Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tonight From Washington 20120824

>> united nations statisticians at columbia university professor, howard friedman talks about finance in his new book, "the measure of a nation: how to regain america's competitive edge and boost our global standing." .. >> in areas of statistics and health economics. he ran data modeling teams for a number of years the most recent book is the measure of a nation how to regain america's competitive edge. please welcome 820 welcome howard friedman. [applause] >> thank you for the introduction and for this tremendous turnout. before i get to into my talk i can see the legs and think this is a terrific place where someone coming from the united nations to talk. also the whole idea looking a different countries is so intrinsic so i will talk about the idea of intelligence and relate to to what happens in the book. and topics of the book. we have limited time. i've offer highlights then question-and-answer. with competitive intelligence it is used in companies all the time. where they do well and lag behind. their advantages, have they can leverage those and opportunities to take best practices. standard practice in the corporate world not so much in the corporate world. my book takes perspective of from the united states. with that in mind when the obvious questions to ask is when it comes to competition it is challenging. the first criteria is they have to be wealthy it had to be leased $20,000. it is wealthy enough and to support its infrastructure and it is important to examine the united states vs. wealthy countries. it is not as insightful. wealth is a selection criteria. the other is population from a least 10 million it is the top one-third and also threshold to required to have more people and the united states. during the numbers there is not a perfect comparison. that is true then has a population as the united states so what can we learn? with that in mind there are 14 countries to meet the criteria germany, the u.k., france, italy, spain japan and o austria. we have a large selection where we can identify objectively areas we selected white house, education, democracy in five critical subjects to see a society thrive or struggle. we defined our categories. a whole idea is promised and three simple points. if you compare to other countries it is different. for those who have not traveled with the policies and practices are so different. the second point* is comparing the data to other of wealthy countries hurt quote we do not to do the best. when not always the best what can we learn? but with health key facts you may have heard before the united states spends between two or four times more than any other wealthy country and of the other 13 we have the lowest life expectancy. you have the lowest return on invested. -- investment. the second fact is there was a time united states had the eighth highest five expectancy and have dropped dramatically. this is a theme you will hear former outstanding performance is declining. we will put those facts aside. safety. one fact, our homicide rate between three and 10 times more than competing countries. a far more dangerous country and others. our incarceration rate is between two and 10 times higher current the comparable to the soviet gulag. it will put those facts aside now. now to the other topics, the first is democracy. it is a difficult subject to measure quantitatively. competition, participation which is the odor turnout. they're far less likely to show up at the polls and other countries. been below is an indication voters don't trust the system works well, barriers to show what the, other issues about the process. it is a symptom of an issue. we have a datapoint coming from the royal bank and each one has consistency the net is states comes out somewhere in the middle. there are measures from the freedom house.3 we have a datapoint coming from the royal bank and each one has consistency the net is states comes out somewhere in the middle. there are measures from the freedom house. australia or canada are near the top. this is interesting. just like health, if we think back we created the declaration of independence, the constitution was a leading document at the time. a leader of representative democracy. we have not made tremendous change to our structure the way the elect people has not evolved. other countries have used modern technology. the leading country was australia. but it is fascinating. voter turnout is low. register it then vote. everybody is aware they have higher barriers to vote but with germany in the u.k. the government takes an active role to use a database to have people notified their registered to vote to let us know if there are others who should be registered. they enable the voting with the tendency of proportionate to representation. winner-take-all. if 45% vote for one party and the rest is mixed a 45% to become elected. the other 55%? other countries distribution reflects the voting 88 out of 41 leading democratic countries. the dorm outside of united states the technology and we keep using you have gerrymandering to isolate and a tendency toward more and more isolation and extremism. politicians know they are getting elected. it is the winner-take-all and with representation we would avoid that. other countries have preferential voting. but with a single seat it is difficult to. you can go to four third-party to be confident it does not get thrown away. if no candidate gets the majority they are distributed who is ranked second. it is a beautiful system. it enables free parties to have a voice. with our constitution constitution, cutting-edge democracy remade some improvements. but there are some glaring issues. no one here is surprised in the united states we have this system of the electoral college in does not represent a practice impersonated. [laughter] many have said what a tremendous document we would like to mirror the documents. like separation of powers but nobody does it with the electoral college. [laughter] year in california the representative of is roughly one-third of the low population state is you get three times as many than those who live in california or texas or new york a violation of one citizen one-vote. swing states exemplified by barack obama spending $25,000 campaigning in illinois. $40 million in pennsylvania. that sends a message to the value. and a swing state you are valuable. that they don't do all or none but allocate of the votes are distributed. take democracy focus on education and equality. education is an important topic. it is fascinating for a number of reasons. mini are surprised we used to be the world leader to provide free primary education. with the gi bill of list -- highest college education in the world. past tense. winnow out of the top 15. i will walk you through how people go through school. at the lowest stage it is preprimary you have great opportunities for education for lower crime rates later. children of middle-class families to 2% higher rate of preprimary than those of four families. this propagates as you go higher. those with the much lower likelihood go to primary and secondary school. then there is the interesting situation. it is from state and local resources. other is with federal which is different. if you grow up in a porn neighborhood you have less fun dame. the ramifications? the building is worse, the facilities, computers not function, textbooks are old. and may pay teachers much less in the ability to recruit is severely damaged. you can compare different countries they tell us the same story indicted states is average through below average. japan and canada ed do things different. use these united states average or below average the children who come from wealthy neighborhoods to outstanding outperform other countries other rise off the charts the other way. in the united states relationship between the high-school exam and socio-economic status is more critical. in one level hire 60 more points. summer you come from as far more influential at the high-school level and other wealthy countries. getting older those of college education but at the same time affordability is an issue it used to be the pell grant would cover three-quarters of the cost. notice 1/3 so now it is holding people back. we did have examples of excellence. what does period do? first, they have a much longer school year. 220 days. united states does not have a national standard but some average 180 days. you can learn a lot more with 40 days and do not forget so much so that is an important factor. all teachers come from the top one-third of their college class. they paid twice gdp per capita. it is a prestigious position they invest in them with a low turnover rate. roughly 80 gdp per capita but at the same time not the position it used to be. all of the attacks against the teacher unions. not the same level of investment so we see a fundamental different approach in the united states. by the way it decades ago used to be well-paid positions in the '70s they were paid 175%. we are seeing a trend. so we have established some issues. united states used to be the best. korea has a number of best practices. this is an area. income, lowballed, social economic mobility, gender equality. income inequality? and could talk about the post adjustment the devastates has a higher level of inequality. it is consistent. the bad news it is consistent. [laughter] not that not every will the country sees the trend. economist described being a function of globalization. in our comparison group for sought -- sought increasing equality. solos of government has a role to play. related to income is cumulative. with a higher level of wealth and it is related to the tax law where people cannot inherit a larger percentage. it is so extreme the two wealthiest americans have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. put it aside for a social mobility. being told been the land of opportunity. the american dream. the interesting thing is americans believe it in their hearts. they have a greater faith they are a meritocracy. we also strongly believe the people who are wealthy is because they earned it or they did not. at the same time because our faces a strong have far more social support. but then negative less not more. you have a better chance of raising. for where you aspire to go but that is less than other countries. the lowest 10 percent referred to the poorest quintile. the top is the wealthiest. board in the poorest have over 40 percent chance to stay there. they are stock. in other countries 20 to 30%. what about the american dream poorest to the wealthiest? we have the lowest rate of any country. instead of the american dream we need to rephrase the american myth and do something about it. is education and educational opportunities are key. ticket example with education. with that quintile with a college degree the chance of staying there is 16%. if you don't give the college degree staying is 50%. education is key. prepared -- preprimary already has a 20 percent difference later with primary and secondary schools there is a difference of funding. we need to aggressively pay attention. at the tertiary the ball -- level we need to get back to that responsibility. . . a lot of the mirkin's aren't. they're not aware of the fact that we don't perform the best because politicians don't like to say that are going all of the health care debate rarely does anyone point out the fact that we have the lowest return on investment of health. it is for those who can afford it. we have the best hospitals in the world. we truly do. we have the best medical school so for those who can afford it we have excellent. for the public system it's not so good. for education cfsan way. we have the best colleges and universities and graduate schools in the world for those who can afford it truly is that the public system is behind. extremes of excellence do not work anywhere near as well. waiters of the fact is the first issue. the second one is complacency. our decline in performance did not happen overnight. we did not have a wish and suddenly the quality for education. we did not have to flip the switch in the quality of our health decline. everything has been gradual and so people don't notice about much. it that much. the other thing of horse is the fact that we are a wealthy country. people are not dying in the streets so they are not angry about the situation. complacency is the second issue. the third issue is our political system itself and that is why he mentioned a few things about democracy. our political system is less open to change than many other systems. an example of that type 2 inequality is the fact that statistical studies have shown that there is zero responsiveness of our national legislature to the needs of the people in the poorest third of social economic class while it's highly responsive to those in the top third. so our democratic system is a third barrier and the fourth one that we have to be aware of is the fact that many groups have profited from our current system. with you talk about health, education, safety, democracy or equality in those groups, they are going to do their best to defend the status quo. so for those who recognize that we have issues, for those who see that we also have the images, we have leading colleges, universities and graduate schools, leading hospitals, great innovation and tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurship but for those who see our competitive damages and want to use as competitive advantages at the same time you have to recognize that in order to take advantage of our competitiveness you have to at the same time fight the status quo and those who have benefited. those are four factors, barriers to change at those who want to implement change have to recognize. with that said i want to summarize by recognizing that the competitive intelligence shows a lot of things. it shows declining performance. shows areas where we can learn lessons from other countries but it also shows leading areas and i just mention them. leaving areas in terms of education at the tertiary level, the graduate school level, in terms of innovation in terms of our medical systems, our best hospitals are research and technology, our entrepreneurship. our strategy needs to be the leverage those competitive advantages will let the same time using the lessons learned to support our public system where we are not doing as well. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you howard for a thought-provoking fact-based set of comments. i have a broad range of questions here. i would like to start with a couple of questions on the measure of the exercise that you undertook for the book and then go to some specific questions about the topics he covered. why don't we start with this one? we all know why he ranks matter to companies. white is a rank matter to a country and what does it mean to a country? >> okay so first of all i have a -- that's a tremendous question. absolute values are important. the united states's life expectancy now a slightly higher than it was previously, so the overall value is getting better but ranks are important as it indicates where there are opportunities to improve. it will show you areas where you can get better. there is a worse many other factors you have to examine that it's a way of indicating where you have opportunities to leverage or potentially leverage information from other countries. so i used in that respect. the framework that i describe of using competition is a metaphor. at its core it's okay if we are not the best ranks is that as an opportunity for us to leverage information from other countries. >> you talked about a bit about averages versus distributions. how would the u.s. comparing exercise if a roman represented in the top one third of the wealthiest states? firstly by the bottom one third? >> i will answer that but at the same time the answer will be true for any single country. if you select the wealthiest component of any country in our comparison group, they will outperform the rest. there's a reason why that is not a fair comparison but without question asked, yes the wealthiest parts of the united states will do on average much better so there's a huge disparity in education. there's a huge disparity in life expectancy across the united states. some of it correlates with wealth and some other correlates with other factors. other things though such as our socioeconomic mobility and our democracy, and so it's irrelevant to that but in general comparing those who are the elite of one country to those that are the average of another are not unfair comparison and you will always end up quote unquote looking good. >> as an increasing number of nations joined -- for example tunisia, asia, turkey etc. do you foresee receiving more data for your models for similar future exercises to compare with the u.s. and which of these countries are on their price to be included in your comparison? >> i am certainly open to publishing a second book in five years provided we have sufficient sales of the first one. [laughter] >> i will give you a more complete answer. in terms of expanding it, seriously, it's a question of really making sure we have a reasonably fair comparison. there is a reason why the middle income countries weren't included. you listed indonesia, malaysia. there are gdp is much lower. it's a rough measure that indicates some of the wealth of the country and its ability to support these practices. it's also important to note that even the comparison i did not all countries were equal. the median gdp per capita of the united states is much higher than some of the countries included in some of the countries are reasonably well. countries like korea, they were developing countries only 30 years ago so they have made a fast rise whereas other countries like the netherlands and the u.k. have been wealthy for decades so they had more time to build their infrastructure. so the comparison really reflects a snapshot of today. if i did a snapshot 10 years from now you would have more countries in the club and i think it would be great to see what else we could learn from those new countries in the club. >> two questions on dimensions of comparison you did not mention. the first is about military strength. huertas military might factor into your ranking? >> so i didn't mention it in a talk. it's actually in the book. the military is a very complicated topic because when you talk about health or education, how one particular country approaches improving its system, doesn't dramatically impact another country. in the specific area of the military the united states's approach to how it treats its military and again its perception of itself in the world impacts to military expenditure of every other comparison country. our position in nato impacts the amount of investment that european countries make. vienna make makes a afar far higher investment. in fact we spend roughly half of the world's investment on the military in the united states. while we make that massive investment many of the western european countries are making less. at the same time if you look at south korea and japan we have tens of thousands of troops stationed there. the united states is spending significant amount of money to maintain those troops there and while we receive some compensation for those -- from those countries in return that does impact the military expenditures that those countries have to make so is the one area that i study in the book where actions by the united states directly impact those of other countries. >> in a second mention how does the countries measure compare on gender equality and doesn't correlate with the other issues? >> he so for gender equality is a very complicated topic because there is not one to mention. when you talk about gender equality that areas such as the economic component. the workforce participation as well as the percentage of salary ratio. in those areas the united states does reasonably well. you have some extreme countries. the asian countries tend to be off the charts negatively in terms of workforce participation and salary. you have exceptions like italy where for the women who work they generally make the same as men but overall the united states is reasonably well. plus you have the pertale -- political participation which is very relevant right now. the united states has a much lower representation of women in its national legislature than almost any other wealthy country. the asian countries tend to do -- be very low but if you look at the european countries they tend to have much higher rates than the united states. >> it question about trends pointing to time comparisons. how does the gdp per capita trend in the u.s. compare with our peers especially europe and canada? >> so i didn't look at the trends that much. i don't want to talk too much about this. i would rather mention the per capita as a measure to use as the selection criteria and they didn't mention the fact within the book that not all countries are equal. some are newly wealthy because they are somewhat disadvantaged but if we look at a global time period i didn't take snapshots over decades. cb do you have some specific questions on the areas regarding education, health care and political participation. >> on education if he could talk a little bit about the structural changes that may be needs to the educational systems that other commentators have talked about? for example that american school days are longer than the agrarian calendar? >> i can talk a little bit. i was reading articles that were saying that apparently, don't know if it's true and i'm not an expert on the agrarian calendar, but the first thing to talk about with regard to this length of the school year is this is a recommendation that has been coming up the national level since the 1980s. every president champions themselves as the education president. we have all seen these programs. each one includes a recommendation on lengthening the school year. there are a lot of advantages to that. mostly because for anyone here who has been a teacher it's a question of how much you forgot over the summertime. students are set back months so there's something to that, the sheer presence. now when you also look at other measures such as hours of education what you see is the united states seems to have much higher hours but they are not necessarily active hours. so you have to be careful about keeping that data and not over reinterpreting it. >> a question about health care statistics. you talked about life expectancy in particular. are there other health care systems that you have studied that would go through those? >> i talk about life expectancy because to me that is a snapshot and it's not a particularly powerful statistic but we come off looking quite poorly. the other metrics that i looked at in the book start by looking at life. infant mortality, where we do quite poorly. we have the highest rate of infant mortality but as you talk about and mortality you have the process of giving birth where once again we have the highest rate of return on mortality ratio and you start looking beyond that. but mortality could be prevented by the health care system where once again we have the highest rate in effect when you start going piece by piece through it, then look at things such as noncommunicable disease but -- martin mortality and communicable disease and for each one of these we tend to do poorly. non-communicable diseases as let's dominates in all wealthy countries and would do poorly there. injuries who do poorly. that is a small factor. most of the mortality is related to noncommunicable to diseases and that is where we really do poorly. >> and observation and then a question. on voting participation, there is an observation that australia among other countries has a penalty if you do not let. can you talk generally about political participation and? >> it's a terrific question there. there are a couple of countries that do have what is called mandatory participation rules. belgium has one, australia has one. i'm not a proponent of them but they do work. carrots and sticks in this case it's pretty hard stick. if you don't show up to the voting polls then you get a fine. i don't think that is a solution that would work in the united states. as americans we do believe that not voting is still a choice and so in the recommendations that i'm make in the book, i very much tried to distinguish practices that are implementable in the united states and practices that just won't work herein to me that as a practice that may work in other countries. it was more universal previously. other countries used to have and have eliminated and it just doesn't fit our mentality. >> a follow-up question to the question on military might. are the large u.s. military expenditures part of the reason we are falling behind? >> that is a loaded question. [laughter] i mean realistically you have to look at it from the perspective of have a finite budget and make choices about how you spend it. i would say an area of education and this is going to disappoint a lot of people, we spend more in education than any other wealthy country. we are just not spending it well so education is restructuring how we spend it. for military expenditures that is certainly related to some of our inequality factors but for the military it's not just how much you're spending but it's how you are spending it. in the military there is a rampant amount of no-bid contracts occurring and there is not justification for that. no-bid contracts are an indication to get ripped off. everybody knows that. the other thing to note about the military is a rampant use of contractors in general. when you spend as much as we do there is no reason why our military can't see itself on the supply lines in the last thing with the military that is reflect -- worth reflecting on is we made a decision going back in the last 10 years to fund wars by pretending we are not funding them. in the history of the united states we have always implemented a tax to pay for wars and that tax served a purpose. it raised people's consciousness. even if you weren't fighting and even if you didn't have a family member fighting there was something going on overseas. in the last 10 years we did something very different. we implemented war and to tax cuts and that i think is a fundamental issue. not only in how we approach balancing our federal budget but at the same time and we how we think about our military or in this case perhaps don't think about our military. >> are you ready for another loaded question? the financial health care -- are never health care -- [inaudible] what do you think? >> i think that there are opportunities that we have to face but i don't think bankrupting our government isn't altruistic. the first thing you have to realize is when you print the money you can't get that. is a fundamental fact that actually happen so those who think that you run out of money, they are really kind of playing a scare tactic with you but let's move let's move on furthed asked the question of how do you control its? that's the more fundamental question. and controlling expenses that is where you have to raise the fact that you have a situation where not only does supply, demand exceeds supply but you also have very different health system in the united states and other wealthy countries and what they mean by that is another wealthy countries basic health care is considered a right. here at the consulates around because the universal declaration on human rights which was signed by the united states includes a statement on the right to basic health. that perspective is very different in america versus other countries and is our for-profit health care system that is driving our expenses so much higher for health than other systems. the for-profit health system is not going away. once again that is my fourth . the barriers that change. that will stay as part of american it's not going to change but it's a question of how he can we can work within that system to have far more cost efficient and effective system and i will give you one quick example. recommendations were put out not too long ago to reduce the use of mammograms and to reduce the use of the screening test. by? because it turns out they are not very accurate and they are not cost-effective. what we need to see is the nation is do we actually implement them or keep doing the testing because doctors like if they make money and patience like it because they feel better and ensure they can keep raising your premiums. that is the choice is a country we have to decide. do we follow cost-effective measures are contained down this road of exploding health care costs? health care costs? we have control of making some of these decisions. >> what other countries in your research have similarly high levels of inequality? >> in terms of inequality we do have the highest. there is the tendency for english system countries to have higher inequality. the u.k. has a higher level than other countries such as germany or italy. it's important to note that inequality, inequality of opportunity is not measured as universally as income inequality. income inequality is measured in all groups with this socioeconomic mobility, you only have the simple countries because it requires a lot more study and data. overall there's a tendency that countries that can trade themselves back in the u.k. tend to have higher levels of inequality than countries that came from other cultural backgrounds. >> final question on a similar topic. how can america improve civic education to drive political participation? >> that is a tremendous question. i think that we have seen in the past if you look at the history of the united states, here you are targeting the question of voter participation and we have seen voter drives in the past and they are usually driven by a reaction to something. a huge growth of voter drive going on the 60's as a reaction to recognition on the recognition of issues with civil rights. voter drives happened during the progressive era as a reaction to the high levels of income inequality. i expected and perhaps i was wrong, i expected there to be a strong drive in this upcoming election for people to get out and have a point and make sure that they are voting because the reality is those count. even with all the flaws that i mentioned about our system your vote does count and people who recognize that and you recognize the candidates to represent different points of view, i suspect and i do hope to see passion on the streets and passion on the streets can take different political forms with that as people from tea parties, occupy wall street. either way its passion, people trying to have a vote so there's a sense that people can get involved eyes should -- i suggest they do. >> shifting gears to a question about recommendation to have for addressing the challenges. what are the areas where the u.s. can improve significantly with -- what would you address first? >> my recommendations all started from the data itself and it's important to kind of reflect on the process i went through and then we can talk about a few of the actual implementable once. the process that i followed with starting with with the data identifying leading countries and lagging countries and from the leading countries what are the practices they are implementing that allow them to leave? in terms of what to implement first, the reality is changes to our democracy probably will take a while and we have to reflect on that fact. moving to proportional representation, it takes one single federal law. revising our electoral college. it takes to change the constitution. that's probably not going to happen anytime soon. by the same token states choosing to allocate a lector at using representation could happen but it takes a very old state to do that because they lose some power so i think the democracy changes will take a while. the educational changes, they are going to take some time too because they require us to make conscious choices. the one that i think really can be implemented in the short-term are the ones related to health because we have an opportunity. the doors open to having a much better health system and so we have to recognize that while changes that are opening that door have a longer life expectancy, the other half of the return on investment equation we have to make constitutions by controlling the costs. the flipside of the coin, the responsibility of health is not just on the system. it's on americans themselves. we have an obesity rate that exceeds 30%. some of the compared of countries have low single digits and what is the difference? we consume approximately 1000 calories more than many other wealthy countries. that is more than a big a day plus. what does that mean? that means our health system needs to make changes that we americans need to make changes too and that is a change that is amenable and amenable and it can become. the other thing is going i was going to mention in the equality section, which there are a lot of factors that drive the quality. some of them are from corporate governance standards and norms in some of them are driven by tax clause. if as a nation we want to drive to an area where we have less inequality, that's nothing more than the ability to us to drive changes in legislation. how to changes in legislation have been? by changing the legislators. >> what are examples of other countries that have made significant positive changes in in the areas you have studied and what did you learn in the process of me can is changes? >> there are so many aspects that were covered in this and so are hats we will talk about just one or two types and you will hear about how they went about it. in california of course you're exposed to -- the three strike law was implemented in roughly half the states in the united states. in fact there were three laws that were implemented in the 80's and 90s that drove an explosion in incarceration rates increase by a factor for because the criminalization of drugs. the three strikes laws and the third one which i cannot remember right now. we'll come back to it later. what was that? thank you so much. mandatory sentencing. we have those three factors. specifically canada identified the three strike law results in extremely long sentences for people who are committing petty crimes. so they have revised that loss decades ago. they learned a lesson and they revised it and that is an example of a country learning from practices. another practice that was implemented within the u.k. with where they banned handguns and what do we see? we see far lower homicide rates in the u.k. than in the united states and that is something for people to pay attention to. there was a time where people understood the second amendment to the constitution allows you to bear arms with the protection of public. there is a phrase in there about the militia. you can't lose that phrase because it doesn't mean i can build a weapon in my backyard and i can walk around with a machine gun right in the middle of times square. we have to realize there is a control and a natural limitation in arms which exists in other countries and regardless of our second amendment still has to exist here. it's not just the words that you like. >> what ayres solutions, political cultural or otherwise for narrowing inequality? >> inequality is a very complicated topic because it impacts all of the other areas. it impacts health with a large disparity in life expectancy. impacts educational opportunities and impacts democracy. impacts every aspect. in terms of creating a situation where we have a high degree of equality you have to differ to two things. firsters corporate governance. there was the time when the ceo to worker ratio was much lower in the united states and it is now. in fact it used to be one in 10. what happened? part of it is society decided it's okay for ceos to make so much mind that is the decision by society. shareholders have to enforce the idea of having a voice. in other countries such as germany they have co-chairman boards. worker said on the poor. shareholders have a stronger fod so you have a situation of the income itself. there is a voice to be set in that as well as at the bottom perk on minimum wages far lower as a percentage of gdp than other wealthy countries. someone who works minimum wage in the united states will make roughly one third per capita. that is a far far lower rate than in other countries. at the same time, our tax system controls what you get to keep and we have made a lot of changes to our tax laws over time. regardless of however political spectrum you come from no one can come up with the logical justification for why a hedge fund manager who makes millions of dollars pays 15% in taxes while the rest of the people sitting in this room pay far more. there is a logical justification for it and it's just wrong. these are just basic things. there is far greater approaches but at its core if you want to attempt to account for income inequality you have to work on where the income comes from, that is looking at the minimum wage as well as looking at the maximum wages and as well as looking at your tax system and your social benefits. if you have to take the complete package and examined it. >> if you were to wave a magic wand and pass a federal law, what are your predictions or takeaways in which the political landscape -- [inaudible] >> the proportion of representation i'm referring to is the house of representatives. it can be in the senate as well but it won't impact us. the house of representatives what you see is first used the third parties. you see the end of gerrymandering because it doesn't mean anything anymore. would force more cooperation simply because you have to deal with the people from the other side. it will also reduce the amount of extremists. if you have all of those benefits that is the reality of moving to proportion of representation. it also has a side benefit which is most like he the percentage of legislators who are women will increase. most experts and democracy identified the united states has such a low representation because of some of the ratifications of the winner-take-all election and in proportion to representation where you use party list you have a far more like a chance of having female representatives. >> based on your research which country would you most like to live in? [laughter] >> i would like to live in the united states of america. but i want the united states of america to be the greatest country 50 years from now and 100 years from now and that is the important thing. some people, they take a negative spin on this but. they look at and they say well this is america bashing is not america bashing. at finding ways to identify opportunities for improvement in america so we can become a greater society because i'm trying to look at it from the broader prospective perspective. i'm not talking about what life is going to be like in america six months from now because these changes take time. i want to know one, two, three generations now we live in a world which does have a high degree of socioeconomic mobility, in a world where we have health for everyone not just everyone who can afford it and we have educational opportunities for everyone not just those who can afford it and to me that is the most critical factor. >> building on that order the biggest drinks america has two draw from and address these issues? >> this is the competitive advantage. where does the united states xl? you have heard a lot of negatives and i know you did that there are positives was well. we have colleges and universities and we drop the top students in the world to come here. they come for our universities and they come for our graduates. they come because of the opportunity. they come for the opportunities for entrepreneurship. if some of the lowest barriers to creating the business of any wealthy country. what we need to do is we need to use those competitive advantages, drop the top talents and give them an environment that encourages them to stay. also built a home here that is great for everybody. so we take those competitive advantages and when we talk about health there's a reason why people who are world leaders come to the united states for that risky surgery. they trust us in and having those great hospitals. another example of as having the best -- [inaudible] >> and a final question and they will have to close out. would you be willing to start a political party that would make the u.s. number one? you have at least one audience member who said they would support you. [laughter] >> i see that will just pass on that question. thank you very much. [applause] >> it is trying to get fair answers out of him and that is how i approach my job. i'm not looking to catch -- when jay carney gives the press brief i am not necessarily catching him in a not is -- that is not what you said the other day. >> more with juliana goldman sunday at 8:00 on c-span's q&a. >> it group of law professors recently talked about the concept of racial biases and area types that exist in the law. they discuss topics including tax policy, intellectual property law, native americans in health care. the form was part of the law to loss was both entitled and quiz it racial bias across the law. from harvard law school, it's 45 minutes. >> welcome back everyone to the book conference. i am just in ludington. i will be introducing today our panel chair and moderator. our panel chair today is quite unique scholar. she is one of the few social psychologists who is employed at a law school. .. harm one. >> and did bide justin and robert smith published by cambridge university press. our final speaker relates to his recent book. thank you for being here and accord to our panel list presentation and discussion for about i will handed over to dorothy brown. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. >> very good. i've only speaking 10 minutes but i am talking about tax macbook chapter is about stereotyped and earned income tax the bias was interesting. who has filled out a tax return? who has checked the box andres? nobody. there is no box. if the lawmakers says i have no intention you can say lacked the black president because candidates have disclosed tax returns. this is a you can find out. it is fascinating. the book chapter talk about the earned income tax credit for the working poor dependent on how many children, 15,000 down through no return children eic phases out. low income, at working taxpayer credit designed to read borat -- reverse the federal income-tax and so security withheld. created in the '70s from president ford as a temporary measure to encourage work and taxpayers to not pay a penalty and getting afdc payments. this house like a great idea of. 27 million working families to be until june 2009. 6.3 million lifted out of poverty as a result in 2010. unique feature is it is a refundable credit of the credit is greater than the liability, you get a check compensating for security taxes. about two-thirds compensate taxpayers. 1/3 get to over and above that makes it operate as the minimum-wage add-on. people see it as a good program however a 25 through 30 percent error rate with those dollars that were spent a better paid out in error. why is that? two competing explanations. some are just tax cheats. but people tried to games this system. it is a complicated credit and they make mistakes. what are the datapoint? to talk about a series of facts, the irs booklet is over 50 pages long and has said several computations and the gao did a study it tax return prepares and taxpayers doing their own and the irs and 55th 55th -- earned income tax credit every level was significant mistakes. number three, 60% of all taxpayers go to tax prepares but 72% of earned income tax credit go. when i see that is complicated would is complicated. for every dollar of income that you learn you get a percentage of eitc. at some point* you hit a ceiling. then you get no more additional credit. then the other point* as the income increases your credit declines for every additional dollar that you learn. that is complicated. ahoy is complicated program. looking at the error rate it ignores those who are eligible but do not apply. i would argue that is part of the error rate. congress looks at the air reach. in the mid-90s with a child tax credit there is a discussion how it operate with earned income tax credit. many republican members said we don't want them getting more from the child tax credit because they are literally getting welfare. suddenly working taxpayers were branded as the welfare. there battling with president clinton and the good deal to save it that president clinton said i will allocate $1 billion for audit and crack down on and earned income tax credit to save the program. they are the equivalent of the welfare cheats. we just need to audit the rican reduce the air raids. of around the same time the irs was under heat how they were treating middle-class taxpayers. congress a radically cut back the ability to audit. the late 1990's the only taxpayers who were audited were earned income tax credit. one could easily see a 25% error rate as being bad but there is a tax gaap the amount of money the irs does not collect because people cheat. about $300 billion. list of 1% is attributable to the earned income tax credit. go with the many is auditing eitc will not fix the tax gap. congress when the audit route to versus simplification who they believed that eitc claimants were and the rhetoric around welfare's tells us. fast forward 10 years. the error rate to barely budged. the problem is not with the cheating but the complexity. what haskins congressional inaction? if you look at who the claimants are, 50 percent of whites, and likelihood because they make up the majority of the claimants. slough to target the vase the taxpayer that was one group. another problem of not simplifying the mentioned how they use tax return impairs at a higher percent also refund anticipation loans at a higher%. 63% go to the eitc taxpayers. they have extremely high fees. so that extra money goes to the tax preparers and refund anticipation loans. focusing on fraud and not simplification mrs. the tax cheat. thing kmt sheet -- thinking who contributes is small businesses dealing with cash. they are hard-working taxpayers we don't want to be intrusive. producing energy of low income tax payers congress as drop the ball. high-income hundred tools, corporations, and the number of players that pay less they and their fair share. i just want to conclude with the earned income tax credit focusing on reducing the error rate that congress never intended to harm and taken their eyes off of the real problem and finally, it has since allowed for simplification to occur when low income tax payers have to give money to prepares it refund anticipation loan the earned income tax credit is not working. it should teach us something. [applause] >> thank you for that presentation. thank you for pulling this together to write such a provocative and peace of four. i am thankful to harvard law school and the charles hamilton institute. also those who served on our panel to help us understand the complex issues we just heard about the tax route. i will try to demystify intellectual and property law. i will give you some examples and to bring it home. people think intellectual property is it objective and rational discipline that has to tinge toward gender or race bias. i her but -- propose it is a beer. where do we get our intellectual property law? article one sexual eight clause eight which is the patent copyright laws. when the constitution was considered imagine where they were at the time many where slaveholders the constitution delivered the patent and copyright laws that is a flawed in drafting then i will jump into why i believe implicit bias operates in this round of article one section eight clause eight to promote science and art for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to to their respective writings and discoveries. >> think what the framers trying to do. trying to reward monopolies but the constitution you have to ask who were they intending to reward blacks it was not the slaves are the blacks but the white slave owners. professor has an excellent example in the discovery of a better technique to plow. who did that? not the slave boehner. the slave came up with the invention to make his work easier. did he get the benefit of the reward? no. the master said these people are not worthy of being called inventors. they do not have that spirit and not real people. the slave owner has the right to claim ownership. fantasy origin of the patent copyright clause and then introduce you how that has pervaded the clause particularly the copyright act and we have another built-in bias that copyright law should prevail over those who want to capitalize the reason nih shows these is because an american culture we have reverence for the copyright act or creators of knowledge we want to reward them with that benefit who are they writing about? often about the attar women, people of color those who recently understood they are in viewed with the right of publicity you will no time and again it prevails in preamps publicity. you may think that is action. look at context. many holders are institutional copyright holders. and music companies, media companies, publishing companies that they have created another is publicity. in the chapter i look at it the vanna white case hell of white woman could be reduced to a level of illegitimacy because of her job she sued samsung because they developed a robot with a blond wig and spoofed her and did not ask her permission. all those she eventually prevailed at trial, but the judge wrote a scathing dissent in. he agreed to stir. -- her if you dress up a monkey you could do her job. . . freedom of expression. and against a right of publicity. so let me give you a little more contact about the institutional copyright holder versus the right of publicity holder. in our society, culture is defined by the images that we see. we define who we are. we define what we believe many times by what we see in the media. many times by what we see in the media. many times by what we see in the media. is given base position of supremacy over the right of publicity holder, often times but that creates is a scenario where the superior has added benefit over others who have been particularly disenfranchised. so most of these cases you will see granted right of publicity are coming from when men, are coming from african-american because they are trying out the last straw to grasp what is most important in today's society. and that is the economic value of information that informs culture, being able to define oneself and one's identity is what we have left in our economic toolkit. so an intellectual-property life come it is important to begin to flesh out biased because this has economic implications. so to also provide you more context, what is it about the intellectual property regime that we should be challenging? we should be challenging this regime that says intellectual property law has no implicit bias in it. we should be challenging the intellectual property law is and object to and dispassionate and nurture all. we should be bringing to bear what we understand about implicit bias in this very important arena where we define culture and we actually bring an economic value to those information assets that we think is most important. i also want to give you another case example to show you how implicit operating in intellectual property. i don't know if many of you have any familiarity with paris celebrities. paris celebrities are those vc on boxes of cereal sometimes or on product. well, there is a case about to celebrities that came about at the same time. one featured a pair a celebrity who an african-american woman and the other featured russell kristof, a white male. russell kristof was signed at the folgers copycat. i don't know if you remember him. and cheered tony chi black woman was signed l'oreal perm products. so these cases, going through their prospective trial show how jurors react to it to those plaintiffs. june tony, her case initially dismissed on summary judgment. russell kristof on the other hand to receive $15.6 million for his claim a violation of his right of publicity. and let me just tell you what the court said in some of that case language. the court says, here is a gentleman who is revered. he is no longer a model. he is a kindergarten teacher, but he has a face that is very idealistic. and so, we have to protect this person then manage. we have to protect the fact that he has a persona that is able to call reference. well, interestingly enough, with russell kristof, it seemed like what the court was most concerned about what is that his picture was put on folgers jars in south america, they darkened faces. and the court and the jury found that rather objectionable. so i think i had a lot to do with this $15.6 million to three. not a trial is under review, but i give those to you as examples of how implicit biases operate and what otherwise would be considered rational objective, dispassionate and raised nurture old jurisprudence. thank you. [applause] >> hello, everyone. susan and i would like to echo professor conway thanks to the book editors, harvard law school, charles hamilton institute and this morning's panelists were giving us the opportunity to participate in this exciting and amazing dialogue and to share our thoughts with you. we are both new moms so if we break out into song, please excuse us. that is our daily work. the main proposition of our chapter is that implicit bias against native people, specifically a sovereign advances continuing dispossession of native land, native resources and self-governing authority in much the same way that explicit bias is the initial dispossession of those things. and while we are at an implicit ice conference comments professor lawrence noted this morning, part of addressing implicit bias is to provide necessary contacts to the contemporary problem is to make the implicit and explicit in the present and harass them and this involves shining a light on the direct line between historic highs against native peoples and native peoples current struggle to repatriate banned, resource and self-governing authority. so susan has uncovered a few images that depict historic explicit bias against native peoples generally and native hawaiians specifically. i'm going to turn the floor over to her for a moment and introduces images. >> first, 1804. the death of jane macrae by jon vanderlinden. savage, violent, cruel. 1869, harper's magazine, a school for savage's day again, we want big hockey. uneducated, ignorant, inferior. in 1893, this is mmh of the last reigning queen. primitive, subhuman, and native american control and altogether they show that native people are incapable of self-government. >> this domenick comics with the stereotype of native people in the flats was originally produced for three main steps. the first was to racialized native people in order to diminish their political identity. second, to attribute negative characteristics to native people in the group capacity rather than individual capacity. and third, to conjure legitimacy for these negative attributions by injecting them into law and legal discourse. if you'll indulge me, and like to go through each of those individually. this idea of race, first of all. in many forms to take for granted the idea that discrimination against men as people is bias without acknowledging the assignment of a racial identity to native people would save political maneuver. what i mean is that the time the united states formed, the united states is a government had a much less legitimate claim to the land and resources here are existing in the same territory. so in order to justify the united states, they have to shift what is essentially a political pickle question, whether one's one's one sovereign can unilaterally dispossessing other sovereign of all of its governing authority and resources and recast as a racial question of whether these purportedly superior european americans controlling the united states government had a more legitimate claim to land and resources and governing authority than the preexisting native government. professor newberger causes the basic racist move-up work in indian law and i think it is significant to note that when we are talking about issues being faced by native communities in contemporary times that the idea that native communities are very significant, deliberate framework of thinking about depoliticize his native people and turns them into a race rather than political entities. the second is the idea of bias against the group versus bias against individual. now in order to advance this idea of dispossessing native governments at their land and resources, the united states government had to attempt to assimilate the individuals. for that reason, you can't have raised operating in much the same way that it operates with other groups because you want to have the notion that people can be functioning members of the dominant society. you want to disband the political entities. saw the bias is really focused at native societies as political groups as opposed to native people as individuals. this is not to suggest there wasn't any racial bias native people as individuals. this is just to suggest that the dominant discourse is really about native peoples functioning of government and as groups. and then the idea of conjuring legitimacy for those biases and mom. professor robert williams junior an assault occurred guarded civilized society can engage in the court destroyed another people for very long without appealing to revered legal discourse to justify that. so we see that in the early jurisprudence and the united states law and legal discourse being used as forcible tools for farming and advancing the dominant negative stereotype that you see in these images. for instance, foundational u.s. supreme court cases that articulated the federal government purported rights to control native land to land to be able describe native as savages whose occupation was war and called them remnants of a race less powerful, now we can diminish to members. in shining those depictions and how the supreme court opinions, legitimated those ideas for subsequent generations of americans to accept as given the notion that native people comprise a week and unsophisticated racial group as well as the belief that the united states has a right and duty to control and to take care of those groups. now, susan will discuss a little bit how that historical bias manifests in the present time. >> today, such explicit characterization that someone was talking about are rare. but the stereotypes are alive and well and are still harmful. using various measures, social sciences have documented the existence of this no implicit bias against canadian aboriginals, native american and native hawaiians. there's actually only one study i know of a native hawaiian suggest a mother hinted that one. i don't have enough time to disguise on the studies, but the four or five that we did find confirmed what we already know, that implicit bias against native peoples is real and pervasive. it occurs in various social contacts and it influences our thinking and our behavior towards native groups. specifically, the empirical studies show that today the native people were flagged at least three of the underlying racist assumptions, the under lying describes. first, native people are less american than white or more foreign. so when that study, ironically, people more easily associated americans with white van with native. fatcat, native peoples are aggressive in the criminal law context, which is reminiscent of the savage or violent native person. in that study, people more easily remembered our misremembered aggressiveness by the native hawaiian person in different factual scenarios involving confrontation. and the last native people are nonacademic and in need of benevolent assistance. in other words, ignorant. there's two studies that we found and does show that in partnership or in group settings, native americans and canadian aboriginals were viewed as preferring nonacademic tasks rather than academic ones or they were in need of benevolent assistance on intelligence or academic tests. so as someone mentioned, these assumptions have deep, deep roots in u.s. law and legal discourse. for native societies and as you said kim described as pure savages in the state at pupil age. what is important here as the accomplice and biases about native people have the relationships that native people have put the federal, state and local governments. and this is seen in legislation that the authority of native people to govern as seen in case opinions, modern-day case opinions that challenge the ability of native people to govern responsibly. and i don't have time. we have examples in our chapter. i don't have time to get them now, bur perhaps at the end will have time to explain some of those. so indeed these lasting racist assumptions manifesting now as implicit by an notion that native people today are incapable of self-governance and they justify continuing acts of dispossession and deprivation against them. so what are some of the things that we can start looking not to address this? in our chapter, we contend that eliminating bias against native people, the sideburns is an integral part of a larger project of repatriation of land, resources, of governing authority to native people. and very briefly, we urge researchers, social scientists to investigate a broader range of stereotypes against native people and the behavioral consequences of implicit bias against them. we explored devising techniques suggested by social scientist that are appropriate for this legal and cultural context and we argue that attempts to lessen or eliminate implicit bias against native people must take into account the historical, cultural, social roots of this bias in a messy to change the structures, the legal, political and otherwise does serve to maintain these biases. thank you. [applause] >> hi, everyone. my name is deana pollard sacks. i am very grateful to be here in honor to be a part of this group of scholars and i have for a special thanks to c-span for bringing us from the academic real to the public. my presentation today is entitled delusions of the mind and twisted behavior. implicit bias is delusional thoughts. it's untrue ideas about people within the mind that manifest in unfair behavior. the word itself means twisted. it comes from the latin root may twisted. antisocial behavior can result from implicit bias and as result of implicit bias every minute of every day in our society. i decided to hunting today on a true example of implicit bias that tap into some money who i know very well in the legal academy. i'm going to call him rico and hopefully no one will know who i'm talking about because the last thing i want to do as i argue here is invade my friends privacy. we go is a strikingly attractive mexican-american man. he is the epitome of hispanic good looks. he's tall, dark and handsome. rico graduated from other top law schools in the country, law school at harvard and decided he wanted to become a law professor. so even in the market and gave a presentation at a law school and did a very good job from what i hear. i was not there. but when they open discussions about him coming about the women objected to hiring him to the women said that it made them feel uncomfortable. they said that he seemed conceded and the word womanizer was raised to the married man and his children and the conceded thing i found this fascinating because i was looking into stereotypes as part of my book chapter and came across an article that said the number one stereotype applied to attractive people as they are conceded. i would've guessed that they are substandard. i have a lot of really attracted friends and they are the least selfish people i know. and when to give us a story that you know why? and may be because people expect them to be conceited and treat them with hostility and they end up with low self-esteem. putting that aside, i can play point-blank, rico is not conceded. he is one of the nicest people i've ever known and hispanic resource of great source of support for me personally. when talking about what happened to rico, i'm going to focus on three questions. one is causation question. how does this happen? added a nice guide to characterize in a way so untrue? second question is normative. should we as tort law as a way of addressing or should we leave it to public discourse and private discourse? the third is a practical question. if we accept what liability as a means of addressing this problem, how do we do that? to the first question, how did the stereotypes about hispanic men late to rico's rejection is a law professor? and before you get too sad, joée he did end up getting a job in the legal academy in part because someone brought the fact that they thought he was being stereotyped. back to the question, why did women not like him? what did he do, what did he say? when pressed, the women had no answer. but most of us are where hispanic male stereotypes conjure up machismo, sultry, chauvinistic. this is where i think it came from. ricoh doesn't have these characteristics, but because his hispanic good looks are so salient, i think it just brought in the flood of assumptions about what kind of person he has come even though they didn't match the content of this carrot or at all. i think it happens all the time and i think his biggest crime was showing up cute and hispanic. and now a solid tip for the series types to come flooding in and to be rejected as a candidate despite being a fabulous candidate. so the next question is the normative one. do we want tort liability as a way of addressing this problem? a tort is an act of civil wrongdoing. towards this wrongful behavior come antisocial behavior, behavior we want to stop and reverse behavior is aware too fair, just and honorable behavior. tort liability as a barometer of civil expectations. if we fall below that, we can be liable, student pay damages. toward behavior is bad because it hurts individuals, but also her societies at large. this is why we have punitive damages, to make sure that it goes beyond individual lawsuits and goes out to society and deters others because thoughts are about damages. candidate damages are the greatest amount of damage and loss. procter and keaton referred to tort law as a battleground of social theory. scholars agree that tort liability is extremely flexible and their response to social problems. now since the mid-19th century our country, starting with brown v. tandem, we have revolved her liability generally about principle of salt. you must prove someone did something intentionally or at least negligently to pin them with reliability. but that is about change. in the mid-20th century, we as a society decided it was so important to prove fall. it's more important to make sure we have good social policy and ensure compensation to victims. we have always begun to depart from the principle over the years and it's happening more and more. a number of cords and i discussed this in my chapter house gathered from the idea of a duty of care. they say we say behaviors are wrong that we can't tolerate it. we're going to go ahead and bypass the duty issuers say there is a duty when there really wasn't one. a quick example was the first case out of california and 83 were a bartender just refuse to allow a non-pitcher in two use the phone to make a 9-1-1 call. in other non-patient has been beaten dudas outside of the bar and the bartender said i'm not letting you use my phone. i'm not sure he used those words, but that was the idea. and according california said we don't care. what he did was so wrong as so antisocial of the man died. he was beaten to death, possibly because the bartender would not let his non-teacher and make a free call. so the courts start to see that we need to watch what we do a tort law and order to make sure we are continuing to construct the kind of society we want. the turn of the 21st century is issuing the last expression, law regulating function, tool of social engineering. again, this is the way of looking at tort liability differently. not so much based on file, that based on the idea that when people understand that something is wrong, and may influence the way they behave and may change their norms. my favorite example is a lot in sweden. in 1979, sweden was the first country in the world to ban parental spanking in the privacy of one's home. the speeds are pretty upset at the beginning, but after time, they accepted and i wouldn't have any other way. though i had no penalties come in a civil penalties, but it works because it got people to think about it and just thinking about it and talking about a change the law, change the way people behave without any penalties. so this brings us to the last question. assuming we believe tort liability is where addressing this issue, how do we do it? implicit bias can have more than an unspoken.. so the only way we can do this is to use a predicate toward and if we can show implicit bias cause that tort, allow enhanced remedies in some way. so one example might be again not so much about fall, not so much punishment, but about exposing the seriousness of this problem by making big damage awards that will catch media's attention and spark public discourse. get people thinking, get people talking, get people to say this is not to do about nothing. implicit bias causes serious injury to people, lots of job opportunities, loss of life sometimes. so there's a very serious issue that needs to be taken seriously. now the other thing that i thought my work is applicable that cities. in ricoh's example, for example, i think what happened there as the hiring process in law school is so subjective and often arbitrary. we don't have samples. we don't have forms to fill out. there is this blind vote and that is ubiquitous in our academy, which i disagree with. would you do things in a subjective matter that's exactly where it comes into play. where he is more objective means, forces people to think through why they vote the way they are. so in a situation like that, if ricoh were to bring a claim, maybe a court could fashion a remedy that's how the law school how you must hire, you must look at people's academic backgrounds. you must review their scholarship records and create some kind of quantitative analysis of why you're hiring who you are hiring. that is one way of possibly dealing with bias in making sure these the solution to my mind is based on a persons physical exterior don't end up costing a person a lifetime of job security and millions of dollars because that is what the position is. am multimillion dollar contract, light and the security. and so i think realistically, tort law could be used with conscious buyers. it is unfair. it's ubiquitous. very few people know about it. and if we did a loud sound liability to provide remedies to the vet and can also start debates and get people thinking about and talking about it and possibly lead us to a more fair society for everyone. thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon, my fellow humans. it is a pleasure to be able to participate in this milestone conference and i too am grateful to all of the organizers and consumers and developers and i and i very much appreciate the privilege. i have learned a great deal and appreciate the opportunity to be involved in the dialogue. my assignment essentially was implicit racial bias across the lot as relates to madison and i thought a bit about it and came up with a slightly different topic, but the same content i would say. but the doctors hidden brain come in the patients neglected pain, what can we do about it. i'm going to try to cover those three items as we go forward. some months back i was asked to present a dr. martin luther king lecture at a hospital in northern massachusetts and is trying to make a more interesting. and i was trying to be a little key with it, so i said why do we say what would dr. martin luther king lancaster know about health care? and so that is what i did and i ran across a quote after doing that and i hadn't seen the quote before, but here it is. of all the forms of inequality, injustice and how does the most shocking and inhumane. we all know dr. king was a very wise man, very insightful man. why do you think you said that? i mean, we've been talking for days here, the last two days about all of the unjust essays. why is injustice in health care the most shocking and inhumane? well, what we think about it a little bit. when are we most vulnerable? when we must write and? when are we most insecure? when we have to speak another language or understand another language and even moreover, we may go to a stranger to get the help. so it is a bad place to be and it is a very inhumane reality. this is sort of the proof, a book written 2002, unequal treatment. and just to clear the attack, i think this pretty irrefutably documents all kinds of health inequities. and it is quite pervasive. i'll do a quick review of it. first of all, these studies reviewed about 600 peer-reviewed articles in the literature that demonstrated and documented disparity in health care. and it describes all the different individuals who are at risk. ever going to look at that. but these studies were done with excellent controls. socioeconomic status is controlled. insurance was controlled. stages of disease and comorbidities were all controlled and yet these inequities are well-documented. so it turns out there's roughly 13 groups of people that experience health care disparities. so it turns out there's roughly 13 groups of people that experience health care disparities. so it turns out there's roughly 13 groups of people that experience health care disparities. evacuation for comic asian-americans, all daily,,, and transsexuals. latinos, native americans, obese people, people living with disabilities, some religious groups, women and not just minority women. now, please raise your hand if you are not in any of these groups and you don't know buddy who is that you care about. okay. so let's look at some of the specific situations. again, 600 in the literature come up just few. africans americans receive fewer kidney and liver transplants. if their diabetes there are likely to have amputation. with prostate cancer they're more likely than others to have castrations as a treatment. among all women as compared with men, they receive fewer joint replacement, less medications following heart attack and defend it emt services don't get women to the hospital with heart problems as rapidly as men. and this kind of summarizes it actually. they say give it to me straight, dock. tommy was wrong. he says well, you're not a white male. so this is a way to look at some of these things. now a teen as mention. i saved it now because we talked about the patients neglected pains. so this is a steady that shows that less pain medication for major fractures and latino males in southern california. the study was done some years back. major long bone fractures, these bones, thigh bone, the bone between the knee, those are long bone fractures and it shows that latino males going to the emergency room in a major southern california medical center received 50% less likely narcotic medication for their long bone fracture and we know that fractures are not psychological. you can't fake them very well and it's easy to diagnose. is that a controversial diagnosis and they are painful la salle. and these individuals presenting in the emergency room, 50% less likely chance of getting a comic pain medications for fresh long bone fracture in parenthesis shows parking that it was repeated in atlanta, this time looking at african-american in the exact same study and the same results were found. so, this has been covered i think in a lot of ways, but it was just like to share with you it talks about the inertia of racism. we talked about it a social event, lots of ways to look at it. but this is a racial iceberg. an iceberg is 9% below the surface, 10% above and above the surface of things we been talking about for the most part today, the encounters and difficulties. but this iceberg is in a sea of history. and it is really helpful to me to get a feeling, an understanding of this inertia, this environmental racism. and it depends on the fact that amnesty of history, this racial iceberg is supportive. it has its inertia and the fact that is due to an rear projected still by slavery, but jim crow, by colonialism, but the civil war itself, japanese internment, immigration, lynchings, chinese and terminate, the monroe.come in the mexican-american war, all these historical events are not just an history book in the past, but they affect our day-to-day activities engaged a reality is. and this is from a book that i will suggest to you, but i would like to share with you this definition of race. race is a doing, he dynamics that have historically derived and institutionalized ideas and product says that forces people into at the groups according to perceived critical behavior human characteristics often imagined to be negative, inmates and shared. associates differential value, power and privilege that these characteristics, establishes a hierarchy among the different groups and confers opportunities accordingly. now isn't that what we've all been talking about all day in various different iterations, various different places, but all those dynamics are quite realistic and i think this is a very powerful definition. accounts in this book, which i recommend to you. if you are here coming out of something out of this book, i promise you. it comes largely from the center of comparative studies of race and ethnicity of stanford, published by norton price. the authors are marcus and moya. it addresses in a scholarly way any of the race realities that we deal with. i always show this when i talk about implicit bias of course and dr. but not she demonstrated this morning. you can in the privacy of your living room find out whether you have implicit biases among -- about whether or not the old people, gay people, obese people, check it out in the privacy of your own room. i've been working -- i worked my leg is in orthopedic spine surgeon, but about 10 years goya discontinued clinical practice and got involved in medical education. and i had the pleasure of being able to work with others and being able to work with health care disparity. the major one new bit of information i came to a wherewith, reality. i studied for it in college and a psychology major and so forth, but this book by shanker but in 10 of all of its various iterations is called the hidden brain, so that is why i say the hidden brain and neglected pain. so those doctors who neglected the pain of the african-american patients with stress fractures in atlanta and latino patients with stress fractures in southern california, their hidden brain was alive and well and these are numerous, numerous examples in this book. and here is one of the examples. if you look at us, you will see this was the graph of the pounds -- i'm sorry for not defending glenn. and these different dots represent sequential wheat thin wedge is an honor system you go to the key plays coming future milk, put your milk in your tea and on the honor system you put a pound in the kitty. and the demonstrators were able to show on alternate weeks not very much, as you see in week 10 if you go down, more in week nine and alternate, and they show more went in the kitty than not. closer attention to go on and on the honor system. on alternate weeks they didn't get as much as they should have. what was happening was next to where the milk was on the wall there were pictures. and if you look at this, in the first week they didn't get very much money there as flowers on the wall. the next week was eyes on the wall. contributions when it appeared the following become et cetera. follow it all the way down. but the bottom, look at those eyes. that was a good payoff for that week. some of the experiment was over, the people indicated that they had no idea. they didn't notice any pictures or anything else on the wall. the hidden brain was operative in that circumstance. this is a study that was mentioned earlier that you can take someone who says they are not biased and give them an iht test. if it shows they are biased, and these are residents by the way. and you have them attest to treat patients, those who said they were not biased would show up on the iht test did not treat the african-american patients with the same treatment they deserve her should have had in that particular study. the other thing we should say is when you stress the psychologist tells us you're more likely to have biases and stereotypes become operative. this is the long thing. a depression, 30% depression and a long list, personal financial debt, keeping the knowledge you only need to read 18 articles a day, 365 years to keep up with the literature of internal medicine, struggled reimbursement. this one surprised me. the violence, which is four times as another private sector entities. i do want to say over time, but the solution is education, education, education. that doesn't do it all. i hope the psychologist here will teach us how we can reeducate the subconscious. i look forward to that. that will help us a lot. this book is available. this is my temporary physician's desk, 52 years of experience taking care of patients over the years and how i think some of these things might happen and the doctor patient relationship and how some suggestions for doctors to provide equitable care and suggestions for patience as to how to receive equitable care. and the main theme of not. i can't predict each of right now, but the main theme is to seek our common humanity. doctors should look forward the human element and interact the human element. patients should look for the human element in the docs and react and cannot do that human element. there's other things we can do of course have a better cultural understanding. had the privilege in 1963 to have records with dr. king in california and i didn't learn -- at entire gym very much, but i was greatly inspired and always remember and the inspiration continues to abandon his presence to really move because you're in the presence of a special person. i believe dr. king would want us to continue to strive to be more humane society and that is the nurses and others in this room to be humanitarian role models as they look to get closer and closer to our humanity and eliminate all of the careers that we are confronted with. thank you very much for your attention. [applause] >> thank you, panelists for your riveting, insightful presentations and also forced a non-time. we are doing so well. we have our entire half-hour for facilitation. first i will make a comment. implicit bias is essentially the operation of unconscious, automatic association in the mind. associations that are, as these panelists help us appreciate, rooted in history and that helped rationalize or legitimize or justify a particular system. and all of the presentations touched on those themes in some way. they help identify with some of the associations are and how they are used to justify the treatment of certain groups. associations such as foreignness, violence, laziness, ignorance, dehumanization, inferiority and evaluation, laziness, fragilis, hypersexuality. as the panel is show us, there are implications from across various areas of law. from tax to ip to self-governance, madison and that law is far from natural. professor white asked psychologists to help educate, jobless learn how to educate the subconscious. i would also push us to find ways to educate about history, what actually transpired and also to educate on how to question the entitlement but a latter is the panelists presentations help to reveal as operating in society. i am going to transition out to the facilitative part of this panel. we have in the idf as part tichenor's, legal scholars, steam social scientist. we have is one of our two co-facilitators 18, and dean arpaio nelson will lead our facilitation. i would like to ask for a panelist to come down. i'm going to remove the podium. if you could please come down around the desk. i am going to leave most of the facilitation to dean nelson. i may or may not abuse my own questions. we'll see how it goes. but i would like to push as con and if this panelists can speak to this they can, but like to push us to think about the limits and opportunities of viewing many issues to the length of implicit bias. and now i handed over to dean nelson. >> that afternoon, everyone in thank you for staying. we very much want to use this opportunity to hear from you. it's important that you shared your expert -- i have it on. please, guys. it is that you share your expertise, insides and thoughts you have indication opportunity to be with us for most of the day. as the panelists get situated i want to start by asking to think about the following anti-please share your thoughts by pressing your microphones on so the light will illuminate. one of the things that don't are white sad at the closing of his comments and the reason we are all here today is really an impact question. so now that we have what seems to be a growing body of work at the intersection of law in many disciplines throughout the social sciences, what next? so what shall we do with all this work? is it a case that we have to search to use your language, dr. white, to find the human humanity across various disciplines? how does that look? dorothea, were looking at the tax system, irs, judges, the part thing aren't patton, how to attack to legislatures and dealing with their quests for sovereignty. how do we have impact and how do you feel about that potential? so where do we go from here? above to hear your insights and from the panel of experts as well. questions, comments. professor goodman. >> minnesota law school. i wonder if we might not start by having the panelists get less some insights based on their work about where do we go from here and even perhaps connect that to wetmore you might have wanted to say to us, but she were so efficiently timekeeping. >> we can proceed that way. i know one of the things we want to make sure as we were instructed as to make sure you all have an opportunity because he didn't have an opportunity throughout the day. so if you want to chime in, please do it eliminate your microphones and chime in, otherwise we're happy to have the panelists give us more of their wisdom. >> dr. white. >> hi, i read about racial disparities in health care. i worked in nursing homes but have expanded my view. i just read an article on health care reform and racial disparities. so for me, where do we go now is to change the lines in the focus of the questions were asking in health care reform is all about individual responsibility. we moved to question away from the structure of the system institutions that are causing some of the problems. let me just give you one example. when we talk about obesity crisis in the united states have legislatures and policies governing to keep people from drinking soda, we need to change how people eat, but ignores the reality, and ignores reality is that there is no grocery stores, ignores the reality is that there's facilities and ignores the reality that physicians have moved out of those communities. and so for me, where do we go from here is to acknowledge the institutional bias, but also to feed back into the implicit bias, which says if you give people access to insurance, that's great, but what happened as dr. white says when they actually go, they have health insurance and they are not being treated. sue to mean, we need to focus not just on the individual level, but all of the issues that are racial disparities. >> i think this maybe will address your question. [inaudible] as you probably noticed, i tend to simplify things. either you fix it or you don't. so i have kind of arrived at the conclusion that the world is kind of the eternal about the good guys and bad guys and that we don't have solutions right now, but i think we should all feel away at whatever discipline is. we can see that in a number of different disciplines, their studies done, programs that people assume and think will be affected so you can work to establish those. people do have to have access. the action-adventure asked. i think the psychologists have given me more and more information about understanding and perhaps manipulating a little bit of liability to control some of the unconscious biases. so i think that we should continue to work as hard as we can and leave them from time to time to share things, to share ideas and actually there's some of us try to work and organize things. i think in terms of health care, progress opportunity is to do more public education so that people understand the paradigm that they are in so they can help adopt more. so that is one area to work in. but then basically we talk about focusing on humanitarianism, humane goals vis-à-vis getting rid of all of this list of 13 and that is the conflict. that is the challenge. >> let's go down the line. i was fortunate to be on the panel last week at law society when i shared a very similar presentation, but i was talking about intellectual property rights and communities. one of the panelists suggested in his presentation. he said very interesting talk and very interesting points raised, but sometimes the types of things you're talking about, they fall into this category of justice fatigue. we are out there fighting the big fights, you know, a lot of people don't think about intellectual property or economic incentives as justice. and so, i think one place we can also go is to find space for these areas that seem complex because people are missing out on the thing that could raise their level of wealth and raise their ability to be considered in the in group by increasing their wealth by monetizing what it is that they have control of. and many times when i'm talking about here is the value in this extend to information about themselves and is disaggregated by other secondhand aggregate agent companies. so we have to start looking sort of additions or new models for justice. >> it was really interesting one of the things you said with respect to the kristof example and the personality case, the litigation and successful settlement or award was tied to one of the things that professor krieger said this morning as far as looking almost opportunistically for claimants. so was an interesting rub on her point from this morning because it would seem that he could actually establish, given everything we've heard today that the image would actually prove harmful given over biases. >> yeah, he is the movement personified on how right of publicity cases should actually be litigated and how jurists actually come to the decision making and how appellate courts should actually respect or recognize identity and persona over copyright over the fundamental holders of the power in our intellectual-property arena. >> i wanted to follow up talking about economics. how much it's your money do you get to keep helps build wealth. so a couple years ago i put a piece called why the obama speak too much in taxes. in 2009 president obama had about $5 million of income, most of it from his book income. so most of it was book wealth income and that is taxed at 35%, after 35%. the typical $5 million -- the president and mrs. obama's effect that tax rate was 32%. the typical effective tax rate of the $5 million is 23%. so the question is, where the obama single-handedly trying to reduce the federal deficit by paying extra taxes? now, the typical $5 million makes about half of it from stocks, income of stock in the form of capital gains and corporate dividends, which is taxed at no more than 15%. so we have this risk out there that the more income you have two fire your tax goal when nothing could be further from the truth. we have two tax systems, set word that we are all in because we work for a living. we are taxed at 35%. the people who have enough money to let their money work for them by entering static get to pay taxes at 15%. see you do the math. for every dollar, 65 cents versus 85 cents. who's going to get richer? so when people hear tax policy discussions, their eyes glaze over and gearshift down and they turn the channel, but this is your pocketbook. the next time you hear attack story, i'm begging you, what can you do? get mad and write your members of congress. i did a study because everybody says the reason why the laws are the way they are is because it's been acted by special interests. it's in the financial interest it's in your financial interest to fix it unless they realize it's keep their job if they don't sit -- [inaudible] a different question about other people. >> yes. >> first, thanks for the panel to inviting me to the presentation. professor, i believe you mentioned in the your presentation there are examples of -- [inaudible] that reflects against native peoples. to -- [inaudible] >> there are actually two or throw we highlighted as being very significant. one is a recent law that was passed on the type of law called intr intents and purposes it is a good thing. it increases the ability of the government to sentence the longer periods of time and to let the higher -- [inaudible] to criminal defense. the issue there is to to more closely approximate mate western courts. they have to provide civil rights as a contemplated in western systems, and once they do that, they are able to access the higher sentencing authority. the unintented effect we see there is customer their laws the traditional way of governorring is being silenced in a way to become more powerful. it reveals the thought process of the government that governments that look like traditional governing structures are less capability of getting out jus nice a appropriate way than governments that look like western. that's one major example that we provide. the other is we are refer to our more doctrines under federal indian law, -- for example the federal plan i are power of people that gives congress unfettered authority with respect to people things like that come out of the idea terrorist there's a war guardian between the federal government and the native people that persists to the current date even though the ideas are contemplated. >> thank you. [inaudible] professor, -- you want to jump? >>. >> one of the easiest ways and most cost effective ways of dealing with this and statements made by others that the d.a. fa make is to call people out on it. he lost -- [inaudible] vote against him. and the he food up and said i think you guys vote against him because he's good looking. i think you to think through what you did. and a revote was called. i think it's important to call people out. something similar happened in a faculty meeting. we have an incredibly fabulous, the kind of scholar we for the greatest in the law school. and the young lady has been successful in the scholarship. she also happens to be very cute, sweet, and kind hearted. he's one of my favorite. someone made a statement she thinks she's better than us. i said wait a minute, do you say that you think? what is that based on? is it because she's beautiful? and people looked and said did you say she was beautiful? i said it because i don't understand how you say that. she's beautiful inside and and outside. she's a wonderful young lady. people straight end up in their chairs that i had the gall to call out. you are possibly lawyers you can't go into a court of law saying she's a bill bow or better than us. you need evidence. we have -- you have to walk in there and state your opinion period. [inaudible] and you have to lay a foundation. so you to testify to facts the minute you start making straight comments. objection sustained facts and knowing this having been through the evidence classes we of all people should be knowing we can't make statements without facts to back it up. we need to be conscious about what is being said around us. maybe we don't like the person. we need to stand up for making people justify what they say. >> one of the things thought was curious. i want to city it into into a conversation. a possible solution in the faculty governance or higher scenario within the education system is what you're talking about also related to other settings and possibles was to have court supervision of some sort or to have an objective approach with the that you consider this. and i'm -- i would love to hear what people think. one, do you have the confidence given what we've heard this morning in the ability of the court system and/or individual judges that help us in that. how do people feel about that as a solution. the tie in to dr. white and the conversation we've been having, what is the role of education and a curriculum that has mandatory component? not an effective, but a culture competence exoanlt in the law. because the conference is focused on implicit bias across the law. as we think about the various curriculum, and how we develop that, again, cut to faculty governance, right. how likely is it, or how important is it that we think about these types of insights and innovation within the curriculum? >> one of the things i said to the members of the faculty is to say that do you realize that title 7 action you will have to disclose your vote and you will need to justify it. you will be polled or questions. people don't understands. we need as leader scholars and academics of all people we should be setting the standards. teaching people about justice, law, employment discriminate. it is happening every day in every law school in this country at least as far as i know. it seems to me it's an abomination we should set the standard. we should coit ourself. we shouldn't need a court to tell us how we hire. for goodness sakes! of all industries we should get right, set the standard and get others to think through how it should be done. i'm blown away by what i've and seen in terms of talking about people and their credentials and the blind voting. for goodness sakes, the title 7 act is filed. you had better be ready. >> just -- [inaudible] related. first of all, we don't really the american association of medical -- [inaudible] and it really does a very nice job of reviewing all of these kinds of issues to diminish -- [inaudible] another thing is that always compliment speak up and say things. i like the comments we said about speaking up. i think it's important. the last thing is the idea of -- [inaudible] we all educated people, you know, [inaudible] i think perhaps all of the educated people not just the health care people, but all of the cross cultural interaction how many times a day do we have interaction with folks that are different than our own, in fact, the law go out to a majority of the -- [inaudible] >> professor brown and god win? >> i wanted to say i've been a law professor since 1990, and i think there are ways to follow the law. so my one thing from a former colleague that said dorothy, the rules are for the bad people. they're not for us. as a defense to why he wasn't following stated procedures. [inaudible] >> well, in fact, that's the challenge, and it's very interesting, dr. white, to pick up on your last comment, which is how well laid out these principles are with medicine and how we teach the medical school students. whether or not they fully get it and we certainly know from your presentation and others we have a long way to go for sure in medicine. but what's very interesting on the law side, i'm a professor in medicine law, we don't in fact structure have anything near the same kinds of structures or expectations to teach students at all or professors for that matter, about the probably for bias or explicit bias or implicit bias at all. it's possible to go through three years of legal training at law school, and to be taught about ethics but come away with nothing about gender or about race, and when you put in context that it's only within the last twenty years we have neutralized the terms in our law school teachings, so that it's not just the reasonable man, now we with have the reasonable person. that is something that is fully developed within the last couple of decades. we do within the context of the law have a long way to go. we can certainly start now in the law schools. [inaudible] >> but i think the divine meant to be in the panel meant to think about constitutional responsibilities to control bias so you're mentioning some of those and the -- [inaudible] to control the bias. i wanted to add to that when i was listening to the doctor a kind of brilliance, i was zeroed in on what she was saying. she was teaching us that we are unapp unapp app -- [inaudible] property law that is what underlying the pat encopyright regime is the [inaudible] let's make it so we get economic and useful benefit from authoring and [inaudible] bebut we have a narrative. we talk about promoting authors and inventers and we talk about them as if they were individuals. but the real benefactors are the intellectual property enforcement and protection are the institutional copyright. or the patent, the pharmaceutical companies, so this leads you into the area of hiv/aids drugs. it is pervasive in intellectual property. we have white folk and they can't break institutional regime. how do we get is my question. how do we get institutional responsibility when the status status quo is meant to follow the institution. >> it doesn't matter as we think about diversity of our institutions and structures. or is the structure itself so deeply aconsult acculture ated or entrenched with the biases. [inaudible] >> i actually had a question going back to the natives stories. do we have time for that? great. question for susan, and brie began regarding the hawaii islands in the state. how much of that land is sovereign is owned by the native hawaii begans and secondly, what are they doing with the land they have under the control. thirdly, are they bringing any types of businesses? are they, you know, doing anything to improve their lives and bring in much needed revenue in, you know, to it and improve their lives. unfortunately here in nefngd, new i think england a lot of the native american tribes have on the property are casino but at least they are, you know, definitely, you know, doing better than they were beforehand . >> your question addresses a lot of points. i'm going try to address all of them. native hawaii are not recognized by the federal government as self-governorring in the same way that many native communities are on the continent for that reason the formal governance over territory and land-based and citizens i are is not recognized for native hawaii begans. i hope you get a chance to read it. legislation that has been proposed to grant that same or similar type of recognition to native hawaii as self-government has been controversial for a variety of political reasons, but it's certainly been expressed by the current senate committee on the indian affair. the priority of the chair is to have at least some sort of charity between the native hawaii community and other native communities operating within the united states respect to self-governance. we are hopeful of that. as far as what -- [inaudible] the law to the native community, that's out very, very highly controversial question. of course, the native community would say everything. and i think that there are many outside the native community that would agree. there are certain pockets right now despite the situation that i just described where native hawaii authority over certain places and things is recognized as a dimplet [inaudible] there are home steadies within hawaii that are designated as territory for the native hawaii, and so the department of hawaii homeland on behalf of the state of hawaii administrates that land trust on behalf of the federal government. then you also have the office of client affairs, but we have the full disclosure. i work for that office. and what the office of client affairs does it administrates the proceeds from the public land trust. a portion from the publishing land trust that is set aside for the betterment of condition of native hidz and the focus of hawaii affairs is to impact systemic changes including health, education, housing, governance is another issue, and the focus there is the idea of governing despite the lack some sort of formal blessing or acknowledge by the federal government that the community can bo do so. the community is doing so. i think that speak to the original question, what we can think going forward. i think the conversation needs to shift in talking about native people. one, we are looking to federal law and state law to define native communities, the bounds of their authority, whether they are territory begins that needs to be shifted. the conversation really has to go back to what the native communities understand the extend of the authority to be top. where the land base is, what cay they can do there. that is the starting point for the conversation. a different dialogue happens. i would encourage us all to start the conversation there. also with respect to the idea of weather native peoples are a race or political entity i think that the conversation needs to shift there as well. i think when you discuss native communities in the context of ration all of a sudden by vir chiewr you're explaining -- that is not applicable we need to grapple with the idea that separatism and even discrimination the right to be separate rather than equal in the native context when we're talking about politics and the governing of territory can be a positive normative principle when we're looking at the authority of native governments to governor in their own land and people. so i would encourage us to think about those things when we have conversations like these because i think they are important points that can shift the importance of the conversation. >> [inaudible] with my job of -- i'd like to thank the fa facilitator. our wonderful panelist and our insightful audience. thank you. we go back to the program for the final session. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] on friday's washington journal, thomas burr of the salt lake tribune discusses romney's mormon faith and the role of religion in the 2012 presidential campaign. president of the national mining association talking about the ruling by the d.c. court of appeals striking down an epa air pollution regulation. and later talking points memo will be here as part of the online media series. "washington journal" live every morning starting at 8:00 eastern on c-span. what do we see when we look at the dead? they responded to this with two odom nant ways. one by describing the bodies in great detail. and then often stopping in the middle of that very detailed description and then saying, it's too horrible. i cannot actually put this into words. words cannot convey this. >> this weekend on american history tv. the professor of harvard discusses the impact of the images of dead soldiers on the american public during the civil war. saturday at 10:00 p.m. eastern. also this weekend, -- >> america will stand up for the ideals that we believe in when we're operating at our best and we want to see this country perhaps above all else return to the path of peace. >> more from the contenders our serious that look at key political figures that ran for president and lost but changed political history. this week 1972 democratic nominee and antivietnam war candidate george mcgovernor -- govern. this weekend on booktv. beginning sunday at 4 p.m. eastern. from the 2010 afterwards interview mitt romney from his book "no apology "they thought the president was not going to be a strong defender of american values and principles, human rights, democracy, free trade, free enterprise those words of apology and statements have em bold end those as a weak end. >> later in the book, "the real romney" investigate i have reporter michael exemployers romney's early years in bloom field michigan through the 2002] winter olympics and the tenure of bain bain capital. part of the. earlier this week evening attorney general addressed a professional associate of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender in washington, d.c. in his remarks the attorney general said they made great strides in protecting civil rights in is twenty minutes. it. [applause] starting off with my ongressional hearings. [laughter] good evening. and thank you, dollar sei for the kind words and thank you al, for such a warm welcome. it is a pleasure to be here lcnight, and it's a privilege to join with each of you with and with so many members of the wito national lgbt bar associate in celebrating and renewing our shared commitment with advancing the cause of equality. for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. [applause] i would like to recognize the association's staff and the entire leadership team and thank them for all they have done to bring us together for this year's lavender law conference and career fair. for more than two decades, this important annual of that has brought together hundreds of legal practitioners and law students from across the country. this provides an opportunity to highlight the extraordinary work that this organization's members are leading and participating in every day. it offers a chance to reflect on the progress that in the past few years each of you has helped to make possible and to reaffirm how -- our determination to carry this essential work into the future. because of your dedicated efforts, you have made this year's gathering the largest minority recruiting event in the country. [applause] and the most successful lavender law conference, with over 260 employees in attendance, including multiple representatives from the united states department of justice. [applause] in fact, i am pleased to report that we are joined tonight by a number of senior department leaders as well as five united states attorneys who are strong lgbt allies. linda, and the northern district of california. -- from the northern district of california. david, from the western district of pennsylvania. amanda, from the district of oregon. stephen, from the southern district of illinois. michael, from the middle district of georgia. and my man, robert, from the western district of texas. [applause] through workshop sessions, career counseling, and panel discussions, this conference is providing a unique opportunity for mentoring and engaging among some of the best attorneys in america on cutting edge legal issues. your help and to call attention to obstacles and biases both overt and subtle that continue to affect far too many lgbt americans every day. you are encouraging collaboration, cooperation, and more effective advocacy as we seek to design and implement innovative strategies to confront the most persistent challenges that far too many americans face. as attorney general, i consider it a privilege to be a part of this annual gathering and to join such a diverse group of partners, colleagues, and friends in working to strengthen our nation's legal community and legal system. as an american, i am deeply proud to stand with you in celebrating the remarkable, unimaginable progress, particularly over the last three and a half years -- >[applause] the progress that your leadership and coordinated efforts have helped to bring about. we come together tonight at an exciting moment. thanks to the work a tireless advocate, advocates of the attorneys in and far beyond this room, our nation has made great strides on the road to lgbt the quality and the unfinished struggle to protect and secure the civil rights of all americans. for president obama, myself, and colleagues at all level of the administration, this work has long been a top priority. i am pleased to note it has resulted in meaningful, measurable, and in during the change. we can all be proud of that today. for the first time in history, those who courageously serve the country in uniform need to know longer hide -- need no longer hide their sexual orientation. [applause] as we approach the one-year anniversary of the end of don't ask, don't tell, it is worth celebrating that some of the brave servicemen and women can now serve their country proud the, honestly, openly, and without fear of discharge. we can take pride in the fact that early last year president obama and i directed justice department attorneys not to defend the constitutionality of section 3 of the defense of marriage act. [applause] [applause]

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