One of the key themes in that portion of the book, it seems to me, is that the military planners inside the beltway, civilian leaders inside the beltway simply didnt adjust or respond to and, in fact, you do write today did not adjust to changing situations on the ground in iraq. Well, that and the fact i also write that after the initial invasion there was just a series of stunningly bad decisions and mistakes. Well, id like to read a portion of the book, a situation that came across to me as scandalous. And i say this also because you heap quite a bit of praise on president bush in this, and you so, and i think your critique of the president and the pushreported critiques of president obama muchreported critiques of president obama have missed the part in that theyre part of a larger fabric and evaluation of these men which is much more nuanced than weve gotten so far. Let me read this one portion which describes what i think is a scandalous situation. Our fundamentallyflawed and persistent assumption from the outset that the iraq war would be a short one caused many problems on the ground and for the troops. As the months stretched into years, those at senior levels nevertheless clung to their original assumption and seemed unwilling to invest substantial dollars to provide the troops everything they needed for protection and for success in their mission. And to bring them home safely. And if wounded, to provide them with the very best care. Who wanted to spend precious dollars on equipment for todays troops that after iraq would be, would just be surplus . So for years in iraq our troops traveled in light vehicles like humvees, the modern equivalent of a jeep, that even with armoring were vulnerable to weapons such as improvised explosive devices, rocketpropelled grenades and explosively foreign projectiles. Were people asleep at the switch . Why did they not respond to casualties were increasing, the what we were doing in iraq was not working. Were they not visiting the country enough . Were i they getting Bad Information . Why was there such bureaucratic resistance to making change . Well, i think, i think as i indicated earlier, i think they kept thinking that the end of the war was right around the corner. Throughout 2006 the commander or in the field, until the fall of 2006, our commander in baghdad was still planning to draw down from 15 to 10 brigades by the end of 2006 and only realized toward the end of 2006 that wouldnt be possible. Actually, the first person, i think, seriously to conclude that the advantage wasnt working was president bush. And i think that happened probably in the late spring or summer of 2006. There were several different reviews launched of our strategy including the most important one was probably led by the National Security Council Staff which then led to the president s decision to surge troops to get control of the security situation particularly in baghdad. This is a case, and i point it out, you know, its been presented mostly in a negative light, but i dont think its a negative consideration that both bush and obama pushed back against the generals. In the case of iraq in 2006, it was the civilian leadership that decided the strategy wasnt working, not the military. And when bush decided to support the iraq surge, he was opposed by the entire joint chiefs of staff, the chairman of the joint chiefs, the theater commander, the commander in baghdad and the commander of Central Command in florida. But i must ask you, though, i mean, you can hardly characterize that as a brilliant insight. The entire country seemingly had turned against the war because we were not doing well there. Why did the generals come why were they so late when everybody else had decided this was not going well . From i wish i had an explanation for that. I wasnt there. I think that they i think they had concluded that their view was that more troops would aggravate the situation rather than help it. That it would let the iraqis off the hook in terms of assuming responsibility for their own security and that it would, and that the iraqis were expecting to see a reducing u. S. Presence, not an increasing one. Like to ask you one other question on this subject. You write in the book that general shinseki famously predicted at a congressional hearing that an occupation would have required would require, this is before the invasion, i think, in march of whenever it occurred that an occupation would require hundreds of thousands of troops. Was he right . Would that have been a percent approach . A better approach . I think, i think that the initial this goes back to the mistakes that i think were made after the original invasion. Had the iraqi army not been disbanded, which was one of those catastrophic mistakes in my view, turning 400,000 men who didnt know anything else except how to shoot into the civilian economy with no support for their families was just a formula for disaster can. For disaster. If we had done our best to keep the iraqi army coherent but with different leadership, then you probably would not have seen the looting that took place many baghdad and elsewhere in baghdad and elsewhere, and you might have had greater civil order that would have prevented the sectarian violence that became so bad by 2006. So the number of troops required after the invasion in part depended on making smart decisions about what we would do next in iraq. I said in a speech in may of 2003, just six weeks after the invasion, that now that we had overthrown saddam, it reminded me of the situation where the dog catches car. Now what do you do with it . And i had said at the time if we have more than 100,000 troops in iraq for more than a few months, we will be in serious trouble. And i said i thought that the Political Part of this would be far more difficult than the original invasion. So i think if different decisions had been made in that period after the original invasion, then you might have had a different outcome. But we ended up with what we did, and people seemed unwilling to stick their neck out to say that was a really stupid decision, debaathification. I mean, i write in the book, its like nobody ever read a book about the denaziification and the fact that if you ran the local power plant, you still had to be a member of the party. That didnt mean you were himmlers best friend. The same thing in iraq. You had to be a member of the baath party if you were a schoolteacher. So just being oblivious to those kinds of things just led to some amazingly stupid decisions. And it wasnt just a matter of their military infrastructure being dissolved, but also the civilian bureaucracy as well exactly. Which i think just disappeared overnight and left you with absolutely nothing. I have to ask you i mean, it goes in a way, and it goes to the equipment question you asked me. Secretary rumsfeld famously said to a soldier you go to war with the army you have. And thats true. But what i add is then you better make it into the army that you need as fast as you can. And thats what i think we did not do. Yeah. I have to ask you this. You mentioned in the book and i think i have this right that your good friend, brent scocroft, a very senior National Security official with thenbush 41, i think it was, the first bushed administration, opposed the invasion in iraq. And i was wondering, you never really address that issue as far as youre concerned in this book. Had you been asked, had you been part of the administration then, would you have supported the iraq war . Well, i say in the last chapter sort of summing up in reflections that i dont know. Its hard for me to say what i would have advocated in 2003. I, like a lot of people in the congress and most other countries in the world, initially all accepted the argument that saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Thats how u. N. Security Council Resolution 1441 got passed. The Intelligence Services of even russia and china yes. Thought he had these weapons. And so in that speech that i referred to a few weeks after the invasion, i said that i had supported the original decision for that reason. But i say in the book toward the end that, you know, i had argued strongly against going to baghdad in 1991, in the first gulf war, because that would have meant to try and overthrow the regime to get saddam would have meant occupying twothirds of iraq. And then it would be our problem. And so we were unanimous in the First Bush Administration in opposing the idea of going to baghdad, and we took a hot of of grief for it a lot of grief for it, for not completing the job. We didnt, we tended not to get that criticism after march 2003 anymore. But i argue maybe i would have made the same argument i did in 1991 about going to baghdad. I also might have been far more skeptical because of my intelligence background. I might have been or far more skeptical of the intelligence case that he had weapons of mass destruction. Than others were around the table just because i have a pretty good view of both the strengths and the weaknesses of our intelligence capabilities. So i think its, you know, to be honest, i think its hard for me to say what i would have advocated in 2003 with ten years of hindsight. Right. Could you talk a little bit about your effort to get these morehardened vehicles for the troops in iraq . You were surprised to learn that there were these vehicles in development, these mraps, mineresistant ambush protectant that, as you say, went a long way towards reducing casualties. How did you get that done . And i noted, for example, that senator biden was a target of much of your criticism in the book, helped you a lot in that regard. Yep, and i give him credit for it in the book. Actually, its a lesson that i tried to hammer home to the senior civilian and military leaders in terms of paying attention when they read criticism in the newspapers not to go into a defensive crouch, but to go find out whether the story is true or not. It was a newspaper, it was a newspaper series in the Washington Post that put me on to the problem with Wounded Warriors at walter reed that led me to fire the secretary of the army. It was a newspaper story where i first read about these mraps, these heavilyarmored vehicles, and i read in the usa today that the marines had about 300 of these vehicles in anbar province, and in over a thousand attacks not a single marine had been killed who was riding in one of these vehicles. I had got some briefings on it, and i wanted to buy these things in large numbers. And i couldnt there was no one in the department of defense at a senior level, either civilian or in uniform, who supported that decision. And i basically said, well, were going to do it. And this is one place im very critical of the congress in this book. But this is one place where the congress did the right thing, and they did it in a timely way, and they gave me all the money i asked for. And we ended up buying 27,000 of these vehicles for iraq and afghanistan. And i one of the measures that meant the most to me, i mean, there are lots of statistics out there in terms of lives saved and limbs that werent lost, but when i first became secretary and visited the armys burn unit at Brook Army Hospital in san antonio, it was absolutely full. Because most of those young men had been in humvees that had blown up and became funeral pis for them. Pis for them. Pyres for them. By the time i was in six months of leaving as secretary, that burn unit was nearly empty. And so, you know, ultimately everybody came around to the fact this was a really good idea, lets get on with it, probably because i said so as secretary of defense. But there was a lot of opposition. And, again with, because these vehicles werent in anybodys longterm procurement plan, and they were more worried about what they would do with them after war than what good they might do in the war. My attitude is particularly when youre dealing with the lives of young men and women is when youre in a war, youre all in. And whatever it takes to protect them, whatever it takes to give them the tools to do the job and then come home safely, you make that investment. And if youve got all this stuff surplus at the end of the war, so be it. I found that part of the book one of the most disturbing parts of the book because here was a method that was available to the military to save lives, yet for narrow reasons of bureaucratic agendas, it wasnt implemented. How do you fix a problem like that Going Forward . It seems to me thats cultural, and the culture no doubt survived after you left. Well, its a leadership, a leadership issue. Ill give you another example that is even more shocking in my view. The medevac time, the time for ped advantage in iraq was medevac in iraq was an hour, called the golden hour. A helicopter could be dispatched, pick up a soldier who had been wounded and get him to a hospital within an hour. In afghanistan it was two hours. And i said i think it should be an hour. Just hike in iraq. Just like in iraq. And both uniformed and civilian senior officials came to me and had all these statistics about how the death rates were comparable for medevac in iraq and afghanistan despite the time difference and so on and, therefore, because it was statistically pretty much a wash, it wasnt worth the investment to put Additional Resources into it. My reaction was a Pretty Simple one if im a soldier and ive been blown up, i want a helicopter this as quickly as possible there as quickly as possible. So i said were just going to do it. And so we sent more helicopters, several additional field hospitals. I made that decision in january of 2008 or 9, i cant remember which, and by july Something Like 80 of our medical evacuations were taking place in less than 40 minutes. But it was finish the problem in part, it seemed to me, was that the people who were in charge of these things werent looking at them from the soldiers standpoint. They were looking at it from sort of 30 or 40,000 feet. The other problem in the pentagon that i talk about that relates to all of these issues is that there are so many different elements of the department of defense who have of to be onboard, who have to agree to move anything forward that any one of those elements whether its the money people or the Technology People or the budgeteers or whatever can basically slow down or stop something from happening. Only the secretary of defense has the authority to override everybody in the building and say were just going to do it. In other words, it requires a leader with a considerable will power and commitment to getting this thing done. I wanted to ask you well, and theres nothing like getting the attention of the senior military and the pentagon as a whole like firing some people. Which you did a lot of, i can tell from the book. [laughter] i held people accountable, and my attitude was in the case of both walter reed and the Nuclear Issue which is back in front of us, when i fired both the chief of staff and secretary of the air force, i didnt fire them for not knowing about the problem in the first place, i fired them because once they knew about it, they didnt take it seriously enough. Right. And thats the kind of accountability that i think needs to be exercised more frequently in washington. Since you brought up the issue of firing, how did you feel about losing Stanley Mcchrystal . Well, at first, i mean, i felt he committed a terrible error, and i say so in the book. Giving access to this reporter. Mcchrystal is probably one of the most effective combat generals weve had since world war ii. Both as commander in afghanistan and as commander of the joint special Operations Unit in iraq and afghanistan. He did a lot of damage to our enemies and people who were killing our troops. But the world of politics and the media was a new battle space for general mcchrystal, and he was, he was a brand new Second Lieutenant in that realm. And as effective as he was of in the command position, he stepped out of line in some of his interviews. But i felt when the report, when the article came out about him with the quotes that seemed to disparage the Vice President and the National Security adviser and others, my worry was that if he let if he was relieved, that we might lose the war in afghanistan right then and there. We now had, by that time we had the timeline the president had decided, which i supported, being all out, our combat troops out by the end of 2014, and he got along well with karzai. He knew the battle plan, he knew the brigade commanders. There was a familiarity there, and i worried that finding a replacement would take months to get confirmed and then more months to get acclimated and up to speed. And so i was deeply worried that relieving mcchrystal would be a huge setback in the war. And then it was the president in discussing whether to relieve mcchrystal who said how about Dave Petraeus . Right. To take over . And immediately, and i give the president a lot of credit for the idea, because it hadnt even occurred to me. But that alleviated a lot of my concerns, because petraeus knew the battle plan, knew the brigade commanders, knew karzai and had a Good Relationship with him and so on. So i felt like we really wouldnt lose much time in the war if mcchrystal were replaced by petraeus. And i told as i say in the book, you know, i wish stan had given me something to defend him with, that the story was wrong in some particulars. But as i write in the book, it was sort of like he was at west point again and just say ising no excuse, sir and just saying no excuse, sir. So under those conditions, as i write in the book, i thought the president had no choice but to relieve him. Yeah, i found that part a little puzzling, although there was a history. Stanley mcchris call was a special Operations Commander who had tremendous success in iraq before going to afghanistan, was a war hero, had caused, taken out of the battle in this very feared alqaeda commander, zarqawi, i think it was, and was instrumental in kapturing capturing saddam hussein. A revered soldier whose staff in afghanistan made some very unfortunate and candid remarks to a Rolling Stone reporter. When he was called out on the carpet, and this is after, i gather, he had made some other unfortunate remarks in london. Not sensational, but rather off the reservation and not closely tracking with the president s preferred policy positions, making the president mad. He had already had a couple of strike against him. When this came up, you said that general mcchrystal didnt take any steps to defend himself even though there was possibly an argument that he could have used. Why . Well, i think, first of all, i think stan was im assuming some things here because i never really had a detailed conversation with stan about why he didnt defend himself, only that he didnt. But i think that he knew he had made the decision to allow this nontraditional reporter to be a part of his endage. I think he was stunned by the article, and he may not an Army Inspector general report suggested he may not have known about a lot of the statements that were made by his staff right. To this reporter. And so i think he didnt quite know how to respond. He didnt want to throw his staff under the bus. And so i think he did what he saw as the ethical thing for a commander to do under the circumstances, which was to take the hit. R to do under the circumstances, which was to take the hit. One question. Let me just say to build on your observations, i mean there was a lot of goodwill toward general mcchrystal in the white house because during the fall of 2009 and we have are debating options for afghanistan, including whether to go with what he had recommended, this 40,000 additional troops or other options with smaller numbers that have been advocated by the Vice President and others, there were a number of a number of leaks in public statements by the military including by general Stanley Mcchrystal that made it appear to the white house fact and to the president said the military was trying to box him in and force his hand to adopt their options in terms of 40,000 troops. I tried to convince him, the president , i could see where this suspicion came from because of these leaks in public statements. The president , joe biden and others saw an orchestrated campaign by the military leadership, i tried to argue that it was not a campaign, not orchestrated, that if it had been orchestrated it would have been a lot smarter about it but i was unsuccessful in that but it did lead to an undercurrent of ill will toward him that this article came out six months later, he didnt have a question. Host you wrote in your book, you describe this as a pretext the Vice President used to have Stanley Mcchrystal fired. Guest i think Stanley Mcchrystal handed his opponents in the white house the ammunition for which to get rid of it. Host i want to talk briefly about your political battles in washington, you do not paint a flattering picture, this is not big news of our political process in washington. What struck me is your very detailed accounts of interactions with democratic and republican members of congress who behind closed doors would tell you the policies you are promoting were actually things that had to be done or should be done or were going in the right direction but when they came out and spoke to the press there was a totally opposite description of the situation and they were highly critical of the president and the pentagon. You have been in washington or in government long time. Do you think our dysfunctional politics are any different from the way they have never been . Television contributes. I say in the book when the red light in the Television Camera would golan it would have an effect on members of congress of a full moon on where wolves. The way i would put it and the way i write about it in the books is our politics in this country as this setup makes so clear have been roughandtumble from the very beginning and quite even George Washington in his second term came in for a lot of hits and did all of his successors. What is different now and what has happened over the last quarter of a century, is that we have lost congress has lost the ability to do the peoples business. It is one thing to argue and fight and say terrible things about each other. That has been going on for our whole history but the inability to pass legislation, to deal with Serious Problems is a relatively new phenomenon. Some of it is institutional. Has to do with gerrymandering and the fact that in the house may be only 50 or 60 seats i now competitive and the only elections that matter a lot of cases of the primaries where you have got to appeal to your partys base with you are democrats or republicans. What we had for the first half of the career of what i would describe as a large number of i will just take the senate, senators who were centerleft, centerright, who figured out ways to put together a coalitions and get important legislation passed and the list will be familiar to all of you. And as far as i were concerned, people like bill cohen and bill bradley, jack danforth, john warner, david boren, sam dunn, nancy republicans and democrats may be the last one to leave because of frustration was olympia snow. So you have a large number of people, most of whom could have been reelected forever who left in disgust because they couldnt get anything done and that is the new phenomenon over the last couple of decades that is especially worrying. The other theme in this book and i think it is an important point to make, despite my frustrations and even my anger at the congress, reality is i got a lot of things done with the congress. Most of my predecessors if they were lucky to get two or three or four big military procurement programs canceled that were over cost, over do, or no longer relevant. I cut nearly 3 dozen and ended up getting congressional approval or acquiescence in all of them. I cut 200 billion out of the pentagons overhead. Even eliminated a combat command. I got the congress to support me on that. Partly because i had enormously strong support of president obama and veto threat behind me but it was also working across the aisle before members of congress that and figuring out move the agenda forward. I argue that the end of the book that we do have these institutional problems like gerrymandering, what i consider the weakening of the role of congress in governance because of a weakening of Committee Chairs and other things but at the end of the day the problem, you can begin to address the paralysis, not necessarily the polarization but the paralysis, just by people at the white house and people in Congress Beginning to treat each other more civilly, people being willing to listen and take ideas from the other side, not demonizing the other side, not distorting the facts purposely. A bunch of things in terms of the way people treat each other in washington, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee when i first became secretary, a few months in, told me that my a rival had been important because i changed the tone of the way the debate was being carried on in iraq and other things. I was able, the undercurrent of this book is i was able to make washington work but the way you make it work is through the way you treat people. Host on the subject of politics, were running out of time, you mention deep in the book a little description of a phone call you had gone from the Senate Democratic leader harry reid who wanted the depends department to spend some money on research on irritable bowel syndrome. This is while you were dealing with wars in iraq and afghanistan, a great deal of danger here deploying certain metaphors and i will try to avoid that. How did that conversation go . Guest i very politely told him that i would look into it. He came out yesterday and was critical of the book to which of my response was it is a fact of life that members of Congress Vote on things they havent even read. [applause] you have to pass the bill to find out what is in it. He called you at one point and asked if you would be interested in running with president obama as his Vice President ial candidate. How did that conversation go . Guest one of the most bizarre conversations i ever had. We were talking about Something Else and all of a sudden he said i was largely responsible for talking president obama into running for president. I heard that from a lot of people on the hill. He said there is no candidate for Vice President. How long have you been a registered republican . I said i am not registered republican. He said where do you stand on abortion . I said i dont have a stand on abortion but somehow that is never come into the National Security arena. He said how long were you an academic . I set of of not all that long. Something come of this or nothing, i just wanted to check, i started to laugh. That is really weird. As i say in the book ever told anybody about it. I didnt think anybody would believe me. Host you did end up working for the president nonetheless. One serious issue that has been raised, the way the government functions that came up early on in coverage in the book theres a lot of handwringing about these conversations you had with president obama and the focus is always on the conversation with president obama, not president bush, you revealed much there as well. Were held in conference that indeed the president often invoke executive privilege to present this information from coming out in the public so theres a free flow of ideas and exchanges, how did you do that . This is a Public Service that people learn a lot about, senior government leaders, difficult decisions for republican and democrat. I had no doubt both president s that didnt anticipate, how did you work through that . I think modern president s have realistic expectations about what will be written, and there were a couple things. And the conversations i described almost entirely in the positive light. And asking hard questions, and spoon fed information. And not just acquiescing because someone with four stars would do that himself so, what americans would hope their commanderinchief would do, these two president s like almost all of their predecessors disagreed with the military at various times, and the second piece of this is dedicated to men and women of the u. S. Armed forces, and i wrote this book in substantial measure for the troops and families and one of the things i wanted them to see under both of these president s, in both iraq and afghanistan, i wanted them to see what the washington battle space looked like. They knew what iraq and afghanistan looked like. I wanted them to have some insight into the real world, what was going on in washington as big issues associated with these wars were discussed, and to and give them some sense of the passion and the amount of time spent debating these issues, the decisions they would make and i think it is a realistic portrayal of the wars that were being fought in washington at the same time there were wars being fought in iraq and afghanistan. Final point. Peoples memories are short especially in washington. The reality is all true 2010, senior white house staffers were leaking what the president was thinking, what his conversations were, his criticisms of the military and so on and so forth. On a routine basis in the newspaper. So the notion that what i described in the book as the president s reservations about the decisions he had made is absolutely no news. Newspapers were full of that information all through 2010 in the first part of 2011. Host i agree with you. Your descriptions of george bush and president obama are often very laudatory but theres quite a bit of critical commentary in there as well and one portion of this book strikes me as very much in that seem, you take president obama to task for being what i would characterize as an uninspiring military leader. He didnt bring enthusiasm to his role as commanderinchief as regards to the Afghanistan War and you had a conversation with rahm emanuel where you made that point that the soldiers needed to hear, that the president was behind as you called it the mission. And you drew that conclusion from your interactions with him in these inner councils. Guest trying to waive this and balance it, i supported every single one of president obamas decisions on afghanistan including up to the decision to seek the strategic agreement with the afghans that would keep residual force thereafter the end of this year but there were two aspects, the war in afghanistan, that troubled me. One was the president s suspicion of the motives of the senior military particularly when it came to recommendations on afghanistan. The second was what you describe. As i told rahm emanuel when i met with him i dont mind that the president speaks out on exit strategies and so on, but the troops need to hear from their commander, the person who is sending them in harms way, that the cause is just and noble and the mission is important for the country and therefore their sacrifice is worth while. In the 21 2 years i worked with president obama the only did that once or twice and i think that is one of the responsibilities of the commanderinchief when he deploys men and women in harms way, is that he be willing to speak publicly to why that is important and why their potential sacrifice is worth while. Host did you ever tried to approach this with the president himself . Guest i raised it with rahm emanuel and said the president has to take ownership of this war. I think on probably a few occasions i mentioned to the president that he ought to go say more about why it is important to do this but the interesting thing is once he made this very difficult decision in november of 2009 where he overrode the political recommendations of his Vice President and all of his political advisers to approve this surge, other than the initial speech at west point on december 1st there was really not any kind of the white house efforts over the ensuing months for there to be any kind of campaign with the American Public to tell them why those decisions were important and why this cause was important. Host one last question. You mention in the book that you urged the senior white house staff not to leak information about the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden and the information leaked out within five hours. Who leaked that information . I like to tell people first of all the department of defense wrote the book on leaking. I am not trying to pretend the Defense Department of innocent in this category although the Defense Department is very good about Holding Secret military plans and tactics and techniques that might put troops lives at risk so in this case my belief is i will describe the scene. At the very end of our time in the situation room we know Osama Bin Laden has been killed, he is back in july bond, on his way to a watery grave and we are about to break up as the president is going upstairs to address the nation and tell them about this extraordinary success. And i said look, before everybody goes, we used these tactics and techniques every night in afghanistan going after taliban and al qaeda leaders. So it is important that everybody agreed all we are going to say is that we killed him and not get into any details about the operation and how we did it. As you say, i right in the book, that lasted about five hours. And everybody agreed after i made this pitch, everybody agreed, like little kids, we did our little blood oath kind of thing we wouldnt do this and it lasted about five hours. I believe that the leaks primarily came from the white house and cia who just couldnt wait to brag about how good this had been. And then i think two weeks later defense probably started. Guest host there was a downside to doing that because the model for that raid, the rage that were being done every night in afghanistan and iraq to apprehend and remove from what you call the battle space these al qaeda commanders and taliban people. There was a significant cost to that. Guest i think so. Host some questions from the audience i would like to pose to you. Very quickly, anything you did you wish you could have done again . Before i say that, you write very movingly about the difficulty in coping with the casualties and your responsibility for that. That part of the book is well written and i recommend people focused on that. Guest i think i am fairly i think i am blunt and candid in prescribing mistakes that others made. I am equally blunt and candid in describing mistakes i think i made a. To answer your question, one, for example, is that i allowed a fairly dysfunctional chain of command problem in afghanistan to continue longer than i should have. Where the u. S. Commander in afghanistan actually didnt have command over all the american troops serving in afghanistan. And while i asked two success of chairman of the joint chiefs to fix this, it was ultimately my responsibility and i took too long. I finally fixed it but i took too long to get there. That is one example. Host you write that richard holbrooke, special envoy, and the ambassador, were working against the Reelection Campaign of our allies there, hamid karzai, and she didnt seem to be very happy about that. How did that happen . Guest hamid karzai has his shortcomings but he knows what is going on in his own capital so the idea that we could do this and him not know we are trying to get rid of him was pretty naive in my view. And so when you see all these problems hamid karzai creates for us, his knowing that for all practical purposes we attempted to coach against him in the summer of 2009, probably didnt help the relationship. Host and he is still there, nursing some resentments i am sure. Some questions from the audience. Here is a statement first of all, a flat out position paper. Thank you for your longtime commitment to protecting my family and country, get well soon, godspeed and go aggies. [applause] host a little trouble reading this. It is my understanding of the chairman of the joint chiefs is director responsible to the president. What valuable input do we lose when the chairman is obsequious to a domineering secretary of defense . Guest the chain of command does not include the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Nor does it include the Vice President. It goes from the president to the secretary of defense to a combatant commanders. So under the National Security act of 1947, the chairman of the joint chiefss staff is one of the statutory advisers, one of only two ahead of intelligence. He is the president and senior military adviser and the chairman of the joint chiefs, he has no direct command authority and i would say both president bush and president obama gave the joint chiefs, including the chairman, all the time they wanted. And in my experience, and i watched two different chairmen under two different president s and i never saw either of them be obsequious more the president tried to intimidate them or sort of dampen their views by being sarcastic or harsh or insulting or intimidating in any way. Both of these president s, despite the fact that they both agreed, disagreed with the chairman on a number of occasions were very respectful and gave them all kinds of time and i always made sure, i considered it critical for me to get the most most blunt possible advice from my senior military officials. I will give you an example of it. It will have to be bleaked, but when it came time for me to decide whether to extend military tours in iraq and afghanistan from 12 to 15 months, i was working with the military, trying to decide, this was a difficult decision and i knew it would have consequences for military families, my senior military adviser comes to me at one point and says the troops know you have to make this decision and they think you are an asshole for not making it. That is the kind of candor i tried to encourage among the senior military and i believe that i have very Good Relationship with them and they would disagree with me on more than one occasion. The medevac was an example. The number of drones was another. So i tried to encourage an environment where they would speak up and where they would be honest and candid and i think any secretary of defense or president who does not want that kind of candor is making a terrible and frankly dangerous mistake. Host judging from your book, us endless frustration of president bush and president obama, mike mullen, on a number of locations. Guest it wasnt just mike, it was a number of other senior military. Their frustration and impatience was not over what the senior military would tell them in the situation room or the oval office or open testimony. It was what they would go out and say in public speeches or television interviews, that got under both of these president ss skin. Host i can see why it would. A difficult line to draw. You want to get good advice. This is a democracy, citizens need and expect a certain level of transparency and information from their leaders and if a military leader is off the reservation and pursuing or promoting a policy agenda that differs from the white house that could cause tremendous difficulties. Guest pursuing an agenda, different from the white house, it is speaking out about things that in some way or another limit the president s options or telegraph consequences that may be the president would rather keep private during a period of deliberation. One of the things i write about at the end in terms of Civil Military relationships is the consequences of senior military speaking out too often in areas which are not necessarily their direct responsibility or in terms of preempting the president. Host i have another question here, very simple which i think the answer is simple. Which books for interview have you enjoyed the most . Charlie rose or jon stewart . The answer has to be this stop. Guest lets just say the interviews with john stewart and charlie rose were somewhat different in nature. Art and charlie rose were somewhat different in nature. [laughter] but both were enjoyable. Do you think the United States should adopt a policy of National Service in place for a draft . I believe, if i could wave a magic wand, what i would favor is required National Service that is not limited to the military. I believe that every young person in america between ages 18 to 28 or 25 or whatever ought to spend a year or two or three if in the military providing National Service, of giving back to the country something in exchange for what they have been given. We hear so much in this country about our rights as citizens and we hear so little about our obligations as citizens. So whether its tutoring in the inner city or rural schools are working in teach hospitals, teach for america, new version of the civilian conservation corps, theres a host of Different Things young people could do for some period of time and for example if you volunteered for the military you would have to commit for three years but you would get paid significantly more than any other area partly because of the risk and so on. And where i am torn is that there is, whether such service should be required or whether it should be voluntary. But the voluntary piece of it would involve some measure of pressure in the sense that if you had not performed National Service, you would the significantly tested and edged in it missions for universities, in the hiring process for jobs. In other words this would come to be seen as amoral and ethical obligation on the part of a young person and if you chose not to serve, it would weigh against you in some of the choices in your life. I strongly believe that there ought to be you would find that the military leadership is totally against the draft. And i think i share that, but i think it ought to be broadened. Service ought to be broadened for everybody. The last question for you. As you look into the future what do you see is the greatest threat to the security of the United States . Well, and ill honesty, i think that the greatest immediate threat to the United States is in fact the paralysis that we see in the two square miles that encompass capitol hill and the white house. If we cant begin seriously to address the problems that we face, whether its education or immigration or the deficit or the national debt, a host of other problems, none of those problems can be solved in the span of one presidency or one congress, so the only way we can actually make headway against those problems is through Bipartisan Solutions that can be sustained through more than presidency and congress. And if we cant begin to get past this paralysis and ching tan, then i think we are in serious trouble. If you want to talk about National Security issues, i think we have to worry about cyber. We have to worry about a terrorist in this country with a weapon of mass destruction. We have to worry about iran. We have to worry about north korea and we have to worry about something inadvertently creating a crisis in the South China Sea. Those are all kind of out there on the horizon as far as im concerned is significant problems, but the biggest challenge we face is getting our own house in order. Secretary gates, thank you so much. Its been very interesting. [applause] [applause] the benefits that the Software Designed to give you. In other words have you could pretend to be someone the yards but, but you will not really have a lot of friends because the whole point of facebook is to connect with people you really know, and theyre not going to know it is you if you dont use your real name. Follow us at twitter booktv, and like us on facebook, facebook. Com booktv. Tomorrow to talk from marv mission about the will of the publishing. The talk but chinas efforts to secure National Resources and Investment Opportunities around oral and the impact it will have on everybody else. This is about one hour and 20 minutes. Good evening and welcome to the World Affairs Council Washington d. C. s program with the authors of fascinating new book, by all means necessary, how chinese resources changing the world. It is my pleasure to welcome you all here this evening. With us are elizabeths the economy in michael levy. This tv star senior fellow and director of Asian Studies of the council on Foreign Relations, currently the vice chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council and the future of china, and she sits on the board at the chinese u. S. Center for sustainable development. She wrote the environmental just to chinas future and has published numerous articles including those in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business review, and Foreign Policy receiving a ba and then in may from stanford and a ph. D. From the university of michigan. The senior fellow and director of the program on energy, security command Climate Change. Previously nonresidents science and Technology Fellow and a director of the federation of american scientists and. Security project. The author of the power surge. Nuclear terrorism in the future arms control. His ph. D. [applause] going to be of the different. This evening, perhaps start by setting the stage for us. Why did you write this . Window, energy. Well, we thank you for having us this evening. It is a real pleasure to be here thank you for coming out on this. Each of us has a slightly different reason for why we wrote this book. Leslie focused on the domestic considerations of chinese economic developments for the countrys environment. As i began to look at it more deeply as saw that what china is doing at home was likely to be what china was going to do abroad. And in many respects is the same kind of Development Practices that will lead to the same kind of environmental challenges abroad that china is already facing at home. That was my original impetus for starting to do research on this topic back around 2006. But as mike and i sat down and began to think about writing this book together it really became for me much more an issue that was at the heart of the chinese rice and really how china is transforming the world. If you look at this China Research quests ec that it does, in fact, address all of the issues that we think about and we think about chinas rice. What is the impact on the Global Economy fifth cahuenga said security, and their impact on global governance. [inaudible question] these of a kind of questions that they try to get through the prism of from me that is so it really you of come and intellectual issue unchallenged. Fermi i think i ended up at a similar place, but i got there from a very different starting point. First, i should think you per of having us here tonight. Great to be here. So where i started was at the broad intersection of economics and International Politics and security. If you look at how people thought about Foreign Policy during the cold war it was really split into two areas. Rebought of economics and markets and how we deal with their friends and security in an adversarial relationship and really get of the nine states in the soviet union go with each other. There were too pretty different spheres. But in most times in history there are not so separate. Particularly when you see arising economic power creasing the taking responsibilities. And i have tried through a lot of my work to understand that in this section. Talked about her last but, the consequences for Economic Security for the environment to understand how those pieces fit together. And as i looked at that i started to appreciate the need to look more broadly to really get an alumnus place where economic insecurity clashes. So the thing that leads you pretty quickly to china. If you like it history rising powers tend to engender concerns on the economic front, a political front, and security front to their efforts to secure resources. Countries can be pretty much Everything Else that they wanted from the internal resources, people, technology, capitol, but you have to deal with the resources that are on your land. And if he did not have them, you go out. Whether it is ancient greece over japan in the 1960s and 70s and 80s, this is an inevitable part of what is happening. The last part of your question. In order to get a sense of what is happening in need to look across these differ resources if you look get people they have a different picture of china and the world then you get if you like someone who studies food. And we will talk about this early on that to really get the full sense of what is happening we had to look at a variety of resources because it turns out that the way china is dealing with each of these varies enormously. Let me go to your subtitle. Give us a few examples of valid is changing. So there are obviously a lot of examples. Think it has probably had a bigger impact than any other area and one that like for the future. One of the striking things when we were doing this was the repeated conclusion that chinas biggest impact in a lot of ways has been through trade. We focus on china investing in this or that part of the world of the possibility that china might become engaged militarily or distorted diplomacy because of the recent request. Sexy in exciting things, but if you drill down on it the biggest impact of chinas recent requests so far and a lot of ways comes because china buys an enormous amount of resources on the market, but with very broad global consequences, and you have seen no with elastic eight enormous rises in the price of oil, gas, iron ore, copper that would not have happened had this demand, this huge demand not embrace so rapidly from china. And the consequences of that touches everything, not just the countries that china buys from, but producers and are able to develop more resources and sell that for more which as economic consequences and environmental and social ones. But the bigger effect on consumers around the world. We pay more for a lot of our resources because of that the emergence of china. And so that coming to me, is below the biggest thing that has happened so far. I am very interested in what is going to happen with the security of the path through which chinas resources travel. We take for granted that you can produce oil in west africa and have it end up in the United States or in japan or any other part of the world. We a expect that this Global Economy run seamlessly. This is underpinned by decisions by powerful players about his contract with him, and if you look to the future, i do not think its you can be completely certain that we will have the same security and a pending. And that think if your looking for big ways that china could change the world in the future in and talking multiple decades of, you are looking at the security underpinnings of that resource trade. Let me add one other one. As i mentioned, a lot of things, how china, the way in which china was transforming the worlds governance lens gave. By that i mean if you look at, for example, is used like transparency, if you look at the environment, things like safety you find that that practice is that china has the homes of very much the loans that Chinese Companies build abroad. One of the most corrupt. The Mining Industry is found to be quite corrupt. So you might expect that to some extent when Chinese Mining Companies go abroad there are very used to dealing in ways that involve. This is something that we found across the sort of resources landscape. In terms of the environment, Chinese Companies in many respects have only recently studied the Environmental Impact assessment on the home front. Again, that Chinese Companies began going abroad and you find a lot of them have Environmental Impact assessments as the countrys whose own governments was not as strong. They did not bother enforcing any kinds of laws in terms of making Chinese Companies undertake these Environmental Impact assessments. Again, you found some kind of undermining of governance in terms of the environment. When it comes to labor as well, one of the things that we saw camino, a Chinese Laborer, there are two impacts. One is that many, many countries support that Chinese Labor participants is at the bottom of the barrel. Safety practices are much worse than the australians or americans. The pain is much less than other countries. To some extent that is true and to some extent it is not. This story is more nuanced, but you see this enormous influx of Chinese Labor that is different from any other country, and it caused a lot attention. Here to you find that countries react very differently. Countries with strong state capacity tend to pass laws which says that Foreign Companies that come and have to hire nine mineworkers from mongolia. Five different ways to try to limit this influx of Chinese Labor. So what the Chinese Companies will say, the Chinese Labor are much harder workers. All these other workers are lazy the income across the board, whether your top limit countries in africa, the chinese a asia, latin america. Workers psst, chinese officials, they like ted said in dense. The one holidays. Labor unions. In this kind of thing. And so the Chinese Workers will work seven days a week 12, 18 hours a day. So it is this kind of difference so in many respects when it comes to issues of labor and environment, transparency, the chinese, how they worked at home is very much of their work abroad. I would love that some point later in my discussion to talk a little bit about the way that this is changing that because there are a lot of pressures in china because you see better practices coming in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility on the home front end here to have impact on how china be airs a broad. The positive trends that we found over the course of our research. That is another way in which china is transforming the landscape. I want to come back to the strategic access. But the first i want to go to a point that you both make about china obviously not being the first emerging power that went out looking for resources, but tell us how it is different than the english experience with the spanish to the United States for that matter. One of the interesting things about the work that we did, they took a piece of the historical puzzle. Primarily china. More global as he took the other power part, but i think from a chinese perspective it was fascinating to look back even before, but that is what we focus our book. That is not quite 700 years. See that the many strains of continuity in have china approached its resellers dating back centuries. I mean, it is quite surprising to me. Some of the things that we discovered, for example, there was always a pretty strong degree of state control over these. Said that the Chinese Government was always very interested in dictating what would be ground. They wanted to grow rice and grain, they did not want to grow tobacco. They try to pass laws saying you cannot grow tobacco. Things Like Research and security. Not having enough resources, especially for grain dating back centuries which is one of the things that we track throughout the book which is still essential part of the chinese mine said, the concern over whether or not china can be selfsufficient. And even china is going out, 15 hours so years ago. China, again, dating back looked aside its borders, in particular to their rice but also silver and would, but it was expensive and slander of example of waste in history in china. Let me cite one president not to go way back, but to get to the most recent example. If you look at a lot of the riding in this country about the rise of japan and japans demand for resources, particularly oil and iron ore, it is similar to what we read today, and so there are lessons that you can take from that. So this evolution that we have seen in china, then my and the international market, start investing abroad in order to improve what they see as a security and supplied. And that strains the market, creates a lot of attention, but eventually things start to work themselves out and you can see a lot of pieces of that pattern reemerging with china. We are not at the end of that and things can still the verge, but we have seen that sequence of not being satisfied, investing abroad. Some tension, but now may be a bit more of our rationalized approach. The striking thing they uc with japan that i think is starting to see with china, there are big heres the because the state is so dominant to pamela take a world away from markets. And this has been a big focus of american Foreign Policy. We want markets to govern the Global Economy in the distribution of resources. It turns out that Global Markets and a lot of these things are extraordinarily powerful and very difficult to undermine the Global Market. We have seen and we know that japan to not, for example, take away the global oil market. China, a lot of fears throughout the 2000s, locking up its resources to fundamentally break the Global Market and their places were actually china not intentionally driven up in a more marketbased direction. I knew he sincerely nothing about iron are refreshed and writing this book that i assume puts me in commonplace. But one thing that happened over the last a gator so is that china, because it had so many small producers of competing with each other to get access to iron ore for steel mills ended up essentially liberalizing the global iron ore market. It went from a system dominated by three producers to negotiating around the table to one that is much more like a Global Market today. This is another important lesson china is enormous. Even when the Chinese Government cannot accomplish its goal china contains a world in big ways. There is an important distinction there. Just because china does not accomplish what it wants to does not mean that it does not have a large impact. These articles began with some reference to, you know, or every gallon africa these days there are chinese businesses gobbling up all of the mines and other resources of every sort. And also, usually in the same articles there will be a reference to the fact that American Companies and not doing so well because the United States is more interested in human rights issues and state elections and things like that and the chinese dont bother governments with that. So tell us about the specifics about china deals with its African Research resources. I want to jump in as well. Something else we found surprising although we are doing for research, other places as well, gobbling up resources, and it is not vacuuming them back. Just developing soda may direct pipeline, research pipeline. In fact, if you look at africa is the fourth largest source, not the first. And in many respects at least what might just mentioned, much bigger aspect of China Resources engagement is through trade as opposed to investment in many cases. So i think it bears remembering and holds true in many other areas. For example woodland we read a lot in the media about chinese land grabs. In fact, china is a distant third after canada and the United States in terms of overseas land investment. So just some surprising faxed a kind of change your impression of how much china is really gobbling up resources in ways that other countries are not participating, but to your question about africans in particular, i think that the biggest challenge that china faces, to some extent is that many longstanding ties with african leaders, and zimbabwe, an old friend of china. When china began its uptick in terms the Resource Investment after 1999 and 2000 is sounded much easier to strike deals large entourage of stateowned enterprise says that travel to africa, meet with camino, foreign heads and strike was seen to be the vast trade and aid and investment deals. You know, could read about billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars of planned Investment Infrastructure in Natural Resources primarily. Much of it ended at not being realized, but the way that this structure these deals in some cases as problematic. And that caused consternation among some publics. There was the issue of the export of labor that is problematic. And, you know, more recently there has been this sense that china against all of its own best wishes and rhetoric, i would say, is just a real colonialist. This following the same path that other western powers, you know, who went into africa, doing the exact same thing even though china promised it was not going to do that. So now they started to try to address some of that popular dissatisfaction by doing things like establishing spec to the special economic loans when theyre trying to develop manufacturing for africans. Not clear that these are having much success at. A very mixed stories. Some of them some Companies Find it difficult. The government would like them to do it, but theyre not interested. Some of them are in the service of Chinese Companies. So they have taken off in a way that Everything Companies or chinese, beijing really wanted, but it is one of her that they are addressing. Another thing else say is that there really trying to improve their responsibility. A lot of thislike as a do with labor issues and Environmental Issues and this is that china simply does not care how and what its doing when it is a broad. So the government, many, the Staff Exchange has established all sorts of laws and regulations to try to govern these enterprises. For example, saying, you know, if you dont do this man not going to lend you any money. Thats a pretty strong incentive you cant go public. Whenever it might be. A lot of time Companies Find ways around these regulations the sometimes they are enforced. Its another positive trend away seeing in this effort to address when i would consider the public will popular black backlash. Three quick examples that i think highlight interesting aspects of what is happening. If you go to mozambique in the visit the Foreign Ministry one of the first things you will notice is that its roof is a pagodastyle roof. That is pretty consistent with the deep political relationship and longstanding relationships that china has with mozambique. Now, naturalgas, they have big offshore natural gas discoveries but if you would have gone there year ago the chinese, you would not see any chinese presence in the natural gas sector. It was an italian company. Why . Because there is still this technological edge that a lost of a lot of western companies have, the ability to do serious exploration. No, today you have got one of the big chinese will Companies Buying into part of that development, bringing capital. Still a lot of operators. No matter how deep the political relationship is you dont have the technology and the management capacity to produce a particular resource. That political connection is worth a limited amount. I think you see that repeatedly, and it is important not to overstate how much china can do by itself. Second, second rule, in zambia, some of these Chinese Companies have had an absolute nightmare of a time. There is one small company, been there a long time. It has had a disastrous experience, all sorts of people seem to get shot at the facilities. No one likes them. They dont seem to like the place much. They shut down in the last several months. On going, festering issues. And i was in zambia last year i went and visited with the Chinese Ambassador in brought this up and i expected a big defense of first column coal. Instead the ambassador said if youre interested in buying this company i would like to have to be sold to you. Part of the message was he the we controlled everything which might be true with the Big Oil Companies. The heads of the Big Oil Companies are powerful and political players in their own right, when it comes a smaller players, particularly in the variety of resources or you have smaller players, not government, not stateowned enterprises, the administrative capacity of the Chinese Government to control them is allowed less than we might think in the same thing is true within china. This is another play for limited export. We have to be careful to understand what china can and cannot do when it comes to actually getting Chinese Companies to play by the book. In the last case that comes to mind, looking at what is happening right now. Turner handsoff strategy has been a challenge. China says, we are not interested in the domestic policy of this country are that kutcher of the other. Domestic policy is very interested in china, and Chinese Companies are being affected by what happens domestically and suzanne. There are learning in the Chinese Government is learning that they cannot afford these entanglements in their having to figure out on the fly how they deal with them. Of course Chinese Investments are not limited to a the developing world, if you will. Talk a little bit about how the investments in places like canada or australia and the United States for that matter and how that differs from their approach is elsewhere and the reaction to it. Particularly the differences, if any come between the u. S. Response and that of canada in the stroller. So, the first overseas chinese or of investment was not in africa. It was not in latin america but canada, alberta. Theres a long history of chinese overseas Resource Investment in these countries. If you look at australia, not just china, with the Japanese Foreign direct investment. So these countries have welldeveloped policies. Each has its own quirks. You caricature them. As trillions are much more willing to make reciprocal deals, talk about trading access to this or that piece of australian resource for reciprocal access to the chinese market. In canada they have been handsoff, but things have come to ahead. This happened last year over an attempt to take over the next. It drove a very big national debate. At the end of it the canadian government said we are approving this, but this is basically it. Unless there are special circumstances we will be approving further Chinese Investment in this strategic sector. Whether that will hold or not remains to be seen. The United States has not been challenged as much yet. The u. S. Is becoming a much more attractive destination for Chinese Investment and resources, particularly in oregon gas and the u. S. Is going to have to grapple. Maybe you want to talk about that. Actually, what i found interesting is that the Chinese Companies look at canada, australia, the United States very much as sort of, i dont know, the golden apple. The most desired. Access to these markets is the highest priority. In many respects they understand that the practices they bring to invest have to be of a higher order and is a good way of forcing change and Chinese Companies. That desire to move up the investment value chain has actually proved to be quite useful. I think when the chinese are looking, for example, and land acquisitions, which they are doing right now on the and states, theres a lot of interest in buying farms and accessing u. S. Land, especially because of the very dire situation in terms of chinas sorrow contamination. Theyre very interested in highquality land. You know, theyre looking at the productivity levels of u. S. Sericulture which theyre saying we are a hundred years ahead of china in terms of larger cultural productivity. It is truly astonishing. And so i think that as the chinese start coming year, going just show it to canada, there are challenges in terms of raising their own practices but also to give opportunities like to buy into better practices, to buy entire and technology. So i think that it is a good way of forcing change back on china. There is also sometimes a political connection. Last year, the year before when a variety of Chinese Companies were looking at investments in u. S. Shale gas, there was a quiet message sent that if those companies were also going full speed into the wrong to take the place of western companies that are moving out because of the sanctions, the United States might not look as favorably on these investments in u. S. Resources. So the increasingly at attractive set of Resource Investments in the United States, if we handled improperly, can actually give as political leverage around the world when it comes down the chinese [inaudible question] one more broad brush question and then we will go to the audience. Lets go back and talk about chinas neighbor a little bit. You mentioned mongolia briefly, but there are different relationships with Central Asian republics and with south vietnam, for instance, burma, me and mark, and, of course, the whole issue of the south and midEast China Sea. Can you address those sorts of things in a very quick trip around the block, so the speak . Let me take the perspective. Michael will want to talk more about the resource suspect. It is just a fascinating case study in many respects when you look around asia and china is very different relationships that are emerging at this point in time. Central asia where china seems to be thinking not only of its own physical backyard but also the political backyard. Scarcely a set of countries within china is more politically intend than some of the authoritarian states of central asia. So as they are developing their pipeline structure theyre also building Stronger Political relations with the countrys chemical operation organizations, for example, security ties. You know, in contrast to see their relations with many Southeast Asian countries under quite a bit of stress. So despite the fact it china has caused this diamond decade with its relation to Southeast Asia, its brewery now is moving away as were looking forward for the next ten years, moving away from this emphasis on u. S. China relations. Number one priority is going to be the region and promoting positive solutions. What they have done is try to develop a pretty bifurcated policy which is to move ahead on the economic front of the security front take a tough line which is why we see these challenges in merging, vietnam, the philippines, south and East China Sea, japan and taiwan. So i think it is a very interesting set of political, economic, and security dynamics. Think its quite challenging for chinain many respects. And the lasting a mention, of course, all overlay of the water issue which we have not touched on yet which affects all of these movements. Whether were talking about the chinas relationship to india to mccaws a son or certainly Southeast Asia through the knee, river pretty much most of the important rivers that are running through these regions, al it allocates, headman manages Water Resources is critical to the future. The water security feature, cultural and Industrial Development of all its neighbors and we have seen china probably be more willing to talk about things like water quality, mom maturing, disaster, but not really to discuss water allocation. There is lot of concern emigrating from the region. Chinas plans to abandon 20 more quite significant india as a whole. The largest source of low investment its a lesson about what can happen. Pretty significant backlash that china is facing. It is really causing in some sectors of Chinese Society a pretty significant about how we should be engaging. I do think its having an impact in some sectors its striking that we have not talked about the middle east because when you typically have discussions about resources and security in International Relationships the questions revolve around developments in the middle east of the hot spot of the day in this or that corner of the world and we have rightly drill down on the region right around china which is one of the things that i think emerged through our research in the book. The closer you get to china the more acute the potential security challenges are. And that is for a fairly simple reason. China does not have enormous physical global reach, at least not on the same scale in the same way at the United States says. And so you can imagine clashes in the East China Sea because china as a navy is capable of operating there and so do a lot of others, so inevitable you have the potential for friction. In contrast china does not yet have the capacity to project force significantly far from the shores. In the middle east, even in the lawn of africa where they have done a little bit of kind counter piracy. And so if you do want to see where the big tension points are going to be around china, the intersection of resources and security over the next decade at least, is in its backyard. That is where you want to focus, not on not so much in the places where we traditionally looked to think about resources and security. Now lets turn to our audience for questions. We will need a moment to reposition the camera. And then the microphone will be lets see. Where will the microphone be. Right over here on this side of the room. Wait just a moment. Someone asks a question. Yes. Great. Every year. Someone asks. [inaudible conversations] lets go to questions from our audience. Please give us your name and as a brief question so that we can get to as many as possible. Thank you. I would like to mention earlier, purchase an american oil company, california once was rejected for policy reasons. My question relates to the chinese. Because right now the undisputed sorus, Financial Resources for australia, not land locked, southern sudan, but australia. When you talk to executives, there are lamenting lower prices so they demand right now. What is the outlook for chinese demand for Natural Resources this year or in the foreseeable future . Thank you. Is very much depends upon obviously what happens with the chinese economy and is clearly in transition. 7 percent growth. It appears this past year. But more to the point, you know, the efforts, the push now within the Chinese Government is to rebalance the economy away from investments derived growth to service economy, boosting consumption within the chinese economy which would suggest a continued sort of slowdown in demand for many resources. However, you know, at the same time the Chinese Government is talking about urbanizing another four or 500 million people. Into urbanize those people means to build roads and buildings and apartment houses and more impressed fracture which should, in fact, cause a pretty significant uptick or at least, you know, a level of constant demand for many of these resources. So in many respects we are looking at is a question of, you know, how successful is the Chinese Government and doing what it says it is going to do in terms of balancing away from investments like growth to read the second part is how much progress china makes and improving the efficiency of resource use and conservation of resources. Objectives. And if it makes significant progress on that have been some cases we will see a diminishing resource demand, the growth of the demand, but from my perspective much of this remains open the air. We need to wait to see how this trajectory of chinese Economic Growth progresses because these are the same goals that the previous had a decade ago. So i think a good measure, part of the answer to your question, what the Chinese Government is moving forward. One small thing. If you look at the record of the 2000s, what drove high prices was not growing chinese demand in the abstract, and it was not an absolute shortage of resources around the world. It was the surprising rapidity in the growth of chinese demand and the difficulty of Resource Producers or the unwillingness in some case of Resource Producers to keep up the pace. And does that surprise and leads prices to blow up. Reread a point where expectations have been reset. No one is surprised by rapidly growing chinese resource consumption, which makes it tougher for prices to go far higher than people expect, but if you look over the next decade , these surprises may be more likely on the downside in terms of lower demand for resources and people expect. And just like unexpectedly high demand can create disproportionate shortterm increases in price, unexpectedly low demand can put you way out in equilibrium on the downside. And so if i were a betting man i would focus on those kinds of possibilities. I would look out for them. June parsons. My interest is actually in security for the Oil Resources that china demands and the path of getting those resources to china, whether it is their relationships with indonesia, malaysia, and so on and their reasons aggressive stance in the South China Sea and now the East China Sea and the dynamics of what that is going to do in the region. What is your take on that . So, i am glad you put it in that context. A lot of discussions about oil and the south and East China Sea focus on the resources that may be under the seabed. So when you drove down, focusing attention on those areas goes well beyond that and in particular goes to control. So those areas are highly relevant, but often not in a way that people tend to assume. Try will leave most of the south and east tennessee, something about the molochs streets. Chinese security planners and the u. S. Ability to control that critical to appoint four of oil supplies and also for a lot of the gas supplies is still a very large threat looming over them. And they would be foolish to ignore it. The United States does have the capacity to stop their access command if you look at what china doesnt know, not just in trying to build pipeline routes and alternative sources of supplies, but in stockpiling and other steps like that there clearly concerned and trying to protect not just their economy, but their ability to actually fuel the Chinese Military during a clash. Takes a lot of fuel to fight a significant conflict in the region. This is a significant driver, but the reality is that even projecting Chinese Forces to the strait of malacca is a stretch. In to the extent that china builds up the physical capacity to do that, there is going to be a strong pull for the foreseeable future to the ploy that much closer to china to deal with whether it is to deal with their much closer and more high priority issues. One of the things that we conclude in our book is in many respects the past is not prologue, and particularly when it comes to china things can change rapidly in ways that are also unexpected, and the security is one where we both agree that things can change rapidly and in ways that not only are unexpected, but perhaps i think we are seeing in the east and South China Sea precisely that. Fundamentally the conflict between china and Southeast Asia and china and japan and east tennessee is not really about the resources as much as it was about the sovereignty internationalism. And those are forces that are in some was much more difficult to control. In china has tapped into them for the purposes for domestic purposes allow them to blast at certain points in tampa and down, but now theres a certain point, i think, were it is very difficult, a pretty high set point. And so i think is going to be difficult to find a way it take a step back from what is a pretty contentious, you know, in some ways potential flashpoint kind of situation is not particularly with japan, but also the philippines and vietnam. You can see rising nationalism from these countries. So i think part of the problem is that, you know, International Law does not provide very concrete guidance unfortunately concrete guidance supports two different at least two different plans, the law of the sea. Jim is is china trying to move into say the latin america or poor countries like brazil because they can go crops longer than us and for a different time. Basically they are strategic, we want to focus on the u. S. And get the land here or are they going to laterally try to get into those . I spent some time in brazil. It is really interesting because again i think there was a lot of hype surrounding Chinese Investment in agriculture in brazil. There was a study that came out recently that pointed to the fact that two thirds of chinese stated investment not just in agriculture but across the board in brazil had to be realized. Theres a huge number, 70 billion announced back in 2007 and two thirds of that have yet to be realized. In brazil as looking at the agricultural issue and was quite fascinated. Because it is a case of highly unrealized investment. And number of reasons. First what brazilians would say, no matter how the chinese do business at home they cant do business that way in brazil. In china, simply expropriated. Simply take it. Somehow you buy it because they dont technically own it so they would travel to brazil and say to local officials we like this land, this piece of paper and handed over and no matter how many times you explain this to the chinese they dont have the power simply to sign away the land. The chinese didnt seem to understand. Part of it is they were approaching it in the wrong way. Second the brazilian past is much more restrictive when it came to land. They say this is not designed specifically as a response to the chinese to move in but in fact they will acknowledge that it certainly has raised the issue for them. So clearly there was some concern about this big push from china to brazil on the land front. It brings up all sorts of feelings of nationalism and people stealing our land and controlling our land. Not just in brazil but a lot of places we looked at. Funny story when i was meeting with brazilian business people, this constant flow of local officials, chinese local areas traveling to brazil to talk about potential land investments. They said they were never interested in investing in land but all of these localities have an overseas investment in travel budget and everybody likes to go to brazil so they would go over, have a good time and leave but they were never truly interested in investment. The last point i will make, the chinese make this point. It is difficult to invest in brazil. A lot of infrastructure they want in terms of roads and highways to get soybeans or whatever else it might be to the ports simply doesnt exist. Brazilians do not make it easy for foreign investments, and overseas tourists to try to attract and their laws simply dont assist with that. There are a number of reasons why the chinese have definitely gone to brazil, they might have not realize the kind of return on their investment. I am really interested in this intersection of economics and security, kind of abroad thing and i was wondering, a more narrow picture of this intersection, what are the implications for overall governance . Great question. A bunch of narrower areas where the two intersect, economic and security, resources is one obvious place. Another place, cybersecurity. For an investment in that space there are a lot of discrete pieces where economic and security meet. It is a tough governance problem first because every country handles it differently. Every country has a different role in domestic markets which leads to different views on how the two should relate internationally and bureaucratically we are not all that well set up and neither are many others to think about the two effectively. The u. S. Government has pieces that try to do that. Adding achieve the economist at the state department, deputy National Security advisor for international economics, people who are supposed to build a bridges but you still need some coherent vision for how the pieces fit together and some sort of if not consistent then somewhat consistent way of finding trade off that go through these areas, i dont think we are there yet. We deal with this on an issue by issue basis and fight these things through. This intersection is going to become more difficult. And sovereignty issues in the china seas, cybersecurity issues where all the energy and security concerns that we had, this is not going to separate itself. We are not going back to another iron curtain where security is here and economics is there. Thank you. From the brookings institution, if i may have a question for each out there. Could you talk about the food, energy and water in china and a major constraint on what is going to address that key thing in the matrix. You talk about other countries, the pattern of Energy Resources exhibition especially japan, and the population of japan, china, natural gas expected to reach 63 this year, 19 rise from 2013. Do you say the share of scale pattern, on the security, International Stretch how soon to be in place to prevent to mitigate conflicts from rising . Thank you. I will try to be reasonably brief. And doing research for the first book, i talked to a lot of local officials in china. It was really interesting for me to learn if you ask a number of officials what is the most serious challenge you face, granted this is the decade ago, often times they want to say things like corruption, they would say water. Water was the number one problem they were concerned about, particularly in the northern part of china where basically when looking at roughly one ninth of the participation but the water solution, the water issue is quite serious. Also dramatic things like the yellow river stuff, doesnt reach through shanghai anymore, or 16,000 exploding down. The dramatic sites of water turning green or black, the water from pollution. Fundamentally it is an enormous pressure on the chinese system. It does what you say, the potential for Energy Development. Mike has done a lot of work. This is an area that china is interested in not only investing in the United States but also developing its own reserves and one of the challenges it faces is the Energy Development requires enormous amounts of water that it doesnt have. In some cases the type of Energy Development china wants on a limited by is water constraints. China has for many years undertaken a lot of different experiments with water pricing, water conservation, working on desalination, big desalination but expensive and take time to develop. There is campaign mentality diverting rivers, not only from the water that would go to other countries but within china, taking water and making it moved north to the yellow river. What people say, we dont water from the south because if is all polluted so there are a lot of challenges not to mention the agricultural issue because not only is chinas soil contaminated because of heavy metal and other sort of past success spewed from its factories but when its water is contaminated that is a different, second problem. And what was recently in the past five to ten years to the floor of chinese consciousness, there is a researcher, chinese researcher that published the study year or two ago the talked about 400 cancer villages in china so places where the rates of cancer are higher because of this water pollution. Across the full spectrum of post developmental issues and Health Issues and i would also add social unrest when it comes to the environment. The number one soc of social unrest is the environment. The issue of water is absolutely fundamental. You hit the nail on the head when you talk about chinas scale. One of the points we emphasize is this is a way in which china can be very different. Distinguishing among different resources, bigger deal in other places, the scale might not be so consequential as you would expect, the first actually is in some parts of the food world because while chinas particular Development Model leads it to consume a disproportionate amount of iron ore and bauxite and so on it doesnt lead to a disproportionate amount of food. A lot of food drives a lot of concerns in china but Food Security and other countries are also driving demand for food in a big way. China is significant but a piece of a much bigger trend. Secondary is gas. You point out gas. For china gas imports are largely discretionary and since the gas market is not to particularly robust i would be surprised if china chose to become heavily dependent on importing natural gas. The discretionary, china, detriment to its environment as alternative to natural gas as a whole, domestic coal for the most part, chinese policymakers have an option to be choosing the domestic coal over importing natural gas and increased a lot. The low base, fairly small in the larger context, japan and korea are the dominant importers in the region. U. S. About what the global structure should be dealing with security given chinas rise and we could go on a long time but let me flag three basic pieces two of which i put in security space. The more the rest of the world can do over consumption, and spillovers will be from chinas resource. We control lot of pieces. And everything is generally called a. And and to develop some, rather than political negotiations, youll take the security challenges out of the equation. And decisions about direct investment into our resource opportunity. We keep security in mind in the broader u. S. Economy. We should remember that we are helping the framework china might operate in and the first person who asked unquestioned, the aborted deal, that matches the chinese and you cant rely on much. We have got to make sure again. To the extent we can, we send the signal, and the military front. To accelerate chinas apatite with extensive military presence given by resources. To step away rapidly from our own commitment to providing security on an equal basis for every one which is something we do today, unusual in history. We provide security for resources coming out of the middle east for example. Even if a predominantly travel to asia, increasingly travel to asia and china, but we still remain better off when we do that rather than inviting the chinese to take our place. Those are the three i would emphasize. My question is china gained so much popularity in their growth and rise of power the past couple years so my question is what are they doing differently than what the u. S. Is doing or is it a case in point that they are doing what we have done and are doing and we will see a big one do it better and what strategies they are going to implement to assure it is better than what the u. S. Has done . I dont know if in my travels, they were more popular than the United States. We might disagree with the premise of your question. What we found, if perhaps we had been doing this research around 2006, maybe 2007, you might have been on target but increasingly not only in terms of chinas resource quest but a backlash among publics in many countries across the globe. This is not limited to one continent but whenever you find resources, you find significant portions of populations that are quite discontent with the way china does business and that reflects badly on china and in the ministry of Foreign Affairs when i met with a couple officials, one who is number 2 in charge of latin america and africa, they said very difficult for them, they spent a lot of time in countries with many consulates like to deal with the particular problems a state bonet enterprise or other factory might have with the labor force or environmental problems. Very challenging set of issues like constantly trying to make up for whatever bad practices their firms are doing and as mike alluded to earlier not only is it stateowned, it could be 4500 miners in gonna for example, all from a couple villages, then has to try to negotiate some kind of happy settlement so i think again at decade ago all or all less than that, i think today the position is quite different and particularly in chinas backyard it is different. Part of the reason the u. S. Pivot or rebalance was not only welcomed but initiated by actors in the region was because of their concern over chinas rise, their fear of how china was going to be paid in the region in the security front so probably i would see sort of a popular perceptions from china these days of little bit differently. That is not to say many leaders across the country including political leaders here can go to any state and find governors travelling to china seeking for investment, an enormous amount of interest in bringing Chinese Investments not only to the United States but pretty much everywhere. Dont get me wrong to. In that sense there is a lot of interest but i think the image of china has been tainted by its practices over the past decade. To build on that briefly, something important liz said earlier about the distinction between chinas regime and the country at large. And to get a sweetheart deal on investment, china, the chinese, not nearly as good at dealing with the broader population. This is a case where firms can raise the bar, one of the striking things in places where western firms, and infrastructure, consultants and contractors and others that can do things like helping you deal with effectively, understand do they want housing, do they want services for health. When those pieces are in place because of other companies. And held to higher standards. If they take advantage of those tools. It is better for the people to invest. My question is to what level can china alleviate economic sanctions that the west fine security threats, iran as an example, significant economic sanctions placed on it regarding the world market and export and import of goods and china has become they sell a lot of oil and raw resources to china in return for a market, to do business. That raise issues in the west bend it is not just iran. To what extent does that go to and what does it do the relationship between the west and the country in question and china. It is useful to look at the trade sanctions and investment sanctions, the trade sanctions china has been able to continue importing oil from iran, lower volume, it is being complicated not just by the financial but by insurance sanctions, but if we are going to be honest we got to accept those sanctions probably would not be put in place had we not expected china to be able to continue to buy some iranian oil. Enormous fear in policymaking circles that the sanctions would cut off oil lock sports and tank the western economy. The hope and a lot of places was china would continue to import oil from iran but demand a steep discount and we get the best of both worlds, the world would be well supplied. And lower revenues. That was the theory. They have been ultimately able to have imports and extend when they wanted to. And the investment front is interesting. First the chinese have to some extent to restrain themselves from stepping in and the lot of cases even when they look to step in and fill the gap they havent been able to. The iranians have been a nightmare to work with, they had endless negotiations, there hasnt been a deal landed a lot of cases because of the widget that they need it comes from europe, comes from the United States, they cant get access to it. And so we still live in a world where a lot of the hightechnology parts of Global Supply chains are in western countries. That is one of those pieces that could change substantially over time. We tend to focus on the operators when we look at how the world Resource Investment works, the exxons and b h ps and sullen and we say china has their own but often the next layer, the supplier, the contractors that china doesnt have that give western countries more leverage but in a way that might dissipate over time. I elaborate on the question of little bit more. In regards to your response. In that case where the technology is in the west and not available, do some of these countries look to china to fill that gap . Are they looking at other ways to get technology that is restricted to them . Right now chinano country has been able to turn china together in the absence of cooperation from the west and that is something that could change in the future. China cant be autonomous in everything particularly if it wants to develop an economy at the pace it needs to in international markets. It relies on comparative advantage, will chinese leaders come out of this experience and say we need to do the following things differently . Perhaps. One thing we dont do enough is look at particular acute instances where policymakers are focused on resource issues and try to understand what they learned from this. To give you another example the libya crisis. There was a lot of panic in china. Lot of distrust that markets would resolve the flow of oil in the aftermath of the libya crisis in a way that would hurt everyone. If our Intelligence Community is not trying to understand lessons china took away from that, about the village of markets and the neat to have their own bilateral supply interests, any of that they are missing the big thing they should be paying attention to. Thank you very much. Brief question. Last in line. I am the director of the rule of Law Committee for the oceans. China acts like a postal state in the 1960s trying to control access to control resources and at the same time they look to the law of the Sea Convention, freedoms in ensuring access to kobolds in congo, oil from the gulf, passage to the strait of morocco commack access to gas and the russian Continental Shelf, iron ore from norway, Mineral Resources on the deep ocean floor. On one hand they are taking an antagonistic attitude towards the widely accepted law of the Sea Convention ended another if they are both demanding and dependent on the freedoms that are incorporated in that. How do you see this going . Will china be able to continue these two opposing attitudes indefinitely . Will they have to accept one or the other . Be strong locally or get the freedoms that they need globally . China is comfortable with contradictions so i dont think in the mind of the chinese leaders there is any problem navigating those two separate scenarios. I also point out from their perspective to a large extent what theyre trying to do is defensible under the law of the see especially the East China Sea because they have the idea of the Continental Shelf so in their view of understanding of the law of the sea, they are sort of claim extends far past what for example the japanese recognize under the law of the sea so i think they may see it as not quite such a great contradiction as you are laying out but certainly the neighbors do. More than that china has shown an unwillingness in many instances to sit down and negotiate for example the South China Sea with the range of players in the way that they want and i think that is problematic as well. Personally, i dont think they will have any difficulty holding that in their heads. I think that is right on the money. After elizabeth economy, director of various studies at the council on Foreign Relations, director of programs on Energy Security and Climate Change at the council on Foreign Relations and the new book by all means necessary, thank you both for being with us tonight and thank you for joining us for this discussion about such a very important topic, good night. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] booktv is on facebook. Like us to interact with a booktv guests and viewers. Watch videos to get information on events. Facebook. Com booktv. James bamford to discuss National Agency spying and the nsa surveillance of american citizens since 9 11. Talk about ed snowden and the current lawsuit being brought against the agency by the Electronic Frontier foundation. This is about an hour and 15 minutes. Really appreciate a really great event. Only eat the second greatest event i have had here. Right through those doors i was married a few years ago so this has to take second place to that, i think. Among the people at my wedding which i discovered later was the russians by bob hansen who i had known for years as one of my sources and didnt realize what his avocation was. Really good to have you all here. I was happy the president decided to hold off on his announcement until tomorrow to hear what i had to say tonight. That was very nice of him. I dont think he will agree with what i have to say but it will be interesting to hear what he has to say. One of the things that is fascinating me is how many people actually know about the nsa today . When i first wrote the purple palace in 1982 i was doing a book tour and one of the people on the book tour at least in the limousine going to studio was senator bill bradley, what is your book about . About the National Security agency, what is that . We got on the set and he was talking about the economy, i was talking about the nsa and the could resist and the host asked me how secret is the nsa . Even senator bradley said he never heard of it. Got really angry. Took a separate car back to the hotel. Next day his aide called up and said that was really below the belt to say that. I said below the belt was saying he probably confuse it with the nba. He went on the Intelligence Committee after our get together. Team will lot more about it than i did after a that. One other thing that was funny when the book came out was the book was picked by bookofthemonth club and New York Times book review, all these pictures of these books that make a little pictures of the books that make the bookofthemonth club. It was a picture of a rocket taking off or something, and what was the idea doing this . Thought you were talking about nasa. They changed recover of my book on the bookofthemonth club because they thought i made a mistake. John wanted me to keep this short. We have a lot of people with a lot of questions, questions are going to be far more interesting, and a few interesting things here. I am happy to be in the press club. The press club, have been a member for 30 years now, my first slide, and i was actually a member when not at the time but later on, all mens place until 1971 i think it was. But the person up there that has a hand of cards on them was an old time press club member. He would hang out here in the 1950s and became a really fascinating card shark and wrote a book called in education of a poker player. Still an original building he had been playing cards here but before becoming a card shark he had another job and that was being a founding father of the National Security agency. The nsa got its start in that little apartment building. Inga july 1920 and he was the chief of the black chamber, that is what was called anti lived on the top floor with his family and the first floor was a phony company, a company that supposedly made commercial codes but it was just a front and the actual code breaking was done on two middle floors. As you can imagine the nsa has grown a fair amount since those days but some of us, some people have been done since 1929. Secretary of state simpson, didnt want to tell him there was a thing called the black chamber even though his state department was paying for it because he didnt know what his reaction would be, a secret law office in new york that is eavesdropping on communications and he did finally tell him and simpson was outraged and he yelled gentlemen, do not read each others mail and immediately closed down the black chamber. That puts him out of work. So he went from being the head of the organization that was the first predecessor of the nsa to becoming basically the ed snowden of his day. Ed snowden today has become the object of the is he a hero or is he a trader and my answer to that is always he is a very heroic whistleblower, there is no connection between ed snowden as far as i am concerned and spies. I had one at my wedding as i mentioned. Ed snowden is not selling secrets to the russians. Didnt go there to sell secrets to the russians. He went there because the u. S. Canceled his passport halfway between hong kong and ecuador. Wade before there was an ed snowden, there was Herbert Yardley. After they closed the black chamber he decided to write a book about it which was the first expose of american script logic community and they were not very happy when his book came out and they tried putting him in jail but they couldnt find a law so they created a new part of the espionage law to prosecute him with an a lot of that is what they were prosecuting, trying to prosecute ed snowden with right now. Ironically the first head of the nsa, became the first whistleblower. This is something i think ed snowden would be very interested in because theres a history of this. There is a history which i am going to show you in a little bit. At one point being a real big villain to the nsa and the next minute being a hero to the nsa. It took awhile, to almost 70 years, but they finally put Herbert Yardley in the hall of honor at the nsa so maybe theres still a chance for ed snowden at some point. Yardleys book was the first written on the organization of the crypt illogic organization, the next one to write was david conn who wrote a book called the code breakers in 1967 which told a lot about the nsa. It was the most the biggest expos they of the nsa that happened since Herbert Yardley and the nsa went to a lot of trouble to try to get rid of the book. They even considered, this came out in the senate Intelligence Committee report, surreptitious entry to his house, tried to steal the manuscript, Clandestine Service applications, whatever that is, kidnapping, termination, whatever, worst of all they were going to plan some disparaging press reviews about his book which as an author you take every other option before that one. Like yardley, in 1995 they made him official, the First Official scholar and president at nsa and the book that they were trying to ban, they put it in the library. Again, more hope for ed snowden here. Then the next one, the puzzle palace, there they accused me of putting the country at risk, threatened to meet twice with prosecution, forced me to give up documents which i never gave up, rated a library where i did the research, ripped a lot of stuff out of the library, they threatened my sources including a former nsa director, with prosecution and jail time and everything. They had a guy follow me. That is why i wore a costume wherever i went. That was a Halloween Party at john henrys house but they did. They actually had somebody in every audience who i gave a talk taking notes in taser slipped up and said something they could put me in jail with and put a whole file cabinet of papers together on me. And submit free information request and said we dont have anything on you. I said that is impossible. I have been writing about you for three years and you dont have a single piece of paper . Then i saw on one paper the word esquire, that is my codename. So i started request for everything on the esquire file and i got a whole for. I just made that picture up there. That actually had a book signing for me. They invited me to speak to the national corp. The logic school. Rogan nasty book about them so i am no longer on their official tool list anymore but anyway, theres a possibility that this could be reality. General Alexander Holding a sign up saying ed snowden is the hero or wearing a hero tee shirt. It is all possible. Who knows . But before ed snowden there were other whistleblowers and those are the people i really admire. People that helped me in writing some of the books i did, some of the articles i did. Tom trey, all people who defy it and as a. These were people who were looking at nsa. They worked there for almost 40 years. Tom drake worked there as a contractor for a long time. Before that he was in the military. And tom drakes first day on the job was september 11th, 2001. These are the people they are people who have a conscience. When 9 11 came along and the nsa began eavesdroping domestically these are the people who spoke up. They left the agency. They quit the agency because they didnt want to see the system they worked on turned into a vehicle for eavesdropping on american citizens in the u. S. I have a lot of admiration for them. They dont have the amount of attention ed snowden has that they did an awful lot of work to help get the message out and a few of them are here tonight actually. This is the nsa has gone a long way since Herbert Yardley in the town house. Now it is an entire city. I have been through there a few times. It is up mammoth location. People have no idea how much of the agency has grown in the last ten years. The headquarters complex itself you could put the u. S. Capitol in four times over and have space leftover. The whole purpose for this is eavesdropping. Is an agency that really needs to have a close eye on and that is why we are here and why this controversy has come up because there hasnt been a close eye on it. Here is the nsas budget. For years this is one of the topsecret documents released by ed snowden. For years the nsa was the largest budget item in the Intelligence Community but that changed more recently because of the advent of drones with the cia and so forth but an enormous amount of budget. You can see how much it is budgeted. It is very widespread. This is one of the more revealing signs i have seen from the ed snowden group. Shows where they do, they planned all their malware, all the computers around world, 50,000 places they plant malware, all the places they tap into fiberoptic cables and so forth. For somebody who has been writing about the nsa for a long time, this is an extremely informative slide. Met a data, no one heard that word before last june but it is really the key, one of the key issues we are talking about now because i dont know about you but i never gave the u. S. Government, particularly the nsa, the authority to collect every time i pick up the telephone to keep record of that and to keep it for five years. That is one of the big issues that will be talked about tomorrow at the president s talks, whether he will go along with the committee recommendation, his panels recommendation which is taking the nsa out of the business of storing all these records and instead putting the data where it is supposed to be, where the companies have collected it and using Legal Authority from a judge to search through the data and not just going through it without any oversight. Anyway, metadata is a really big problem. One of the famous that has come up more recently was these two decisions on the issue of metadata and one was judge richard leon, federal judge in washington, and the other was judge William Paul Lee in new york. I dont know if it made any difference but i grew up with judge leon and went to law school with him but we never agreed on anything in 30 years. He is a very conservative judge and the plaintiff was very conservative. Judge leon came to in a very conservative conclusion which happened to be the same conclusion i came to which was a liberal conclusion and that is that the government should not be able to do this kind of activity with metadata. Judge William Pauley came to the office, you had that split decision. In my opinion you just got to get rid of the whole idea of the government collecting metadata. The ed snowden case is a perfect example of why. Here was ed snowden who worked 6,000 miles from nsa, he was a contractor, he was in his 20s and yet he was able to spend almost the year, it seems, 1. 7 million of the most secret documents from nsa and nsa would not even knowing about it until he shows up in hong kong. Do you want to trust and agency with all your data . I dont think they want to do that. See what happens with target. There are people out there that really want data that will pay a lot of money for it and if somebody at nsa starts doing the honorable thing which is being a whistleblower wanted to be a criminal, they got all that data. The less you keep in the hands of the government the better is but one of the key issues which we will talk about here, somewhat of a complex issue, but a key issue in the entire metadata discussion. It is the issue is that judge pauley hung his hat on on his decision. It all centers on this house in yemen and this person appeared, i am the only person in this room that has been to that house. This was bin ladens operations center, it was where he controlled all his plots from. I went there because i did a documentary for pbs, we did a documentary on nsa. And 9 11. And we saw it and that was where the first hint of 9 11 came from. And again these are all issues that feed into judge paul lees decision, the comments of the director of nsa, the key excuse for having the metadata program. What happened was in december of 1999 the nsa had been listening to this for years because it was the house where bin laden would call to set up his terrorist operations, the house where they attacked, set up a plan for the uss cole and the u. S. Embassies. The nsa was listening. December of 1999 they picked up a communication from afghanistan that said send answar al sunna the meeting. We know the nsa knows at this point there is going to be a big meeting. The nsa passes that to the cia and other intelligence agencies, the cia sends people and they get the cooperation of the government and they are watching these guys and all of a sudden they go to the airport and they get on a plane, Khalid Almihdhar and his partner and the cia being good intelligence people figure out they are flying to bangkok because that is where the plane was going. The problem was they called up the station in bangkok to alert them and it happened to be a saturday and nobody was working so the two terrorist got off the plane and disappeared into bangkok, but the cia didnt know theyre going to the United States because they had a copy of their passport which had the visa in it. What happened was the two of them flew from yemen to california and since nobody had been tipped off by the cia that they were coming nobody was there to watch some arrived. They went down to san diego. They managed to get this house here. Was a house in san diego a owned by a muslim in san diego, and saw two people who needed a place to stay so that some say. The guy happened to be an fbi informant which was very interesting so you have two terrorists on their way here. The cia knew about it, didnt tell anybody and they are living in a house owned by fbi informant. Khalid almihdhars wife was pregnant in yemen so he called her fairly often, at least once a week and the nsa was eavesdropping on everything in that house in yemen, everything going in and coming out of that house in yemen so what happened was the cia wanted information from that house, they wanted to say give us the transcript, give us what these people are saying and the nsa wouldnt give the cia any information that they were picking up from the house. They went 3 times asking senior officials at the nsa for that information, they wouldnt give it to them so the cia ends of building their own listening post to pick up communications from the house. The problem is they are only getting the downlink. They dont have a satellite so they are not getting the uplink of the communications so they go back to the nsa and they say we got the downlink, our own listening post, can you give us the a plant . We dont have the satellite and cant afford to put one up over yemen right now and the nsa again said no, you cant have that information. That is one of the key issues right now. This is another case coming up which i will talk about. Let me back to this one. That house there in yemen is a key issue right now because judge paul lees decision accepted the nsas argument that even though for tweet 2 years they were listening to everything going in and out of his house they were not able to pick up, they werent able to find out the calls from that house were going to to the house in yemen. I followed the nsa since 1982. It has a lot of technology. I talked to a lot of whistleblowers and whistleblowers cant believe the nsa is saying that they didnt have the capability to find out where those phone calls were coming from. But that is the nsas policy. The nsas policy right now is that they didnt know where those calls were coming from. They were listening to the calls in yemen but they couldnt tell that they were coming from san diego. That is the key point. So judge pauley accepted that argument and that is the argument for metadata. The nsa could tell where those phone calls for coming from, and then you had to collect everybodys metadata in the United States so you have in one place and then you can go through it so you dont have another 9 11 but that is their argument. So again these are things that are somewhat complicated, they are not usable in a sound bite on television but they are critical to this whole issue of metadata, needs more writing about in the Journalist Community because a lot of this i will talk about or saying i you kidding . All this technology out there and you cant tell where a telephone is coming from . Everyone has collar id . The story is not over yet. There is a third bite of the apple here. We had a split decision, the judge in new york, the judge in washington, another case coming up, church of los angeles versus an essay. I played a little role in this case myself. By the Electronic Frontier foundation, that focuses on the legality of the metadata and so forth but another little twist were focusing on another issue which is very important which is americans right of assembly. The government should have a right to know every time the committee for the republicans are meeting here to get our phone calls and find out we are having a meeting or the naacp or any political gatherings or antiwar gathering so that is one other aspect that makes this case different from the other two and it should be decided hopefully in the relatively near future. So you have these three cases and they will go to the Appeals Court and the Supreme Court decisions so we are at the entry position here but i really do any time i see judge leon i really have to for the first time say he was right and i am glad he was right on this issue here. What i did was i talked at berkeley at one point. They wanted to help do a brief, a friendofthecourt brief for that case, the third case coming up. What we focused on largely was looking back to the Church Committee for example, 1975, the Church Committee, we can show that before the Church Committee nsa was running amok. They had this operation shamrock eavesdropping on everybody at telegram coming in and out, millions of telegrams a day and all that, operation minaret, antiwar protesters, only when the Church Committee came along and make it transparent, publicized it through their hearings and reports, there was change made, the creation of the foreign intelligence corp. The first court to ever put any kind of regulation on nsa. And it worked really good for 30 years. Wasnt perfect, but at least it was there and it did make some i used to make jokes about it but i think it did do a fair amount of good work, better than not being there. What happened after 9 11 . The Bush Administration went around the court, violated the law and bypassed the court and 21 2 years later after the New York Times revealed the program, they created this thing called the foreign Intelligence Surveillance amendment which basically legalize what they were doing in the first place. Now we are at the point where we were just prior to the Church Committee where the nsa has run amok, and we need another Church Committee to look at this. I admire the president s panel because he came up with some good suggestions, just a panel that looked it some of the issues for a month for couple months or whatever it was and that is it and they are gone