The dartmouth review. It is my privilege to serve as moderator and introduce you to the topic. Before we get underway, i would like you to locate the nearest emergency exits and silence all cell phones. Please note that flash photography is strictly prohibited, but our artists participants would like to encourage you to take photos and share what you are seeing on social media sites. When individuals like bill ayers and Dinesh Dsouza get together for an evening of discussion, theres sure to be much to talk about. The focus of the debate tonight has to do with the nature of america and its meaning in the world today. We will be asking our participants for what their thoughts are on what makes america unique and how it has succeeded and failed in living up to its own ideas. Ideals. The wording of the resolve have been left purposely vague. We hope that we can take up the central question fully and explore its social, economic, and political forms. Part of what will make the discussion unique is the background of its participants. You would be hardpressed to find to americans whose career in politics are more different. On the right, we have Dinesh Dsouza, a critically acclaimed author and political commentator. Born in mumbai, india, he has a 30year career as a public intellectual and has been called one of the nations most influential conservative thinkers by the New York Times magazine. Since the 1990s, mr. Dsouza has published 12 books. One of them inspired the film the6 obamas america, second most successful political documentary film of all time. On his left is bill ayers, one of the nations premier theorists on Elementary Education and a former leader of a Counterculture Movement that opposed the vietnam war. Born in the chicago area, he is best known for his involvement in political activism in the 1960s, and the leader of the weather underground, a selfdescribed communist underground group that conducted bombings in the 1970s. In the years since, he has emerged as a leading public atellectual, and has had distinguished career as a professor of education at the university of illinois, in chicago. He has written about social justice and characterized education as an ethical enterprise. His most recent work, public they, describes experiences and perspectives as unamerican dissident. An american dissident. To have two individuals of such distinction with us tonight is no small feat. Thank you to the tireless work of our supporters. We would like to thank the Young Americans institution. Their dedication to the ideas of liberty and the sporting supporting apparatus of liberal debate will be displayed in full throughout tonights discussion. Wed like to acknowledge the contributions of the College Republicans and libertarians, whose efforts on the ground in hanover were instrumental to make sure the debate could take place here. We also want to thank the campus, and we hope our ideas tonight can positively impact our own discussions after the debate has ended. I will now turn the floor over to mr. Bill ayers. He will have 18 minutes for his opening remarks. At which point in time, mr. Do sousa dsousa will have 18 minutes to make his. They may rebut each others points, then have 10 minutes to ask questions of one another. To audience will be asked participate in a questionandanswer session which will continue for 30 minutes, until the debate ends. We ask that audience members reserve all the questions to the time allotted and present their questions clearly and directly, so as to give others around him a chance to speak as well. We hope that by making this event responsive to issues that interest you that we can create an evening of debate thats as enjoyable as it is memorable. Without further ado, i yield the floor to mr. Ayers. And thank both of our speakers for participating in this forum. [applause] thank you all for coming. This keeps being called a debate, but i dont know who the pro or con is. I think it is discussion about a lovely question what is so great about america . When a dialog was proposed to me on this expansive question, i immediately said, i think i will make a list. Lets see on my list, topping the list is chicago. Thats right. Because it is my hometown and i know it well. And because it is one small piece, in all of its outsized and crazy complexity, of america itself, the city is the essential american metropolis. Chicago is one of the things that are so awesomely great about america. The musical sure, the film the jungle, and the blues are brothers, and the filmmaking wachowski siblings studs terkel. A raisin in the sun. Nelson auburn, whose dazzling book was called city on the make. He once described chicago as a beautiful woman with a broken nose. He would have said the same thing about america. So great, and theres more of course. Lake michigan, the vast inland sea now under siege from cataclysmic climate change. The massive, inviting prairie, that fires our imaginations, and beckons us toward the far horizons. The chicago cubs, who teach us humility and perseverance. [laughter] whenever i travel abroad, and often inside the United States, the citys name evokes a cliched response. For years it was al capone. Then, refreshingly, michael jordan, michael jordan. Someone asked me recently if i knew oprah. Of course, i said. It is a small town. Today, the universal reaction of hearing chicago is one word obama. Chicago is home to barack obama, the president of the United States. The first black president in u. S. History. During the primary battle in 2008, when asked which candidate he thought Martin Luther king jr. Would support, senator obama responded without hesitation reverend king would not endorse any of us because he would be in the streets building a movement for justice. Undoubtedly true. It raises a couple of interesting points. It tells us a little bit of what we should think of our own activity. One point it raises that if you take a brief glance at history, you recognize that its building movements and changing things. Movements that changes things. Passed theson, who most farreaching civil rights legislation since reconstruction was never part of the black , freedom movement. Franklin roosevelt was never part of the labor movement, and Abraham Lincoln never belonged to an abolitionist party. Those three president s are remembered because of fire from below, and that is what we ought to be concentrating on. When you think about political power, often you think about the white house or the pentagon and that medieval auction house that we call congress. And you think, that is where power lies. There is power in the neighborhood, the factory, the mill, the classroom. The university, the high school. Power is there, and that is the power we have access to. Too often, we stare at the sites of power we have no access to. But in a democracy, we cant wait passively, wondering what the king has in mind for us. We are not his subjects, because we are the sovereign, the collective authority. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to enact our sovereignty every day. Chicagos jane addams acted on her citizen responsibilities every day, and she is part of what is great about america. Socialist, feminist, lesbian, pacifist, addams established hull house, and went to start the first Juvenile Court in the world, which freed people from prisons and poorhouses, the first public kindergarten in america, the end to child labor, and a thousand other projects. She argued that Building Communities of care and compassion required more than doing good. More than volunteerism. More than the ultimately controlling stance of a lady bountiful. It required a radical oneness with others in distress. And identity of purpose with the wretched of the earth. When she opened her settlement house with her sister activists and lived there with an open, unlocked door, in the heart of a poor, immigrant neighborhood, with families in crisis and need, she pushed herself to see the world through their eyes, and fighting for their humanity, achieved her own humanity as well. J edgar hoover, the gman wizard opportunismkills of outstripped any crimefighting abilities. He had called jane addams the most dangerous woman in america shortly before she became the First American woman to win the nobel peace prize. 50 years later, at the helm of his vast criminal enterprise known as the fbi, he bestowed that same honor on my partner, bernadine dorn, and it was possibly the only time we agreed. The most dangerous woman in america indeed. There are today countless women sweating out jane addams hopes all over america, naming circumstances and situations as unacceptable, working to right wrongs, fighting for more peace and more democracy, more joy and more justice. These men and women propel themselves to act in solidarity with, not in service to, the people with whom they work. They are what is so great about america. What else . My list contains multitudes. First, the spirit of democracy. The precious and fragile ideal that every single human being is of incalculable value. Endowed with certain inalienable rights. The faith in that ideal using , faith in the biblical sense of theence of things unseen conviction that people need no kings, queens, or rulers of any kind and we are capable of aching the decisions that affect our lives and the people what the problems are also the people with the solutions and with the wisdom and energy of ordinary people is our most precious reality. Second, the inspiration of liberty. The aspirations towards liberation, the belief that all human beings ought to be free to invent and reinvent ourselves, to shape our identities and every sphere of our existence without the traditional constraints of king or court or church or howling mob, and whether we are concerned with our social character or our politics, our manners or sexual practices, we can resist convention and strike out in a path of our own choosing or own making. Third, the pursuit of social justice. Like any compelling term, social justice is not easily defined because it is not so much as a point of arrival for a specific destination as it is a longing, a journey, a quest. It is a ceaseless striving by human beings in different places at different times under vastly different circumstances, and pursuing a range of strategies and tactics and tools, for greater fairness, greater sustainability, equity, recognition, agency, peace, and mobility. These three themes, democracy, liberty, and justice are generative. The more you have, the better off you become. The more you give away, the more you have. They are clearly dynamic and unfinished beings pulsating with the uncertainties and chaos of life, not static or fixed or simply instrumental. And yet each is made more vital and unrestrained when encouraged and assisted by the arts of liberty, and specifically by a small but mighty phrase, easily embraced by the humanities i wonder. It is not the known, after all, that propels people out of bed and out the door. It is not the taken for granted that prods us up the next hill. It is not received wisdom, including all the deadly cliches of common sense, that pulls us forward and pushes us to create or invent or plant and build. The deep motivation at the core of our humanity, the powerful force driving towards liberation, is the vast and immense unknown. That is why the phrase i wonder is indispensible. I really dont know. As soon as you know something for sure, it becomes boring or selfrighteous and it turns tedious or dogmatic quickly. If you think all there is to know about a certain thing, then fervor may be there but not curiosity. Not the drive. At that point the questions close down, answers come too easily, and you become a threat to yourself and perhaps, others. There are zillions of americans whose lives who have soared in the wings of wonder. Einstein, stravinsky, twain whitman, hughes, kelly, the marx , brothers, Woody Guthrie and pete seeger, tommy morello, just to name a few. In a free and Democratic Society we learn to live with questions. And in dialogue. We learn to speak with the possibility of being heard and we learn simultaneously to listen with the possibility of being changed. Remember the brief but famous dialogue in the form of two simple questions between Ralph Waldo Emerson and henry david thoreau, shouted over a prison wall not far from here . What are you doing in there, henry david . Emerson asks his incarcerated friend, locked up for refusing to pay taxes to a warmaking state, a slave state. Thoreau responds, what are you doing out there . Thats a good question. What are you doing with your spirit of democracy, your rumors of freedom, and your various quests for justice . There is a wisdom simple to there is a rhythm simple to state but excruciatingly difficult to enact, to state to staying true to the spirit of democracy and justice. Simple to state. Open your eyes, pay attention, as step one, be astonished, do something, and then doubt or rethink. I will elaborate. Open your eyes. This means you cannot make sensible, bought full, thoughtful, participatory decisions about the world unless you participate in it. I think of my mother. I took care of her at the end of her life. Some 20 years ago, she had broken her ankle and she said to me, what about this thing called Global Warming . I didnt want to scare the hell out of the old lady, so she gave me a mild version. Saidave me a cold look and i am sorry i asked. , well, you asked and someone told you. And when you are told something, you feel a call on you to do something. You open your eyes and you feel astonished at the loveliness all around you, and you are also astonished about the unnecessary suffering that human beings impose on one another and then you do something. You have to act on what the known demands are, recognizing you are a limited and finite to actbut you have anyway, on whatever you see and understand. Then you have to take the fourth step. You have to reflect and wonder if everything you did make sense. Were there other ways to do it . If you dont doubt, you become orthodox and dogmatic. Some of you must know monty pythons life of brian. Do you know this . You guys are not nerdy enough. Google them. Life of brian, monty python. It is a story of a reluctant messiah. Who at one point is standing on a rampart in an ancient city, like jerusalem. He shouts down at the mob below, look, you have got it all wrong. I am not the messiah. They say, it he is the messiah. He says, no, you have to think for yourselves. Youre all individuals. Yes, we are all individuals, they cry. They repeated in unison. No, no, you are all different. Frustrated, yes, we are all different, they say together. One bewildered man in the crowd goes around and says, im not. The others gang up on him and say, shut up, you are different. That is what dogma does to you. What is so great about america . There are the arts and the artists. Gwendolyn brooks begins her palm on the dedication of the picasso chicago, does man love art . America is a place of voyages, metaphorically as well as literal. There is always complexity and contradiction at the very heart of the matter. Centuries ago, a genoan adventurer and his band of fellow travelers punched into the unknown, wrote the wild waves until they discover the bahamas and as the authorized text tells us, discovered america. We know that story by heart, and it is worth noting that whatever else it represented, that exploit, part myth, part symbol, took a surplus of imagination and vision, resourcefulness, and courage on the part of the wild and random crew. Every story needs a prologue. Every opening, a forward. No story could ever quite begin at the beginning. Centuries before that, another group of voyagers summoned their imaginations and visions, their own resourcefulness and courage, to travel thousands of miles on foot across the Bering Strait down through forest and mountains into the great plains of north america to settle there and bring forth generations. That is another story we all know by now. There is a third a central part of our shared american narrative and another piece of what is so great. Those americans who rose up to oppose the castilian invasion and resist the colombian genocide. Crazy horse and kochis cochise mobilized their own visions and their own american hopes. Clearly, history is more than facts. It is as well the narratives we create to circulate those facts. It is more than an intersection between what happened and what is said to have happened. Each of us, both then and now, is both actor and narrator in history. We are each a work in progress, thrust into a world not of our choosing, and yet destined to choose who to be and what to become in the unfolding drama. Two minutes. How many . Two minutes. I may have to take three. Sorry. America is a crazy quilt. And the people yes, the people. The opening lines to carl sandburgs love song to america, where we come from and where we will forever return. Heres a fun fact about him. He moved to chicago from the from milwaukee where he , served as secretary to the citys first socialist mayor. The city had the longest run of socialist mayors in american history. One of them had met Albert Parsons as a fiveyearold child in 1986. He was later hanged for his role in the haymarket demonstrations. It turned into a police riot and massacre. When he was on the run from the police, he hit out in the home of daniels and socialist parents, who owned a factory there. Texas,parsons was from and had fought with the confederacy during the civil war. He went through an essential american transformation when he renounced white supremacy, a lifealtering choice available to all of us, right here, right now, and became a leading voice for anarchism, socialism, workers rights, and the eight hour day. He married lucy parsons, who was a former slave who outlived him by half a century. Show trial, the remaining defendants were cleared by the illinois governor. Until anotherrite governor declared himself an abolitionist and cleared death row in 2003, just hours before he left office. Two years for going to prison himself, fraud, corruption, the usual stuff. It was a magnificent action challenging Capital Punishment , and so now george ryan is my favorite illinois governor. Death penalty abolition, one of the great things about america. The Death Penalty itself is the shame of the nation. Time. There is constant contradiction in chicago and america. There is always another incongruity, disparity. Another