Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capitol Hill Hearings 20130906 : comp

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capitol Hill Hearings 20130906



dispair. in his american assumption, there was a version of the creed of exceptionalism that scholars came to regard as uniquely american, escaped from the rise and fall of history and universal opportunity for individuals, endless progress for the nation, and yet split historical second in the heat of radical reconstruction, they maintained that the american assumption was temporarily counterbalanced, alarmed by the return to congress in 1866 of unreconstructed southerners who might repudiate the civil war debt and almost certainly reduce the national tariff, they characterized northern industry has frightened and moving towards the stand which abolition democracy had already taken, namely temporary dictatorship, endowed negro education, legal civil rights, and eventually votes for negroes to offset the southern threat of economic attack. the american assumption was from radical reconstruction whether it was special order number 15 # giving emancipated slaves possession their titles to titles to land in georgia and south carolina, whether it was the freedom's bureau in negotiates contracts and negotiating 247,000 new citizens in 4329 elementary schools, the first federal antipoverty program or protecting voters rpd the act of 1875, but much sooner than later than the version of events, the dictatorship of labor imposed on the south by the alliance of northern industry and democracy collapsed and dropped away flu american assumption. so it was back towards slavery, the title of the ultimate chapter with the wages of whiteness destroying any possibility of the solidarity of labor along class lines, dilemma of destiny em posed more than any other people of color pressing against the white republic, crackled again in high voltage prose of the souls, and one is widely inhibited and mentally confined as the american negroes. within the colored race, the philosophy of salvation is curiously twisted and distorted. from the defees of reconstruction to the dispair of the great depression, where had history taken them, he asked? what sign post pointed to a way out of the 300-year-old box. shall we use torch and dynamite? shall they go north or fight in the south? shall they segregate themselves more than they are now in states, in towns, cities, or sections? shall they leave the country. are they americans or foreigners. my country tis of thee, children saved and buy homes or dlictly commit race suicide? long ago in the flush of the harvard sociological study, du bois was certain as written in the autobiography that the cure for the race problem was knowledge and scientific investigation. the lynching of sam here in atlanta, the policies of the general education board and race riots in springfield illinois in 1908, this abused him of an ideal far more suited to enlightenment than in georgia in the rain of watson. the faith in the power of knowledge never dispated, but sought what promised to be the more effective strategy of journalism by uncompromising principles and social science. that conviction was never more manifested than in the propaganda of history, the black reconstruction in which the structures of calvin and alexander thundered proclaiming that history is true could empower true democracy if only history and historians chose to lie less. he was writing, get a feel, devastated by lies told by roads and dunning, by walter phlegmings and bowers and a library of others. there would never be a science of history until we have in our ecologies men who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race. men who will not deliberately encourage students to gather thesis material in order to prejudice for. the last chapter soared beyond an appeal to honest history into a realm where mortal philosophy fused with the cymballism of the creation, but -- i'm fighting a head cold. bear with me. if it was special pleading as bias in its own way as any white spu premise, it was partisanship in the cause of justice and democracy, as he proclaimed. it's the most significant drama in the last thousand years of human history. it was, he wrote, the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty into the newfound west. including they descended into hell, and in the third century, they arose from the dead in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world has ever seen. it was a tragedy that beggared the grief. it was an uphelve of humanity like a french revolution. we are blind and led by the blind and discern in it no part of our labor movement, no part of our industrial triumph, no part of the religious experience. why? because in a day when the human mind aspired to science of human action, a history in psychology of the mighty effort of the mightyist century was under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future. the inpsych peed ya prujt was at a curious cross roads. the more attention paid to it by the academy and foundations to the negro, the more resistance there was to privileging the scholarship of one authority whose claimed to interpret the problem of the 20th century was unexcelled two days after the commemoration of the 70th birthday, du bois sent a type carefully crafted four-page rebuttal to the 11th hour misgivings and formally conveyed to stokes by several general education board trustees. the remaining obstacles had been told by the my philanthropist ws objectivity, quote, they are only concerned about one thing, stokes warned in the letter of february 11, and that is whether we have fought through ways in which to assure objectivity of the findings, quotes closed. several trustees were particularly agitated by the opinion of a british anthropologist who had determined that scholarship in the united states betrayed either a white or negro bias. stokes was advised this distinguished an throe polings doubted the possibility that there could be complete objectivity even in historical matters where raisht pride on the one hand or racial prejudice on the other was at state. interoffice correspondence at 61 broad kay, the head quarters of the egb reflected the board's looming die lem ma in the months of january through mash much, 1938. whoever funding its portion of du bois might not prove unavoidable. the insis tense of the highly respected and highly political charles johnson, a leading african-american sociologist and philanthropies in mid-march that, quote, interest is gathering momentum, and that the merited foundation support under du bois was noted. the academic creed of the day proclaimed that objectivity was, if not yet attainable in its purest incarnation, a goal in whose pursuit a discipline voaf discard all relativism except actions that were inescapably human. the historian like the social scientist was in the words of the historian whoation work inevidentbly captured the fiction, a neutral or disinterested judge who must never degenerate into an advocate or worse, propaganda for the objectivity quest was to be a grave risk when history is written for utilitarian purposes. these are quotes. du bois's february 1938 memorandum to stokes claimed you could be objective and at the same time, you could be an african-american. well, du bois assumed after meeting all the objections of the funding of the funding was imminent, some $260,000. he assumedded it was about to materialize, and with it, the wherewith you know all of professional talent and sources sufficient to reformulate the problem of the century for this veepture met as much to him or the symbol and substance of the collaboration as for what could produce in the way of old revised and new findings interpreted about the negro. although the seven decade pageant that filled black america with sounds and light, it had been played out largely behind a vail color and meaning, however, that despite the visibility of the minority, there was occasions when the white majority was compelled to notice. he in the country were prejudice that forced him into a shoe string career as academic journalists and man of letters and exist especially in the margins where never once during an odd surmounting half century had there been a offer of an appointment or learn society affiliation with his genius. richard logan, his assistant, could no longer recall the brand, but he still retine tanned a vivid recollection 30 years later of champaigneed iced in the bucket, and the decision of the general board executive committee to refer to the full board had already reached atlanta when rufus, the new university president, returned from new york with news that the du bois proposal was slated for approval at a meeting of the geb trustees on april 6th, 1938, a wednesday. anticipating stokes' corroborating telephone call in the late afternoon on thursday, du bois and logan passed the attention over cigarettes and small talk as a bottle of excellent champaigne nestled in the crib of ice. logan was one of the few people with whom du bois ever descended into mere banter, but as logan responded to boasting, he knew du bois better than anyone perhaps other than his second wife. after a number of decreasingly anxious glances at the clock; it was depressingly obvious as the light went out of the late afternoon that no telephone call would come from stokes that day well, i have disappointing news, the president wrote days later, putting the best woft face on rejection, stokes complimented the president, the general education board, for being perfectly fine about the whole matter, and another for fighting for the proposal. the general education board, not flatly declining the request decided they cannot act favorably upon it. yes, stokes is clearly confident ending the letter with a sigh that you and i may not see the project through, and i hope and believe we will. as they confided, on thivity concerns continue to nag at certain trustees. head unvowed, they said quite possibly they are raising the funds is my own personality, and logan went to the grave convinced that the project had been undermind of both foundations by machinations. the lesson drawn from this mortifying experience is that there was once a time when the word of one quiet man could determine whether a project concerns negroes could be approved or not. the abdomen in addition was correct, but they blamed the foundation loss only somewhat less receptive to those competing $2 # 00,000 proposal for a free study of african peoples had been rejected by the cooperation two years earlier. so they continue to persevere, and he receives a word from a general education board, and -- well, i shall read this, stating frankly du bois's activities with the naacp overshadowed scholar i interest and more time necessary to create another impression, better objectivity, obviously, sympathetic program officer of the general education board lobbied the carnegie corporation to approve its portion of the stokes'-du bois's application despite action of his own foundation. dr. du bois is the most influential negro in the united states, stated the officer petition. this project would keep him bis -- busy for the rest of his productive life. particularly fond of frank, found him sympathetic, and the president had unself-ly prodded his own produce tees to bail out du bois's magazine, the crisis, twice mentioned the publication costs of the book on reconstruction and had a noncommittal interest in the negro. as it was possible there's action as a decision to defer rather than remains that they might act favorably on the request for an appropriation of 60% of the 260,000 budget that he would never receive such an appropriation communicated to du bois in a manner that was both indirect and guilt-ridden. his visitors arrived on campus on the third or the fourth day in november 1938 with little advanced notice putting aside the black vote, du bois conversed with a half hour or so with jackson davis of the general education board, offering regional business as the reason for their visit, the real reason was evident after general discussion of the project. two young swedish academics had just arrived in the united states to conduct studies was offices of the carnegie corporation. they were unfamiliar to du bois, but he agreed to discuss the projects with them and when, as davis informed them, they would come to atlanta towards the end of the month. near it all, a 40-year-old economics professor with a major reputation in europe had been conducting a broad based study recommended by mutant baker, the chairman of the board of the corporation in the fall of 1935. the astonished professor and social democratic leader of the parliament had the invitation in august 1937. his wife spent the academic year in 1929 serving the united states on a study grant from the rockefeller memorial foundation, arriving just as the stock market imploded. they developedded decided use about the american economy, but they knew almost nothing about negroes and the race problem. seven years later, they were asked to return so that they could undertake a comprehensive study of the negro in the united states. the key to the decision to seek a foreign scholar was contained in the carnegie study to be conducted in a wholly objective and dispassionate way. the president was convinced that the special factors, prejudice, professional jealousies, regional sensitivities, put octoberivity beyond the reach of home grown social science when dealing with the national race problem. notwithstanding what the other prominent americans social scientists had to say to the contrary. in the quest for ideal european, they considered -- eliminated to swied herb scholars and anthropologists and political scientist, a retired dutch colonial administrator, a brit ire economist, a south african, a governor of nigeria, former headmaster of lug by -- rugby, and a leading an throe polings of the day before deciding the swedish economist possessed the problem. signaling his acceptance, but only after being persuaded by a rockefeller foundation friend to withdrawal a declaration. they concluded that the carnegie option might be the last exciting project before the on set of middle age. why not the negro as well as anything else he said years later. the deal was sealed in the spring of 1938 with the handshake over cocktails in new york century club where they were entertained by the carnegie trustees after delivering lectures and proceedings and honorary degrees. if you bear with me, i'll read one more page. it brings du bois to 1949 when he's going left and really out of the mainstream. to put a mildly. this deals with, as i said, the famous historian peace conference. invited at the beginning of the year to serve as a member at large of arts, sciences, and profession, asp, du bois immediately informed an atron mother of the acceptance, although he must have been surprised to see his nemesis listed with palling, downs, and the four regional chairs of the restructured peace organization. during three days in late march 1949, the cultural and scientific conference or historic peace conference, had the east side, the catholic war veteran ticketed hundreds of citizens affiliated and unaffiliated filled the sidewalks and baseball of angry messages and radio gave the conference the advanced billing reserve for natural disasters for partisan review and ad hoc ban of several hundred cold war liberals calling themselves americans for intellectual freedom, the peace conference was a communism front whose perniciousness was deadly because of the presence of so many of the sincerely misguided. sidney hook, mary mccarthy, and dwight mcdonald patrolled corridors and wedged themselves in the panel discussions to combat. howell writing for partisan review sneered at the solemnness found no names and they led off the conference, and there was no mention of the fact that the state department denied visas to latin america and all in western europe thereby eliminating picasso and others. du bois's writer session, howell described the performance as that of an reluck at that particular time norman mailer, a perfect illustration of a unexperienced mind, quote-on-quote, expressing disillusionment by confining the world to the terrible prospect of war. du bois's second wife naturally thought that the speech in madison square garden on march 27 #th, the final night, was the high point. he spoke to the delegates with an intensity that conveyed a depth of the revulsion, centered by spotlight, enhanced by the microphone, proclaiming the culture and scientific con fliewns for world peace a success in a time of hysteria, suspicion, and hate, they brought together one of the largest gatherings of the creative artists and thinkers the world has seen. they were not now nor probably ever would be in agreement on all matters, but in one final respect, our agreement is complete, no more war. he was there to introduce, but had not yet said enough, and when the applause subsided, he continued that the nations knows we are not traitors nor con conspirators and far from plotting force and violence, it is precisely force and violence that we bitterly oppose. they spoke of the failure of the league of nations and now the unit nations to address the cancers of the imperialism and racism. 8the years fall away. i tell you people of america that the dark world is on the move. it was and will have freedom, autotonmy and equality and will not be diverted in fundamental rights, spinning, political hairs, white, if they will, i'm there, but the vast majority will march over them to freedom. still, he was not quite finished. race war was not the answer. what we all want is a decent world where a man does not have to have a white skin to be recognized as a man where sickness and death are linked to our industrial system. then he was done. this is not an end. it is the gateway to a full and abun -- abundant life. it was noted the policemen in the garden applauded. thank you. [applause] david will be happy to take questions, but this talk tonight and your questions are being taped for c-span, so we ask that if you have a question that you come down here to my left, your right, and talk into the microphone so you can be -- have your moment in the sun at 2 a.m. on the television at some point. [laughter] >> a question or two? good evening. >> [inaudible] >> that story is, indeed, a hard one to tell. it's not an uncommon story of a man whose commitment to great prince. s and abstractions means people nearest and dearest to him find the oxygen is sucked out of the universe, and they shrivel and are really denatured by the close contact, over don't come off well. the mother, the wife, the daughter waiting to be noticed by the great man, and periodically, he does, but the psychic was large, and, of course, there were ironies here and du bois was a great feminist of the early part of the 20th century to redu bois on women's rights is to read some of the most salient, cogent prose going, not just that women should have the right to vote, but that women should have complete control of their bodies, and equal pay for equal work, and yet the treatment of his wife was a -- they made somewhat a mockery of the principles. similarly, what was the second point about being close to him and suffering, yes, he wrote in a children's magazine that he created in collaboration with jesse that may res enate here, children's magazine called the brownnies, a monthly magazine for children of color. again, a wonderful nurturing publication for young boys and girls of color, but, of course, in his day-to-day dealings with his daughter and granddaughter, he was not paying attention to the text of the book. >> [inaudible] >> well, let's see, relief, i think, is the major thought of the moment. [laughter] what i found is that there are people who are different from other, not just the rich, and du bois is one of them, and there is an intelligence at work here that's really wonderful to behold, and the opinions are problematic and some are really wrong, but -- [laughter] he is in his principle quest for solutions to social problems and willingness to put his pen on the line, he's standing outs in a country that's not so many of his character. what else? i think what i was pleased to see that going into this business, you know, i knew, as you do, that the one thing that du bois said was that the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line, and at the end, i see that i'm quoted as saying in the flier that the atlanta history center is distributed announcing the lecture, i said that in the end they said it was really the problem of the cash line, and i think that his evolution for concerns of race rights in confining terms to blacks in america, people of color in general, the evolution of that and a rather romantic conception of the qualities of people of color, the evolution from that object to one of economic democracy globally and a critique of the market economy as a wonderfully, deadly phenomena impressed me greatly. it seems to me that even with the collapse of the soviet union and the problems of china, the caveat is that often the seating of social problems to the market for solutions is very up wise, extremely costly, and in the en, it'll rise up to bite us in the behind. those are some of the things that i took away from du bois. >> [inaudible] >> please do. >> [inaudible] [inaudible] >> secondly, having been born, growing up in atlanta -- [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] >> that's a tall order, and i'm delighted to have the questions, and i think i'm really going to say that i hope i'm going to sign your book later in the evening because those things are certainly addressed. i -- the question about really underscore, though, that i think i should say something about in the time remaining, and that is the seeming paradox of the man who is so committed to human rights and racial rights ending up using totalitarianism in order to get them. it's a paradox, and while you argue is makes sense from a pragmatic perspective, you know, that the enemy is your friend, use him or her and that ideology, you expect more from this great intellectual and humanist as i've spent too much time depicting, and sioux a biographer is troubled by discoveries of that sort, but my job is to simply recover the life and recapture the life, and i don't have to be overly much vexed by these oxy morons or paradoxes of which are there so many, but as a biographer, that's just wonderful material to use. >> [inaudible] >> the long -- the first president of the atlanta university, yes. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> [inaudible] my reading is of the situation that suddenly they deal with reality of segregation, but i'm wondering how -- what was the hope? [inaudible] >> the frustration of white supremacy and jim crow was such that du bois bumped up against the edges of the box, and so sometimes he would offer one solution, and sometimes he would offer a solution at the time and confusing those who marched with them and gaining allies who were disingenuous, and the example is du bois going out of the naacp wrote editorials with the title "segregation and self-respect" saying that this was a fact of racial life and endured for quite some time, and, therefore, it better be smart about making the best segregation possible, and, therefore, he suggested some sort of socialist solution. they said, as many people did, look, we can't have a luxury of that kind of intellectual hypothesizing because we heard entered into the records your thoughts and prose by bill and several congressmen said the new deal should be color coded with separate wage scales for whites against blacks, and they are quoting you, and so, you know, it's not utilitarian. it's a difficult thing, and i think that the inconsistencies refleblght a second line trying to find a way out. >> [inaudible] >> good evening. >> [inaudible] >> yeah, it's inspiring to hear talk about how the idea gestated with them, and it's clear they had the source, and cradled the idea, and it succeeds, remarkably well, and there's a large contribution to it. i make a fight and claim of no objectivity, perhaps, but it's -- it's got some troubling flaws, i gather, each specialist has drummed on to and said, realm, they've not done a good job here or there, not surprising, and i suppose now that henry louis gates and others sold to time warner for $10 million, just the source money to work out the glaichs. -- glitches. [laughter] yes, sir? >> [inaudible] >> i read the book, bought it last week. >> oh, great, thank you. >> [inaudible] >> that's it. there's no malcolm x that i could find. >> [inaudible] >> that's really a delicious speculation, and i decline to do so because i'm still a historian, and it's not what i believe in doing. i can tell you what i'd like it to if he was around. i think he probably would not have understood that alas. i think it's, dealing with the gentleman here who is very elite, must have been the most elitest member of the communism party of the united states. [laughter] i think he would have mistaken this persona and not, perhaps, have been patient enough to see and give him for time, but i think there would have been ide loming call problems there as well. well, thank you very much. [applause] >> we'll continue the discussion of military strikes on syria with retired army lieutenant diffed from the center for new american security. >> wilson was so intellectual and our most academic, most educational educated president, the only president with a ph.d.. as a result of that, i think most of the books that have been written about him have been academic in nature, and i think they have missed the very human side of this man. he was deeply emotional, passionate, romantic figure, had two wives, first wife died, he courted and fell in love with a woman and married a second time. wrote thousands of passionate love letters to each of these women. this was a real, living, breathing human being, and i don't think we've seen that about woodrow wilson. >> a. scott burg's biography releases next week. hear more sunday night at eight on c-span's "q&a." >> monday, the u.s. court of appeals for the dc circuit hears oral argument in the case of verizon against fcc to determine whether the fcc has the authority to regulate internet service providers. analysts discuss the legal and technological implications at the new america foundation today. this is an hour and a half. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> all right, hello, and welcome to everyone joining us in the room, and the live screen online. for all of you, i encourage you to cooperate the conversation online using the hash tag poundopeninternet. all one word. i'm thrilled to introduce a really great participants here today to talk about the future of the communications ecosystem. we are here to talk about the open interpret, the status of the case of the dc circuit where the order is challenged, but we're also here to look broadly at problems emerging as they grapple with the scope of the authority of the modern communications network. the challenges affect us and and will continue to affect us all. arbitrary distinctions mean federal policies leave important principles behind in the internet era. principles that ensure communications network connect everyone everywhere, that our networks service open platforms allowing each of us to access consent of our choosing and communicate, and new competitors compete on a level playing field with providers, and, ultimately, the digital divide marked by racial, social, or economic lines is not perpetuated. the values that underline the principles, the benchmarks known as common carriage date back over a century. they are not new, and the fcc needn't reinvent the wheel. we'll discuss what a mod -- modernized communication looks like. joining me is matt wood, policy director at free press, steven, national organizer for the center for media justice, marty from aarp, and and ji, and susan crawford, professor at the school of law, fellow at the roosevelt institute, codirector at the berkman center, former official assistant for science, technology, and innovation policy to barack obama, and author of captive audience. susan, pleased to have you here, you have much to say, so i'll turn the floor to you for opening remarks after which we veed to a conversation. >> welcome, and thank you for hosting us. there's a spray of issues in communications policy and law and a lot of shiny objects, a lot of confusion, so it must be relief to especially the journalists in the crowd here that the case being argued on monday at the dc kir cut is called verizon versus fcc presents a moment of grandeur. does the u.s. government have a role to play when it comes to ensuring open world class, reasonably priced internet access? does the government have good reason to ensure that facility in america? i believe it does for competitive reasons because asian policies are pushing towards exactly that end, and we have an obligation to ensure a thriving middle class that helps the country remain strong for generations. the case argued monday discusses today is situated in two powerful reasons, an attack on the idea that the government has any role in ensuring open, world class, interconnected, reasonably priced high speed internet access, and it's an attack on the idea of both at the administrative level so whether fcc has delegated authority from congress to do what it did in the open internet role that we'll discuss and administratively, that attack is strong, stemming from legal gymnastics that people in the room are qualified to talk about, and talking about it in detail, if you want, but that's all about policies. those decisions made by the fcc were made against the background of assumed legal authority, and we'll get through the policy decisions one way or another. they get decided. that's the administrative level. what i'd like to highlight this afternoon is the profound, the profound attack this case represents on congressal authority to say anything about high speed interpret access-under-par the commerce clause. each talk with one message so one thing to remember today and that one thing that's so important is that the dc kir -- circut has to firmly squash verizon's first amendment claim that any oversight of the high speed internet access service would be unconstitutional. the dc circut has to stop the argument in its tracks. verizon says in capacity, when it's wearing that hat a as a high speed internet access provider, it's the same as the washington post. any effort by government to con train ability to slice and dice and prioritize and make deals with content providers about that high speed access should be found unconstitutional under the first amendment. verizon has plenty of good reasons to make this astonishing and laughable argument. it's an attempt to constitutionalize the regulation of general purpose communication networks. you have oversight out of the political branch, congressional delegated power, and they make sure there's a roadblock, a very tall constitutional roadblock to any oversight that seek to remove any threats, any threat of oversight over we've seen this before in the era, the same claims that were made by companies seeking to remove regulatory oversights, but even then, tfn companies did not claim that the first amendment bars any oversight or regulation of their transport activities. it sounds like a serious legitimate constitutional argument. if they get there, that's a win. if it's serious, it's a win for them because that will make some court, and they hope it's the supreme court, someday, and they make the argument over and over and over again agree that this is a serious question. that any general purpose network raises constitutional questions about speech and say in light of the questions, you can't poly defer to what the administration agency, in this case, the fcc, has done to exert oversight over us. they repeat this over and over again, this laughable argument. this happened with health care. just keep saying it and hope someone believes you there's a claim at issue here. well, the government has good reasons to oversee the operation of these general purpose transport networks, and the reasons are so good and verizon's claim is so absurd that it's important that the dc circuit make a claim about this. remember why we have an amendment, directing the content of messages from savoring certain points of view. what is the likelihood that government's in the net neutrality order in issue in this particular case or any other arena of policies over general purposes transport networks is actually suppressing speech or attempting to favor certain messages over others. i'll tell you what the likelihood is. it's zero. that's not what's going on here. there is no attempt. they say they are forced to subsidize speech abliged to be neutral. that's nonsense. fifty years ago, the arguments were made by segregationists saying the lunch counters subsidized sit-ins only rating a paragraph 50 years ago, disgraceful at the time, and here, sure, everything's subsidizes something else, but there has to be some lines, and scalia said it clearly about ten years ago that a philosopher claims everything is related to everything else, but there's a line, and a transport network is not subsidizing speech that travels over it. it's not subsidizing messages, understandable messages by an audience by which it does not agree is not going on nighs. the dc circuit needs to slam the door on the first amendment argument decisively because what verizon is really trying to do in the entire case is protect its profitable positions wanting power to squeeze profit everywhere, both at its interconnection points with other networks, and in the last mile by discriminating wr. to traffic, but economic loss is not a first amendment injury. it is freedom of speech any time it wants to on anything thinking of other people's speech to cross lines does not amount to compelled speech. luckily, in a recent supreme court decision, justice roberts made it clear in the solomon amendment case. we're hoping the dc circuit pays attention to that. verizon is not singled out. the companies at issue in net order are regulated entities who provide wires and transmission lines and use rights of way to provide communications into u.s. house holes, and, yes, there's a line between regulated entities and applications that use the internet. that's a line. it doesn't mean that the regulated entities are out for speakers of the messages. it's different from the conversation. right now, we are worried about the sidewalk, uncon trained power to rise up and make more money by picking and choosing particular conversations of which is improverred, and, importantly, government has plenty of good reasons to prefer open networks to private carriage to ensure access just as our phone system was the envy of the world when it was built. .. >> we are giving them the opportunity to explain for what this means. >> thank you, it is great to be here as always. we have this case and we are talking about the neutrality and how it is not content regulation. it is simply regulation of a communications network. and we have this what with the conversation and we had a regulated network and that doesn't mean the government or anyone is regulating what you and i say to each other. it means that they a have a basic guarantee and that is what the content regulation is about. even though people will try that line on you even today. what it means is that it's a simple statement about the principles of the person you pay to ship something, you can't mess let muscle at the contents. simply saying that it is contrary to the plan of verizonmac. they cannot edit your e-mail must does, they cannot tell you which ones to go to. they can't save you can use some applications and services. you should be able to use any one of them. they can't say some service that would cost you more. so they would like to say, we like it when you pay us for tv service and also for internet access and this is a hypothetical, this isn't something they had tried to do. it is a predecessor case that basically ran for 2007 through 2010 and finished up just as this one was kicking off. it is not hypothetical, but something i promised that you hear people talking about it at panels like this one and in places like aspen with when they say we should be allowed to experiment with new teams paying for content may mean that not only for the people to pay them, like i pay comcast for that internet connection and also google or facebook or netflix or whomever. we won't have the ability to charge them as well for the revenues. so what are these open internet rules this week and what are they actually doing? >> they do have a decent job that they do. sometimes you will hear about no complaints and that obviously means that there is no need for the rules. and it's like, boy, wouldn't that be nice if we could do this. we refuse to make an application available to everyone by apple, they said he could have face time as long as you pay up for unlimited voice minutes and i like that part of it. i mean, as long as you pay us for unlimited voice, then you can substitute something cortisol is the check is guaranteed and we are getting paid two or even three times, and it's like, sure, have fun, but only once they have discriminate against the competitive and innovative application that will take away some of their business. and i would just finish with this on the authority piece. it's very important in the case. it is most likely in the case to consider whether they have the ability to adopt these or not. the first compromised as wireless disparity that we talked about in the past. where we have different rules that apply to these wired networks. the carrier has an obligation and that is allowed, or lease it is part of the rules that are not encouraged. they also said that the wireless carriers could not block applications and to think of something like skype or google voice and those could be fair game, not just for deferential treatment, but for blocking by the ist we have any here on our panel and i hate to talk about this and some incomplete definitions, because they worked so hard to make this principle preserved for us. but there are some people who have talked about reasonable network management and their these kinds of loopholes and landmines that may be very legitimate ways for them to manage this. the third way was on the authority base and susan talked about this. we will talk about how it was part of the real-world implications and we don't want to get too lost in this part of the greater basically what it has done is continued down the path to say that the internet access services are not really a transition service. but they are also different enough that we don't have the same kind of authority over them or something like a telephone number i wouldn't say that that is a that is not the cleanest one that they have available. we have applications that we think that they could have taken a long time ago and could could've been the end of this regulatory twilight zone in which other broadband communication services have been part of the better part of the last decade. and that is what we are going to see is the argument plays itself out and as the judges finally render a decision may be early next year. does the sec have this authority in a court is a need to go back and try this again? the problem is that this is not only something that affected this neutrality. but if it's given a broad loss, over modern communications networks, and that would be a disaster because we need the fcc to make sure that we have a level playing field so that competitive companies are available to provide services to communities and they have access to that modern communications network that we so need, even as the technology and content changes. to that is more than enough from me. i would just like to apologize for anything if i do anything wrong during the confirmation that were made. it's very excited. >> i would like to talk about the perspective that i had. whole legal team was involved in the consideration of this. but i was primarily responsible for and representing the commissioner for this and we had discussions with chairman baucus and the staff. i would like to take us back and brought in what was going on at the time. we were considering this order and it was with wide public support for the commission to act and to do something. why is this? that it was because folks don't realize how important it is to have access to the internet as we had all learned to love it and access it and we have been able to surf the web and check the website, "the new york times" and the idea that we would have to pay more and it was sort of scary idea. how will that change and there was an economy growing around it and here is an alternative to reach consumers in a new and exciting way. many of the staff has grown up during this internet age. i began work in the mid-90s. i remember when you could not attach anything to an e-mail and we used to talk about whether or not we would be able to provide voice or video service. over the internet. the idea that we have gotten to this place, i think we all were a little humble and we wanted to be sure that we were taking steps to prevent consumers and that the at the same time that the rules would not be so onerous that we would somehow alter or stop innovations that would happen that would benefit consumers. and the other thing i wanted to point out to you was that congress had actually become quite aware of how important internet wise. and congress had elected to the commission to spend time and money putting together a national broadband plan. how can we get broadband and high-speed internet access to all americans. broadband that is affordable. then they provided about $7.2 billion to build broadband in america and make sure that all consumers would have access to this new and exciting service and they recognize how this had been. how telephone service began in realize that this equal the playing field for consumers and provided them new opportunities and here are ways that we can create economic opportunities in rural america. and the president having talked about this internet policy and the broad discussions were going on. and i think that the commission really wanted to ensure that consumers can have access to this open internet and they have the opportunity to speak. they had the opportunity to reach competitive opportunities. at the same time we were very humbled to the position that we were in, and we wanted high-level rules that would provide us and we knew that yes, it wasn't going to please everyone. and perhaps that meant that we got to the right compromise on both sides, not everyone was happy. they now have a different hat on. i represent competitive carriers in the trade association. in these are in the rules and they are very important. the commission laid out very clearly in this order how it is that large isps that also have alternative voice services can discriminate against competitors and the small companies that are trying to compete over the internet and offer alternative services would be put at a disadvantage without these rules. and that is the perspective that i want to provide for my old position and in my new position, and i am happy to be here and to continue this discussion with you on. >> thank you. we would like to hear more about how your current numbers today are at a disadvantage when we don't have certainty about how these three occasions networks hang together the impact is part of this. and this is by the lack of certainty in their communications futures, and that is why we are so excited to have marty and steve here in such a powerful voice on a lot of issues and the impact that lack affordable and universal communications services and the effect on aging populations who have had as much to do as anybody that don't always adapt to the service instantly and we need to have some kind of service in this landscape. so whatever you like to share. >> thank you very much. i think you colleagues for this great opportunity to talk about the potential impacts to the populations regarding this decision and the decision. this is a nonprofit organization with the number of members and we hope people have turned their goals into possibilities, real possibilities. we have the sense of community is and we talk about those that matter to families. including retirement planning, affordable utilities as well. many of you in the room are much more defined, especially since i can tell you that we see broadband as a successful connector for the 50 plus population and we understand that everyone has a fundamental need to be part of a wider community. this is particularly important for older adults would find out later in life many times that there are more potential opportunities after the age of 50 than before and starting new businesses and coming up with those and they had proceeded with and now after a life full of work they have the opportunity to engage in. the 50 plus population in the country is growing rapidly and is projected to increase by 21% by 2020. and those growing by the year 2020. all of the communities in this nation need to find ways to keep his largest buyer and 50 plus population not only engaged, but connected as well. we would like to talk about the technology infrastructure and the implications and impacts for this population. and we have an opportunity to study local institutions and intergenerational access to enter public schools and access to public services offered by federal and state and local governments offered with life enhancing benefits that are online now. those adults who have no access or view have limited access to lease valued broadband and the internet to get to those benefits. again, i mentioned access to small business opportunities as very important. talking quickly sweet moved questions and answers as to how we can see this technological change happening. we firmly believe that as the technology involved, consumer protection should not become obsolete. there is no stopping point. there is no tipping point. they must move as the technology evolves for the protection of the nation and in the public interest as well. we know that the classification issue is at the core where the heart of a lot of the distress right now regarding a hearing next week and other telecommunications issues and we try to help our members understand the difference regarding classifications and the sec has so much more authority under that classification as opposed to the information service. so network neutrality and aarp supports an open internet. we support the consumer's right to access and information openly without discrimination of contents or service. and we believe that policymakers are sure to have the right to access to use this and offered any lawful especially to the operator's broadband network as long as that device is not damaged board degraded that subscribers use to access the network. aarp is very supportive of the role of the sec of being a rapidly changing technology and its infrastructure. we believe that they have a road that must be maintained and protected. it is no longer at the fledgling technology of the 80s and 90s needing the nurturing of a light or restrained touch of regulations and instead it is what it is for a full-grown and robust technology and industry that is very critical to our nation and the public interest of our nation and very critical to our 50 plus population this deserves a federal communications commission whose role will be to protect the universal access of not only connectivity, but the content and services that the internet will offer. >> thank you so much. it is not just those who cannot afford to buy it and they can edit it if they want to. and i thank you,, ma'am. first of all, they do so much for having me on the panel today. it is an extreme honor to be on this panel with so many folks. i was humbled to be here. so i am here with the center for media justice and i am hoping to represent the grassroots network, which is a national network that they coordinate across the country. we know that it's vital to the health and well-being of the communities that are represented, which are very much rural communities, it is vital towards their health and well-being. it is important in protecting the public interest. especially knowing that these can be priced out or relegated towards the internet that impacts the ability to participate in the global and 21st century economy. last we see the open internet as being vital that democratizes our communications and provided us an effective platform where we can voice our opposition. i will go into those a little bit more. this case could be about controlling ownership of this vital infrastructure and these are pre-existing tensions and poor and working-class communities and one of our network members is a young people's project which is in mississippi river on this program for children in high school because they know how critical these skills are to a quality education. they are engaged in to connecting this education just because it is so vital around jobs. this has been the engine behind economic development. and we're taking a look at this in the mississippi delta and we look at how many were in each of the zip codes. those that have the service providers that were about 378 businesses, and supposed to have zero, there were about 70. it is no surprise that a lot one of those went over with rural communities and poor communities and communities of color. we have learned from the struggles is that when the lack agencies so one process inevitably conflicts with the public interest. it is a principle that protects the public. it is network neutrality and network pcs. he came out with a tiered data plan for little but we can get an additional website. you can start seeing this with metro pcs, it's a company that is now t-mobile. but they are now were specifically marketing towards people of color the communities of color for the working-class communities. we are denied one more platform. this is now more than ever in regards to how syria has been. we must understand that it is vitally important that we hear these stories of those anti-muslim racism it is the same kind of company that has provided this massive amount of data to the nsa. it is something that has come to light in the has been the online communities and they have fought back. it's a vital platform and we see these pieces is important. >> thank you, stephen. anything about this scenario that we were describing earlier. and it would affect this and i can start off and we are trying to broaden the scope of the things supported to include broadband service. including the lifeline program which provides a discount and we are supporting standalone broadband. so we have the ability to include broadband and extend those regulations and this includes regulatory authority over traditional telephone. we have to dig in a little bit to some of these related issues. >> it is divided markets, we are able to charge whatever you want for whatever kind of services that you want to have, it becomes another private limousine service we have things like the postal system and the federal highway system in america and we have indications networks and the phone and that huge competitive advantage for the country is whittled away. because we have a few people new businesses will be able to align a common interface and we won't have kernel access to health care for american education but we won't get that we get what we've got. we have the status quo. >> i would like to emphasize that there are pockets of populations in this country that have no access. a very limited access to even have phone service is already struggling to provide this to communities, this no providers to probably what i would like to say ways that populations that want to continue generation after generation. these places may never get service. those places would limit this and we would have a very difficult time to attract these profits in the profit driven providers succumb to the communities. they really don't have a we see in washington dc and other urban areas in this country. >> we had a commission, it is about a reform that occurred about a year and a half ago and put together a pilot program with broadband internet access service for low income conservatives. including lying upon the access of internet do that. so that they can turn this program into not just a great subsidy program but a broadband subsidy program. as you indicated, the commission already included the subsidy for purposes of packages so that consumers find the voice and the broadband package that can be subsidized. but it's still in obscene amount of money. and it's not apparent that there are companies are offering that service to low-income subscribers. so congress still has authority that it can delegate if they somehow limit the authority that the fcc has been delegated and we have to go back to congress in order to ensure that low-income consumers can be served and get access to broadband internet access and subsidies. it is going to take a wild for that to happen. and that is a concern. to uphold this statutory and the 760 authority that has the service of voice and a 230 provision that was relied upon. and so i would even go to stresses beyond and they need to uphold this at this time. and they have to go back and redo this. to read redo the amount of time that that would take the political pressure that was fell from the public and the company. this is not a great use of government resources. it has been asked and answered on the court should uphold it and we should move on. because there are many other things of the community needs to work on, including finishing up that pilot project in making sure that we have access to affordable broadband internet access service. >> part of what i think about this is an interesting part of the generation. i'm old enough to have gone to school at times when i does not necessarily need access to the internet. i was the first person on my block to get a computer and have a dial-up connection. i was like the go to person for every query. nowadays when i go back, my cousin lives with my mom now. she has the cable broadband connection at home. my cousin is in high school and regularly utilizes her computer to finish her homework. so for me, the doomsday scenario is more about what the impact will be for people. and this has been utilized for so many critical things. every time they try to do something, it seems like juries don't like it and they respond by saying, well, the fcc doesn't have the authority to do that so thank you. and they didn't like it, they didn't want to be regulated and they have no authority. in some ways these arguments come up time and time again. anytime they try to do something. it's a very important question. >> without questioning this true statement that this will tie the commission of, going back to that point a little bit. people will say sometimes that if they do the right thing, they will be sued. they get pseudo-matter what they can do. a lot of our advice at the time was part of this and at least get sued for the right thing, do the strong thing in the right thing and going with your strongest theory and obviously it be sec chose to redo the order based on some kind of narrow fight would be very important. again, putting that mentality out there and you could talk about how we navigate the current system that we have or they can even interconnect. especially based on the technology they are using and we will have this for the economy and society and these include the games of the incumbents play to make difficult as possible for their competitors. >> but that is referring to is that congress provides for provisions in title to and specifically the local phone market for competition they are now arguing that this is internet and therefore the commission should not regulated the family that regulated the traditional service. and they do not want to always interconnect with competitive carriers. and they want a commission to be treated as though will be all over the top and this will take care of the situation. in that position is that it's not part of this arrangement. it is a waste product that is a managed service over the carriers network and they all advertise the internet protocol services. and we continue to have that. and so there is a lot of spillover for arguments that you you have seen before to see again proceeding after proceeding. the commission's lack of determination about how to classify services and treat services. and that has tied us up and not and occasionally we find out that we have an inner connective voice that have not recovered such as the recent case on planning. and as it turns out, if you are a consumer vendor products get switched over to a voip service without your permission, you have a complaint and they are going to dismiss it because they haven't said that those rules apply to the interconnected voip service, even though in other consumer protection services have this as well. so yes, this is -- it makes it difficult for our members and we are concerned about exactly what steps the commission will take and what authority will have part of the competitive playing field. he will have alternatives and if they don't like it, they can go to someone else. this is what we want to see what the provisions that are continuing. >> so you miss in your earlier statement the widespread political and social support back in the days of the original drafting of the internet order. given this regulatory arbitrage that was highlighted in your story exemplifies and the fact that we have these technologies and we are bringing it into systems delivered over the internet. and so where are we now when it comes to this social support, and how we missed the moment? i think there is a lot of confusion. >> you know, i don't want to put you on the spot, but there is confusion what you just said. because sarah, the numbers show not much of the voice services are actually over the internet right now. the use of the internet protocol is a transmission technology. it doesn't mean that it goes over the internet. so therefore it is going over the internet and i have something to tell you all, that is just not true. that is a misconception of my association is spending a lot of time trying to correct. and so, you know, as it turns out, there are some folks that are choosing to have their voice products over the internet and we want to encourage that and we think it's very important. but it is also true that the tuc managed voice products from consumers and almost all business consumers are choosing this as well. that is because for business consumers, they need to absolutely make sure that they have good quality of service. the internet is a best effort network. it doesn't offer the same kind of guarantees that the telephone network has traditionally offered and it's so important for so many consumers. it is important to me with two young kids that don't rely solely on my mobile service i still need a voice part because i actually want to be sure that i can stay in contact with my friends and family and loved ones. conductor but there's an emergency in my house. and that manage product that i get is a managed voip product that does not travel over the internet. in fact you can go on the website and they will tell you that. so that is -- i just really wanted to be clear. that we folks understand. and the commission -- a lack of certainty and definition from the commission's perspective, and it hasn't provided what this is, it continues to be a problem. sometimes it's not even a problem that they are talking about. and you think about those that say we can't handle this complaint. so where is the consumer supposed to go? how is the consumer ms? it is important that the commission, that they address issues head on. and the politics are hard. i have been there before. there have also been in a situation where i am begging determined to make an exception and it is so important for the commission to view its job and protect consumers and especially in light of the fact that there are about 50% of the states that have deregulated and this is the last agency to protect the consumers. >> i just want to think angie for the clarification. also to highlight the necessities and the dire situation that we have with aarp and other consumer advocacy groups. especially those who don't have and they may have the best lobbyists that the carrier can provide. but they don't have the best information. and they get a lot of conflict in information as well as to where their authorities began and where it ends. and where the sec is able to step in and what the role will be in terms of being a stopgap. so i just want to speak up for the consumer groups that are dealing with these mixed messages about the role and that the state level they are saying, don't worry, they are doing everything that we can to make sure that the sec will not be there. >> the sea, and we have real people that are confused. and i think it goes back to something that mark talked about earlier and maybe we can finish with some final thoughts before we start taking questions. one thing is that we have as many experts here in the audience. so i'm curious to talk about this confusion. it is just simple disbelief that suddenly consumer protections don't apply. the play, we mean, i can't do this in e-mail as an e-mail or a website and why would that be different is because the technology has improved or changed. why would i not have the same types of rights economically speaking. and why can't i go and find a system that we are talking about. and i think that is where a lot of the confusion comes from for people. >> it almost makes you smile. these are just general transport networks and you're supposed to be able to do whatever it is that you need to do. it should be something where we are always number one. yet steadily at the state and local level and the federal level, all of that structure is being removed and this case is absolutely central an integral to that very well thought out problem. it's enough of a shell game that is provided by the same guy. i think that we are defining this bubbly, and yet it should not be that difficult. without clear authority so this is a very important role for the state to play and we have to get them into that position. we have this opportunity to move this around, and i am hopeful that whatever happens will result in us seeing important policy issues for our country. >> yes, and we do have the state commissioner and we need more of them with the organization that represents us. the president put together a task force and they just released their paper on the cooperative settlement and what needed to happen with new networks and i encourage you to go to their networks and go to the website and look at this paper and we need to have more discussion about how we have this at the state commissioner office and the sec are working together to ensure there is a competitive playing field and that we all have options, whether residential or business and we all know that this is one of the best ways to protect consumers and also there needs to be protections in place. that absolutely ensure the kinds of guaranteed service that they have always had and that they rely on and that they don't have to understand the legal distinctions when they're using the internet versus wireless. >> what we are trying to do with the network is bringing our grassroots voice to a lot of these places. we want to show what the impact is for everyday lives. so for folks out there on the internet, feel free to hit us up. because that is where it is that. >> with that, i think we can open it up for questions. speaking of this, we have some folks monitoring this and we will try to get one or two questions. >> thank you very much. it seems to me that the panel has done a great job of presenting some things here and there is an elephant in the room that is being overlooked. and the reality is they think that it would be helpful for your listening but in the event that the fcc goes down on 706, which i think they should especially addressing all of these advanced networks. you could go back and address these things and i feel like everyone is tiptoeing the around the fact that the sec got into this by basically defining what we have pointed out, which is something over ip and then they sort of scrambled around the edges looking for provisions of law saying that he didn't give it all away, which is the important things. [laughter] so maybe you could talk about how these titles might apply in the event that the sec went back and revisited these definitions. >> absolutely. and i did not intend to tiptoe around it. it is an information service in the first adapter cable modem service, then they did that for dsl service. so that is one option that the commission can go back to. we are talking about a competitive market. so we can offer an open internet service. the commission would be left to do it. but there is a series of this that that lasted in the prior administration. and i think that one of the reasons is that it's just too hard to hear such an outcry that it shouldn't do that at that it shouldn't be this or that and see what the court says. >> i think it is very important to people understand that this is not the end of the road. since the end of this road of that regulatory twilight that i have talked about earlier where they have tried to say that we have broadband, but only in convoluted type of ways. and maybe that holds up in the it's just not good enough with all of the responsibilities that we have in all of the rules that they have to play and we don't let it disappear just because the technology has changed. >> i think our members would have real concerns about the amount of time that would take for the commission to make this decision and what the end result could be in one of the things that i would hear constantly one is we need certainty and we need certainty now to just make a decision and this puts us all into more uncertainty and there are other proceedings that are going on at my members care about like special access reform and reforming the last mile of policies. this is not a first amendment right that horizon has. and it should shut down so what they have already done and how that might impact the cost reform and locally this was before more specific positions. and we need to be having a different discussion and that was one of the primary underlying factors and i was thrilled that the commission on was upheld for purposes of the jurisdiction and so i really hope that this will be something that we can look at and we are going to look at all the other provisions and the redefinition and that holds the sec so that we can get beyond those conversations and talk about other things. >> please go had. >> thank you. it was want to go back and we want to improve everything. and we are in the basic principles and concepts with the rules and we want to look for equal opportunities and help with everything, all the commodities are good. so the internet and everything is such a concept. so this is very important. and today we have had everything. they have this and this is not your land at all and so we have this type of thing that we don't deserve. we have a problem and the reason that we have this is that we know that it is just that you have a bigger issue than that. because they don't allow you to do that. and it's just not working at times. so all of these issues, if we don't resolve it, we really have a big problem. and this is not just based on justice. and so we have a big issue. it took a look at adoption rates in urban communities versus rural. and whatever mechanisms need to be taken in place for it to be utilizing technology. and obviously they had regulatory rules and developing that in that sort of thing as well. >> and why is that just a substitute for this antitrust. >> and we are talking about this policy as well competition is a great way and we should have this in our toolbox and we haven't had it in enough resulting in lower prices. >> it looks backward inherently not only protects competitors. it protects the competitors. here we have a marketplace where they have divided up market funds all over the place. and they can't say we have to serve the regulatory policy. >> we have an interesting consumer protection and when it comes to making these regulatory rules, only the expert administrative agencies can do that. >> i mean, you can offer anything that you want to call this part of the basic communications service, let it not something that is part of this. >> i wanted to get back to this element. and i'm a little bit out of touch. but a couple of years ago they lost this and i'm wondering what some of the same issues were and if this has been repealed or distinguished and how serious is this issue? >> well, i would say that some people say that this is let's do it again. and we have established and that is the approach. so at least you have your basic structure clearer. and then we have the problem that is having enough representatives in congress. and we won't give you any more campaign contributions. >> thank you so much. >> there are so many provisions that were not in the original compact case. >> are there no questions? >> let's keep talking about this. doesn't the fcc have the authority to make the reclassification and go from title i title ii? and hopefully this is the ability to do that right now. >> they do, and they have to have a reason for doing so. >> it's not just the merits, but it's part of the sec that has the discretion to do this and they said that the fcc got it wrong but even though there is information riding on top of it. the people that want to talk about the axis of this, to confirm this on the merit of this classification and i understand how that goes. >> yes, we have time for another question. the accounts would add. >> when we talk about this, the real problem is we don't want to leave the sec unclassified and it's not reluctant to tackle that issue. and there is no fundamental technical difference. and people say that the congress will cut the funding. >> let's be optimistic. so let's say something very clear. whatever that is, let's make it clear and that will give everyone a roadmap about what principles do we need to deal with. >> i think we have time. >> i'm wondering what kind of communications are part of these and have happily part of actions. it is what is neutrality and what the public sees that. i wrote a book about this which put this in context and explains how this takes place. that has been one of the problems and we see a lot of acronyms that people get confused. >> we will have more content and we save the internet as well. we will have that conversation as well. .. >> legislators and everyday citizens can hear them say there are mixed messages out there and they exist for a purpose, the sec does than they are not the stopgap that many are tallying up policy makers the commissioners need to be more vocal to more diverse audiences to let them know what their role is and why they were created in the first place and the statutes they operate under. >> i will offer up in terms of the national network we host of the conversations were reluctant these issues and deconstructs them and connect to the broader social justice issues people care about day-to-day we have interesting tools to break down the issue one thing that comes to mind in particular was an organization in new york produced a video that it is serious business that explains how the internet functions. who on network neutrality also the media literacy project had dialed in tool kit how mobile functions being an issue in relation to neutrality they don't distill exist for the wireless users that neutrality was a big hot-button issue of our network produced a the wrap it was a song called regulate specifically looking at how to explain what this whole proceeding was about and you should look that up. >> and ac that they are hitting the firm's stock so we will end it there. we will see you are bound if anyone has additional questions. [applause] [inaudible conversations] the. >> annapolis is the southern town with the slavery up intel emancipation but i did not realize how bad jim-crow movement was after the war of the early 1900's. that was a shock annapolis was one of the two cases decided by the supreme court of the united states in 1915 of the grandfather clause. you get to the oklahoma case that had restrictions on voting with that as well was a law passed and 19 '08 changing the charter of the city of annapolis to restrict voting by african-americans. they are free and had been voting not the state elections they tended to vote republican and so those democrats in power wanted to restrict them. you could not vote in annapolis under the law unless you had $500 worth of assessed property in the city naturalized or a part of the naturalize citizen or a descendant or unless you are -- your grandfather could have the january 1st , 1868 to. that is tied to the constitution of merrill lynch which allowed vote in the boating only to white males. if your grandfather was not a white male and could not go you could not vote no matter the 15th amendment in 1870 in annapolis if it was not 1868 you could not'' 1908. as american history tv looks at the literary life of annapolis throughout the weekend and saturday at noon eastern. its >> stage is the new american foundations for having us i am honored to be moderator because up until this late date in my career nobody has thought -- sought may moderate enough in my views. [laughter] this is the first time och aye have been able to moderate a panel is great to talk about betty friedan with the anniversary and obviously it is a book that has put the spark and do the culture and this that very rare book that has the argument actually changed people's lives and the culture. coming under criticism more recently for not talking about working-class women who had no choice but to work all along and not talking about other people who may have already could have found themselves outside of conventional life thank. today but i want to talk about is the ongoing power of the classic. i taught this to my undergrads at nyu a couple of them are here in the audience to do not ever hesitate to tell me of something is boring or representative irrelevant or dated or not worthy of their intentions. so it was amazing to me the class came to life than the book spoke to them in interesting ways so to talk about the new feminine mystique and the old seven in mystique geffen still oppresses us. it is very complicated because we live in a row that is so transformed by both books and the movement that followed for most of us in the room before and after it came now it is hard to imagine those days at all and i think of the rapidity of change in my own family when my mother was a child for father said only ugly women become lawyers that is the world she grew up in an aicher up where my mother removed the barbie powless that my grandfather gave me and told me it was lost. [laughter] 1970's new york city and then my daughter we were watching the obama and hillary presidential election. she was five and she said she was a big goal of a supporter and i said would it be cool if there was a woman president and she looked at me disdainfully and said of course, there has been a woman president how crazy we have come from only agree with an earlier solloway to of course, there has been a president but books that cut across they have names like the richer sex or the end of men or aha which then are the majority in the workplace and mostly have a college education or have a and managerial position and it is hard to look back at that time. we don't know coming weekend us see it or feel it's exactly. i interviewed she was told she had not one single woman professor even though i know that life was like that it is still astonishing. my first question i was going to ask those that were alive. [laughter] can you describe just for one moment your experience when you first read the book is an over exaggeration to say it changed people's lives? >> no question. of course, it changed people's lives and it is still changing people's lives and it was passed down and the greatest social revolution from the us suffer just. this movement will take 100 years we're only halfway through. [laughter] we have to count on the younger ones to really push it along. i still remember reading the feminist mystique to my mother's after that was one of the few books that she read but it was not possible for her to move on it because although she was a gifted singer and quite attractive and natural businesswoman but living in the suburban housewife role with two children my father refused to let her work because that would have suggested that he could not support his family as many men felt that the time. she was frustrated comic either volume or vodka. [laughter] that is what kept the women going on intel she was in her 50s and divorced she went to aa met another man and became a business woman but she lost half of her life i thought i would be totally different from her. i loved her into was compassionate but i saw that was not the right route but what happened to me? i married a man whom i loved that he was starting medical school so i thought this is cool because i have to support us i have an excuse to have a career that was my strategy and i was rejected by the of their wives of medical students because i was such an oddball but wanted a career. then we got divorced having put it has been through before there is any sort of recompense i was a single mom. that changed my trajectory that i became a feminist but at that time i started the herald tribune in the women's department that was the only place you can get a job i had to sneak down the back stairs to be darr to go across the room where women were not allowed to get into the office of the sunday magazine editor to pitch the story of their by a i developed a mentor that allowed me to move ahead. gloria steinem who was a little older and more politically sophisticated had to take a job as a bunny to get a story and that hung on her forever but only klay where it ariel levy was an editor had a mother as a journalist so he had no attitude about women he thought they are talented. and we would pay them all little less. not own the my career by gave cory and the first column that lasted for many years then when she wanted to start of course, she could not raise money, who would give money to a woman who wanted to publish a magazine about strident women? they said it is great let's put it inside the covers of a new york so there is the magazine with the cover on the outside and as well it sold out korea called in a panic and could not find it and said there is no magazine in he said it sold out. that was a great exhibition of the collaboration between a male mentor that i think we lost sight of think of only women can help women but actually why not seek out a sponsor who was already at the top? >> you remember where you were when you read "the feminine mystique"? >> no i don't remember where was. i am not even sure if i know how it affected me but i do know how everything came before. i can only say that there were so few possibilities for women that we were expected to be married by 21 or 22 expected to raise children not expected to do anything or make many not protected against what would happen if we were divorced or someone died we had no resources to the vulnerability led us to behave towards men as if they word demigods. i think when "the feminine mystique" en came out i think betty friedan herself put into words what was in so many people's hearts hearts, they could not have said and it was like the electric shock that i didn't think anything perhaps since martin luther king but that actually you felt together we would change the world we went on a feminist march to washington and went on a peace march together and suddenly we had a voice we were different somebody had to pay attention to us. and it was overwhelming. which is why baja -- may be about barbie and a hair dresser. [laughter] but i remember going to the museum with all the plates dedicated to the women who have made contributions l i am not judging this as a work of art, this is not my field but i can tell you i was there with katy and her younger sister and i felt as if the world was turning. we were going to do this now i may have thought it was simpler than it turned out to be and may not have anticipated to three children with a corporate lawyer job but the celebration of it, i just want to say one more thing that i will stop. i took a rating class the year was 1956. the professor was horace gregory. it was an all girls' school at the time and we read our papers and some girl had gone to rigo to get a divorce. you have to live there six weeks and she came back with a detailed report on everything that happened during her six weeks. the world she was describing, the riveted. she gets to the end until they turned to her and say what makes you think anybody would be interested in your divorce? there was silence because i could not have spent the only one. [laughter] there is also the possibility with been key at because what would my subject be? i was not a war i cannot right like that. the the sense that we were pushed aside in the s i must have read it 110 times but the voice says that everybody has now that i really believe is liberated into our world is so many that i am so grateful that i live to see this happenism. [applause] >> given how radically this transformation occurred if you think in terms of the history of social change and how rapidly, how unbelievably fast the world transform we went from the feminine idea of a woman working is so subversive a.m. transgressive to where we are now not in the workplace to said they're all kinds of problems to be addressed but certainly in terms of opportunity they had the opportunity that could not be imagined when betty friedan set down to write this book. so what if we have really cast aside "the feminine mystique" she was writing about because i have not given up this romantic vision have we given up the idea of family all of the feed to see what conventional life is supposed to be like? zero motherhood is? >> no. i don't think we have walked away from that but what interests me is that it is so exciting to hear that we thought we could do this because you did. when you started to talk here are all the things exchanged of course, there has been a woman president of what is remarkable is the most striking thing to be looking at the book is we don't appreciate all the change was the notion we had when she wrote the books that we spent the first half of fighting for rights in the second half now -- not appreciating them she is writing in 1963 and this is our reaction now of course. but i think we have one these rights so now you can do everything. this is not the fault the feminism but the opportunity it has in it -- unable but the fact is you cannot do every single thing. it cannot be done at the same time. it is tough feminist fallacy. i don't think we have given up the a.d. at all -- and the idea at all but to say we could do it all at once. >> i am glad we have not given up the fantasy to have a family. it is a great thing in the vast majority do want to but also of educated women something of 40 percent of educated aspirational women choose to have children not to have children by the age of 40. that is pretty dramatic. but we had attachment parenting come up in the last decade where women were encouraged to be very close for the first five years and interestingly studies done about women who once they were educated to the ada if you really drop out or go off ramp in your job in your thirties to have children and be home with then you will not get back on where you left off and you will pay in all kinds of ways. women are still too easy to do that in the mid geordie are still choosing the non linear path to take time now. but you still stay connected subway and become an object in your to work from home. >> but not everybody has that skill set. >> that is true. >> we may have forgotten after "the feminine mystique" was published, we had a war. i would not even call with the feminist movement that between women who made different choices. i have to say we better not glorify this. there was real nasty is going on between the women who had jobs with careers who felt themselves infinitely better or threatened by the women who were baking cookies. those women were livid and humiliated by the women that were climbing up the professional ladder. it was extremely unpleasant but cookie baking never lost its punch i could have stayed home and people were appalled. i just want to read a quote from "the feminine mystique" that shows that concept she wrote to buy as women moved into the workplace another hazard a woman faces on her way out of the housewife trapped is from other housewives. >> betty friedan over andover said she was fourth choice not that you must get the top level job but you need to be free to choose the life you want even though when i looked at "the feminine mystique" again i saw she was not very kind it to the house why staying home. i think politically she sought quickly you cannot dismiss many hundreds of thousands of people life choices you have to respect them and make it possible for them to feel pride in themselves or they will come kill you. [laughter] >> you don't want to root denigrate i don't think it is an end feminisms interest to denigrate how difficult child care is. that is work. >> i am very encouraged of the feminist spirit among the public feels. -- millennial some. one woman i know quite well that is in all a co-president she started out at 22 joining the only black coat investment firm in the country, a ariel levy id was identified right away from the president as being at a great talent and promise and at 24 he took her to meet with the biggest ceos in the country and said i am proving you to be president, ariel levy and she elected to be his grasshopper and she jumped everything from writing thank-you notes to the parents of his children's sleepovers then at 28 he made her president. she was completely career oriented write-up until her mid 30s and said it might be nice to be a banner in went out with someone fairly prominent, the film maker of "star wars" if they are now is engaged in she is 43 and probably will never have children because she did not have time but when she says about one of women come to her if they talk about the work life balance she knows they will never move up to a senior position in her firm or any other because they have to be unidirectional for release the first 10 years of their career there is not a lot of women who find that appealing to also be s ceo to give 110% of your time more power to them i hope we get more but it is a narrow portion of the female population that binds that a feeling? >> even if we only have half of a revolution if we had actually change the world then we would have the world that could make this possible. >> but we are not satisfied with half a and that will not work but it is not because not permanent but something happening now because we have not changed the whole society but just what women want now we have to change what men want and what society is willing to do for a family. we have to make the world completely different for ourselves. >> that is such a different point is something that makes me so sad is we were really close something in that walter mondale polished they would have universal preschool a and day care like they do in scandinavian countries in nixon said we don't want to put that past moral authority behind a nontraditional family structure that meant a messy life a end unconventional and that would have changed so much. >> that would be nice it would have to come from hassling private companies the government cannot say with the entitlements we cannot go with the march on washington. >> i think there is the death of pressure if young women coalesce then i think that can happen there is a lot of precedent in companies like google's that just expanded to 12 weeks' paid maternity leave because they had too many women leaving. that is what happens. [laughter] then they improved retention rate ended is paying off for them. >> her name is in in the air already but food she has been attracting that way if we talk about these problems there are some ceos she has received an astonishing amount of vitriolic and i have written about this on one level we say we really want more women ceos but those hate filled with many ceos that we do have a we cannot stand that would million things we need to learn about why a and that cheryl is trying to do some of the things that we think about as the next page for the revolution. and trying to talk to women about how to succeed in a high level business structure a.m. to two a great deal of danger from the women critics and feminist in case thinking liberal so what do you make of that and the possibility to think through this problem? >> it is so inconceivable to me to work at a job like that. i cannot relate to key in anyone relate to having that kind of corporate job? i have no idea. [laughter] >> i equate with my one that built the nursery next to her office. [laughter] since the those patriots the book where she talks about leaving in the face of now leave the workplace before they leave the workplace she has a lot of practical of vice it is not so wonky betty friedan tone but really it is practical she goes on a 530 to have dinner with her kids but people attacked her because she is obviously very rich id think it is a weird deign to attack the ceo i think what is valid is a white privilege to well-educated delete situation. that is true and that is a valid critique if you are the ceo you have the power to say i am leaving a 530 on the other hand, they are e. lee and have power so if they put the noose than that is not so bad. >> but it is not reproducible and it does make many women who are struggling terribly to figure out the balance to go through that terrible baby comfort women feel as six months with their unpaid maternity leave is over and they have to go back to work because they have too and they don't want to leave their child. that is a reality for most women who have children and a good job they don't get to go home at 530 to have supper with their kids. forget it. it is natural to say you are just not working hard enough. figure it out. >> i don't think it is a fair representation at all i have to say also costs of lot of people are saying those that criticize the book have not read the book. >> but i do not the she is saying we're not working hard enough i do think that is the unfair distillation of what she is saying. >> there was a writer i don't know if you remember but she said in this culture is someone raises a head out and takes a breath and says something if someone on the shore will throw a rock at that head. [laughter] that is completely true. there is that bill did the hostility of women to women that we have not begun to deal with and any woman who says it's anything slightly different from what the dog must says you should say will be viciously attacked it is not a question of right side and one wrong side but the urge to attacked is very strong. i don't know what to do about or how to cut it down and i also don't want that we all love each other in throat our arms around each other that is not doing anything but how this social movement anything that moves will get passed. >> a think one of the things that have been did not representing the position is how we view her there were two prominent journalists who irresponsibly use a quotation of hers one was maureen dowd and said i always find myself running the us social movement but they stopped it darr the actual bomb'' that was boring was mostly like working for a nonprofit. by taking the first part it makes it sound like she has a ground vision and aspiration so of course, people pounce on her house someone to do something so borderline because it is really wrong to miss'' somebody like that but if she did say that the original'' should we all take out our guns and shoot her? i steel for them to have the grand vision and idea automatically causes a lot of anxiety and hostility. >> he and pointing out with our all of love, a betty friedan lead be the worst and lesbians were a lavender and then this again is a vivid in she warned against the man hates being then. she was not somebody who said if you're a feminist you are fried with me. [laughter] >> you are distorting it just a little bit. [laughter] there was a group within the feminist movement that approved of the family side of the feminist movement so that betty friedan on a book to write a remember which one was greeted at various libraries but natalie tickets but bomb threats and they did not come from the bearded pakistan a terrorist but a women's group that was very, very thing gree. so we have to remember i don't believe, i don't know who started that fight. it is true it was not a woman's woman if there was a room full of ted women there was one man in the quarter than betty but go to the quarter to talk to the man. that was part of her charm. [laughter] but i that is what i really think for a while and unfortunately died down but for those of us that were there not the lesbians of the family women but what you doing to our movement? >> there was another part that were the man haters there really were favor given the name the ball busters frustrated and ball busting move manley told movement got a bad rap in and it was very threatening. i did not become a feminist intel the '20s and neither did gloria because i did not want to be a part of that and i was scared the man i love would think that i was. i went on the marches and did the things but i have a real struggle i'd want to give up so loving compassionate nurturing, as sexy, the man loving side of resolve to be a part of this movement and that was a real struggle for many of us. >> had been "the feminine mystique" and she said in an interview that some people read her as saying joining the revolution all you have to lose is it your man and she said know all you have to lose it is your vacuum. [laughter] wonderful marketing. i want to think more how we can identify our own problems that have no name better just by definition hard to recognize one of my students said been that speaks to that having no question but there is a conflict in which they talk about the new style of parenting in the ways in which we parent that take the ominous amount of energy for filling intellectual pursuits so what do you think of "the feminine mystique"? >> it is so funny coming from a french woman then you have then a giant best seller that is inherently french but anyway i don't think this is the most important problem but i do think it is a misconception to some extent the codification of the culture means we are sexually liberated a do think that is a myth that the most important thing they do think it is a myth. i did a whole book about this wiry flashing for "girls gone wild" when you look at that sexual desire why is it your job to look as skanky as possible? i think there confusion is a difference between and it is confusing between filling the new role as the angel and the house a and to be totally and sexually liberated it is another issue over confusing when you talk about sex and porn was pretty fractious. . . wall". the author discussed president kennedy's war diplomacy at the woodrow wilson center in washington d.c.. this is an hour and a half. >> welcome everybody to the woodrow wilson center for the launch of the "kennedy and the berlin wall." a hell of a lot better than a war by william smyser. it is certainly one of the most readable books on the history of the berlin wall and the major confrontation between khrushchev and the united states and the soviet union in the late 50's and the early 60's and i'm sure we will have 90 highly interesting minutes of talk and discussion together. my name is bernd schaefer and i'm a senior scholar and a former fellow at the historical institute. i'm very pleased to have an outstanding panel here today. we will start with mr. smyser who will talk about his book, the major points of his book for 30 minutes followed by comments. i will introduce our commentator at that time and mr. smyser will have the chance to respond briefly to the comments and then we will open it up to the audience and hope we have a lively question and answer session afterwards. so mr. smyser is currently the henry alford kissinger scholar in the sean w. lucre center and is teaching at the bmw for german studies at georgetown university. he has an outstanding career in public service and you can find it in his book a lot of details about his career. during the berlin crisis he was in berlin. he got a lot of insights which you will be introduced to in this book. he also served later in the white house with henry kissinger and the national security council. he was a specialist on vietnam and other parts of the world. he has an outstanding career and biography. today he will talk about his book which has the close connection to the wilson center because he wrote major parts of this book when he was a public policy scholar at the wilson center so in some ways it's a wilson center book and we are very proud of the final product. it's a very engrossing reading i can tell all of you. i look forward to have -- having him talk about his book for 30 minutes and i will introduce the two commentators. >> thank you very much mr. shafer. on january 19, 1961 it was a snowy day in washington. president-elect john f. kennedy and some members of his cabinet went to the white house to meet with outgoing president dwight eisenhower. eisenhower was to brief them on foreign affairs as with secretary of state christian -- they did that and eisenhower said privately to kennedy berlin is a place that worries me. i think we are going to have a crisis there. we have managed to postpone it but it's going to come up probably pretty quickly. christian hood or the secretary of state briefed him on how khrushchev in 1958 issued an ultimatum that we would all agree to sign the peace treaty for germany within six months. if they did not do that he would sign a private treaty just with the east german party boss in the tater and then after that the allies would have to get their rights from -- at that point they would no longer be able to fly in the quarters the way they have been flying. they would no longer be able to go back and forth to berlin on a special privilege. they would no longer be able to take their special trains. khrushchev had a menace and eisenhower warned kennedy that there were many signs that khrushchev would in fact act on it. i will not go into details of the whole story because it's in the book and i urge you of course to read it but i will talk here about four things. the vienna senate june third and fourth 1961 between khrushchev and kennedy checkpoint charlie confrontation october 1961 and the connection between the cuban missile crisis and berlin in october 1962. when kennedy became president january 20 the day after he met with eisenhower he stepped his white house with the people who everybody called the best and the brightest to george bundy who had in dean of faculty of harvard university and the scholar of everything at harvard university and a number of other people. he also brought on board the best possible experts on the soviet union george tenant who he had known personally for quite some time chip bowl and ambassador who had served that moscow as kennan had and he also brought on board several other people whom he consulted from time to time like tommy thompson who was ambassador to moscow and assistant secretary for european affairs but also soviet hand. there was only one european hand who is in the senior levels of the white house and that -- he found it rather frustrating. kissinger believed that once you look at berlin for a lens focused on western europe on west germany that the important thing to do was to protect berlin so as to maintain the allied position in germany. but he found himself consistently frustrated even though he had some good meetings with kennedy. he could not get kennedy to agree with him and he finally left at the end of 1961. he resigned and the left with a memo to schlesinger in which he said quote i am in the position of a man sitting next to a driver who is heading for a precipice and the driver is asking him to make sure that the tires are properly inflated and that the oil pressure is adequate. that was not what kissinger wanted us to roll. he felt that kennedy was heading for a disaster and he wanted to make sure that he could not make a contribution. khrushchev made nice to kennedy. he was delighted that kennedy became president. he hated nixon. he was so glad that kennedy won and within a few weeks of kennedy's victory even before kennedy became president khrushchev sent the word through some american journalists and also through some soviets that he wanted to have a good relationship with kennedy and that he looked forward to it. kennedy and response had a meeting with the soviet experts and in february sent a memo -- excuse me a letter to khrushchev indicating that he hoped they would have an early meeting. khrushchev sat on the invitation he had had intelligence reports that the united states was going to attack cuba. he alerted castro and told him what to expect and then he decided to sit and wait. as you know the american invasion took place. it was the bay of pigs. actually was a group of cuban exiles whom the americans landed and as you also know castro was ready and the cubans had to surrender and the whole thing was a disaster. but what fascinated khrushchev was the kennedy let it be a disaster. he thought that kennedy would use some of those planes that were flying overhead or that he would use some of those ships cruising off the coast of cuba in order to man troops and in order to take over the islands that kennedy didn't do it. khrushchev said to his son sergei i don't understand kennedy. perhaps he blacks determination. and at that moment he changed his mind about kennedy. he decided that there was no sense talking to this man on an even basis because this man was weak. he called him a boy in short pants. khrushchev respected agent did not respect people who were too young and certainly did not respect people who did not at the way he would have acted. he was a fighter. if his friends were losing he would do everything he could to make them win. kennedy did not do that and khrushchev decided that he was facing a weak american president. he was reinforced in his opinion by len shook off the soviet ambassador for washington and said -- excuse me who wrote to khrushchev that quote when there is a real crisis kennedy will drop a load in his pants. that is not a nice thing to say about the head of state to whom you are credited but that is what he believed and that was cruised -- what khrushchev was beginning to believe. khrushchev had a chance to test this theory in june 1961 when he and kennedy met in vietnam. but the kennedy preparation for the summit was a disaster. in fact as an officer i can tell you that i was shocked by some of the things i read in the kennedy library and what people had sent to kennedy. ambassador tommy thompson who had been personally warned by khrushchev that he wanted to settle berlin and vienna and he was going to be hard on that circuit sent a cable to washington saying that khrushchev would glide over berlin. the state department said a memo to kennedy, a pre-meeting memo in which he said they were expecting a positive meeting and khrushchev would be prepared to delay on the berlin issue. only a soviet agent whom robert kennedy had befriended told the americans the truth. he told bobby that there would be a tough meeting and khrushchev was going to be hard on berlin. kennedy replied, bobby replied on this one the president is hard said. he is not going to pull out the troops. so bobby said to jack we are going to have trouble. but nobody else did. as it turned out they were right. when the summit began kennedy began with two ideas. the first idea was to divide the world and particularly to divide europe. he said to khrushchev, and this is in the record, as far as i'm concerned you can maintain your position in east berlin and you can maintain your position in eastern europe. we want to maintain our position in western europe and we want to maintain our position in west berlin. khrushchev absolutely and totally rejected that. he said you cannot prevent the people from acting as they want to ask. then kennedy based on briefings briefings and wishing tim said to khrushchev you know, will have nuclear weapons now. we have to make sure we avoid miscalculation and we avoid getting into a war as people have gotten into it war in world war i. khrushchev blew up. he jumped up and he said i did not want to hear the word miscalculation again. what you are trying to do is to tell the soviet people to sit on their hands like schoolboys. we will not do that. kennedy retreated and made a quiet promise that he would never use the word miscalculation again. but he had met the real khrushchev who is absolutely determined he was the future of communism. he was not going to sit down and let anybody talk about him. khrushchev warned at the end of the first day during which they talked mainly about laws and about arms control, that he wanted to settle berlin and he said we have only a have only half of the left and we have to talk about them. it didn't work out that way. what happened was that kennedy talked a little bit more about laos and arms control and talk a little bit more about everything and it was only when they were within an hour and a half and this was with translation so an hour and 45 minutes, not until then did they get onto the subject of berlin. by then khrushchev who is by nature impatient and impulsive was beside himself. he said i have come to settle berlin. you have got to sign a peace treaty. if you don't sign a peace treaty at will sign the peace treaty with the gdr and at that point your rights will evaporate and you must settle with the gp are. kennedy reacted firmly. he said we are not talking about love. we are talking about something that we take much more seriously. khrushchev said he was going to sign the treaty within six months and he said there might be war and if there is war the burden would be shared equally on all sides. kennedy was unhappy and so after lunch he said let's have another final meeting even though we are not scheduled to have one. he tried again to say to khrushchev looked, berlin is a subject that is difficult for us. we cannot just do what we want. we cannot pull out. khrushchev got even worse and got more impatient. he said i'm going to sign the treaty within six months. nothing will stop me. there will be war. kennedy was totally intimidated. all he could say was it will be a cold winter. a friend of mine who spoke with a journalist who had seen kennedy after the meeting and he said kennedy looked green, like a man who had all the blood drained from his face. it was a terrible moment for him. he met with scotty scotty reston for "new york times" reporter afterwards and he said i had never met a man with that. khrushchev felt just the opposite. he felt he had made his point and harry reiterated his view. he thought i god he could pressure kennedy into leaving berlin and could in fact pressured kennedy into almost everything else. he was very very tough. he briefs him and he said we are going to get that peace treaty and things are going to change. i was by then at the u.s. mission in berlin. we had american journalists come by to brief us about what was going on. not formally but they told us what happened and we were very discouraged. we realize that kennedy had not really been able to deter khrushchev. the berliners were also discouraged in most of also where the east germans. the refugee rate from east germany into west berlin picked up to over 1000 people a day and on weekends 2500 a day. they decided they could not wait any longer. they had to get out. he said finally were going to do something about berlin and he said to khrushchev there are two things i want. one thing i want immediately is to stop the refugee flow in the other thing i want is a peace treaty. khrushchev said looked, these are very important decisions. they are going to shape the future of europe. i cannot do it without first discussing it with the warsaw pact. at the beginning he called a meeting of the top people the top leaders of the world in moscow and he said, you make your proposal -- proposal. the warsaw pact leaders said looked, we agree you have to stop the refugees but you cannot have a peace treaty because the chancellor of west germany would impose an economic embargo and they cannot afford an economic embargo. mr. khrushchev is unprepared to support our economy and khrushchev said no i cannot do that. khrushchev gave group issued instructions to stop the refugee flow and he said to him not one millimeter more. then he sent marshall to berlin to keep an eye on the situation and probably particularly to control mr. rubin should as well as watching the situation. on august 13, 1961 at 2:30 a.m. i got a phonecall and somebody said to me it was the duty officer at the mission. there something going on in east berlin. would he go take a look back site got into my car which was a 190 sl convertible. the best way to look at what is going on. i drove a and i didn't get duty reimbursement i should add. i drove at potsdam. i was stopped because there were east german locals putting barbed wire across the street. i said to them you cannot stop me. you have to let me through. i'm a member of the allied forces. i have to be able to get through. they checked with an officer and the officer said yes you have to let him through. they pulled back the barbed wire and let me go into east berlin. i drove around east berlin for about 45 minutes. i have never seen so many armored cars. i also saw something i hadn't seen before. there were police all over the place and east german armies. i would see in the distance some things that look like soviet cars. of course we didn't see anything but nonetheless it was clear that this was an east east german operation and the soviets were watching. then i went to -- the principle route or at least one it was in those days to get from east to west. there i met a scene of utter desolation. there were people sitting on their suitcases and people sitting on makeshift bags. they were people weeping absolutely disgusted that they could not get out. i went up to the train tracks as close as i could get, and it was clear that all the trains that came from east berlin to west were being stopped and turned around. i went back to the u.s. mission and i said, they are closing down the refugee camp in closing down east berlin. the missions sent a report to washington and met with the french and the british missions and they drafted a protest to make the soviets -- because this was a violation of rights. in washington everybody was totally calm. in hyannis port where president kennedy was spending the weekend he got a briefing from his man general ted christian who said to him we have a report from berlin which says they are closing down the refugee camp. kennedy said a war is not very nice but it's a hell of a lot better than a war. i made this a subtext of my book because this was kennedy's attitude. he was terribly afraid that berlin would lead to a war. if khrushchev and -- could solve the refugee problem then maybe there would not be a war. the east germans have done us a favor which is not the way we saw it in berlin but this was the way we saw it in the white house and in washington. however that was not the way the american people saw it. the american people were upset. kennedy began getting little black umbrellas in the white house mail meaning that they thought that he was an appeaser like chamberlain. he began getting angry phonecalls. newspaper editorials said we cannot let this happen without a reaction so he realized he had to do something. he called in a number of people including general lucius clay who had been a military governor of germany for four years from 1945 to 1949 who had been -- and he asked him what he should do. clay said what you should do is send a brigade into berlin in order to show you take this seriously and your rightful not be trampled. kennedy decided to call a meeting about this and about other things. and at that meeting clay gave his proposal. he was totally opposed to all all the soviet hands including chip boland. kennedy had to make a decision and the decision he made was to send the brigade. it was the first time he had gone against the advice of the soviet experts. it was for him a real coming-out, a real shift in his attitude about a number of things. he also of course said lbj who made some nice speeches and the brigade got through. mona noffke the defense minister of the soviet union told khrushchev we should lock deprecating khrushchev said no. but khrushchev and his son, because this was a weekend, and he was not in his office, he watched -- not on television because he didn't have television but he watched reports on everything that's happening with that brigade. kennedy himself asked for a report every 20 minutes. both khrushchev and kennedy were worried about what would happen. they were both very relieved that the brigade came through. it was the kind of thing which was a risk for kennedy but it worked. then kennedy decided she wanted to send him to berlin as personal representative. i was appointed to be his assistant which was in adjusting job and if we have more time later i can talk about it. but what clay wanted to do was to give the berliners a sense that the west in the united states in particular would not abandon them. he ran patrols up and down the autobahn. he ran patrols to the border. he took a flight and i accompanied him to pull out the refugee -- [inaudible] when we left in the helicopter with the refugee some of the locals turned their guns on us but we were perfectly calm because we knew they had no authority to shirt it -- shoot. in fact they probably didn't have ammunition. in any case clay was doing the things that the boosted berlin morale and had an effect that clay had his opposition. in washington it was obviously the soviet hands. it was mac bundy himself who had many doubts about what clay was proposing. the military especially nato commander norse dad was very worried about it and the british including prime minister macmillan who once called clay is senile and bitter old man. pardon the redundancy but i think it says exactly what he felt about somebody who was going against the way he wanted. .. >> they sent a squad of soldiers who, with their rifles in front of them, and walked in the dark several times in order to make the point that we were going to oppose this. they kept it up, and a couple of times in the next few days did the same thing. at the end of the week, decided he would try a test, so he put a few military in civilian clothes, and had them try check point charlie. they did, the same thing happened. by thursday of the week, there was a great recognition this was something the east germans would try to keep up. clay already sent a cable to kennedy ten days earlier saying that kennedy should look out because the soviets were letting the soviets intimidate us and harass us while they were in the background. he said, i don't think we should let this happen. what i'm going try to do is bring the soviets out of hiding, and once, of course, they come out of hiding, i will pull back. it's important for them to show themselves. after the american car was turned back, he not only had to walk through the check point again, but then he sent ten tanks to an empty lot, lots of empty lots in those days, about two or three blocks from the check point. the soviet officer from the soviet mission walked around the tanks saying, you know, we have tanks too, which i think we all knew, and low and behold, a couple hours later, ten tanks appeared at the check point. by then, we knew the soviets took control of the check point. they had definitely not let the east germans handle this situation. clay wanted to bring the soviet tanks out, so he instructed the tanks, our tanks to have a white line paints across the street. when they did that, the soviet tanks rumen out of the parks lot and face the american tanks about ten feet away or something like that, with gun pointed at each other. at that point, we relax, and the american operation center knew that the soviets were not going to start anything, and we knew that we were now okay. they got what they wanted, forced the soviets out, but, of course, a press report spoke of impending war. they said here's the americans and soviets shooting each other. are they going to shoot each other? this is a very dangerous moment. several of the other white house advisers said to kennedy, look, pull back the tanks. we can't afford the risk of war over this. kennedy put his feet up on the desk in order to show that he was totally calm, and he called per lin. when clay said, hello, mr. president, the operation center fell dead silent. kennedy said to clay, what's going on? clay said, everything's fine. there's hundreds of tanks in the area. they only brought up ten. it's a sign they don't want any trouble. perfectly relaxed, the situation is under control. kennedy said, good, glad to know that. he said, i hope you don't lose your nerves, and clay says, mr. president, we're not worried about our nerves. we're worried about the nerves of those in washington. kennedy said, people here lost their nerves, but i have not. those were, perhaps the most important words that kennedy has spoken in his presidency because it showed that he at least understood how you have to deal with certain types of situations, and that he recognized that sometimes you just had to bring up the tanks if the other people were going to be that way. i always believed that berlin was the best preparation that kennedy could have had for the cuban crisis. because of that. in any case, the next morning, soviet tanks pull back, explaning to the son that october 9th in berlin, you know, the soldiers can't take that, pulled them back, and, of course, within 20 minutes, clay pulledded back. the check point confrontation was one of the most important moments in the history of berlin because it showed that the americans were ready to act when it was necessary. they didn't want a war either, but they wanted the americans to show they would not, and that was pleased. for the next few months, crisis came and crisis went. the soviets tried to make reservations in the air corridor so we couldn't fly through them, but we did. we flew through them including civilian planes. they wanted fighter aircrafts in the corridors in order to tell the soviets they were doing something which they shouldn't do. kennedy said no, but he had other things. it was a mixed relationship. sometimes kennedy support the clay. he supported him a lot more than anybody else in washington did. certainly, more than rusk and bundy did, but sometimes he did not. strangely enough, everything calmed down by april. the reservations lifted up, and everything was quiet. we know now that there was a conversation about that time. they said, we simply don't have the power to make americans do what we want them to do. clay left berlin. before he left, he sent a cable to kennedy saying i think we are in a pause, but we are not at the end of this. there will be something more. i don't know what it will be, but there will be something that will happen. we must be ready for it. what happened next, of course, was cuba. in berlin, we first knew this was going to be a crisis because the soviets began building pipelines, old pipelines from the polish border to the west german border and surroundings of the berlin. something that they did not do except in limited ways when they had maneuvers. we knew that they would fry to make a major show of force in berlin and wanted us to know it. a major show for it. at the same time, there was a cable sent to kennedy saying, you know, we really should, with the united nations, substitute united nations forces for allied forces, maybe 25% a year until at the end of four years, allies are totally out. kennedy reply, i'm not going to do that, but they went to the white house and said, you know, he's going to come in november to the united nations, going to make a speech there, and he wants to settle the problem. he was thinking that in berlin, he knew it, but we didn't know what it was, and, of course, later, we found out, it was effort to put the missiles into cuba. now, all of you know what happened. no secret about that. kennedy forced them to pull the missiles out. crus chef said to his son -- that would be an excellent book -- that he expected kennedy to protest a little more and t what he had not realized that kennedy was a different man in october 196 # 2 as he has been in june 1961. i'm just about to finish. with that, and with the end of the cuban crisis, the berlin crisis is over. they said to me, you know, this is it. nay are not going to do anything more. interestingly enough, the next day after kennedy made his speech announcing that we would insist on the missiles to be withdrawn, the soviet forces began pulling back from the west german border. we always saw a connection. in any case, in november 1962 after the cuban missile crisis, i happened to be in new york, had drinks with general clay at the club, and he said, you know, if kennedy acted more toughly in berlin, they never would have been a cuban missile crisis. he expected that kennedy would accept the missiles, and, of course, kennedy couldn't do that. the end of the story, june 26th, 1963, kennedy comes to berlin, huge crowds, and he says something that does not mean i am a jelly donut, and we can talk about that if you'd like. despite that -- thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. we will have two comments, first, mary beth stein, and both about ten minutes long. mary beth is the professor of national affairs at the george washington university, and he has received numerous fellowships and scholarships dealing with various germany and experts on terms of east germans in literature and also on the berlin law, and expert here today, and 11 years ago, we had the first panel, happy to be with you, and i look forward to your comments. thank you. whatever you want. >> it's one of the great paradoxes of history that the berlin wall was built august 13th, 1961 and torn down on november 9th, 1989 for the same reasons, to keep east germans from escaping the german democratic republic. the former event was carefully plannedded for on an early sunday morning in august with prior approval, and the war saw packed countries, the latter was literally the chaotic unraveling of a to therring regime. they had been told at the 40th anniversary of the gdr a mere three or four weeks before the collapse that the soviets would not come to the aid and stance -- assistance of the east germans in trying to deal with their problem of the mass refugees, and the grows number of demonstrators in east german cities, and the political circumstances between 1961 and 1989 could not have been more different. there had been gradual, yet visible improvements over the years not only between the superpowers, but between the two german states thanks to a number of important milestones. there was politics about which i'll talk in a moment, the agreement between the four allies of the berlin, and the basic treaty between the two german states. yet, between 196 is and 1989, one crucial aspect remained the same. the lack of support of east german population for the socialist union party. this, ultimately, is what drove the gdr government to build the wall and tear it down. there's a precise and engaging account of what's known as the second berlin crisis. the first of which was the berlin blockade and air lift. the second crisis was presip kateed by cruise ships ultimatum that west berlin be a free and mutual city. everyone understood what that met meaning the western allies should evacuate the city and soviets and gdr would move in. the crisis reached a climax with the close closing of the border, but did not end there. that's kennedy's visit to west berlin in 1963, merely two years after the building of the berlin wall. the bookends with the fall of the wall. the closing and opening of the border are the dramatic bookends. the intervening chapters recount with fascinating detail the moves and countermoves of the western and soviet allies. the wartime alliance fractured beyond repair and ease caylating cold war. equally fascinating, in the accounts are diverging interests of the british and french and american leaders with the gull that pursuing their own national interests and european policies often at the cross purposes of the u.s. government. they had no love for germany and was an appeaser to soviet demand. they encouraged kennedy to adopt a strong position against the threats, but he was underminding kennedy by trying to appear as a soul supporter and maneuvering to keep british out of the european communities. the berlin wall effectively lower the temperature on a highly charged international situation. professor's account effectively recreates the drama of the time, a drama that turns the key player knew or thought they knew and what has been discovered through arian -- archive material and additional research. before addressing political implications of the berlin wall, i want to dawn my cap as a professor of german, not to talk about the jelly roll and whether he said that. that, i think, was answered by the professor other others, but to talk about the narrative structure and perspective of the work. like most, the professor writes from the perspective of a narrator, and the historian whose cold from all available sources and written from the advantage of hindsight. however, there is an immediacy of perspective, and in the moment feelings when the author steps forward as the participant in an eyewitness to many of the very dramatic events and speaks from personal experience as he guides robert kennedy around west berlin and more intriguingly, nixon is incognita in east berlin. i enjoyed that episode, and i hope there's chance to talk about that, and i assume there would have been many more such episodes that could have been included in the book. the immediacy and drama of the time is what was referred to as the book's readability, and it's captured in chapter titles, quotes from published accounts, archived material, and personal interviews between the author and key players. the authors and relations for general clay is clear in the admiration i share, but the opinion on or perspective about other key players and developments remained largely guarded. if i critique the book, which is admirable, i have to say that i would have liked more unique insider perspective. perhaps a single chapter devoted to his role or activities of the u.s. mission throughout the crisis. this is the unique perspective that the author brings to a widely researched project. let me turn now to two of the key players to whom the professor had special access working for one and with the other. clay, represented both american and west berlin interests as was made clear. clay was the american world worr ii general and first hero of the first berlin crisis master minding the berlin air lift playing a role in preserving west berlin for a second time. as kennedy's personal representative, he gave the the president a radically different viewpoint from the state department and white house advisers. clay understood both the strategic and symbolic importance of berlin for germany and europe and believed berlin was an important -- was important for american influence in europe. he not only knew berlin and the berliner's will, but learned from past experience how to deal with the soviet threat and understood what was needed to withstand east german and coach yet pressures which was, essentially, a tift for taft response to every east german provocation along the border or highway, a similar response by the americans. much to kennedy's disstress, clay was behind the showdown of tanks at check point charlie, the hottest moment in the cold war history of berlin. finally, and for the west berliners, probably most importantly, he encouragedded u.s. investment in west berlin at a time when many west berlin companies moved to west germany. most importantly, however, was the advice to kennedy that reflected both american and west berlin interests baited on a deep personal understanding to the will and temperament of the west berliners. they turned out in hundreds of thousands in 1963 to hear kennedy say, but in many pockets of west berlin, particularly the exclave, it was clay who was the local hero, the winning of the hearts and minds after two long years of resentment of american's inactions. in the late 1980s, when i was living in west berlin doing research, i interviewed many people who had known clay, but they said with bitterness, while kennedy was off sailing in the crisis, clay was standing by us, and they recounted vivid and personal memories how clay had done so much to promote german american dproips with, quote, such as he was an elegant man or saved west berlin a second time. the unique perspective is kennedy wouldn't not have had a west berlin to visit if not for clay's influence and impact on kennedy's decision making. what i had not known and learned from the professor's book was the strategic timing of kennedy's visit. i never knew why that date -- turns out, it was to preempt the visit to germany and undermind what the gall was doing in his european strategy based on a close, franco-german relationship. much has been written about kennedy's speech before hundreds of thousands, one of the finest moments, and they have gone down as one of the presidential great quotations of all time, and like lincoln's gettysburg address, kennedy's text was rewritten in the last moment, and in doing so, he pitched it perfectly, expressing the right sentiment at the right moment in time, and like lincoln's, kennedy's speech acquired an iconic status. second, i would like to talk about billy, the agenting mayor of berlin at that time, and his subsequent politics becoming the federal chancellor of west germany. when he was chancellor of the federal public of west germany, his social democratic party embarked on a new course switching from a frame work based on a western alliance, the atlantic alliance, to maintaining a western alliance while improving relationships with the east, particularly, with the soviet union and the european states. through renunciation of force agreements. for bankrupt, it was rooted in two key factors,. the first was the less son he took away from 1961. he recounts in many of the memoirs that he'd written, the one i look at again in preparation for this talk was his autobiography, my life in politics, describing his frustration in dealing in the lack of response by the western and, particularly, the u.s. come daunts when the border was closed. he describedded the mixture of fury and protests that his government was forced to deal with on its own. he writes, we should not expect others to find answers we had to find for ourselves, and we worked on a frame work to improve and remake the status between the two east german states. the second factor in the off politic was an indisputable conviction that germans belonged together. they believed east and west german leaders must rid themselves of allusions, intractable politic, and instead work towards practical solutions that could ease tension and human suffering. the salient feature was really the humanitarian dimension. the policy of small steps forlated by the adviser was changed, continued confrontation felt would only deepen the division. he began by dropping language that had aggravated relations with the gdr, and in his inaugural address, he omitted the word "reunification," and reversed nonrecognition policy vis-a-vis the gdr. he was the first chancellor to refer to two german states, and initiate the first germany did not produce immediate results, but it laid the ground work for the later basic treaty between the two germanys. ironically, and i always found this interesting, their meeting reprized some of the basic die dynamics in effort of the offensive, demanding the de facto recognition of the gdr and saying they had harsh ultimatums and like kennedy had opted for a soft approach and hoped to begin with their points of basic agreements. now, what was the response of the soviet union party? it was skeptical and fearful because they did not want to change the status quo. they fully recognized the changed relations would, in fact, lessen control over the citizens, and that, indeed, is what happened over time. to my knowledge, brunt was the only key player from 1961 still alive in 1989 when the berlin wall fell. when interviewed, he said with great and understandable emotion, what belongs together will now grow together. he lived to see one of his fondest hopes realized. the jury's still out on how much the two haves of germany grew together in 20 years, but the statement captured the mood of the moment in the first petty days of the open border when germans came together to celebrate the unexpected and almost forgotten hope for unities. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, professor, and now we turn to livingston, distinguished career of the u.s. foreign service, and here in washington, currently a visiting fellow at the institute where we also sharedded many time together, glad to sit next to you after so many years, and he had been the founding director of the american institute for contemporary hopkins and former president of the and in the 60s in the foreign service based in west germany in berlin at the time of the construction of the wall and one of thee german hands, and he has a lot to say about the book and about the time, and i'm very pleased to have you here and looking forward to your comments. >> thank you very much. thank you for the -- i'd like to begin with the personal note as mentioned that i was in berlin wall lip in the u.s. mission there, and i was in the same section of vick, and, in fact, i remember some of the editing of my cables that was done, and so even back in those days, he was a real stylist. [laughter] let me just say for a minute, seems to me as we get, one of the main strengths of the book is the counterpoint between the personal and the summit meetings of kennedy and eisenhower and the meetings in washington, takes ability to show it in every chapter how it looked to a different amounts like himself on the ground. this counterpoint is a great strength of the book. he's drawn from a wide variety of sources, as beth mentioned, and i think probably dick was planning to write the book for 48 years because some of the end notes refer to authors' notes from august 1961. clearly, here he was planning something 48 years ago, and here we have it today. i'm going to skip over points i otherwise would have made, and beth suggested that the book is tightly focusedded, focusedded on the period of 1961-1963, and the core of it is focused on the time with clay from august 1961 to may in 1962, and one last personal word, the book shows that the loyalty to the former bosses, also more republicans, by the way, henry kissinger, and he has a lot of sections on kissinger's advice to kennedy, most of which was not taken, and then, of course, the core of the book, as i mentioned, is about the gung ho as some referred to him with clay. .. >> it was a learning process of a practitioner and his willingness at the beginning -- he was unwilling at the beginning to confront the russians and eventually develop confront the russians at the time of the cuban missile crisis. entire pattern of his behavior changed. we forget what he preteens that was. we forget the series of defeats in his first year, and it was terrible. there was a disastrous summer in july of 1961. then there was the building of the berlin wall. in august of 1961, all of which is important to mention. in the end he got what he really wanted. he wanted the peace treaty and he wanted the flow. which was much more important to the east german economy. which was the most important part of the plot. before i finish with this series of positive remarks, let me suggest four points but i think should have been emphasized more. the first is not forget that in 1961, khrushchev was at the top of his power. there is a large celebratory much like what has been going on in beijing in recent days and so, you know, it's not too difficult to understand why in his meeting at the vienna summit was really convinced that communism would work. today from the perspective of 2009 or even 1989, this seems ridiculous. but to understand why he believed this because he was at the apex of his power in 1961 that should've been stressed one. secondly, this does not sufficiently stretched important of the complex of the influence. which was all the americans all the time, and some of them did not act strongly. we didn't have any contact and we knew if we were spotted by a reporter, they were often talking to an official and it would be in the papers the next day. and then the election campaign was going on between eisenhower and kennedy's first reaction is he was trying to capitalize on this for election purposes. one should not forget that it was a contest which played into this whole thing. and i think that we need to mention not sufficiently. lastly, i think they should've mentioned a little bit more strongly that kennedy in 1963, he did not does give one big speech, but he gave his second speech which rewritten or rated his readiness to meet and negotiate with the russians, and see what he talked about in the university as well. and the belligerent speech that he gave as well. in conclusion, one point that i think that we should not forget when we criticize him for negotiating and to accept the division of berlin and germany. all, whether government democrat or republican, have avoided confronting russia directly on security issues which russia signaled as important. 1953 we did nothing to support the uprising of the east german workers. we did not support this uprising. in 1968 the soviets invaded czechoslovakia and we did not confront the russians. so kennedy was reluctant to confront them. in many ways to be expected with presidential politics over five decades. the second aspect is the mis-assessments and the bad advice given to him by experts. maybe mr. obama will think about about this because the experts were prepared and they gave him bad advice generally. and it had been so highly rated in the past. kennedy came to rely on his instincts and his brothers. well, that is something to be learned. secondly, it shows the difference in agency that enforces political position. all of those with whom kennedy was dealing with and also someone much older and they were influenced and had served in the first world war and had this is quite understandable. they are not anxious to get into another war. and in the second world war as well. you know. [laughter] so here it was nothing unusual. he was dealing with a teenager in short pants. but i think that sometimes it's important. maybe most importantly, it shows us his success in berlin. both in 1948 and 1961 and it was based on one very important factor that i think was meant should be stressed much more. that is the courage of the berliners themselves and claim had come to know that in the blockade in 1948. berlin is not conservative. it's in the leftist part of the city. so this was a leftist city. but it was still very so american. that they counted on the berliners, he made berlin the central aspect a relationship with germany as dick had pointed out. the berliners were our first allies before the west germans a decisive element in the crisis. slice wednesday rush out and buy a big book. go to your bookstore and get it. it's a very good book. >> thank you very much for your stimulating commentary. i would like to give the audience a chance to respond and ask questions. so many good points made by all of you. these germans played a major role and the refugees were forced to handle these germans and this is not a collective action. people wanted to flee because they wanted to have better rates and their career. and this was also part of this. and it failed thanks to those people who force them basically in east germany for very leftist reasons. >> don't forget that this is part of a long-term trends. the germans had been moving from east to west ever since 1944, and they are moving today. they're not losing population because they had a dictator there. even for economic reasons. >> mimi doe moved him from ohio to new york. [laughter] >> a few minutes about some of the comments made. >> i wanted to say one thing about the speech. which was i saw as i saw it kennedy was so darned smart to say the things that he did. because they actually included the word laws that will come down. you know, this is the kind of thing she understood that he could not save her and he made up the procedure as he drove through the city. the kind of speech that we needed. jackie kennedy said that any time -- conservatives always sorry but only a single speech was made by her husband in a foreign language. >> don't go to a bookstore. >> i have this and i would be happy to sign any coffee that you get. after someone's story. i asked a few people about this and they said, have you got any advice. and the first is the smartest man that we have ever known and he also had a great line. all three of those turned out to be true. i appreciate what everyone has said. and i'm wondering if we could have questions or comments from the audience. it's so great that you came and listened to all of us. 's. >> thank you. you come here for and i am from the bureau of research and director under kennedy. i think it is terrific as the book. stimulating and rewarding read. but i won't take your time. select your invention, a couple of things as i sat in the foot. was it is for me to see that you could write about the kennedy center without mentioning the dulles family. certainly it was central to winning the background of his kennedy and other senators were there during the late 50s when dulles was part of this and even the european oriented democrats are actually against dulles for his policies. and then there was alan and then we had the representative affecting the state department. remember at the beginning of the kennedy administration, it was said that tom, i know my sisters are working on this and if you have any part of it, let me know. and she was miss berlin wherever she was. [laughter] >> so she was part of this arrangement. and so, you know, that is missing. and as soon as the wall went up, eleanor was talking about this with all of the russians gumshoes very direct and personal. anyway, we refer so often the the washington advisers and they are the group of people my impression washington is that there a lot of people are putting a lot of input in a more junior level, perhaps. but when you look at this, as mike feldman, and dick goodwin and it was quite a rich pool of people there. the same thing is true when dulles was so upset. they continued lecturing them. [laughter] and there were a lot of stories about this situation. my final point is a more serious one. i think it is quite ill go along with you on the kennedy transformation. but i think that kennedy is much more complicated go to the beginning and the end than you indicate. i don't think that you suddenly influence by berlin. he was a republican of us want to share responsibly for whatever happened. he was very nervous about this. he didn't suddenly decide this was the latest move with the russians. and kennedy had many personalities and he was able to rise to many different occasions, a lot of them are contradictory and make contradictory statements. ultimately it seems that he would've thought the success was because he was very upset about military advice but he stuck it through four somersaults and he didn't want to press the military man on the spot. which is part of what it stands for. he tied the hands of everyone in the military, both in washington and abroad. it was nothing he didn't authorize from the white house. so i come away pleased that you have reached the analysis that you have, but it is probably overstated when it comes to the final john f. kennedy and whether he really was actually -- you know, whether he was doing this. >> i should perhaps say that you are absolutely right. kennedy was in quickly comforted a person. i'm not sure that he heard from other white house advisers. it is astonishing and every document seems to be. >> i couldn't deal with people's records that i cannot see. but as for kennedy, a very collocated man, but a very different man from what he had done and 63 to 1964. one can possibly trace this is when does with a series of hills summoned to a mountaintop. not necessarily a smooth rise or meaning that he had become fond of the military, which i think you're absolutely right. there several times that he would've liked to take this and throw him out the window. but the point was that good things in 1961 and 1962 and also later on as well, and also he did things like sending the brigade out there, which he would not have done earlier. he may have done him because he didn't want to get into trouble and he didn't have any arguments. so they said, let's just are. as you know, they didn't want clay to be there by himself as a republican. but nonetheless, i see development and kennedy. and whatever it may be, i think this is where trent had made his big mistake. how he had put this on, i found it very interesting. two other questions or comments, please? it was a good intervention. macs are there any more questions? >> can you state your name? >> let me flesh out something that was just alluded to in passing. my impression is that in the context of 1961, the heart of american policy was to treat it as a proxy for the cold war. was this really and was there any real alternative or weight that had been different or wise and it was more a german problem in the cold war problems. >> this was his view. it is hard to say in retrospect. and i would say that is perhaps impossible to treat it in this way. because the soviet troops were there. what kissinger was suggesting was that we should suggest a technique of negotiation. one of the memos that he signed have lived on through 1990. we are always coming up with ideas because they would be acceptable to the soviets. he said that if we make acceptability that tests those, you always lose. so he said that we have to explore things and we have to do things that had a positive impact on german and european opinion. he was yours is much concerned about the tactics of negotiations and of how you maneuver through this. i worked for kissinger later on the white house as was mentioned. i felt the same thing. but there was a man who always had a strategic objective. but that all around the strategic objective, there were tactical things a win that win in all directions and they may have been as many as people had accused of making them, done entirely for the domestic labor reasons or bureaucratic reasons, we just don't know all of that. i have spoken many times with him. but i would be in trouble and if i told you i knew the full range of his mind or purposes. nevertheless it was quite clear he thought that we should not display the soviet card. i would like to say one other thing that was mentioned in the book. after kissinger, one of the most important missions was to be briefed on atomic weapons policy. as you know this may a lot of people nervous. kennedy felt that a offering this was a red flag. but he had to find some way to assure that. because what he said is that the syrians could convey germany. they would end up at the french border and say thank you very much. and the only way to get rid of it is to bomb west germany with atomic weapons and not obviously was impossible. germany had been largely destroyed. so kennedy sends kissinger in order to brief him on american atomic policy. and they had a meeting that lasted a half hour and that lasted almost two hours. they cancel everything else and postpone everything else. in that meeting, kissinger told kennedy that this is where we're going to start using these weapons. you can be assured that the soviets would never cross west germany outside of it. and he went through quite a shift in astonishing detail. with such astonishing detail by now so that i want these notes the story. and so did the american embassy. kissinger never reported it, he just told kennedy that he had done it. but that is the kind of thing that he could do. and that's that's the kind of thing that he could do brilliantly because he had stopped this tribe and after that conversation, he understood that he didn't need to worry. >> it's like, okay, we are not going to drop nukes on forever. >> i'm not sure that he said that. but they were destroyed because they were regarded as so sensitive. there were so many questions about the use of nukes. >> i never asked him what he said. so i don't think that i'm necessarily in favor of this. you know, i think not. [laughter] >> other questions? >> i am michael michael bennet from the air force. he said that khrushchev respected strength. what did he think of eisenhower after the minimal u.s. response to the hungarian uprising and when pleading for help, with the wall have gone up during the eisenhower administration? >> well, one moment, i think we don't know what he said exactly after that. and i cannot answer that question directly. but i do know that in the context of berlin, that there was this moment when they have been negotiating it a little bit and had turned out nothing useful. so eisenhower decided i would like to get to know this man a little bit better. and he invited him to washington and to camp david. he had been escorted around the country. and then khrushchev met with eisenhower at camp david. essentially he did what he always did, which was to talk in such a backward way that nobody quite knew what he was saying. but they thought might be okay, but they weren't sure. and you know how it is. the famous moment when everybody was confused about what they should say. because i said i will describe and confuse everyone. [laughter] and that was part of his tactic. and khrushchev was delighted that he had been a part of it. he said now we are somebody. and he said now we are recognized by the greatest power on earth. this is very important for us. and i think it's more than not. one of the things i have learned as i have traveled is how so many countries always think that the americans or english or french are superior. and that they act superior. people will love it when i would talk to them like a normal human being. it was one of those moments i began to realize that there isn't much of the world a sense that somehow or another, we westerners on a different plane. but nonetheless, this was incredibly important for koester. the unit was a communist society and they were making their way up in the world. they have a lot of missiles. but they needed recognition and new people to say to you or someone. now, i can't tell you in detail what he thought about those sorts of things. but i didn't read that part of his memoirs very carefully. but that was kind of the way that he reacted. incidentally he gave up on berlin and he didn't push it because of other things. >> any further questions or comments from the audience? >> we have about five more minutes. let me just raise a couple more points. and first is that the readiness of the united states to negotiate behind the germans back. and the reluctance about germany itself johnson's refusal to make his trip there. and at the right, he felt powerless in the summer of 1961. and so just like he wanted to keep them under control and described as quite well, i think that we want to make sure that we keep our germans under control as well. the second point is very important. because it's an abiding feature. it is the power of the west german economy and caused the czechs in the polls to wish for a peace treaty as early as the 1950s. and i had offered to make a deal with the soviet union and buy out this at the very end. and the strength of the german economy is more important not only important to these countries, but a booming economy had attracted the labor. not only from east germany, but from all over europe. and this continues. and it does seem to me that this business is willingness to negotiate and this is a part that i hadn't really thought about before. the way the goal was able to exploit that to develop his relationship, which ended in his treaty in 1963. part of it was and they didn't say much. they were actually insistent upon their rights. and so the contrast between the americans and the french on one side and the british on the other and the british had no problem with showing their identity cards. not at all. but when he went through made a big issue out of it. so there are these ironies. >> kennedy was going to vienna and he said it is the best service you can do for the russians, as well as everyone else. and those were the last words that he heard and it may have influenced him a little bit. and it's nice that fancier because he can tell my editors about this book and i didn't want to do that because i wanted to focus on this period. i had wanted to write this for a long time. and i did not write it because i felt that i didn't have all the information. it was when i went to the kennedy library when i saw the tapes in the memoirs and i saw the book written by is this remarkable man. when i saw those things when i saw the east german documents, which have become available. i said to myself and now i can tell the full story. i was interested in telling this story not getting into other things. sometimes that his whim, i guess. but the point to me was that i think that kennedy grew during this period. i thought that this could have been the education of john kennedy. he's a determined and followed 1962 and khrushchev did not know that. that was his big mistake. and we have begun to sound but there were times when kennedy supported him. he said once you have a remarkable conversation and he said this is what you should do. and he said talks talked to the president, don't talk to me. it was beginning to shift away that not all people understood that became clear in october 1962. i think you very much for coming and for your attention. i'm very honored really that you develop the questions to this meeting because this is a very personal memoir for me, as well as a political book and research book as well. it mixes scholarship and autobiography and it's nice to see that people take it seriously. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you, everyone, foriting te biographies of the civil rights leader. he talked about mr. du bois at the history center. this is about one hour. >> thank you for making this event possible. it is a great event for me to be in my hometown. i did not really go up here. i spent many years here and my dad was president of a college and my brother was president of stillman college. and if there were another city in which my wife and i chose to live, and i thought i would give the flavor of the biography with the three readings that we have this evening. can you hear okay? okay. is that better? >> three readings from various sections of the biography chapters 10 and 11 and 14. and they could fall under the headings of the politics of history. that reading will deal with the magisterial study of the reconstruction era and this was published in 1935. in the second rubric might well be called chapter 11, the politics of knowledge. and that will deal with this, one of his greatest social science efforts, the attempt to secure funding from the general education board of the carnegie corporation to fund the encyclopedia of the negro. a third might well be called politics of the left and it deals with involvement in the waldorf astoria peace conference of 1949. by far the greatest achievement was to be a credible historical narrative in which people filled admirable intelligence, as well as the ignorance inherited through three centuries of bondage. 4 million men and women whose numbers comprise the majorities of two southern states and the sizable portion of the remainder with what a later generation of historians were gravely call agency it returns to the center of the reconstruction athletic as they steal away to freedom a great many of them, somewhat little some with little book learning, but very quickly voting their own kind into office. the treatment of these first days summons the voices of lyricism to full throttle in the coming of the lord, and the chapter in purple, in a passage that a historian had said that reconstruction was a mistake. it might have ended in here and give an approximation of the voices in order to avoid the comments. it was all foolish and tawdry comment negros dancing and poverty-stricken ignorance labors, destruction and revolution for the mystery of the free human soul. and the frenzy becomes majestic in uppercase. although his beauty, although his love, all that was truth stood on the top of these mad mornings "dancing with the stars", they treat in the wind and tossed its tears upon the sea. and he offers what he knows has been to continue to be the dilemma of race in america. of all that most americans want it. this was the least. everything black was hideous and everything he said was wrong and if they offer freedom, they were beast and if they did not fight, they were born slaves. and if they turn on the plantations, they loved slavery and if they ran away, they were wrong. if they felt they were to join. it celebrates a special it taxes into jubilee. there was joy in the south and it rose like a perfume. like a prayer, he lands. and then stood quivering, slimmed-down girls wild with beautiful hair. all broken mothers, black and gray, raised great voices and shouted is a great song arose in the loveliest thing born on the side of the sea. recapitulating unforgettably. it did not come from africa. where the ancients were it and thrive. it did not come from white america. however the surrounding tones had driven. not the indies or the hot south with a heavy west that made this music. it has great cadences and wild appeal and it thundered on the world's ears with a message voiced by man. guardians of southern history something the books potential was instantly on the tv. there is a feeling of lightness and the writing and an occasional passage that is provocative and is a mild adjective for black reconstruction and was syndicated to several alerting the region. some critics would insist in an excessive portion of african-american reconstruction in the strong. but it was an aide to senator of function in the formation of industrial wealth that was the first of several original conceptions of profound impact. the book's opening chapter shows us that black labor became the foundation stone not only of this, but manufacture and communists of the english system of buying and selling things on a worldwide scale. it was the fulcrum of the industrial revolution. it had been the treaty of 1713 that marked a historic moment when the small island one the means to become a global powerhouse. a significance that was underscored in the text and the tendencies to the suppression of the african slave trade to the united states as a harvard phd. by the terms of the treaty, we imported slaves into the global empire, by which they have the chief supplier of this. it profits from the atlantic slave trade and finance the textile manufacturing of the british maritime bourgeoisie of the african slave trade now steeped ever more deeply into hallmarks. the authors directly this was to be brought to full term by a west indian admirer and this is classic capitalism and slavery that the profits pouring in to trade in slaves and finnish woods underwrote to a controversial degree great britain's mark will take off. many who saluted this brilliance of the book tended to feel uncomfortable by become suspicious when dealing with this sweet and depth. much of what troubled and alienated the critics now seems less significant six decades after publication to contemporary students of society who have defined inside in black reconstruction that the former critics were ignored or overlooked. thus there is more than met the eye in the influential american slavery, a prophetic fallacy for conscripts including black men and women and children who toiled under the situation. thomas carlyle's list of them, people cutting each other's throats because one have preferred hiring the slaves for life and the other by the hour was a deadly certainty. it was still imperative to remind historians only four years before the release and it was a travesty of unique dimensions. once accustomed to poverty with toil and aggregation. once it is hidden beneath a different color of skin and a different statue or a different habit of action and speech and call consciousness disappears. economic situations on the part of the dismal condition of color coding the basement, however. it was as brilliant as one of the early essays written a quarter of a century earlier. and this included democracy and race in america. even this hardened over decades, masters and slaves and antagonism and it required the millions that excluded poor whites, little more than political passivity and police work. the south was not yet reserved. but with at least 350,000 people with mixed racial heritage in 1850, the majority of them free, the trend toward hybridization showed no sign of slowing. we now know that before this is one a historian maintained this part of relations among the latin american and especially the west indian neighbors. du bois emphasized that the pointers only begin to appeal across these lines on the basis of color with the onset of the civil war indicating that after all, he was wide and they had eight common object in keeping the white man's. consider the consequences of social democracy consists of the author, so long as the southern white laborers would be induced to prefer poverty with equality with negros, just so long was labor-management made impossible. leftists were deplored with any contention that white workers would endorse compensation by public and psychological rage. it would serve as an exception and a potent tool of social analysis in a successive wave of dark and different europeans were inducted into a white republican which people of color were excluded by a almost hysterical one drop rule. extrusion of people was inevitable for the victims themselves is a definable logic and blamed. it was used in the contradiction of an entire people being forced into the second-class citizenship in order to justify in policy and law full citizenship. set free without preparation and deserted by the national political party to which they had rendered such strategic and vital service, these people are uniquely vulnerable to being scapegoated and marginalized. whatever they did in slavery and freedom had to be discounted simply because to do otherwise was to complicate enormously the ideals and politics and economics of laissez-faire. it is one thing that seemed to many is a fabrication of historical license. includes the confederate one machine of slaves. it was depicted as part of having been so benign that the slaves were happy to serve for the fighting south. and the problematic for chapter of the book, therefore, it becomes a controversial part of the slaves is the second most important factor in the defeat of the south. the phrase itself was a provocation with misconstruction and even division. it evoked images of millions of workers with those acting to paralyze governments. and this includes labor union and the proposition that a letter of black men and women have been decisive enough to affect the course of history as it was theoretically too many of the socialist persuasion. it was stripped of associations with the general confederation of labor and the trade union of congress who voiced the general strike that amounted to little more than the common sense of self preservation exhibited on a massive scale. as formulated, the general entailed evacuation of the plantation of the slaves and perhaps a half million people and they wanted to stop the economy of the plantation system and to do that, he left the plantation. 145,000 of the 180,000 negro troops were slaves who had either escaped or signed up in the yankees marched through the neighborhood. what the negro did was to wait and look and listen and try to see where his interests lay. and this was part of the slaves mindset with very similar situations as it became clear that the union armies would or could not return fugitive slaves and that the masters of all of their fury were uncertain of victory. .. >> what was done in columbia reduces slaves' determination to break away from the plantation system as a crucial component in the north's victory. in looking forward, a chapter brimming with ideas and end with a poem by foster, a dear friend, he deployed the concept of the american assumption to explain the failure of reconstruction. this assumption that wealth was mainly the result of its owner's effort and that any average worker can buy thrift become a capitalist had ceased to be valid after the civil war, he claim, but its tradition lasted down to the day of the great depression at which point he announced, writing in 1935, it had died with a great wave of dispair. in his american assumption, there was a version of the creed of exceptionalism that scholars came to regard as uniquely american, escaped from the rise and fall of history and universal opportunity for individuals, endless progress for the nation, and yet split historical second in the heat of radical reconstruction, they maintained that the american assumption was temporarily counterbalanced, alarmed by the return to congress in 1866 of unreconstructed southerners who might repudiate the civil war debt and almost certainly reduce the national tariff, they characterized northern industry has frightened and moving towards the stand which abolition democracy had already taken, namely temporary dictatorship, endowed negro education, legal civil rights, and eventually votes for negroes to offset the southern threat of economic attack. the american assumption was from radical reconstruction whether it was special order number 15 # giving emancipated slaves possession their titles to titles to land in georgia and south carolina, whether it was the freedom's bureau in negotiates contracts and negotiating 247,000 new citizens in 4329 elementary schools, the first federal antipoverty program or protecting voters rpd the act of 1875, but much sooner than later than the version of events, the dictatorship of labor imposed on the south by the alliance of northern industry and democracy collapsed and dropped away flu american assumption. so it was back towards slavery, the title of the ultimate chapter with the wages of whiteness destroying any possibility of the solidarity of labor along class lines, dilemma of destiny em posed more than any other people of color pressing against the white republic, crackled again in high voltage prose of the souls, and one is widely inhibited and mentally confined as the american negroes. within the colored race, the philosophy of salvation is curiously twisted and distorted. from the defees of reconstruction to the dispair of the great depression, where had history taken them, he asked? what sign post pointed to a way out of the 300-year-old box. shall we use torch and dynamite? shall they go north or fight in the south? shall they segregate themselves more than they are now in states, in towns, cities, or sections? shall they leave the country. are they americans or foreigners. my country tis of thee, children saved and buy homes or dlictly commit race suicide? long ago in the flush of the harvard sociological study, du bois was certain as written in the autobiography that the cure for the race problem was knowledge and scientific investigation. the lynching of sam here in atlanta, the policies of the general education board and race riots in springfield illinois in 1908, this abused him of an ideal far more suited to enlightenment than in georgia in the rain of watson. the faith in the power of knowledge never dispated, but sought what promised to be the more effective strategy of journalism by uncompromising principles and social science. that conviction was never more manifested than in the propaganda of history, the black reconstruction in which the structures of calvin and alexander thundered proclaiming that history is true could empower true democracy if only history and historians chose to lie less. he was writing, get a feel, devastated by lies told by roads and dunning, by walter phlegmings and bowers and a library of others. there would never be a science of history until we have in our ecologies men who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race. men who will not deliberately encourage students to gather thesis material in order to prejudice for. the last chapter soared beyond an appeal to honest history into a realm where mortal philosophy fused with the cymballism of the creation, but -- i'm fighting a head cold. bear with me. if it was special pleading as bias in its own way as any white spu premise, it was partisanship in the cause of justice and democracy, as he proclaimed. it's the most significant drama in the last thousand years of human history. it was, he wrote, the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty into the newfound west. including they descended into hell, and in the third century, they arose from the dead in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world has ever seen. it was a tragedy that beggared the grief. it was an uphelve of humanity like a french revolution. we are blind and led by the blind and discern in it no part of our labor movement, no part of our industrial triumph, no part of the religious experience. why? because in a day when the human mind aspired to science of human action, a history in psychology of the mighty effort of the mightyist century was under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future. the inpsych peed ya prujt was at a curious cross roads. the more attention paid to it by the academy and foundations to the negro, the more resistance there was to privileging the scholarship of one authority whose claimed to interpret the problem of the 20th century was unexcelled two days after the commemoration of the 70th birthday, du bois sent a type carefully crafted four-page rebuttal to the 11th hour misgivings and formally conveyed to stokes by several general education board trustees. the remaining obstacles had been told by the my philanthropist ws objectivity, quote, they are only concerned about one thing, stokes warned in the letter of february 11, and that is whether we have fought through ways in which to assure objectivity of the findings, quotes closed. several trustees were particularly agitated by the opinion of a british anthropologist who had determined that scholarship in the united states betrayed either a white or negro bias. stokes was advised this distinguished an throe polings doubted the possibility that there could be complete objectivity even in historical matters where raisht pride on the one hand or racial prejudice on the other was at state. interoffice correspondence at 61 broad kay, the head quarters of the egb reflected the board's looming die lem ma in the months of january through mash much, 1938. whoever funding its portion of du bois might not prove unavoidable. the insis tense of the highly respected and highly political charles johnson, a leading african-american sociologist and philanthropies in mid-march that, quote, interest is gathering momentum, and that the merited foundation support under du bois was noted. the academic creed of the day proclaimed that objectivity was, if not yet attainable in its purest incarnation, a goal in whose pursuit a discipline voaf discard all relativism except actions that were inescapably human. the historian like the social scientist was in the words of the historian whoation work inevidentbly captured the fiction, a neutral or disinterested judge who must never degenerate into an advocate or worse, propaganda for the objectivity quest was to be a grave risk when history is written for utilitarian purposes. these are quotes. du bois's february 1938 memorandum to stokes claimed you could be objective and at the same time, you could be an african-american. well, du bois assumed after meeting all the objections of the funding of the funding was imminent, some $260,000. he assumedded it was about to materialize, and with it, the wherewith you know all of professional talent and sources sufficient to reformulate the problem of the century for this veepture met as much to him or the symbol and substance of the collaboration as for what could produce in the way of old revised and new findings interpreted about the negro. although the seven decade pageant that filled black america with sounds and light, it had been played out largely behind a vail color and meaning, however, that despite the visibility of the minority, there was occasions when the white majority was compelled to notice. he in the country were prejudice that forced him into a shoe string career as academic journalists and man of letters and exist especially in the margins where never once during an odd surmounting half century had there been a offer of an appointment or learn society affiliation with his genius. richard logan, his assistant, could no longer recall the brand, but he still retine tanned a vivid recollection 30 years later of champaigneed iced in the bucket, and the decision of the general board executive committee to refer to the full board had already reached atlanta when rufus, the new university president, returned from new york with news that the du bois proposal was slated for approval at a meeting of the geb trustees on april 6th, 1938, a wednesday. anticipating stokes' corroborating telephone call in the late afternoon on thursday, du bois and logan passed the attention over cigarettes and small talk as a bottle of excellent champaigne nestled in the crib of ice. logan was one of the few people with whom du bois ever descended into mere banter, but as logan responded to boasting, he knew du bois better than anyone perhaps other than his second wife. after a number of decreasingly anxious glances at the clock; it was depressingly obvious as the light went out of the late afternoon that no telephone call would come from stokes that day well, i have disappointing news, the president wrote days later, putting the best woft face on rejection, stokes complimented the president, the general education board, for being perfectly fine about the whole matter, and another for fighting for the proposal. the general education board, not flatly declining the request decided they cannot act favorably upon it. yes, stokes is clearly confident ending the letter with a sigh that you and i may not see the project through, and i hope and believe we will. as they confided, on thivity concerns continue to nag at certain trustees. head unvowed, they said quite possibly they are raising the funds is my own personality, and logan went to the grave convinced that the project had been undermind of both foundations by machinations. the lesson drawn from this mortifying experience is that there was once a time when the word of one quiet man could determine whether a project concerns negroes could be approved or not. the abdomen in addition was correct, but they blamed the foundation loss only somewhat less receptive to those competing $2 # 00,000 proposal for a free study of african peoples had been rejected by the cooperation two years earlier. so they continue to persevere, and he receives a word from a general education board, and -- well, i shall read this, stating frankly du bois's activities with the naacp overshadowed scholar i interest and more time necessary to create another impression, better objectivity, obviously, sympathetic program officer of the general education board lobbied the carnegie corporation to approve its portion of the stokes'-du bois's application despite action of his own foundation. dr. du bois is the most influential negro in the united states, stated the officer petition. this project would keep him bis -- busy for the rest of his productive life. particularly fond of frank, found him sympathetic, and the president had unself-ly prodded his own produce tees to bail out du bois's magazine, the crisis, twice mentioned the publication costs of the book on reconstruction and had a noncommittal interest in the negro. as it was possible there's action as a decision to defer rather than remains that they might act favorably on the request for an appropriation of 60% of the 260,000 budget that he would never receive such an appropriation communicated to du bois in a manner that was both indirect and guilt-ridden. his visitors arrived on campus on the third or the fourth day in november 1938 with little advanced notice putting aside the black vote, du bois conversed with a half hour or so with jackson davis of the general education board, offering regional business as the reason for their visit, the real reason was evident after general discussion of the project. two young swedish academics had just arrived in the united states to conduct studies was offices of the carnegie corporation. they were unfamiliar to du bois, but he agreed to discuss the projects with them and when, as davis informed them, they would come to atlanta towards the end of the month. near it all, a 40-year-old economics professor with a major reputation in europe had been conducting a broad based study recommended by mutant baker, the chairman of the board of the corporation in the fall of 1935. the astonished professor and social democratic leader of the parliament had the invitation in august 1937. his wife spent the academic year in 1929 serving the united states on a study grant from the rockefeller memorial foundation, arriving just as the stock market imploded. they developedded decided use about the american economy, but they knew almost nothing about negroes and the race problem. seven years later, they were asked to return so that they could undertake a comprehensive study of the negro in the united states. the key to the decision to seek a foreign scholar was contained in the carnegie study to be conducted in a wholly objective and dispassionate way. the president was convinced that the special factors, prejudice, professional jealousies, regional sensitivities, put octoberivity beyond the reach of home grown social science when dealing with the national race problem. notwithstanding what the other prominent americans social scientists had to say to the contrary. in the quest for ideal european, they considered -- eliminated to swied herb scholars and anthropologists and political scientist, a retired dutch colonial administrator, a brit ire economist, a south african, a governor of nigeria, former headmaster of lug by -- rugby, and a leading an throe polings of the day before deciding the swedish economist possessed the problem. signaling his acceptance, but only after being persuaded by a rockefeller foundation friend to withdrawal a declaration. they concluded that the carnegie option might be the last exciting project before the on set of middle age. why not the negro as well as anything else he said years later. the deal was sealed in the spring of 1938 with the handshake over cocktails in new york century club where they were entertained by the carnegie trustees after delivering lectures and proceedings and honorary degrees. if you bear with me, i'll read one more page. it brings du bois to 1949 when he's going left and really out of the mainstream. to put a mildly. this deals with, as i said, the famous historian peace conference. invited at the beginning of the year to serve as a member at large of arts, sciences, and profession, asp, du bois immediately informed an atron mother of the acceptance, although he must have been surprised to see his nemesis listed with palling, downs, and the four regional chairs of the restructured peace organization. during three days in late march 1949, the cultural and scientific conference or historic peace conference, had the east side, the catholic war veteran ticketed hundreds of citizens affiliated and unaffiliated filled the sidewalks and baseball of angry messages and radio gave the conference the advanced billing reserve for natural disasters for partisan review and ad hoc ban of several hundred cold war liberals calling themselves americans for intellectual freedom, the peace conference was a communism front whose perniciousness was deadly because of the presence of so many of the sincerely misguided. sidney hook, mary mccarthy, and dwight mcdonald patrolled corridors and wedged themselves in the panel discussions to combat. howell writing for partisan review sneered at the solemnness found no names and they led off the conference, and there was no mention of the fact that the state department denied visas to latin america and all in western europe thereby eliminating picasso and others. du bois's writer session, howell described the performance as that of an reluck at that particular time norman mailer, a perfect illustration of a unexperienced mind, quote-on-quote, expressing disillusionment by confining the world to the terrible prospect of war. du bois's second wife naturally thought that the speech in madison square garden on march 27 #th, the final night, was the high point. he spoke to the delegates with an intensity that conveyed a depth of the revulsion, centered by spotlight, enhanced by the microphone, proclaiming the culture and scientific con fliewns for world peace a success in a time of hysteria, suspicion, and hate, they brought together one of the largest gatherings of the creative artists and thinkers the world has seen. they were not now nor probably ever would be in agreement on all matters, but in one final respect, our agreement is complete, no more war. he was there to introduce, but had not yet said enough, and when the applause subsided, he continued that the nations knows we are not traitors nor con conspirators and far from plotting force and violence, it is precisely force and violence that we bitterly oppose. they spoke of the failure of the league of nations and now the unit nations to address the cancers of the imperialism and racism. 8the years fall away. i tell you people of america that the dark world is on the move. it was and will have freedom, autotonmy and equality and will not be diverted in fundamental rights, spinning, political hairs, white, if they will, i'm there, but the vast majority will march over them to freedom. still, he was not quite finished. race war was not the answer. what we all want is a decent world where a man does not have to have a white skin to be recognized as a man where sickness and death are linked to our industrial system. then he was done. this is not an end. it is the gateway to a full and abun -- abundant life. it was noted the policemen in the garden applauded. thank you. [applause] david will be happy to take questions, but this talk tonight and your questions are being taped for c-span, so we ask that if you have a question that you come down here to my left, your right, and talk into the microphone so you can be -- have your moment in the sun at 2 a.m. on the television at some point. [laughter] >> a question or two? good evening. >> [inaudible] >> that story is, indeed, a hard one to tell. it's not an uncommon story of a man whose commitment to great prince. s and abstractions means people nearest and dearest to him find the oxygen is sucked out of the universe, and they shrivel and are really denatured by the close contact, over don't come off well. the mother, the wife, the daughter waiting to be noticed by the great man, and periodically, he does, but the psychic was large, and, of course, there were ironies here and du bois was a great feminist of the early part of the 20th century to redu bois on women's rights is to read some of the most salient, cogent prose going, not just that women should have the right to vote, but that women should have complete control of their bodies, and equal pay for equal work, and yet the treatment of his wife was a -- they made somewhat a mockery of the principles. similarly, what was the second point about being close to him and suffering, yes, he wrote in a children's magazine that he created in collaboration with jesse that may res enate here, children's magazine called the brownnies, a monthly magazine for children of color. again, a wonderful nurturing publication for young boys and girls of color, but, of course, in his day-to-day dealings with his daughter and granddaughter, he was not paying attention to the text of the book. >> [inaudible] >> well, let's see, relief, i think, is the major thought of the moment. [laughter] what i found is that there are people who are different from other, not just the rich, and du bois is one of them, and there is an intelligence at work here that's really wonderful to behold, and the opinions are problematic and some are really wrong, but -- [laughter] he is in his principle quest for solutions to social problems and willingness to put his pen on the line, he's standing outs in a country that's not so many of his character. what else? i think what i was pleased to see that going into this business, you know, i knew, as you do, that the one thing that du bois said was that the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line, and at the end, i see that i'm quoted as saying in the flier that the atlanta history center is distributed announcing the lecture, i said that in the end they said it was really the problem of the cash line, and i think that his evolution for concerns of race rights in confining terms to blacks in america, people of color in general, the evolution of that and a rather romantic conception of the qualities of people of color, the evolution from that object to one of economic democracy globally and a critique of the market economy as a wonderfully, deadly phenomena impressed me greatly. it seems to me that even with the collapse of the soviet union and the problems of china, the caveat is that often the seating of social problems to the market for solutions is very up wise, extremely costly, and in the en, it'll rise up to bite us in the behind. those are some of the things that i took away from du bois. >> [inaudible] >> please do. >> [inaudible] [inaudible] >> secondly, having been born, growing up in atlanta -- [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] >> that's a tall order, and i'm delighted to have the questions, and i think i'm really going to say that i hope i'm going to sign your book later in the evening because those things are certainly addressed. i -- the question about really underscore, though, that i think i should say something about in the time remaining, and that is the seeming paradox of the man who is so committed to human rights and racial rights ending up using totalitarianism in order to get them. it's a paradox, and while you argue is makes sense from a pragmatic perspective, you know, that the enemy is your friend, use him or her and that ideology, you expect more from this great intellectual and humanist as i've spent too much time depicting, and sioux a biographer is troubled by discoveries of that sort, but my job is to simply recover the life and recapture the life, and i don't have to be overly much vexed by these oxy morons or paradoxes of which are there so many, but as a biographer, that's just wonderful material to use. >> [inaudible] >> the long -- the first president of the atlanta university, yes. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> [inaudible] my reading is of the situation that suddenly they deal with reality of segregation, but i'm wondering how -- what was the hope? [inaudible] >> the frustration of white supremacy and jim crow was such that du bois bumped up against the edges of the box, and so sometimes he would offer one solution, and sometimes he would offer a solution at the time and confusing those who marched with them and gaining allies who were disingenuous, and the example is du bois going out of the naacp wrote editorials with the title "segregation and self-respect" saying that this was a fact of racial life and endured for quite some time, and, therefore, it better be smart about making the best segregation possible, and, therefore, he suggested some sort of socialist solution. they said, as many people did, look, we can't have a luxury of that kind of intellectual hypothesizing because we heard entered into the records your thoughts and prose by bill and several congressmen said the new deal should be color coded with separate wage scales for whites against blacks, and they are quoting you, and so, you know, it's not utilitarian. it's a difficult thing, and i think that the inconsistencies refleblght a second line trying to find a way out. >> [inaudible] >> good evening. >> [inaudible] >> yeah, it's inspiring to hear talk about how the idea gestated with them, and it's clear they had the source, and cradled the idea, and it succeeds, remarkably well, and there's a large contribution to it. i make a fight and claim of no objectivity, perhaps, but it's -- it's got some troubling flaws, i gather, each specialist has drummed on to and said, realm, they've not done a good job here or there, not surprising, and i suppose now that henry louis gates and others sold to time warner for $10 million, just the source money to work out the glaichs. -- glitches. [laughter] yes, sir? >> [inaudible] >> i read the book, bought it last week. >> oh, great, thank you. >> [inaudible] >> that's it. there's no malcolm x that i could find. >> [inaudible] >> that's really a delicious speculation, and i decline to do so because i'm still a historian, and it's not what i believe in doing. i can tell you what i'd like it to if he was around. i think he probably would not have understood that alas. i think it's, dealing with the gentleman here who is very elite, must have been the most elitest member of the communism party of the united states. [laughter] i think he would have mistaken this persona and not, perhaps, have been patient enough to see and give him for time, but i think there would have been ide loming call problems there as well. well, thank you very much. >> well, first, i want to thank the new america foundation for having us. i am particular and very honored to be a moderator because up until now, this late date in my career, no one's ever found my moderate enough in my views to be a moderators. [laughter] i'm really happy tonight, the first time i like to moderate a panel, and it's, obviously, a great honor to talk about this on the 50th anniversary, and, obviously, it's a book that has put this bark on the culture and it's a very, very rare book that makes the argument that it changed people's lives. it's under criticism for affecting a group of small people for not talking about working class women who had no choice but to work all along and not talking about people of other sexual preferences finding themselves askew or outside conventional life. what i want to do today is talk about the ongoing power of the classic, and i recently taught this book to the undergrads at nyu who some of -- a couple here in the audience who did not ever hesitate to tell me if something is boring, irrelevant, misdated, longer worthy of their important attention. it was amazing to me that in this class, it changed the light, and the book spoke to them in really interesting ways, and so i want to talk about the new femme anymore -- feminine mystique and the old mystique whether it's repressed, and, you know, it's pretty complicated. we, obviously, live in a world that's so transformed by both this book and the movement that followed this that it's hard for those of us, most of us in the room, who were born after this came out. it's hard for us to imagine those days at all, and i just think about the rapiddivity of change in my family -- with mom sitting here i have to bring it up -- my father said only ugly women became lawyers, and i group up in a world where my mother removed the palace that my grandfather gave me and told me the next morning saying it was lost. [laughter] you know, 1970 new york city, and my daughter, we watched obama-hillary clinton election, she was tiny, like five, and she said -- i said, you know, she was a big obama supporter, and i said, you know, wouldn't it be cool if there was a woman president? she looked at me destainfully and said, mom, of course there's been a woman president. it was like amazing that it was in that short time that we went from ugly women to becoming lawyers to of course there's been a woman president in a 5-year-old girl. that said, it's very hard for those of us who grew up in the world in which our feminist class, you know, books are causing people to talk today have names like the end of men. we live in a world in which more women than men get college educations in which women are, for the first time, in the majority of the workplace and in the majority in manager positions. it's hard to look back into the other time. i was abstractly understanding things were different, we don't know or see and feel it, exactly. i interviewed the paris review, and she told me that when she was in college, she had not a single woman professor, shockedded, astonished, and i know life is like that. for my first question, i was going to ask our two panelists who were alive when the feminist first -- [laughter] just describe, for a moment, one -- your experience when you first read the book, and is it overblown or exaggerated to say this this book changed people's lives? >> oh, i don't think there's any question. of course it changed people's live, and it's still changing people's lives. it is passed down through the cultures, and it was the greatest social revolution probably since the suffrages, and that movement took a hundred years. this movement will take a hundred years. we're only halfway through, and we have to count on younger ones to really push it along, but i remember reading this, the feminist mystique in my mor's batroom, one of the few books she read, and it was not possible for her to move on it because, although she was a gifted singer, and she was quite attractive, a natural businesswoman, eager to work, but she lived in a suburban housewife role with two children, and my father refused to let her work because that would have suggested, as many men thought at the time, that he couldn't support his family. she was frustrated. she, you know, it was either valium or vodka that kept women going. it was nots until she was in her 50s, they were divorced, and she went to aa, met another man, and she became a businesswoman. she lost, you know, half her life. i thought i would be different, you know, certainly, saw that that root was not the right one, and what happened to me? i married a mar who i loved, but he was going -- starting medical school, and so i thought, ah-ha, this is cool, i have to support us. i have an excuse to have a career. that was my strait ji. i was totally rejected by the other wives of medical students because i was such an odd ball wanting a career, you know, that's just so ballsy. we got divorced. having put hubby through before there was any sense of recognizing for that thing, i was a single mom. that changed my trajectory, and i was a feminist. at the time, i mean, i started the tribune, in the women's department, the only place to get a job as a woman's writer, and i had to sneak down the back stairs and dare across to go to the dmv, the sitting room where women were not allowedded, to get in the office of the sunday magazine editor and pitch him a story, and, thereby, i developed a mentor who allowed me to, you know, move ahead. gloria, a little older than i and much more politically sophisticated, like, what did she do? take the job as a bunny to get a story, and that hung on her forever, but it was only clay who was starting the new york magazine where they were an editor for a long time, who had a mother as a journalist, and they really had no attitude about women. he thought they are talented, move them up. we paid them a little less. he actually not only fostered my career, but he gave gloria the first column written by a woman in politics, a political column that lasted for many, many years, and then when she wanted to start the news, of course she couldn't raise money. who was going to give money to a woman who wanted to publish a magazine about, you know, women? clay said, this is a great magazine idea. iemg going -- let's put it inside the covers of new york, so he midwifed this building, a magazine, 30 pages inside new york magazine with the cover on the outside as well as the inside, and it sold out. it was a great exhibition of collaboration of a male mentor and female which we lost site of today thinking only women help women, but why not seek out a sponsor already at the top. >> when you read this, you remember where you were, how it affected you? >> no, i don't remember where i was. i'm not sure i know exactly how it affected me, but i do know how everything became the forward effect again, and i can only say that there was no -- there were so few possibilities for women that we were expected to be married by 21 or 22. we were expected to raise children. we were not expected to do anything. we were not expected to make money, and we were not protected against what would happen if we were divorced or someone died. we had no resources to earn our own living, and the vulnerable led us to behave towards men as if they were demagogues. some of them were, maybe, and some of them maybe not. when the feminist mystique came out, betty, who was betty herself, we have to remember this put into words what was in the people's hearts and couldn't have said, and she said it, and the effects across the country was like an electric shock, like somebody -- i don't think of anything else perhaps martin luther king, but i can't think of anything else that happened in my lifetime that actually felt together, marched, as women, we had a voition, we were different, somebody had to pay attention to us, and it was overwhelming, which is what made me individual lant about barbie, but i remember -- i remember going to the brooklyn museum to see a dinner table with plates of all different -- dedicated to women throughout history who made contributions. now, i'm not judging this as a work of art. that's not my feel. i can tell you i was there with katie and her younger sister, and i felt as if the world was turning. we were going to do this thing, and we may have thought it was simple leer than it turned out to be. i may not have anticipated what happened if you had three children, a corporate lawyer job. there were a lot of things we didn't figure out completely, but the exhilaration of it, the extraordinariness, i just want to say one more thing, and i'll stop. i -- i took a writing class at sarah lawrence. the year was 1956. the professor who was a poet, it was an all-girl school, sat around the table, and read the paper. a woman went to reno to get a divorce, and you had to live there for six weeks, and she came back with a detailed report of everything that happened in the six weeks in reno. he said, what makes you think anybody would be interested in the divorce? there was this silence, you know, because i couldn't have been the only one visited by this. [laughter] there was also the possibility women can't write because we adopt have subjects. what would my subject be? what would i do? i was not in a war, and, you know, the sense we were pushedded aside, and, yes, there was lessons, and heard it a hundred times, but the voices that everybody has now, the voices that i really believed they liberated into our world are so many and so amazing and so grateful i lived to see it happen. [applause] >> i was going to say to everyone given how radically this transformation occurred and just when you think about it in terms of, you know, the history of social changes, how rapidly the change occurred, how unbelievably fast the world transformedded so we went from the feminine mistake that took place to, you know, the idea of a woman working is so subversive and transgressive to where we are now, ect., ect., and we can say there's all kinds of problems, to be addressed, but, certainly, in terms of opportunity, women have a kind of opportunity that could not be imagined in 1963 when they sat to write the book. >> right. >> so i want to talk about whether weave -- we've cast aside the feminine mistake, and have we given up this kind of romantic notion, which now we call the stay at home mother, have we given up thed idea of family, this kind of all of that, the fantasy of what conventional life is like and what motherhood is. do you think we walked from that? we don't read this and recognize that. >> i don't think we've walkedded away from that. i mean, something that interests me when we talk about this is that, i mean, it's so exciting to hear you talk about we really thought we could do this because you bloody well did. i mean, you know, listen, when you started talking about, oh, you know, hear all the things that changed, what we couldn't do then, and now her daughter's asking her, of course, there's a woman president, but what i think is remarkable, i mean, the single most striking thing to me looking at the book now was that this notion of we don't appreciate the change were the notions people had when they wrote the book. that blew my mind saying, you know, spent the first half fighting for rights and second half not appreciating them. that quote i wrote down is rights have a dull sound to people who grew up after they have been won. this is exactly our reaction now, of course. i think the question is related to that because i think that we have won all the right, and i think there's a feminist now, do everything, and this is not their opportunity that feminism enabled, but the fact of the matter is you can want do every single thing, and -- >> at the same time. >> yeah, at the same time. >> it's the feminine fallacy. >> yeah, i mean, it can't be done. i don't think we've given up the idea at all of families or of motherhood, and i think all we've done is said we can do it all at once. >> i'm glad we have not given up. it's not a fantasy to have a family. it's a wonderful thing. >> yeah. >> and i think the vast majority of women do want to have a family. >> yeah. >> at some point. also, of educated women, something like 40% of women don't have children by the age of 40 which is pretty dramatic, but we had attachment parenting that came up in the last decade where women were encouraged to, you know, really be, very, very close to the children for at least the first five years, and interestingly, even studies that have been done about women who once they were educated to the idea that if you really drop out, go off ramp as was put it, if you go off ramp, to have children, be home with them, you won't get back on where you left off, and you will pay in all kinds of ways, seniority positions and pensions. women are choosing to do that, majority of women are choosing a nonlinier path and taking some time out. the great encouragement is to stay connected in some way and/or become an entrepreneur to work from home, which is really -- >> not everybody has that skill set. >> that's true. >> that's true. >> that's true. >> look, i think we may have forgotten that after this was published, we had a war, and within -- i won't even call it the feminist movement, but within and between women who made different choices, and i -- i mean, i have to say we better not glorify this. there was real nastiness going on between the women who had jobs, working for careers, felt themselves infin nitly better or felt threatened by the women baking cookies. those baking were livid and so put down and humiliated but those climbing up the ladder, and it was extremely unpleasant. >> that cookie baking never lost the punch; right? that's what hillary clinton said as first lady. i could have baked cookie, and people were appalled. >> i just want to read a quote from this which shows how it was, and as women moved into the workplace, and there was another -- a woman faces on the way out of the house trapped in the hostility of other housewives. >> now, betty, over and over again said that she was for choice. >> right. >> she did not say you need to be free to choose the kind of life that you want which including work or it may not. she was not -- it was just not kind to the housewife staying home. i think that politically she saw quickly you cannot dismiss many, many hundreds of thousands of people's life choices. you have to respect them, and you have to make it possible for them to feel pride in themselves or they will come and kill you. [laughter] i really think that's true. >> you don't want to be denigrating. i don't think it's in feminism's interest or interest of reality to be denigrating how difficult child caring is. that's work. >> you know, i'm very encouraged by the feminist spirit among millennials, young women. they really have it, way -- a lot of them. one of the things that i found interesting is a woman quite well-known now, who is a co-president of a company, melody thompson, who started out at 22, joining the only black owned investment firm in the country, and she was identified right away by the president as being a version of great talent and promise, and when she was 24, he took her to meet one of the biggest ceos in the country in the investment business saying, i'm grooming you to be president, and she then elected to be his grasshopper, jumped whenever he spoke, did everything he could want, including writing thank you notes to the parents of his children's sleepovers. at 28, he made her president. she was completely career oriented up until her mid-#30s when she said, gee, it would be nice to have a date or meet men, and she went out with, you know, someone fairly prominent, the filmmaker of "star wars," and they are engaged, she's 43. she'll probably never have children because she never had the time. what she says about young women who come to be mentored is if they talk about work-life balance, she knows they will never move up to senior positions. in her firm or any other. they will have to unidirectional for ten years of the career. a lot of women don't find that appealing to, you know, also be a ceo where you have to give 110% of your time for that. for those who are aspiring to that, more power to them, and i hope we get more and more of them, but it is really a narrow portion of, i think, the female population that finds that appealing, don't you agree? >> that's because we only have half of a revolution. if we had actually changed the world and changed min, we would have the world that makes it possible. what we have is half, and we're not satisfied with half, and half is not going to work. >> right. >> i think it's not because the failure is not permanent. it's something that is happening now because we have not changed the whole society. all we did is change what women want, and now we have to change what men want, and now we have to change what society is willing to do for a family so, for instance, universal day care. we have to make this world completely different for ourselves, and then -- >> i think that's such an important point. one of the things that makes me so sad is that we were really close, that 1971 thing that walter mondale pushed that was bipartisan, comprehensive child care -- where they were going to have universal, you know, preschool and day care like they do, and in scandinavian countries, and nixon vetoed that saying we don't want the vast moral authority of a vast government between a nontraditional family structure which made a messy life, unconventional, what was written about, and that would have changed so much, still would, i think, that that would change so much. >> well, just paid maternity leave. >> of six weeks. >> that would be nice too. >> it's going to have to come through private companies because the government is not going to be able to do it. government can't pay for entitlements it already has out there. we can't march on washington, but work on companies. >> i think there's enough pressure if young women, you know, coalesce in a new movement towards that, that can happen. google just expanded -- google in new york, expanded to 12 weeks, i think, 12 weeks paid maternity leave because they had too many women leaving. well, duh, you know, that's what happens. [laughter] once they got -- they've improved their retention rate, and it's paying off for them. >> there are women ceos who stepped forward, and, obviously, notably sandberg, and she's really perceived, i think, as astonishing announcement of visit -- visit rail. we want more women ceos, but the same people who say that hate the women ceos we have. we look at them, and we really can't stand a million things about them, and it's worthying a little bit about why, and some of the critiques are interesting because she is trying to use some of the things that we think about, you know, this next stage of the revolution, and, she is trying to succeed in a high level business structure while in the sacrificing family, and kind of to a great deal of anger from women critics from feminists, from lots of nice thinking liberals. i'm curious what you make of that, her effort, and the kind of hostility to her in trying to think a way through this thorny problem. >> it's so inconceivable to me working in a job like that. i can't relate to it at all. everyone here, can anyone relate to having that kind of corporate job? i have no idea what it entiles. i don't know what it means. [laughter] >> what did she get? >> built a nursery. >> that's the other one. >> fixing them up. >> [inaudible] >> there's a book about leaning in, talking about how women shouldn't leave the workplace before they leave the workplace, how they speak honestly. there's a lot of practical advice that's pretty much a very -- it's not a lofty betty tone in spite of the critiques, but nuts and bolts way, goes home at 5:30. people attack her because she has this privilege, and she is, obviously, very rich. begin, i think, a weird thing to attack a very successful ceo for. >> it's kind of the same thing as what, and they are valid, what a lot of the criticisms were, this is a white privileged, well-educated elite situation. that's true. that's a valid critique of the book and valid to say, well, you're the ceo, there's the power to say, guess what i'm leaving at 5:30? on the other hand, elites are elite, and they have power. if someone in an elite position are putting things in a good direction, that's not so bad. >> it's not reproducible, though. that's what, i think, is the beef. it does make many women who are struggling terribly to try to figure out the balance, to be fair, to actually go through that terrible baby hunger that women feel at six months when they are unpaid maternity leave is over, and they have to go back to work because they have to work, and they don't want to leave their child. i mean, that is a reality for most women who have children and a good job. they don't get to go home at 5:30 to have supper with their kids. forget it, if they are going to move up. i think it's natural antipathy to having a book say, well, you are not working hard enough. figure it out, girls. >> i don't think that's a fair representation at all of what was said in the book, i have to say. >> there was a great piece on newyorker.com that those who criticize the book have not read the book. i think that she is not quite saying women are not working hard enough. i don't think -- i think that's an unfair dislation. i don't know if you read it, but i think it's unfair of what she is says. >> there was a writer, i don't know if you remember lois gould, and she said that in this culture, if someone raises their head out of general luck, takes a deep breath, and says something, someone on the shore will throw a rock at that head. [laughter] that was pure lois, but it's completely true. there's a hostility of women towards women that i think we have not begun to deal with, and as any woman who says anything slightly at a variance from what the dogma says you should say like katie, will get viciously attacked by another set of women and could be the other -- i mean, it's not a question of one right side and one wrong side. i'm not saying that. i'm just saying that the urge to attack is very strong, and i don't know what we do about it. i don't know how we can cut it county, and i certainly don't want a sticky sentimentsal we all love each other and tell each other how good we all are. that is not doing it. it's something about how social movements, any kind of movement, anything that moves, is going to attack. it's going to get attacked. it is. >> that's right. that's retelling one of the things that happened is in representing the position, the way we view her, there was two prominent journalists who really irresponsibly quoted a quotation of her, and one was on the front page of the times, the other doud, who said something i'm paraphrasing that i run a social movement, and they stopped the quote there, but the long quote, which was boring, was, like, mainly, like, working for a nonprofit or something, and by taking that first part of the quote, it makes it sounds like she's got these grand visions and aspirations of life and wants to be gone or betty, and, of course, people pounce and mock her, and it's one telling that quite well thought of journalist of the "new york times" does something so borderline unethical to the extent that the times printed a correction because it's wrong to misquote somebody like that, but it's also telling that let's just say if she had said the original quote, i want to run a social movement, should we all take out guns and shoot her? this is like what mom is saying, and i feel for a woman to have a grand vision or grand idea automatically causes a lot of anxiety and anger and hostility. >> yeah. >> i only point out that speaking of women who were not, you know, were all in love, one big cuddle bug, betty was a piece of work. lesbians were a lavender menace to the movement and warned against the man hating, bra burning part of the movement. shefsz not somebody who said, oh, if you're a feminist, you're fine with me. >> right. >> well, wait a minute. you're distorting history just a little bit. >> fix me up. >> all right. [laughter] >> there was a group within the feminist movement that was -- that disapproved of the family side of the feminist movement so that they got to be a lot of hostility. betty, on her book tour for i don't remember which one of her books, was greeted at various libraries by not only tickets, but bomb threats, and they did not come from some, you know, bearded pakistani terrorist, but they came from, you know, some women's groups that were very, very angry at her, and so that this is, you know, we really have to remember that i don't -- i don't believe -- i don't know who started that fight. it is true that betty was not a woman's woman. if there was a room full of ten women and there was one man over in the corner, betty would go to the corner to talk to that man. that was part of her charm. [laughter] that is what i'm -- when i really think we -- was that there was a -- for a while, fortunately, died down, but it looked as if it could explode the whole movement completely. >> yes. >> that's right. >> and, you know, for those of us who were there, it was not a matter of the lesbians are wrong, the family women are right, or anything of the sort. it was what are you doing to our movement? >> yes. >> there was another part to that. there was the man haters. there really are were a lot of man haters, given the name "the ball busters," the strident ball busting, man hating women, and the movement got that wrap in the mainstream, and it was very threatening. i was not a femme initial until 1970, and either did gloria because i didn't want to be a part of that, and i was scared that my, you know, the man i loved would think i was. i mean, i went on the marchs, and i, you know, did the things, but i had a real struggle between -- i don't want to give up the loving, compassionate, nurturing, sexy, man loving side of myself to be part of this movement. do i have to? that was a real struggle for many of us. >> this is such a funny line -- i can't remember if it's in the book or if she said it in an interview, that that people -- some women or some people read her as saying, you know, join the revolution, all you have to lose is your man. she said, no, all you have to lose is your vacuum cleaner. >> fab deny u -- fabulous marketing; right? >> i want to think a little bit more about how we can identify our own problems which have no name and our own feminine mystiques, which, by definition, are hard to recognize living in a culture. how do you talk about it? i want to think a little bit about that. one of my amazing undergraduate students said it's like we have that feminine mystique with new other stuff, both of them. that speaks to having it all question we talked about earlier. the french feminist wrote a book called "the conflict," talking about our new style of parenting. she called it "the child is king," in ways in which we parent which are taking this ominous amounts of energy that could be spent on, perhaps, like, other more fulfilling intellectual pursuits. what do you think are new feminine mystiques, new problems that don't have a name? >> i think it's so funny that's coming from a french women, and you have bringing up bebe, a giant best seller by a woman who says if we are like the french and not make the kids into kings, but, anyway, i mean, the -- i don't -- i don't think this is the most important problem, but it is, i do think, i do think it's a misconception to some extent that the kind of pornification of the culture means we're sexually liberated. i think that's a myth. it's not the most important thing, but i think it's a myth. >> i think -- we did a whole book about the interview with young women about, okay, why are you flashing for girls gone wild? why are you, before you're -- before you've -- when you have not experienced sexual desire, why do you think it's your responsibility to look as skanky as possible as one girl said to me. i think that there's confusion about the difference between -- and there's confusion because it's confusing, the difference between fulfilling a new role, the angel in the house, and being totally, sexually liberated, and i think it's confusing, and it was another issue confusing talking about what caused the infighting. sex and porn was pretty fractious. >> we didn't have porn then. >> yes, we did. we had many demonstrations against it -- >> that's right, we did, yes. >> hustler against hustler. >> i'm not clear why this is a -- why this is a feminist issue that divides young women that -- i don't understand what you said. this thing that -- >> okay, so i think that, you know, first of all, i'm starting from the assumption there was such a thing as antiporn feminists who were, you know, arguing against that, and so-called prosex or sex positive is what it was changed to, feminists who thought it was about freedom, choice, and if they want to participate in pornography or watch it or, you know, sell it, that's choice; right? that's where this is starting. i think that no american -- i mean, i think that antiporn feminism failed about as spectacularly as the shakers. look at the culture now. you cannot say it's less porn mid than it was then. there was a confusion about women came so far they are free to express themselves, living in a sexually liberated world, or does it mean we internalized our obligation to be sex objects to a different extent? it's a confusing question. >> uh-huh. >> i'm just wondering whether, you know, we wouldn't want to rephrase that as the puritan effect on our culture which still rages no matter what we do, and i, you know, i don't see this precisely as a feminist issue because, surely, it affects, you know, our mates and sons equally. how can -- >> the feminine mystique saying to the new men too; right? >> whomever is paying, but -- [laughter] the one she was waiting for. look, i -- it's just that the sex issue, which i imagine every generation struggles with in a slightly different, you know, slightly different name to it, but i would be happy if we were able to solve the question of, you know, how do you get -- how can a woman get through her work life and her family life without losing her mind. if we solve that problem, that would be wonderful. then we go to what can we do about horny, human nature? that, you know, i think is an under problem. >> well, i want to ask one last question, and then, obviously, there's much to talk about with this book, sort of, again, amazing to just that it's a 50-year-old book, but i want to ask one question about broad broadening out. she had serious political ideas, but she was not expressing overtly. we talk about the countries, calling it, quote, studied resistance to political ideas, which betty was aware of, and at some level, she was critiquing a lonely crowd america, critiquing this ideal life that was not just about women, but men, that everybody living in this commuter culture trying to get these things and accumulate them and live these conventional lives, and i think that's what i'm wondering what she makes of our world now because i think that if we think of betty and sub texts to the book, i wonder if she makes of our dream of conventional, and you can speak more about it, but our idea of a successful family life. it's narrow in this country. not that different than what it was in 1965 #. do any of you have any -- >> well, it's very different because both men and women spend much more time preparing themselves educationally and occupationally, postponing until late 20s, early 30s. it's a ten year jump from when ann and i were young, women married at 21, men at 23. now it's more late 28 or -- for highly aspirational women who may be mid-30s, late 30s, 40s, having children, reproductive revolution that allowed people to postpone that was fantastic. we are in an entirely different economic situation. you know, we are somewhat, some say, a declining country economically, and the job opportunities for young women coming into this, you know, long recession, are so -- so truncated, that one of the good things i see now women aware of this, having worked through college, and if they pay for their own college and graduate school, they come out, mid to lit 20s with 200,000 college loans to pay off. wanting to be a social entrepreneur which some do, they can't do. they have to take a job in some high paying positions, and if they went to law school, they are going to go into corporate law, boredded to tears with that, but they have to do it for five to ten years to get the money to then be able to do their passion. that's a big difference. you know, when i wrote passages in the 1970s, the most famous business book, and it remains to today is what color is your parachute? the thesis there is start out following your passion. who can afford to do that as a 25-year-old who finished college? they have to work, gain, get some, you know, it takes a decade to pay off the college loans for most people unless they came from a wealthy family. i think there's -- the other thing that's a big advantage is the boomer generation, which was the generation that inherited the -- we started it, a little older, inherited the feminist revolution and moved it forward, 80% white. the generation of young people today, thank goodness, is far more diversified, and there are a lot of young african-american, asian-american, indian-american, hispanics who voted for obama who are very much responsible for the reelection of obama, and who are helping to mentor younger poor women which were left out of the first feminist revolution. poor women, we really didn't have a lot to do for them or even lower middle class women. there was a lot of intention about it, but they didn't get included a lot. neither did women of color, but now it's horizontal in that way, and what i find exciting is young women starting at, like, 18 and 22 to help younger poor women to learn code, learn how to do code, learn how to build websites, learn a skill that's like the typing of the past that allows them to get in low level positions and move up because they know the technology of the future. >> betty undoubtedly was, would have been austerized and killed. there's no way she could have expressed anything that could have been principled to a marxist position in any book that was going to be read by -- >> no, of course, but i'm saying look at her class critique then and apply it to now? >> yeah, i -- >> would she look at the culture now saying we are into small, material things, not reading vacuum cleaner ads, still -- >> well, wait a minute -- >> telling us how to live. >> that's probably all true, but if you are going to use the word "marxist," remember what happened in the whole country is we saw what marxism brought in russia, and having seen what that brought in russia, the word becomes a dirty word, and the idea is not good either, so what now happens is that, you know, i think we are in a very imperfect world, but it's a perfect, imperfect world without ideologies that we can hang on to, so i imagine most people here are not sitting around having coffee, fighting over ideologies. you may be fighting over various sorts of things you want to accomplish, disagree with political disagreements, you know, trying to find out what's going on in your world, but you are not sure this is the answer. that's the thing that changed enormously, i think. >> i think we should open it up for questions. yeah. either to anyone or everyone or whatever you -- >> hi, i'm -- okay. i just want to make a comment. i was at a panel at nyu about women in the law, and it was nyu's first annual conference on women in the law, and, actually, i'll have to admit the reason i was there is because my mother was a speaker. she was past president of the national association of women lawyers, and she started an annual survey. she was first a cosh yowlings, and growing up, she was told she had to be a teacher, that basically at the age of 40, graduated from law school, and ended up going and was a major partner in two major law firms, and then she always felt upset by what she saw and how the treatment of women in law firms and even though she rose to be a managing partner of a major law firm, she started a survey, an annual survey of national law firms across the country, and what she found is 15% of women today in 2013 make equity partner across the board in just her annual survey about roughly 15% of women are able to make equity partner in the law firms across the country was the statistic they found, and that's actually really sad, and, you know, someone got up in the audience saying, realm, you know, a lot of times women want to leave and climb the himalayas or look atmy shelly obama, and she was associating the law firm, saying, you know, people leave our law firm to do great things. well, you know, that's not really the point is you can climb the himalayas and leave the law firm, but the question, i think, that we have to focus on is why are they leaving the law firms? you know, but what is it about the structure about the law firms in not allowing women to advance to become equity partners. there's plenty of associates in law firms for five years and basically forced to leave in one way or another, so i just wanted to ask you, the question is, i guess, you know, what structurally, what needs to happen concretely in america's workplaces? >> i'm not a lawyer. >> i mean, i would have to address, you know, law firm, and betty writes about working for fulfillment, and what's complicated, many don't work for fulfillment, and i think a lot of people working in law firms, trying tore partners in particular may not be working for full fulfillment, and that sometimes, and i think that is -- i'm not trying to stave the himalaya question, but i wonder if this model she has where the educated women should be using their brains in some way, i think there is something in law firm culture for both men and women that's distorted and punishing. i think the question of whether you can have a life outside of the law firm for either a man or women, if you're a young man at 34 and you have a newborn baby, like, are you ever going to see that newborn baby? i mean, you know, i think for both men and women, it's a pretty

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Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capitol Hill Hearings 20130906 : Comparemela.com

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Capitol Hill Hearings 20130906

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dispair. in his american assumption, there was a version of the creed of exceptionalism that scholars came to regard as uniquely american, escaped from the rise and fall of history and universal opportunity for individuals, endless progress for the nation, and yet split historical second in the heat of radical reconstruction, they maintained that the american assumption was temporarily counterbalanced, alarmed by the return to congress in 1866 of unreconstructed southerners who might repudiate the civil war debt and almost certainly reduce the national tariff, they characterized northern industry has frightened and moving towards the stand which abolition democracy had already taken, namely temporary dictatorship, endowed negro education, legal civil rights, and eventually votes for negroes to offset the southern threat of economic attack. the american assumption was from radical reconstruction whether it was special order number 15 # giving emancipated slaves possession their titles to titles to land in georgia and south carolina, whether it was the freedom's bureau in negotiates contracts and negotiating 247,000 new citizens in 4329 elementary schools, the first federal antipoverty program or protecting voters rpd the act of 1875, but much sooner than later than the version of events, the dictatorship of labor imposed on the south by the alliance of northern industry and democracy collapsed and dropped away flu american assumption. so it was back towards slavery, the title of the ultimate chapter with the wages of whiteness destroying any possibility of the solidarity of labor along class lines, dilemma of destiny em posed more than any other people of color pressing against the white republic, crackled again in high voltage prose of the souls, and one is widely inhibited and mentally confined as the american negroes. within the colored race, the philosophy of salvation is curiously twisted and distorted. from the defees of reconstruction to the dispair of the great depression, where had history taken them, he asked? what sign post pointed to a way out of the 300-year-old box. shall we use torch and dynamite? shall they go north or fight in the south? shall they segregate themselves more than they are now in states, in towns, cities, or sections? shall they leave the country. are they americans or foreigners. my country tis of thee, children saved and buy homes or dlictly commit race suicide? long ago in the flush of the harvard sociological study, du bois was certain as written in the autobiography that the cure for the race problem was knowledge and scientific investigation. the lynching of sam here in atlanta, the policies of the general education board and race riots in springfield illinois in 1908, this abused him of an ideal far more suited to enlightenment than in georgia in the rain of watson. the faith in the power of knowledge never dispated, but sought what promised to be the more effective strategy of journalism by uncompromising principles and social science. that conviction was never more manifested than in the propaganda of history, the black reconstruction in which the structures of calvin and alexander thundered proclaiming that history is true could empower true democracy if only history and historians chose to lie less. he was writing, get a feel, devastated by lies told by roads and dunning, by walter phlegmings and bowers and a library of others. there would never be a science of history until we have in our ecologies men who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race. men who will not deliberately encourage students to gather thesis material in order to prejudice for. the last chapter soared beyond an appeal to honest history into a realm where mortal philosophy fused with the cymballism of the creation, but -- i'm fighting a head cold. bear with me. if it was special pleading as bias in its own way as any white spu premise, it was partisanship in the cause of justice and democracy, as he proclaimed. it's the most significant drama in the last thousand years of human history. it was, he wrote, the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty into the newfound west. including they descended into hell, and in the third century, they arose from the dead in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world has ever seen. it was a tragedy that beggared the grief. it was an uphelve of humanity like a french revolution. we are blind and led by the blind and discern in it no part of our labor movement, no part of our industrial triumph, no part of the religious experience. why? because in a day when the human mind aspired to science of human action, a history in psychology of the mighty effort of the mightyist century was under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future. the inpsych peed ya prujt was at a curious cross roads. the more attention paid to it by the academy and foundations to the negro, the more resistance there was to privileging the scholarship of one authority whose claimed to interpret the problem of the 20th century was unexcelled two days after the commemoration of the 70th birthday, du bois sent a type carefully crafted four-page rebuttal to the 11th hour misgivings and formally conveyed to stokes by several general education board trustees. the remaining obstacles had been told by the my philanthropist ws objectivity, quote, they are only concerned about one thing, stokes warned in the letter of february 11, and that is whether we have fought through ways in which to assure objectivity of the findings, quotes closed. several trustees were particularly agitated by the opinion of a british anthropologist who had determined that scholarship in the united states betrayed either a white or negro bias. stokes was advised this distinguished an throe polings doubted the possibility that there could be complete objectivity even in historical matters where raisht pride on the one hand or racial prejudice on the other was at state. interoffice correspondence at 61 broad kay, the head quarters of the egb reflected the board's looming die lem ma in the months of january through mash much, 1938. whoever funding its portion of du bois might not prove unavoidable. the insis tense of the highly respected and highly political charles johnson, a leading african-american sociologist and philanthropies in mid-march that, quote, interest is gathering momentum, and that the merited foundation support under du bois was noted. the academic creed of the day proclaimed that objectivity was, if not yet attainable in its purest incarnation, a goal in whose pursuit a discipline voaf discard all relativism except actions that were inescapably human. the historian like the social scientist was in the words of the historian whoation work inevidentbly captured the fiction, a neutral or disinterested judge who must never degenerate into an advocate or worse, propaganda for the objectivity quest was to be a grave risk when history is written for utilitarian purposes. these are quotes. du bois's february 1938 memorandum to stokes claimed you could be objective and at the same time, you could be an african-american. well, du bois assumed after meeting all the objections of the funding of the funding was imminent, some $260,000. he assumedded it was about to materialize, and with it, the wherewith you know all of professional talent and sources sufficient to reformulate the problem of the century for this veepture met as much to him or the symbol and substance of the collaboration as for what could produce in the way of old revised and new findings interpreted about the negro. although the seven decade pageant that filled black america with sounds and light, it had been played out largely behind a vail color and meaning, however, that despite the visibility of the minority, there was occasions when the white majority was compelled to notice. he in the country were prejudice that forced him into a shoe string career as academic journalists and man of letters and exist especially in the margins where never once during an odd surmounting half century had there been a offer of an appointment or learn society affiliation with his genius. richard logan, his assistant, could no longer recall the brand, but he still retine tanned a vivid recollection 30 years later of champaigneed iced in the bucket, and the decision of the general board executive committee to refer to the full board had already reached atlanta when rufus, the new university president, returned from new york with news that the du bois proposal was slated for approval at a meeting of the geb trustees on april 6th, 1938, a wednesday. anticipating stokes' corroborating telephone call in the late afternoon on thursday, du bois and logan passed the attention over cigarettes and small talk as a bottle of excellent champaigne nestled in the crib of ice. logan was one of the few people with whom du bois ever descended into mere banter, but as logan responded to boasting, he knew du bois better than anyone perhaps other than his second wife. after a number of decreasingly anxious glances at the clock; it was depressingly obvious as the light went out of the late afternoon that no telephone call would come from stokes that day well, i have disappointing news, the president wrote days later, putting the best woft face on rejection, stokes complimented the president, the general education board, for being perfectly fine about the whole matter, and another for fighting for the proposal. the general education board, not flatly declining the request decided they cannot act favorably upon it. yes, stokes is clearly confident ending the letter with a sigh that you and i may not see the project through, and i hope and believe we will. as they confided, on thivity concerns continue to nag at certain trustees. head unvowed, they said quite possibly they are raising the funds is my own personality, and logan went to the grave convinced that the project had been undermind of both foundations by machinations. the lesson drawn from this mortifying experience is that there was once a time when the word of one quiet man could determine whether a project concerns negroes could be approved or not. the abdomen in addition was correct, but they blamed the foundation loss only somewhat less receptive to those competing $2 # 00,000 proposal for a free study of african peoples had been rejected by the cooperation two years earlier. so they continue to persevere, and he receives a word from a general education board, and -- well, i shall read this, stating frankly du bois's activities with the naacp overshadowed scholar i interest and more time necessary to create another impression, better objectivity, obviously, sympathetic program officer of the general education board lobbied the carnegie corporation to approve its portion of the stokes'-du bois's application despite action of his own foundation. dr. du bois is the most influential negro in the united states, stated the officer petition. this project would keep him bis -- busy for the rest of his productive life. particularly fond of frank, found him sympathetic, and the president had unself-ly prodded his own produce tees to bail out du bois's magazine, the crisis, twice mentioned the publication costs of the book on reconstruction and had a noncommittal interest in the negro. as it was possible there's action as a decision to defer rather than remains that they might act favorably on the request for an appropriation of 60% of the 260,000 budget that he would never receive such an appropriation communicated to du bois in a manner that was both indirect and guilt-ridden. his visitors arrived on campus on the third or the fourth day in november 1938 with little advanced notice putting aside the black vote, du bois conversed with a half hour or so with jackson davis of the general education board, offering regional business as the reason for their visit, the real reason was evident after general discussion of the project. two young swedish academics had just arrived in the united states to conduct studies was offices of the carnegie corporation. they were unfamiliar to du bois, but he agreed to discuss the projects with them and when, as davis informed them, they would come to atlanta towards the end of the month. near it all, a 40-year-old economics professor with a major reputation in europe had been conducting a broad based study recommended by mutant baker, the chairman of the board of the corporation in the fall of 1935. the astonished professor and social democratic leader of the parliament had the invitation in august 1937. his wife spent the academic year in 1929 serving the united states on a study grant from the rockefeller memorial foundation, arriving just as the stock market imploded. they developedded decided use about the american economy, but they knew almost nothing about negroes and the race problem. seven years later, they were asked to return so that they could undertake a comprehensive study of the negro in the united states. the key to the decision to seek a foreign scholar was contained in the carnegie study to be conducted in a wholly objective and dispassionate way. the president was convinced that the special factors, prejudice, professional jealousies, regional sensitivities, put octoberivity beyond the reach of home grown social science when dealing with the national race problem. notwithstanding what the other prominent americans social scientists had to say to the contrary. in the quest for ideal european, they considered -- eliminated to swied herb scholars and anthropologists and political scientist, a retired dutch colonial administrator, a brit ire economist, a south african, a governor of nigeria, former headmaster of lug by -- rugby, and a leading an throe polings of the day before deciding the swedish economist possessed the problem. signaling his acceptance, but only after being persuaded by a rockefeller foundation friend to withdrawal a declaration. they concluded that the carnegie option might be the last exciting project before the on set of middle age. why not the negro as well as anything else he said years later. the deal was sealed in the spring of 1938 with the handshake over cocktails in new york century club where they were entertained by the carnegie trustees after delivering lectures and proceedings and honorary degrees. if you bear with me, i'll read one more page. it brings du bois to 1949 when he's going left and really out of the mainstream. to put a mildly. this deals with, as i said, the famous historian peace conference. invited at the beginning of the year to serve as a member at large of arts, sciences, and profession, asp, du bois immediately informed an atron mother of the acceptance, although he must have been surprised to see his nemesis listed with palling, downs, and the four regional chairs of the restructured peace organization. during three days in late march 1949, the cultural and scientific conference or historic peace conference, had the east side, the catholic war veteran ticketed hundreds of citizens affiliated and unaffiliated filled the sidewalks and baseball of angry messages and radio gave the conference the advanced billing reserve for natural disasters for partisan review and ad hoc ban of several hundred cold war liberals calling themselves americans for intellectual freedom, the peace conference was a communism front whose perniciousness was deadly because of the presence of so many of the sincerely misguided. sidney hook, mary mccarthy, and dwight mcdonald patrolled corridors and wedged themselves in the panel discussions to combat. howell writing for partisan review sneered at the solemnness found no names and they led off the conference, and there was no mention of the fact that the state department denied visas to latin america and all in western europe thereby eliminating picasso and others. du bois's writer session, howell described the performance as that of an reluck at that particular time norman mailer, a perfect illustration of a unexperienced mind, quote-on-quote, expressing disillusionment by confining the world to the terrible prospect of war. du bois's second wife naturally thought that the speech in madison square garden on march 27 #th, the final night, was the high point. he spoke to the delegates with an intensity that conveyed a depth of the revulsion, centered by spotlight, enhanced by the microphone, proclaiming the culture and scientific con fliewns for world peace a success in a time of hysteria, suspicion, and hate, they brought together one of the largest gatherings of the creative artists and thinkers the world has seen. they were not now nor probably ever would be in agreement on all matters, but in one final respect, our agreement is complete, no more war. he was there to introduce, but had not yet said enough, and when the applause subsided, he continued that the nations knows we are not traitors nor con conspirators and far from plotting force and violence, it is precisely force and violence that we bitterly oppose. they spoke of the failure of the league of nations and now the unit nations to address the cancers of the imperialism and racism. 8the years fall away. i tell you people of america that the dark world is on the move. it was and will have freedom, autotonmy and equality and will not be diverted in fundamental rights, spinning, political hairs, white, if they will, i'm there, but the vast majority will march over them to freedom. still, he was not quite finished. race war was not the answer. what we all want is a decent world where a man does not have to have a white skin to be recognized as a man where sickness and death are linked to our industrial system. then he was done. this is not an end. it is the gateway to a full and abun -- abundant life. it was noted the policemen in the garden applauded. thank you. [applause] david will be happy to take questions, but this talk tonight and your questions are being taped for c-span, so we ask that if you have a question that you come down here to my left, your right, and talk into the microphone so you can be -- have your moment in the sun at 2 a.m. on the television at some point. [laughter] >> a question or two? good evening. >> [inaudible] >> that story is, indeed, a hard one to tell. it's not an uncommon story of a man whose commitment to great prince. s and abstractions means people nearest and dearest to him find the oxygen is sucked out of the universe, and they shrivel and are really denatured by the close contact, over don't come off well. the mother, the wife, the daughter waiting to be noticed by the great man, and periodically, he does, but the psychic was large, and, of course, there were ironies here and du bois was a great feminist of the early part of the 20th century to redu bois on women's rights is to read some of the most salient, cogent prose going, not just that women should have the right to vote, but that women should have complete control of their bodies, and equal pay for equal work, and yet the treatment of his wife was a -- they made somewhat a mockery of the principles. similarly, what was the second point about being close to him and suffering, yes, he wrote in a children's magazine that he created in collaboration with jesse that may res enate here, children's magazine called the brownnies, a monthly magazine for children of color. again, a wonderful nurturing publication for young boys and girls of color, but, of course, in his day-to-day dealings with his daughter and granddaughter, he was not paying attention to the text of the book. >> [inaudible] >> well, let's see, relief, i think, is the major thought of the moment. [laughter] what i found is that there are people who are different from other, not just the rich, and du bois is one of them, and there is an intelligence at work here that's really wonderful to behold, and the opinions are problematic and some are really wrong, but -- [laughter] he is in his principle quest for solutions to social problems and willingness to put his pen on the line, he's standing outs in a country that's not so many of his character. what else? i think what i was pleased to see that going into this business, you know, i knew, as you do, that the one thing that du bois said was that the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line, and at the end, i see that i'm quoted as saying in the flier that the atlanta history center is distributed announcing the lecture, i said that in the end they said it was really the problem of the cash line, and i think that his evolution for concerns of race rights in confining terms to blacks in america, people of color in general, the evolution of that and a rather romantic conception of the qualities of people of color, the evolution from that object to one of economic democracy globally and a critique of the market economy as a wonderfully, deadly phenomena impressed me greatly. it seems to me that even with the collapse of the soviet union and the problems of china, the caveat is that often the seating of social problems to the market for solutions is very up wise, extremely costly, and in the en, it'll rise up to bite us in the behind. those are some of the things that i took away from du bois. >> [inaudible] >> please do. >> [inaudible] [inaudible] >> secondly, having been born, growing up in atlanta -- [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] >> that's a tall order, and i'm delighted to have the questions, and i think i'm really going to say that i hope i'm going to sign your book later in the evening because those things are certainly addressed. i -- the question about really underscore, though, that i think i should say something about in the time remaining, and that is the seeming paradox of the man who is so committed to human rights and racial rights ending up using totalitarianism in order to get them. it's a paradox, and while you argue is makes sense from a pragmatic perspective, you know, that the enemy is your friend, use him or her and that ideology, you expect more from this great intellectual and humanist as i've spent too much time depicting, and sioux a biographer is troubled by discoveries of that sort, but my job is to simply recover the life and recapture the life, and i don't have to be overly much vexed by these oxy morons or paradoxes of which are there so many, but as a biographer, that's just wonderful material to use. >> [inaudible] >> the long -- the first president of the atlanta university, yes. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> [inaudible] my reading is of the situation that suddenly they deal with reality of segregation, but i'm wondering how -- what was the hope? [inaudible] >> the frustration of white supremacy and jim crow was such that du bois bumped up against the edges of the box, and so sometimes he would offer one solution, and sometimes he would offer a solution at the time and confusing those who marched with them and gaining allies who were disingenuous, and the example is du bois going out of the naacp wrote editorials with the title "segregation and self-respect" saying that this was a fact of racial life and endured for quite some time, and, therefore, it better be smart about making the best segregation possible, and, therefore, he suggested some sort of socialist solution. they said, as many people did, look, we can't have a luxury of that kind of intellectual hypothesizing because we heard entered into the records your thoughts and prose by bill and several congressmen said the new deal should be color coded with separate wage scales for whites against blacks, and they are quoting you, and so, you know, it's not utilitarian. it's a difficult thing, and i think that the inconsistencies refleblght a second line trying to find a way out. >> [inaudible] >> good evening. >> [inaudible] >> yeah, it's inspiring to hear talk about how the idea gestated with them, and it's clear they had the source, and cradled the idea, and it succeeds, remarkably well, and there's a large contribution to it. i make a fight and claim of no objectivity, perhaps, but it's -- it's got some troubling flaws, i gather, each specialist has drummed on to and said, realm, they've not done a good job here or there, not surprising, and i suppose now that henry louis gates and others sold to time warner for $10 million, just the source money to work out the glaichs. -- glitches. [laughter] yes, sir? >> [inaudible] >> i read the book, bought it last week. >> oh, great, thank you. >> [inaudible] >> that's it. there's no malcolm x that i could find. >> [inaudible] >> that's really a delicious speculation, and i decline to do so because i'm still a historian, and it's not what i believe in doing. i can tell you what i'd like it to if he was around. i think he probably would not have understood that alas. i think it's, dealing with the gentleman here who is very elite, must have been the most elitest member of the communism party of the united states. [laughter] i think he would have mistaken this persona and not, perhaps, have been patient enough to see and give him for time, but i think there would have been ide loming call problems there as well. well, thank you very much. [applause] >> we'll continue the discussion of military strikes on syria with retired army lieutenant diffed from the center for new american security. >> wilson was so intellectual and our most academic, most educational educated president, the only president with a ph.d.. as a result of that, i think most of the books that have been written about him have been academic in nature, and i think they have missed the very human side of this man. he was deeply emotional, passionate, romantic figure, had two wives, first wife died, he courted and fell in love with a woman and married a second time. wrote thousands of passionate love letters to each of these women. this was a real, living, breathing human being, and i don't think we've seen that about woodrow wilson. >> a. scott burg's biography releases next week. hear more sunday night at eight on c-span's "q&a." >> monday, the u.s. court of appeals for the dc circuit hears oral argument in the case of verizon against fcc to determine whether the fcc has the authority to regulate internet service providers. analysts discuss the legal and technological implications at the new america foundation today. this is an hour and a half. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> all right, hello, and welcome to everyone joining us in the room, and the live screen online. for all of you, i encourage you to cooperate the conversation online using the hash tag poundopeninternet. all one word. i'm thrilled to introduce a really great participants here today to talk about the future of the communications ecosystem. we are here to talk about the open interpret, the status of the case of the dc circuit where the order is challenged, but we're also here to look broadly at problems emerging as they grapple with the scope of the authority of the modern communications network. the challenges affect us and and will continue to affect us all. arbitrary distinctions mean federal policies leave important principles behind in the internet era. principles that ensure communications network connect everyone everywhere, that our networks service open platforms allowing each of us to access consent of our choosing and communicate, and new competitors compete on a level playing field with providers, and, ultimately, the digital divide marked by racial, social, or economic lines is not perpetuated. the values that underline the principles, the benchmarks known as common carriage date back over a century. they are not new, and the fcc needn't reinvent the wheel. we'll discuss what a mod -- modernized communication looks like. joining me is matt wood, policy director at free press, steven, national organizer for the center for media justice, marty from aarp, and and ji, and susan crawford, professor at the school of law, fellow at the roosevelt institute, codirector at the berkman center, former official assistant for science, technology, and innovation policy to barack obama, and author of captive audience. susan, pleased to have you here, you have much to say, so i'll turn the floor to you for opening remarks after which we veed to a conversation. >> welcome, and thank you for hosting us. there's a spray of issues in communications policy and law and a lot of shiny objects, a lot of confusion, so it must be relief to especially the journalists in the crowd here that the case being argued on monday at the dc kir cut is called verizon versus fcc presents a moment of grandeur. does the u.s. government have a role to play when it comes to ensuring open world class, reasonably priced internet access? does the government have good reason to ensure that facility in america? i believe it does for competitive reasons because asian policies are pushing towards exactly that end, and we have an obligation to ensure a thriving middle class that helps the country remain strong for generations. the case argued monday discusses today is situated in two powerful reasons, an attack on the idea that the government has any role in ensuring open, world class, interconnected, reasonably priced high speed internet access, and it's an attack on the idea of both at the administrative level so whether fcc has delegated authority from congress to do what it did in the open internet role that we'll discuss and administratively, that attack is strong, stemming from legal gymnastics that people in the room are qualified to talk about, and talking about it in detail, if you want, but that's all about policies. those decisions made by the fcc were made against the background of assumed legal authority, and we'll get through the policy decisions one way or another. they get decided. that's the administrative level. what i'd like to highlight this afternoon is the profound, the profound attack this case represents on congressal authority to say anything about high speed interpret access-under-par the commerce clause. each talk with one message so one thing to remember today and that one thing that's so important is that the dc kir -- circut has to firmly squash verizon's first amendment claim that any oversight of the high speed internet access service would be unconstitutional. the dc circut has to stop the argument in its tracks. verizon says in capacity, when it's wearing that hat a as a high speed internet access provider, it's the same as the washington post. any effort by government to con train ability to slice and dice and prioritize and make deals with content providers about that high speed access should be found unconstitutional under the first amendment. verizon has plenty of good reasons to make this astonishing and laughable argument. it's an attempt to constitutionalize the regulation of general purpose communication networks. you have oversight out of the political branch, congressional delegated power, and they make sure there's a roadblock, a very tall constitutional roadblock to any oversight that seek to remove any threats, any threat of oversight over we've seen this before in the era, the same claims that were made by companies seeking to remove regulatory oversights, but even then, tfn companies did not claim that the first amendment bars any oversight or regulation of their transport activities. it sounds like a serious legitimate constitutional argument. if they get there, that's a win. if it's serious, it's a win for them because that will make some court, and they hope it's the supreme court, someday, and they make the argument over and over and over again agree that this is a serious question. that any general purpose network raises constitutional questions about speech and say in light of the questions, you can't poly defer to what the administration agency, in this case, the fcc, has done to exert oversight over us. they repeat this over and over again, this laughable argument. this happened with health care. just keep saying it and hope someone believes you there's a claim at issue here. well, the government has good reasons to oversee the operation of these general purpose transport networks, and the reasons are so good and verizon's claim is so absurd that it's important that the dc circuit make a claim about this. remember why we have an amendment, directing the content of messages from savoring certain points of view. what is the likelihood that government's in the net neutrality order in issue in this particular case or any other arena of policies over general purposes transport networks is actually suppressing speech or attempting to favor certain messages over others. i'll tell you what the likelihood is. it's zero. that's not what's going on here. there is no attempt. they say they are forced to subsidize speech abliged to be neutral. that's nonsense. fifty years ago, the arguments were made by segregationists saying the lunch counters subsidized sit-ins only rating a paragraph 50 years ago, disgraceful at the time, and here, sure, everything's subsidizes something else, but there has to be some lines, and scalia said it clearly about ten years ago that a philosopher claims everything is related to everything else, but there's a line, and a transport network is not subsidizing speech that travels over it. it's not subsidizing messages, understandable messages by an audience by which it does not agree is not going on nighs. the dc circuit needs to slam the door on the first amendment argument decisively because what verizon is really trying to do in the entire case is protect its profitable positions wanting power to squeeze profit everywhere, both at its interconnection points with other networks, and in the last mile by discriminating wr. to traffic, but economic loss is not a first amendment injury. it is freedom of speech any time it wants to on anything thinking of other people's speech to cross lines does not amount to compelled speech. luckily, in a recent supreme court decision, justice roberts made it clear in the solomon amendment case. we're hoping the dc circuit pays attention to that. verizon is not singled out. the companies at issue in net order are regulated entities who provide wires and transmission lines and use rights of way to provide communications into u.s. house holes, and, yes, there's a line between regulated entities and applications that use the internet. that's a line. it doesn't mean that the regulated entities are out for speakers of the messages. it's different from the conversation. right now, we are worried about the sidewalk, uncon trained power to rise up and make more money by picking and choosing particular conversations of which is improverred, and, importantly, government has plenty of good reasons to prefer open networks to private carriage to ensure access just as our phone system was the envy of the world when it was built. .. >> we are giving them the opportunity to explain for what this means. >> thank you, it is great to be here as always. we have this case and we are talking about the neutrality and how it is not content regulation. it is simply regulation of a communications network. and we have this what with the conversation and we had a regulated network and that doesn't mean the government or anyone is regulating what you and i say to each other. it means that they a have a basic guarantee and that is what the content regulation is about. even though people will try that line on you even today. what it means is that it's a simple statement about the principles of the person you pay to ship something, you can't mess let muscle at the contents. simply saying that it is contrary to the plan of verizonmac. they cannot edit your e-mail must does, they cannot tell you which ones to go to. they can't save you can use some applications and services. you should be able to use any one of them. they can't say some service that would cost you more. so they would like to say, we like it when you pay us for tv service and also for internet access and this is a hypothetical, this isn't something they had tried to do. it is a predecessor case that basically ran for 2007 through 2010 and finished up just as this one was kicking off. it is not hypothetical, but something i promised that you hear people talking about it at panels like this one and in places like aspen with when they say we should be allowed to experiment with new teams paying for content may mean that not only for the people to pay them, like i pay comcast for that internet connection and also google or facebook or netflix or whomever. we won't have the ability to charge them as well for the revenues. so what are these open internet rules this week and what are they actually doing? >> they do have a decent job that they do. sometimes you will hear about no complaints and that obviously means that there is no need for the rules. and it's like, boy, wouldn't that be nice if we could do this. we refuse to make an application available to everyone by apple, they said he could have face time as long as you pay up for unlimited voice minutes and i like that part of it. i mean, as long as you pay us for unlimited voice, then you can substitute something cortisol is the check is guaranteed and we are getting paid two or even three times, and it's like, sure, have fun, but only once they have discriminate against the competitive and innovative application that will take away some of their business. and i would just finish with this on the authority piece. it's very important in the case. it is most likely in the case to consider whether they have the ability to adopt these or not. the first compromised as wireless disparity that we talked about in the past. where we have different rules that apply to these wired networks. the carrier has an obligation and that is allowed, or lease it is part of the rules that are not encouraged. they also said that the wireless carriers could not block applications and to think of something like skype or google voice and those could be fair game, not just for deferential treatment, but for blocking by the ist we have any here on our panel and i hate to talk about this and some incomplete definitions, because they worked so hard to make this principle preserved for us. but there are some people who have talked about reasonable network management and their these kinds of loopholes and landmines that may be very legitimate ways for them to manage this. the third way was on the authority base and susan talked about this. we will talk about how it was part of the real-world implications and we don't want to get too lost in this part of the greater basically what it has done is continued down the path to say that the internet access services are not really a transition service. but they are also different enough that we don't have the same kind of authority over them or something like a telephone number i wouldn't say that that is a that is not the cleanest one that they have available. we have applications that we think that they could have taken a long time ago and could could've been the end of this regulatory twilight zone in which other broadband communication services have been part of the better part of the last decade. and that is what we are going to see is the argument plays itself out and as the judges finally render a decision may be early next year. does the sec have this authority in a court is a need to go back and try this again? the problem is that this is not only something that affected this neutrality. but if it's given a broad loss, over modern communications networks, and that would be a disaster because we need the fcc to make sure that we have a level playing field so that competitive companies are available to provide services to communities and they have access to that modern communications network that we so need, even as the technology and content changes. to that is more than enough from me. i would just like to apologize for anything if i do anything wrong during the confirmation that were made. it's very excited. >> i would like to talk about the perspective that i had. whole legal team was involved in the consideration of this. but i was primarily responsible for and representing the commissioner for this and we had discussions with chairman baucus and the staff. i would like to take us back and brought in what was going on at the time. we were considering this order and it was with wide public support for the commission to act and to do something. why is this? that it was because folks don't realize how important it is to have access to the internet as we had all learned to love it and access it and we have been able to surf the web and check the website, "the new york times" and the idea that we would have to pay more and it was sort of scary idea. how will that change and there was an economy growing around it and here is an alternative to reach consumers in a new and exciting way. many of the staff has grown up during this internet age. i began work in the mid-90s. i remember when you could not attach anything to an e-mail and we used to talk about whether or not we would be able to provide voice or video service. over the internet. the idea that we have gotten to this place, i think we all were a little humble and we wanted to be sure that we were taking steps to prevent consumers and that the at the same time that the rules would not be so onerous that we would somehow alter or stop innovations that would happen that would benefit consumers. and the other thing i wanted to point out to you was that congress had actually become quite aware of how important internet wise. and congress had elected to the commission to spend time and money putting together a national broadband plan. how can we get broadband and high-speed internet access to all americans. broadband that is affordable. then they provided about $7.2 billion to build broadband in america and make sure that all consumers would have access to this new and exciting service and they recognize how this had been. how telephone service began in realize that this equal the playing field for consumers and provided them new opportunities and here are ways that we can create economic opportunities in rural america. and the president having talked about this internet policy and the broad discussions were going on. and i think that the commission really wanted to ensure that consumers can have access to this open internet and they have the opportunity to speak. they had the opportunity to reach competitive opportunities. at the same time we were very humbled to the position that we were in, and we wanted high-level rules that would provide us and we knew that yes, it wasn't going to please everyone. and perhaps that meant that we got to the right compromise on both sides, not everyone was happy. they now have a different hat on. i represent competitive carriers in the trade association. in these are in the rules and they are very important. the commission laid out very clearly in this order how it is that large isps that also have alternative voice services can discriminate against competitors and the small companies that are trying to compete over the internet and offer alternative services would be put at a disadvantage without these rules. and that is the perspective that i want to provide for my old position and in my new position, and i am happy to be here and to continue this discussion with you on. >> thank you. we would like to hear more about how your current numbers today are at a disadvantage when we don't have certainty about how these three occasions networks hang together the impact is part of this. and this is by the lack of certainty in their communications futures, and that is why we are so excited to have marty and steve here in such a powerful voice on a lot of issues and the impact that lack affordable and universal communications services and the effect on aging populations who have had as much to do as anybody that don't always adapt to the service instantly and we need to have some kind of service in this landscape. so whatever you like to share. >> thank you very much. i think you colleagues for this great opportunity to talk about the potential impacts to the populations regarding this decision and the decision. this is a nonprofit organization with the number of members and we hope people have turned their goals into possibilities, real possibilities. we have the sense of community is and we talk about those that matter to families. including retirement planning, affordable utilities as well. many of you in the room are much more defined, especially since i can tell you that we see broadband as a successful connector for the 50 plus population and we understand that everyone has a fundamental need to be part of a wider community. this is particularly important for older adults would find out later in life many times that there are more potential opportunities after the age of 50 than before and starting new businesses and coming up with those and they had proceeded with and now after a life full of work they have the opportunity to engage in. the 50 plus population in the country is growing rapidly and is projected to increase by 21% by 2020. and those growing by the year 2020. all of the communities in this nation need to find ways to keep his largest buyer and 50 plus population not only engaged, but connected as well. we would like to talk about the technology infrastructure and the implications and impacts for this population. and we have an opportunity to study local institutions and intergenerational access to enter public schools and access to public services offered by federal and state and local governments offered with life enhancing benefits that are online now. those adults who have no access or view have limited access to lease valued broadband and the internet to get to those benefits. again, i mentioned access to small business opportunities as very important. talking quickly sweet moved questions and answers as to how we can see this technological change happening. we firmly believe that as the technology involved, consumer protection should not become obsolete. there is no stopping point. there is no tipping point. they must move as the technology evolves for the protection of the nation and in the public interest as well. we know that the classification issue is at the core where the heart of a lot of the distress right now regarding a hearing next week and other telecommunications issues and we try to help our members understand the difference regarding classifications and the sec has so much more authority under that classification as opposed to the information service. so network neutrality and aarp supports an open internet. we support the consumer's right to access and information openly without discrimination of contents or service. and we believe that policymakers are sure to have the right to access to use this and offered any lawful especially to the operator's broadband network as long as that device is not damaged board degraded that subscribers use to access the network. aarp is very supportive of the role of the sec of being a rapidly changing technology and its infrastructure. we believe that they have a road that must be maintained and protected. it is no longer at the fledgling technology of the 80s and 90s needing the nurturing of a light or restrained touch of regulations and instead it is what it is for a full-grown and robust technology and industry that is very critical to our nation and the public interest of our nation and very critical to our 50 plus population this deserves a federal communications commission whose role will be to protect the universal access of not only connectivity, but the content and services that the internet will offer. >> thank you so much. it is not just those who cannot afford to buy it and they can edit it if they want to. and i thank you,, ma'am. first of all, they do so much for having me on the panel today. it is an extreme honor to be on this panel with so many folks. i was humbled to be here. so i am here with the center for media justice and i am hoping to represent the grassroots network, which is a national network that they coordinate across the country. we know that it's vital to the health and well-being of the communities that are represented, which are very much rural communities, it is vital towards their health and well-being. it is important in protecting the public interest. especially knowing that these can be priced out or relegated towards the internet that impacts the ability to participate in the global and 21st century economy. last we see the open internet as being vital that democratizes our communications and provided us an effective platform where we can voice our opposition. i will go into those a little bit more. this case could be about controlling ownership of this vital infrastructure and these are pre-existing tensions and poor and working-class communities and one of our network members is a young people's project which is in mississippi river on this program for children in high school because they know how critical these skills are to a quality education. they are engaged in to connecting this education just because it is so vital around jobs. this has been the engine behind economic development. and we're taking a look at this in the mississippi delta and we look at how many were in each of the zip codes. those that have the service providers that were about 378 businesses, and supposed to have zero, there were about 70. it is no surprise that a lot one of those went over with rural communities and poor communities and communities of color. we have learned from the struggles is that when the lack agencies so one process inevitably conflicts with the public interest. it is a principle that protects the public. it is network neutrality and network pcs. he came out with a tiered data plan for little but we can get an additional website. you can start seeing this with metro pcs, it's a company that is now t-mobile. but they are now were specifically marketing towards people of color the communities of color for the working-class communities. we are denied one more platform. this is now more than ever in regards to how syria has been. we must understand that it is vitally important that we hear these stories of those anti-muslim racism it is the same kind of company that has provided this massive amount of data to the nsa. it is something that has come to light in the has been the online communities and they have fought back. it's a vital platform and we see these pieces is important. >> thank you, stephen. anything about this scenario that we were describing earlier. and it would affect this and i can start off and we are trying to broaden the scope of the things supported to include broadband service. including the lifeline program which provides a discount and we are supporting standalone broadband. so we have the ability to include broadband and extend those regulations and this includes regulatory authority over traditional telephone. we have to dig in a little bit to some of these related issues. >> it is divided markets, we are able to charge whatever you want for whatever kind of services that you want to have, it becomes another private limousine service we have things like the postal system and the federal highway system in america and we have indications networks and the phone and that huge competitive advantage for the country is whittled away. because we have a few people new businesses will be able to align a common interface and we won't have kernel access to health care for american education but we won't get that we get what we've got. we have the status quo. >> i would like to emphasize that there are pockets of populations in this country that have no access. a very limited access to even have phone service is already struggling to provide this to communities, this no providers to probably what i would like to say ways that populations that want to continue generation after generation. these places may never get service. those places would limit this and we would have a very difficult time to attract these profits in the profit driven providers succumb to the communities. they really don't have a we see in washington dc and other urban areas in this country. >> we had a commission, it is about a reform that occurred about a year and a half ago and put together a pilot program with broadband internet access service for low income conservatives. including lying upon the access of internet do that. so that they can turn this program into not just a great subsidy program but a broadband subsidy program. as you indicated, the commission already included the subsidy for purposes of packages so that consumers find the voice and the broadband package that can be subsidized. but it's still in obscene amount of money. and it's not apparent that there are companies are offering that service to low-income subscribers. so congress still has authority that it can delegate if they somehow limit the authority that the fcc has been delegated and we have to go back to congress in order to ensure that low-income consumers can be served and get access to broadband internet access and subsidies. it is going to take a wild for that to happen. and that is a concern. to uphold this statutory and the 760 authority that has the service of voice and a 230 provision that was relied upon. and so i would even go to stresses beyond and they need to uphold this at this time. and they have to go back and redo this. to read redo the amount of time that that would take the political pressure that was fell from the public and the company. this is not a great use of government resources. it has been asked and answered on the court should uphold it and we should move on. because there are many other things of the community needs to work on, including finishing up that pilot project in making sure that we have access to affordable broadband internet access service. >> part of what i think about this is an interesting part of the generation. i'm old enough to have gone to school at times when i does not necessarily need access to the internet. i was the first person on my block to get a computer and have a dial-up connection. i was like the go to person for every query. nowadays when i go back, my cousin lives with my mom now. she has the cable broadband connection at home. my cousin is in high school and regularly utilizes her computer to finish her homework. so for me, the doomsday scenario is more about what the impact will be for people. and this has been utilized for so many critical things. every time they try to do something, it seems like juries don't like it and they respond by saying, well, the fcc doesn't have the authority to do that so thank you. and they didn't like it, they didn't want to be regulated and they have no authority. in some ways these arguments come up time and time again. anytime they try to do something. it's a very important question. >> without questioning this true statement that this will tie the commission of, going back to that point a little bit. people will say sometimes that if they do the right thing, they will be sued. they get pseudo-matter what they can do. a lot of our advice at the time was part of this and at least get sued for the right thing, do the strong thing in the right thing and going with your strongest theory and obviously it be sec chose to redo the order based on some kind of narrow fight would be very important. again, putting that mentality out there and you could talk about how we navigate the current system that we have or they can even interconnect. especially based on the technology they are using and we will have this for the economy and society and these include the games of the incumbents play to make difficult as possible for their competitors. >> but that is referring to is that congress provides for provisions in title to and specifically the local phone market for competition they are now arguing that this is internet and therefore the commission should not regulated the family that regulated the traditional service. and they do not want to always interconnect with competitive carriers. and they want a commission to be treated as though will be all over the top and this will take care of the situation. in that position is that it's not part of this arrangement. it is a waste product that is a managed service over the carriers network and they all advertise the internet protocol services. and we continue to have that. and so there is a lot of spillover for arguments that you you have seen before to see again proceeding after proceeding. the commission's lack of determination about how to classify services and treat services. and that has tied us up and not and occasionally we find out that we have an inner connective voice that have not recovered such as the recent case on planning. and as it turns out, if you are a consumer vendor products get switched over to a voip service without your permission, you have a complaint and they are going to dismiss it because they haven't said that those rules apply to the interconnected voip service, even though in other consumer protection services have this as well. so yes, this is -- it makes it difficult for our members and we are concerned about exactly what steps the commission will take and what authority will have part of the competitive playing field. he will have alternatives and if they don't like it, they can go to someone else. this is what we want to see what the provisions that are continuing. >> so you miss in your earlier statement the widespread political and social support back in the days of the original drafting of the internet order. given this regulatory arbitrage that was highlighted in your story exemplifies and the fact that we have these technologies and we are bringing it into systems delivered over the internet. and so where are we now when it comes to this social support, and how we missed the moment? i think there is a lot of confusion. >> you know, i don't want to put you on the spot, but there is confusion what you just said. because sarah, the numbers show not much of the voice services are actually over the internet right now. the use of the internet protocol is a transmission technology. it doesn't mean that it goes over the internet. so therefore it is going over the internet and i have something to tell you all, that is just not true. that is a misconception of my association is spending a lot of time trying to correct. and so, you know, as it turns out, there are some folks that are choosing to have their voice products over the internet and we want to encourage that and we think it's very important. but it is also true that the tuc managed voice products from consumers and almost all business consumers are choosing this as well. that is because for business consumers, they need to absolutely make sure that they have good quality of service. the internet is a best effort network. it doesn't offer the same kind of guarantees that the telephone network has traditionally offered and it's so important for so many consumers. it is important to me with two young kids that don't rely solely on my mobile service i still need a voice part because i actually want to be sure that i can stay in contact with my friends and family and loved ones. conductor but there's an emergency in my house. and that manage product that i get is a managed voip product that does not travel over the internet. in fact you can go on the website and they will tell you that. so that is -- i just really wanted to be clear. that we folks understand. and the commission -- a lack of certainty and definition from the commission's perspective, and it hasn't provided what this is, it continues to be a problem. sometimes it's not even a problem that they are talking about. and you think about those that say we can't handle this complaint. so where is the consumer supposed to go? how is the consumer ms? it is important that the commission, that they address issues head on. and the politics are hard. i have been there before. there have also been in a situation where i am begging determined to make an exception and it is so important for the commission to view its job and protect consumers and especially in light of the fact that there are about 50% of the states that have deregulated and this is the last agency to protect the consumers. >> i just want to think angie for the clarification. also to highlight the necessities and the dire situation that we have with aarp and other consumer advocacy groups. especially those who don't have and they may have the best lobbyists that the carrier can provide. but they don't have the best information. and they get a lot of conflict in information as well as to where their authorities began and where it ends. and where the sec is able to step in and what the role will be in terms of being a stopgap. so i just want to speak up for the consumer groups that are dealing with these mixed messages about the role and that the state level they are saying, don't worry, they are doing everything that we can to make sure that the sec will not be there. >> the sea, and we have real people that are confused. and i think it goes back to something that mark talked about earlier and maybe we can finish with some final thoughts before we start taking questions. one thing is that we have as many experts here in the audience. so i'm curious to talk about this confusion. it is just simple disbelief that suddenly consumer protections don't apply. the play, we mean, i can't do this in e-mail as an e-mail or a website and why would that be different is because the technology has improved or changed. why would i not have the same types of rights economically speaking. and why can't i go and find a system that we are talking about. and i think that is where a lot of the confusion comes from for people. >> it almost makes you smile. these are just general transport networks and you're supposed to be able to do whatever it is that you need to do. it should be something where we are always number one. yet steadily at the state and local level and the federal level, all of that structure is being removed and this case is absolutely central an integral to that very well thought out problem. it's enough of a shell game that is provided by the same guy. i think that we are defining this bubbly, and yet it should not be that difficult. without clear authority so this is a very important role for the state to play and we have to get them into that position. we have this opportunity to move this around, and i am hopeful that whatever happens will result in us seeing important policy issues for our country. >> yes, and we do have the state commissioner and we need more of them with the organization that represents us. the president put together a task force and they just released their paper on the cooperative settlement and what needed to happen with new networks and i encourage you to go to their networks and go to the website and look at this paper and we need to have more discussion about how we have this at the state commissioner office and the sec are working together to ensure there is a competitive playing field and that we all have options, whether residential or business and we all know that this is one of the best ways to protect consumers and also there needs to be protections in place. that absolutely ensure the kinds of guaranteed service that they have always had and that they rely on and that they don't have to understand the legal distinctions when they're using the internet versus wireless. >> what we are trying to do with the network is bringing our grassroots voice to a lot of these places. we want to show what the impact is for everyday lives. so for folks out there on the internet, feel free to hit us up. because that is where it is that. >> with that, i think we can open it up for questions. speaking of this, we have some folks monitoring this and we will try to get one or two questions. >> thank you very much. it seems to me that the panel has done a great job of presenting some things here and there is an elephant in the room that is being overlooked. and the reality is they think that it would be helpful for your listening but in the event that the fcc goes down on 706, which i think they should especially addressing all of these advanced networks. you could go back and address these things and i feel like everyone is tiptoeing the around the fact that the sec got into this by basically defining what we have pointed out, which is something over ip and then they sort of scrambled around the edges looking for provisions of law saying that he didn't give it all away, which is the important things. [laughter] so maybe you could talk about how these titles might apply in the event that the sec went back and revisited these definitions. >> absolutely. and i did not intend to tiptoe around it. it is an information service in the first adapter cable modem service, then they did that for dsl service. so that is one option that the commission can go back to. we are talking about a competitive market. so we can offer an open internet service. the commission would be left to do it. but there is a series of this that that lasted in the prior administration. and i think that one of the reasons is that it's just too hard to hear such an outcry that it shouldn't do that at that it shouldn't be this or that and see what the court says. >> i think it is very important to people understand that this is not the end of the road. since the end of this road of that regulatory twilight that i have talked about earlier where they have tried to say that we have broadband, but only in convoluted type of ways. and maybe that holds up in the it's just not good enough with all of the responsibilities that we have in all of the rules that they have to play and we don't let it disappear just because the technology has changed. >> i think our members would have real concerns about the amount of time that would take for the commission to make this decision and what the end result could be in one of the things that i would hear constantly one is we need certainty and we need certainty now to just make a decision and this puts us all into more uncertainty and there are other proceedings that are going on at my members care about like special access reform and reforming the last mile of policies. this is not a first amendment right that horizon has. and it should shut down so what they have already done and how that might impact the cost reform and locally this was before more specific positions. and we need to be having a different discussion and that was one of the primary underlying factors and i was thrilled that the commission on was upheld for purposes of the jurisdiction and so i really hope that this will be something that we can look at and we are going to look at all the other provisions and the redefinition and that holds the sec so that we can get beyond those conversations and talk about other things. >> please go had. >> thank you. it was want to go back and we want to improve everything. and we are in the basic principles and concepts with the rules and we want to look for equal opportunities and help with everything, all the commodities are good. so the internet and everything is such a concept. so this is very important. and today we have had everything. they have this and this is not your land at all and so we have this type of thing that we don't deserve. we have a problem and the reason that we have this is that we know that it is just that you have a bigger issue than that. because they don't allow you to do that. and it's just not working at times. so all of these issues, if we don't resolve it, we really have a big problem. and this is not just based on justice. and so we have a big issue. it took a look at adoption rates in urban communities versus rural. and whatever mechanisms need to be taken in place for it to be utilizing technology. and obviously they had regulatory rules and developing that in that sort of thing as well. >> and why is that just a substitute for this antitrust. >> and we are talking about this policy as well competition is a great way and we should have this in our toolbox and we haven't had it in enough resulting in lower prices. >> it looks backward inherently not only protects competitors. it protects the competitors. here we have a marketplace where they have divided up market funds all over the place. and they can't say we have to serve the regulatory policy. >> we have an interesting consumer protection and when it comes to making these regulatory rules, only the expert administrative agencies can do that. >> i mean, you can offer anything that you want to call this part of the basic communications service, let it not something that is part of this. >> i wanted to get back to this element. and i'm a little bit out of touch. but a couple of years ago they lost this and i'm wondering what some of the same issues were and if this has been repealed or distinguished and how serious is this issue? >> well, i would say that some people say that this is let's do it again. and we have established and that is the approach. so at least you have your basic structure clearer. and then we have the problem that is having enough representatives in congress. and we won't give you any more campaign contributions. >> thank you so much. >> there are so many provisions that were not in the original compact case. >> are there no questions? >> let's keep talking about this. doesn't the fcc have the authority to make the reclassification and go from title i title ii? and hopefully this is the ability to do that right now. >> they do, and they have to have a reason for doing so. >> it's not just the merits, but it's part of the sec that has the discretion to do this and they said that the fcc got it wrong but even though there is information riding on top of it. the people that want to talk about the axis of this, to confirm this on the merit of this classification and i understand how that goes. >> yes, we have time for another question. the accounts would add. >> when we talk about this, the real problem is we don't want to leave the sec unclassified and it's not reluctant to tackle that issue. and there is no fundamental technical difference. and people say that the congress will cut the funding. >> let's be optimistic. so let's say something very clear. whatever that is, let's make it clear and that will give everyone a roadmap about what principles do we need to deal with. >> i think we have time. >> i'm wondering what kind of communications are part of these and have happily part of actions. it is what is neutrality and what the public sees that. i wrote a book about this which put this in context and explains how this takes place. that has been one of the problems and we see a lot of acronyms that people get confused. >> we will have more content and we save the internet as well. we will have that conversation as well. .. >> legislators and everyday citizens can hear them say there are mixed messages out there and they exist for a purpose, the sec does than they are not the stopgap that many are tallying up policy makers the commissioners need to be more vocal to more diverse audiences to let them know what their role is and why they were created in the first place and the statutes they operate under. >> i will offer up in terms of the national network we host of the conversations were reluctant these issues and deconstructs them and connect to the broader social justice issues people care about day-to-day we have interesting tools to break down the issue one thing that comes to mind in particular was an organization in new york produced a video that it is serious business that explains how the internet functions. who on network neutrality also the media literacy project had dialed in tool kit how mobile functions being an issue in relation to neutrality they don't distill exist for the wireless users that neutrality was a big hot-button issue of our network produced a the wrap it was a song called regulate specifically looking at how to explain what this whole proceeding was about and you should look that up. >> and ac that they are hitting the firm's stock so we will end it there. we will see you are bound if anyone has additional questions. [applause] [inaudible conversations] the. >> annapolis is the southern town with the slavery up intel emancipation but i did not realize how bad jim-crow movement was after the war of the early 1900's. that was a shock annapolis was one of the two cases decided by the supreme court of the united states in 1915 of the grandfather clause. you get to the oklahoma case that had restrictions on voting with that as well was a law passed and 19 '08 changing the charter of the city of annapolis to restrict voting by african-americans. they are free and had been voting not the state elections they tended to vote republican and so those democrats in power wanted to restrict them. you could not vote in annapolis under the law unless you had $500 worth of assessed property in the city naturalized or a part of the naturalize citizen or a descendant or unless you are -- your grandfather could have the january 1st , 1868 to. that is tied to the constitution of merrill lynch which allowed vote in the boating only to white males. if your grandfather was not a white male and could not go you could not vote no matter the 15th amendment in 1870 in annapolis if it was not 1868 you could not'' 1908. as american history tv looks at the literary life of annapolis throughout the weekend and saturday at noon eastern. its >> stage is the new american foundations for having us i am honored to be moderator because up until this late date in my career nobody has thought -- sought may moderate enough in my views. [laughter] this is the first time och aye have been able to moderate a panel is great to talk about betty friedan with the anniversary and obviously it is a book that has put the spark and do the culture and this that very rare book that has the argument actually changed people's lives and the culture. coming under criticism more recently for not talking about working-class women who had no choice but to work all along and not talking about other people who may have already could have found themselves outside of conventional life thank. today but i want to talk about is the ongoing power of the classic. i taught this to my undergrads at nyu a couple of them are here in the audience to do not ever hesitate to tell me of something is boring or representative irrelevant or dated or not worthy of their intentions. so it was amazing to me the class came to life than the book spoke to them in interesting ways so to talk about the new feminine mystique and the old seven in mystique geffen still oppresses us. it is very complicated because we live in a row that is so transformed by both books and the movement that followed for most of us in the room before and after it came now it is hard to imagine those days at all and i think of the rapidity of change in my own family when my mother was a child for father said only ugly women become lawyers that is the world she grew up in an aicher up where my mother removed the barbie powless that my grandfather gave me and told me it was lost. [laughter] 1970's new york city and then my daughter we were watching the obama and hillary presidential election. she was five and she said she was a big goal of a supporter and i said would it be cool if there was a woman president and she looked at me disdainfully and said of course, there has been a woman president how crazy we have come from only agree with an earlier solloway to of course, there has been a president but books that cut across they have names like the richer sex or the end of men or aha which then are the majority in the workplace and mostly have a college education or have a and managerial position and it is hard to look back at that time. we don't know coming weekend us see it or feel it's exactly. i interviewed she was told she had not one single woman professor even though i know that life was like that it is still astonishing. my first question i was going to ask those that were alive. [laughter] can you describe just for one moment your experience when you first read the book is an over exaggeration to say it changed people's lives? >> no question. of course, it changed people's lives and it is still changing people's lives and it was passed down and the greatest social revolution from the us suffer just. this movement will take 100 years we're only halfway through. [laughter] we have to count on the younger ones to really push it along. i still remember reading the feminist mystique to my mother's after that was one of the few books that she read but it was not possible for her to move on it because although she was a gifted singer and quite attractive and natural businesswoman but living in the suburban housewife role with two children my father refused to let her work because that would have suggested that he could not support his family as many men felt that the time. she was frustrated comic either volume or vodka. [laughter] that is what kept the women going on intel she was in her 50s and divorced she went to aa met another man and became a business woman but she lost half of her life i thought i would be totally different from her. i loved her into was compassionate but i saw that was not the right route but what happened to me? i married a man whom i loved that he was starting medical school so i thought this is cool because i have to support us i have an excuse to have a career that was my strategy and i was rejected by the of their wives of medical students because i was such an oddball but wanted a career. then we got divorced having put it has been through before there is any sort of recompense i was a single mom. that changed my trajectory that i became a feminist but at that time i started the herald tribune in the women's department that was the only place you can get a job i had to sneak down the back stairs to be darr to go across the room where women were not allowed to get into the office of the sunday magazine editor to pitch the story of their by a i developed a mentor that allowed me to move ahead. gloria steinem who was a little older and more politically sophisticated had to take a job as a bunny to get a story and that hung on her forever but only klay where it ariel levy was an editor had a mother as a journalist so he had no attitude about women he thought they are talented. and we would pay them all little less. not own the my career by gave cory and the first column that lasted for many years then when she wanted to start of course, she could not raise money, who would give money to a woman who wanted to publish a magazine about strident women? they said it is great let's put it inside the covers of a new york so there is the magazine with the cover on the outside and as well it sold out korea called in a panic and could not find it and said there is no magazine in he said it sold out. that was a great exhibition of the collaboration between a male mentor that i think we lost sight of think of only women can help women but actually why not seek out a sponsor who was already at the top? >> you remember where you were when you read "the feminine mystique"? >> no i don't remember where was. i am not even sure if i know how it affected me but i do know how everything came before. i can only say that there were so few possibilities for women that we were expected to be married by 21 or 22 expected to raise children not expected to do anything or make many not protected against what would happen if we were divorced or someone died we had no resources to the vulnerability led us to behave towards men as if they word demigods. i think when "the feminine mystique" en came out i think betty friedan herself put into words what was in so many people's hearts hearts, they could not have said and it was like the electric shock that i didn't think anything perhaps since martin luther king but that actually you felt together we would change the world we went on a feminist march to washington and went on a peace march together and suddenly we had a voice we were different somebody had to pay attention to us. and it was overwhelming. which is why baja -- may be about barbie and a hair dresser. [laughter] but i remember going to the museum with all the plates dedicated to the women who have made contributions l i am not judging this as a work of art, this is not my field but i can tell you i was there with katy and her younger sister and i felt as if the world was turning. we were going to do this now i may have thought it was simpler than it turned out to be and may not have anticipated to three children with a corporate lawyer job but the celebration of it, i just want to say one more thing that i will stop. i took a rating class the year was 1956. the professor was horace gregory. it was an all girls' school at the time and we read our papers and some girl had gone to rigo to get a divorce. you have to live there six weeks and she came back with a detailed report on everything that happened during her six weeks. the world she was describing, the riveted. she gets to the end until they turned to her and say what makes you think anybody would be interested in your divorce? there was silence because i could not have spent the only one. [laughter] there is also the possibility with been key at because what would my subject be? i was not a war i cannot right like that. the the sense that we were pushed aside in the s i must have read it 110 times but the voice says that everybody has now that i really believe is liberated into our world is so many that i am so grateful that i live to see this happenism. [applause] >> given how radically this transformation occurred if you think in terms of the history of social change and how rapidly, how unbelievably fast the world transform we went from the feminine idea of a woman working is so subversive a.m. transgressive to where we are now not in the workplace to said they're all kinds of problems to be addressed but certainly in terms of opportunity they had the opportunity that could not be imagined when betty friedan set down to write this book. so what if we have really cast aside "the feminine mystique" she was writing about because i have not given up this romantic vision have we given up the idea of family all of the feed to see what conventional life is supposed to be like? zero motherhood is? >> no. i don't think we have walked away from that but what interests me is that it is so exciting to hear that we thought we could do this because you did. when you started to talk here are all the things exchanged of course, there has been a woman president of what is remarkable is the most striking thing to be looking at the book is we don't appreciate all the change was the notion we had when she wrote the books that we spent the first half of fighting for rights in the second half now -- not appreciating them she is writing in 1963 and this is our reaction now of course. but i think we have one these rights so now you can do everything. this is not the fault the feminism but the opportunity it has in it -- unable but the fact is you cannot do every single thing. it cannot be done at the same time. it is tough feminist fallacy. i don't think we have given up the a.d. at all -- and the idea at all but to say we could do it all at once. >> i am glad we have not given up the fantasy to have a family. it is a great thing in the vast majority do want to but also of educated women something of 40 percent of educated aspirational women choose to have children not to have children by the age of 40. that is pretty dramatic. but we had attachment parenting come up in the last decade where women were encouraged to be very close for the first five years and interestingly studies done about women who once they were educated to the ada if you really drop out or go off ramp in your job in your thirties to have children and be home with then you will not get back on where you left off and you will pay in all kinds of ways. women are still too easy to do that in the mid geordie are still choosing the non linear path to take time now. but you still stay connected subway and become an object in your to work from home. >> but not everybody has that skill set. >> that is true. >> we may have forgotten after "the feminine mystique" was published, we had a war. i would not even call with the feminist movement that between women who made different choices. i have to say we better not glorify this. there was real nasty is going on between the women who had jobs with careers who felt themselves infinitely better or threatened by the women who were baking cookies. those women were livid and humiliated by the women that were climbing up the professional ladder. it was extremely unpleasant but cookie baking never lost its punch i could have stayed home and people were appalled. i just want to read a quote from "the feminine mystique" that shows that concept she wrote to buy as women moved into the workplace another hazard a woman faces on her way out of the housewife trapped is from other housewives. >> betty friedan over andover said she was fourth choice not that you must get the top level job but you need to be free to choose the life you want even though when i looked at "the feminine mystique" again i saw she was not very kind it to the house why staying home. i think politically she sought quickly you cannot dismiss many hundreds of thousands of people life choices you have to respect them and make it possible for them to feel pride in themselves or they will come kill you. [laughter] >> you don't want to root denigrate i don't think it is an end feminisms interest to denigrate how difficult child care is. that is work. >> i am very encouraged of the feminist spirit among the public feels. -- millennial some. one woman i know quite well that is in all a co-president she started out at 22 joining the only black coat investment firm in the country, a ariel levy id was identified right away from the president as being at a great talent and promise and at 24 he took her to meet with the biggest ceos in the country and said i am proving you to be president, ariel levy and she elected to be his grasshopper and she jumped everything from writing thank-you notes to the parents of his children's sleepovers then at 28 he made her president. she was completely career oriented write-up until her mid 30s and said it might be nice to be a banner in went out with someone fairly prominent, the film maker of "star wars" if they are now is engaged in she is 43 and probably will never have children because she did not have time but when she says about one of women come to her if they talk about the work life balance she knows they will never move up to a senior position in her firm or any other because they have to be unidirectional for release the first 10 years of their career there is not a lot of women who find that appealing to also be s ceo to give 110% of your time more power to them i hope we get more but it is a narrow portion of the female population that binds that a feeling? >> even if we only have half of a revolution if we had actually change the world then we would have the world that could make this possible. >> but we are not satisfied with half a and that will not work but it is not because not permanent but something happening now because we have not changed the whole society but just what women want now we have to change what men want and what society is willing to do for a family. we have to make the world completely different for ourselves. >> that is such a different point is something that makes me so sad is we were really close something in that walter mondale polished they would have universal preschool a and day care like they do in scandinavian countries in nixon said we don't want to put that past moral authority behind a nontraditional family structure that meant a messy life a end unconventional and that would have changed so much. >> that would be nice it would have to come from hassling private companies the government cannot say with the entitlements we cannot go with the march on washington. >> i think there is the death of pressure if young women coalesce then i think that can happen there is a lot of precedent in companies like google's that just expanded to 12 weeks' paid maternity leave because they had too many women leaving. that is what happens. [laughter] then they improved retention rate ended is paying off for them. >> her name is in in the air already but food she has been attracting that way if we talk about these problems there are some ceos she has received an astonishing amount of vitriolic and i have written about this on one level we say we really want more women ceos but those hate filled with many ceos that we do have a we cannot stand that would million things we need to learn about why a and that cheryl is trying to do some of the things that we think about as the next page for the revolution. and trying to talk to women about how to succeed in a high level business structure a.m. to two a great deal of danger from the women critics and feminist in case thinking liberal so what do you make of that and the possibility to think through this problem? >> it is so inconceivable to me to work at a job like that. i cannot relate to key in anyone relate to having that kind of corporate job? i have no idea. [laughter] >> i equate with my one that built the nursery next to her office. [laughter] since the those patriots the book where she talks about leaving in the face of now leave the workplace before they leave the workplace she has a lot of practical of vice it is not so wonky betty friedan tone but really it is practical she goes on a 530 to have dinner with her kids but people attacked her because she is obviously very rich id think it is a weird deign to attack the ceo i think what is valid is a white privilege to well-educated delete situation. that is true and that is a valid critique if you are the ceo you have the power to say i am leaving a 530 on the other hand, they are e. lee and have power so if they put the noose than that is not so bad. >> but it is not reproducible and it does make many women who are struggling terribly to figure out the balance to go through that terrible baby comfort women feel as six months with their unpaid maternity leave is over and they have to go back to work because they have too and they don't want to leave their child. that is a reality for most women who have children and a good job they don't get to go home at 530 to have supper with their kids. forget it. it is natural to say you are just not working hard enough. figure it out. >> i don't think it is a fair representation at all i have to say also costs of lot of people are saying those that criticize the book have not read the book. >> but i do not the she is saying we're not working hard enough i do think that is the unfair distillation of what she is saying. >> there was a writer i don't know if you remember but she said in this culture is someone raises a head out and takes a breath and says something if someone on the shore will throw a rock at that head. [laughter] that is completely true. there is that bill did the hostility of women to women that we have not begun to deal with and any woman who says it's anything slightly different from what the dog must says you should say will be viciously attacked it is not a question of right side and one wrong side but the urge to attacked is very strong. i don't know what to do about or how to cut it down and i also don't want that we all love each other in throat our arms around each other that is not doing anything but how this social movement anything that moves will get passed. >> a think one of the things that have been did not representing the position is how we view her there were two prominent journalists who irresponsibly use a quotation of hers one was maureen dowd and said i always find myself running the us social movement but they stopped it darr the actual bomb'' that was boring was mostly like working for a nonprofit. by taking the first part it makes it sound like she has a ground vision and aspiration so of course, people pounce on her house someone to do something so borderline because it is really wrong to miss'' somebody like that but if she did say that the original'' should we all take out our guns and shoot her? i steel for them to have the grand vision and idea automatically causes a lot of anxiety and hostility. >> he and pointing out with our all of love, a betty friedan lead be the worst and lesbians were a lavender and then this again is a vivid in she warned against the man hates being then. she was not somebody who said if you're a feminist you are fried with me. [laughter] >> you are distorting it just a little bit. [laughter] there was a group within the feminist movement that approved of the family side of the feminist movement so that betty friedan on a book to write a remember which one was greeted at various libraries but natalie tickets but bomb threats and they did not come from the bearded pakistan a terrorist but a women's group that was very, very thing gree. so we have to remember i don't believe, i don't know who started that fight. it is true it was not a woman's woman if there was a room full of ted women there was one man in the quarter than betty but go to the quarter to talk to the man. that was part of her charm. [laughter] but i that is what i really think for a while and unfortunately died down but for those of us that were there not the lesbians of the family women but what you doing to our movement? >> there was another part that were the man haters there really were favor given the name the ball busters frustrated and ball busting move manley told movement got a bad rap in and it was very threatening. i did not become a feminist intel the '20s and neither did gloria because i did not want to be a part of that and i was scared the man i love would think that i was. i went on the marches and did the things but i have a real struggle i'd want to give up so loving compassionate nurturing, as sexy, the man loving side of resolve to be a part of this movement and that was a real struggle for many of us. >> had been "the feminine mystique" and she said in an interview that some people read her as saying joining the revolution all you have to lose is it your man and she said know all you have to lose it is your vacuum. [laughter] wonderful marketing. i want to think more how we can identify our own problems that have no name better just by definition hard to recognize one of my students said been that speaks to that having no question but there is a conflict in which they talk about the new style of parenting in the ways in which we parent that take the ominous amount of energy for filling intellectual pursuits so what do you think of "the feminine mystique"? >> it is so funny coming from a french woman then you have then a giant best seller that is inherently french but anyway i don't think this is the most important problem but i do think it is a misconception to some extent the codification of the culture means we are sexually liberated a do think that is a myth that the most important thing they do think it is a myth. i did a whole book about this wiry flashing for "girls gone wild" when you look at that sexual desire why is it your job to look as skanky as possible? i think there confusion is a difference between and it is confusing between filling the new role as the angel and the house a and to be totally and sexually liberated it is another issue over confusing when you talk about sex and porn was pretty fractious. . . wall". the author discussed president kennedy's war diplomacy at the woodrow wilson center in washington d.c.. this is an hour and a half. >> welcome everybody to the woodrow wilson center for the launch of the "kennedy and the berlin wall." a hell of a lot better than a war by william smyser. it is certainly one of the most readable books on the history of the berlin wall and the major confrontation between khrushchev and the united states and the soviet union in the late 50's and the early 60's and i'm sure we will have 90 highly interesting minutes of talk and discussion together. my name is bernd schaefer and i'm a senior scholar and a former fellow at the historical institute. i'm very pleased to have an outstanding panel here today. we will start with mr. smyser who will talk about his book, the major points of his book for 30 minutes followed by comments. i will introduce our commentator at that time and mr. smyser will have the chance to respond briefly to the comments and then we will open it up to the audience and hope we have a lively question and answer session afterwards. so mr. smyser is currently the henry alford kissinger scholar in the sean w. lucre center and is teaching at the bmw for german studies at georgetown university. he has an outstanding career in public service and you can find it in his book a lot of details about his career. during the berlin crisis he was in berlin. he got a lot of insights which you will be introduced to in this book. he also served later in the white house with henry kissinger and the national security council. he was a specialist on vietnam and other parts of the world. he has an outstanding career and biography. today he will talk about his book which has the close connection to the wilson center because he wrote major parts of this book when he was a public policy scholar at the wilson center so in some ways it's a wilson center book and we are very proud of the final product. it's a very engrossing reading i can tell all of you. i look forward to have -- having him talk about his book for 30 minutes and i will introduce the two commentators. >> thank you very much mr. shafer. on january 19, 1961 it was a snowy day in washington. president-elect john f. kennedy and some members of his cabinet went to the white house to meet with outgoing president dwight eisenhower. eisenhower was to brief them on foreign affairs as with secretary of state christian -- they did that and eisenhower said privately to kennedy berlin is a place that worries me. i think we are going to have a crisis there. we have managed to postpone it but it's going to come up probably pretty quickly. christian hood or the secretary of state briefed him on how khrushchev in 1958 issued an ultimatum that we would all agree to sign the peace treaty for germany within six months. if they did not do that he would sign a private treaty just with the east german party boss in the tater and then after that the allies would have to get their rights from -- at that point they would no longer be able to fly in the quarters the way they have been flying. they would no longer be able to go back and forth to berlin on a special privilege. they would no longer be able to take their special trains. khrushchev had a menace and eisenhower warned kennedy that there were many signs that khrushchev would in fact act on it. i will not go into details of the whole story because it's in the book and i urge you of course to read it but i will talk here about four things. the vienna senate june third and fourth 1961 between khrushchev and kennedy checkpoint charlie confrontation october 1961 and the connection between the cuban missile crisis and berlin in october 1962. when kennedy became president january 20 the day after he met with eisenhower he stepped his white house with the people who everybody called the best and the brightest to george bundy who had in dean of faculty of harvard university and the scholar of everything at harvard university and a number of other people. he also brought on board the best possible experts on the soviet union george tenant who he had known personally for quite some time chip bowl and ambassador who had served that moscow as kennan had and he also brought on board several other people whom he consulted from time to time like tommy thompson who was ambassador to moscow and assistant secretary for european affairs but also soviet hand. there was only one european hand who is in the senior levels of the white house and that -- he found it rather frustrating. kissinger believed that once you look at berlin for a lens focused on western europe on west germany that the important thing to do was to protect berlin so as to maintain the allied position in germany. but he found himself consistently frustrated even though he had some good meetings with kennedy. he could not get kennedy to agree with him and he finally left at the end of 1961. he resigned and the left with a memo to schlesinger in which he said quote i am in the position of a man sitting next to a driver who is heading for a precipice and the driver is asking him to make sure that the tires are properly inflated and that the oil pressure is adequate. that was not what kissinger wanted us to roll. he felt that kennedy was heading for a disaster and he wanted to make sure that he could not make a contribution. khrushchev made nice to kennedy. he was delighted that kennedy became president. he hated nixon. he was so glad that kennedy won and within a few weeks of kennedy's victory even before kennedy became president khrushchev sent the word through some american journalists and also through some soviets that he wanted to have a good relationship with kennedy and that he looked forward to it. kennedy and response had a meeting with the soviet experts and in february sent a memo -- excuse me a letter to khrushchev indicating that he hoped they would have an early meeting. khrushchev sat on the invitation he had had intelligence reports that the united states was going to attack cuba. he alerted castro and told him what to expect and then he decided to sit and wait. as you know the american invasion took place. it was the bay of pigs. actually was a group of cuban exiles whom the americans landed and as you also know castro was ready and the cubans had to surrender and the whole thing was a disaster. but what fascinated khrushchev was the kennedy let it be a disaster. he thought that kennedy would use some of those planes that were flying overhead or that he would use some of those ships cruising off the coast of cuba in order to man troops and in order to take over the islands that kennedy didn't do it. khrushchev said to his son sergei i don't understand kennedy. perhaps he blacks determination. and at that moment he changed his mind about kennedy. he decided that there was no sense talking to this man on an even basis because this man was weak. he called him a boy in short pants. khrushchev respected agent did not respect people who were too young and certainly did not respect people who did not at the way he would have acted. he was a fighter. if his friends were losing he would do everything he could to make them win. kennedy did not do that and khrushchev decided that he was facing a weak american president. he was reinforced in his opinion by len shook off the soviet ambassador for washington and said -- excuse me who wrote to khrushchev that quote when there is a real crisis kennedy will drop a load in his pants. that is not a nice thing to say about the head of state to whom you are credited but that is what he believed and that was cruised -- what khrushchev was beginning to believe. khrushchev had a chance to test this theory in june 1961 when he and kennedy met in vietnam. but the kennedy preparation for the summit was a disaster. in fact as an officer i can tell you that i was shocked by some of the things i read in the kennedy library and what people had sent to kennedy. ambassador tommy thompson who had been personally warned by khrushchev that he wanted to settle berlin and vienna and he was going to be hard on that circuit sent a cable to washington saying that khrushchev would glide over berlin. the state department said a memo to kennedy, a pre-meeting memo in which he said they were expecting a positive meeting and khrushchev would be prepared to delay on the berlin issue. only a soviet agent whom robert kennedy had befriended told the americans the truth. he told bobby that there would be a tough meeting and khrushchev was going to be hard on berlin. kennedy replied, bobby replied on this one the president is hard said. he is not going to pull out the troops. so bobby said to jack we are going to have trouble. but nobody else did. as it turned out they were right. when the summit began kennedy began with two ideas. the first idea was to divide the world and particularly to divide europe. he said to khrushchev, and this is in the record, as far as i'm concerned you can maintain your position in east berlin and you can maintain your position in eastern europe. we want to maintain our position in western europe and we want to maintain our position in west berlin. khrushchev absolutely and totally rejected that. he said you cannot prevent the people from acting as they want to ask. then kennedy based on briefings briefings and wishing tim said to khrushchev you know, will have nuclear weapons now. we have to make sure we avoid miscalculation and we avoid getting into a war as people have gotten into it war in world war i. khrushchev blew up. he jumped up and he said i did not want to hear the word miscalculation again. what you are trying to do is to tell the soviet people to sit on their hands like schoolboys. we will not do that. kennedy retreated and made a quiet promise that he would never use the word miscalculation again. but he had met the real khrushchev who is absolutely determined he was the future of communism. he was not going to sit down and let anybody talk about him. khrushchev warned at the end of the first day during which they talked mainly about laws and about arms control, that he wanted to settle berlin and he said we have only a have only half of the left and we have to talk about them. it didn't work out that way. what happened was that kennedy talked a little bit more about laos and arms control and talk a little bit more about everything and it was only when they were within an hour and a half and this was with translation so an hour and 45 minutes, not until then did they get onto the subject of berlin. by then khrushchev who is by nature impatient and impulsive was beside himself. he said i have come to settle berlin. you have got to sign a peace treaty. if you don't sign a peace treaty at will sign the peace treaty with the gdr and at that point your rights will evaporate and you must settle with the gp are. kennedy reacted firmly. he said we are not talking about love. we are talking about something that we take much more seriously. khrushchev said he was going to sign the treaty within six months and he said there might be war and if there is war the burden would be shared equally on all sides. kennedy was unhappy and so after lunch he said let's have another final meeting even though we are not scheduled to have one. he tried again to say to khrushchev looked, berlin is a subject that is difficult for us. we cannot just do what we want. we cannot pull out. khrushchev got even worse and got more impatient. he said i'm going to sign the treaty within six months. nothing will stop me. there will be war. kennedy was totally intimidated. all he could say was it will be a cold winter. a friend of mine who spoke with a journalist who had seen kennedy after the meeting and he said kennedy looked green, like a man who had all the blood drained from his face. it was a terrible moment for him. he met with scotty scotty reston for "new york times" reporter afterwards and he said i had never met a man with that. khrushchev felt just the opposite. he felt he had made his point and harry reiterated his view. he thought i god he could pressure kennedy into leaving berlin and could in fact pressured kennedy into almost everything else. he was very very tough. he briefs him and he said we are going to get that peace treaty and things are going to change. i was by then at the u.s. mission in berlin. we had american journalists come by to brief us about what was going on. not formally but they told us what happened and we were very discouraged. we realize that kennedy had not really been able to deter khrushchev. the berliners were also discouraged in most of also where the east germans. the refugee rate from east germany into west berlin picked up to over 1000 people a day and on weekends 2500 a day. they decided they could not wait any longer. they had to get out. he said finally were going to do something about berlin and he said to khrushchev there are two things i want. one thing i want immediately is to stop the refugee flow in the other thing i want is a peace treaty. khrushchev said looked, these are very important decisions. they are going to shape the future of europe. i cannot do it without first discussing it with the warsaw pact. at the beginning he called a meeting of the top people the top leaders of the world in moscow and he said, you make your proposal -- proposal. the warsaw pact leaders said looked, we agree you have to stop the refugees but you cannot have a peace treaty because the chancellor of west germany would impose an economic embargo and they cannot afford an economic embargo. mr. khrushchev is unprepared to support our economy and khrushchev said no i cannot do that. khrushchev gave group issued instructions to stop the refugee flow and he said to him not one millimeter more. then he sent marshall to berlin to keep an eye on the situation and probably particularly to control mr. rubin should as well as watching the situation. on august 13, 1961 at 2:30 a.m. i got a phonecall and somebody said to me it was the duty officer at the mission. there something going on in east berlin. would he go take a look back site got into my car which was a 190 sl convertible. the best way to look at what is going on. i drove a and i didn't get duty reimbursement i should add. i drove at potsdam. i was stopped because there were east german locals putting barbed wire across the street. i said to them you cannot stop me. you have to let me through. i'm a member of the allied forces. i have to be able to get through. they checked with an officer and the officer said yes you have to let him through. they pulled back the barbed wire and let me go into east berlin. i drove around east berlin for about 45 minutes. i have never seen so many armored cars. i also saw something i hadn't seen before. there were police all over the place and east german armies. i would see in the distance some things that look like soviet cars. of course we didn't see anything but nonetheless it was clear that this was an east east german operation and the soviets were watching. then i went to -- the principle route or at least one it was in those days to get from east to west. there i met a scene of utter desolation. there were people sitting on their suitcases and people sitting on makeshift bags. they were people weeping absolutely disgusted that they could not get out. i went up to the train tracks as close as i could get, and it was clear that all the trains that came from east berlin to west were being stopped and turned around. i went back to the u.s. mission and i said, they are closing down the refugee camp in closing down east berlin. the missions sent a report to washington and met with the french and the british missions and they drafted a protest to make the soviets -- because this was a violation of rights. in washington everybody was totally calm. in hyannis port where president kennedy was spending the weekend he got a briefing from his man general ted christian who said to him we have a report from berlin which says they are closing down the refugee camp. kennedy said a war is not very nice but it's a hell of a lot better than a war. i made this a subtext of my book because this was kennedy's attitude. he was terribly afraid that berlin would lead to a war. if khrushchev and -- could solve the refugee problem then maybe there would not be a war. the east germans have done us a favor which is not the way we saw it in berlin but this was the way we saw it in the white house and in washington. however that was not the way the american people saw it. the american people were upset. kennedy began getting little black umbrellas in the white house mail meaning that they thought that he was an appeaser like chamberlain. he began getting angry phonecalls. newspaper editorials said we cannot let this happen without a reaction so he realized he had to do something. he called in a number of people including general lucius clay who had been a military governor of germany for four years from 1945 to 1949 who had been -- and he asked him what he should do. clay said what you should do is send a brigade into berlin in order to show you take this seriously and your rightful not be trampled. kennedy decided to call a meeting about this and about other things. and at that meeting clay gave his proposal. he was totally opposed to all all the soviet hands including chip boland. kennedy had to make a decision and the decision he made was to send the brigade. it was the first time he had gone against the advice of the soviet experts. it was for him a real coming-out, a real shift in his attitude about a number of things. he also of course said lbj who made some nice speeches and the brigade got through. mona noffke the defense minister of the soviet union told khrushchev we should lock deprecating khrushchev said no. but khrushchev and his son, because this was a weekend, and he was not in his office, he watched -- not on television because he didn't have television but he watched reports on everything that's happening with that brigade. kennedy himself asked for a report every 20 minutes. both khrushchev and kennedy were worried about what would happen. they were both very relieved that the brigade came through. it was the kind of thing which was a risk for kennedy but it worked. then kennedy decided she wanted to send him to berlin as personal representative. i was appointed to be his assistant which was in adjusting job and if we have more time later i can talk about it. but what clay wanted to do was to give the berliners a sense that the west in the united states in particular would not abandon them. he ran patrols up and down the autobahn. he ran patrols to the border. he took a flight and i accompanied him to pull out the refugee -- [inaudible] when we left in the helicopter with the refugee some of the locals turned their guns on us but we were perfectly calm because we knew they had no authority to shirt it -- shoot. in fact they probably didn't have ammunition. in any case clay was doing the things that the boosted berlin morale and had an effect that clay had his opposition. in washington it was obviously the soviet hands. it was mac bundy himself who had many doubts about what clay was proposing. the military especially nato commander norse dad was very worried about it and the british including prime minister macmillan who once called clay is senile and bitter old man. pardon the redundancy but i think it says exactly what he felt about somebody who was going against the way he wanted. .. >> they sent a squad of soldiers who, with their rifles in front of them, and walked in the dark several times in order to make the point that we were going to oppose this. they kept it up, and a couple of times in the next few days did the same thing. at the end of the week, decided he would try a test, so he put a few military in civilian clothes, and had them try check point charlie. they did, the same thing happened. by thursday of the week, there was a great recognition this was something the east germans would try to keep up. clay already sent a cable to kennedy ten days earlier saying that kennedy should look out because the soviets were letting the soviets intimidate us and harass us while they were in the background. he said, i don't think we should let this happen. what i'm going try to do is bring the soviets out of hiding, and once, of course, they come out of hiding, i will pull back. it's important for them to show themselves. after the american car was turned back, he not only had to walk through the check point again, but then he sent ten tanks to an empty lot, lots of empty lots in those days, about two or three blocks from the check point. the soviet officer from the soviet mission walked around the tanks saying, you know, we have tanks too, which i think we all knew, and low and behold, a couple hours later, ten tanks appeared at the check point. by then, we knew the soviets took control of the check point. they had definitely not let the east germans handle this situation. clay wanted to bring the soviet tanks out, so he instructed the tanks, our tanks to have a white line paints across the street. when they did that, the soviet tanks rumen out of the parks lot and face the american tanks about ten feet away or something like that, with gun pointed at each other. at that point, we relax, and the american operation center knew that the soviets were not going to start anything, and we knew that we were now okay. they got what they wanted, forced the soviets out, but, of course, a press report spoke of impending war. they said here's the americans and soviets shooting each other. are they going to shoot each other? this is a very dangerous moment. several of the other white house advisers said to kennedy, look, pull back the tanks. we can't afford the risk of war over this. kennedy put his feet up on the desk in order to show that he was totally calm, and he called per lin. when clay said, hello, mr. president, the operation center fell dead silent. kennedy said to clay, what's going on? clay said, everything's fine. there's hundreds of tanks in the area. they only brought up ten. it's a sign they don't want any trouble. perfectly relaxed, the situation is under control. kennedy said, good, glad to know that. he said, i hope you don't lose your nerves, and clay says, mr. president, we're not worried about our nerves. we're worried about the nerves of those in washington. kennedy said, people here lost their nerves, but i have not. those were, perhaps the most important words that kennedy has spoken in his presidency because it showed that he at least understood how you have to deal with certain types of situations, and that he recognized that sometimes you just had to bring up the tanks if the other people were going to be that way. i always believed that berlin was the best preparation that kennedy could have had for the cuban crisis. because of that. in any case, the next morning, soviet tanks pull back, explaning to the son that october 9th in berlin, you know, the soldiers can't take that, pulled them back, and, of course, within 20 minutes, clay pulledded back. the check point confrontation was one of the most important moments in the history of berlin because it showed that the americans were ready to act when it was necessary. they didn't want a war either, but they wanted the americans to show they would not, and that was pleased. for the next few months, crisis came and crisis went. the soviets tried to make reservations in the air corridor so we couldn't fly through them, but we did. we flew through them including civilian planes. they wanted fighter aircrafts in the corridors in order to tell the soviets they were doing something which they shouldn't do. kennedy said no, but he had other things. it was a mixed relationship. sometimes kennedy support the clay. he supported him a lot more than anybody else in washington did. certainly, more than rusk and bundy did, but sometimes he did not. strangely enough, everything calmed down by april. the reservations lifted up, and everything was quiet. we know now that there was a conversation about that time. they said, we simply don't have the power to make americans do what we want them to do. clay left berlin. before he left, he sent a cable to kennedy saying i think we are in a pause, but we are not at the end of this. there will be something more. i don't know what it will be, but there will be something that will happen. we must be ready for it. what happened next, of course, was cuba. in berlin, we first knew this was going to be a crisis because the soviets began building pipelines, old pipelines from the polish border to the west german border and surroundings of the berlin. something that they did not do except in limited ways when they had maneuvers. we knew that they would fry to make a major show of force in berlin and wanted us to know it. a major show for it. at the same time, there was a cable sent to kennedy saying, you know, we really should, with the united nations, substitute united nations forces for allied forces, maybe 25% a year until at the end of four years, allies are totally out. kennedy reply, i'm not going to do that, but they went to the white house and said, you know, he's going to come in november to the united nations, going to make a speech there, and he wants to settle the problem. he was thinking that in berlin, he knew it, but we didn't know what it was, and, of course, later, we found out, it was effort to put the missiles into cuba. now, all of you know what happened. no secret about that. kennedy forced them to pull the missiles out. crus chef said to his son -- that would be an excellent book -- that he expected kennedy to protest a little more and t what he had not realized that kennedy was a different man in october 196 # 2 as he has been in june 1961. i'm just about to finish. with that, and with the end of the cuban crisis, the berlin crisis is over. they said to me, you know, this is it. nay are not going to do anything more. interestingly enough, the next day after kennedy made his speech announcing that we would insist on the missiles to be withdrawn, the soviet forces began pulling back from the west german border. we always saw a connection. in any case, in november 1962 after the cuban missile crisis, i happened to be in new york, had drinks with general clay at the club, and he said, you know, if kennedy acted more toughly in berlin, they never would have been a cuban missile crisis. he expected that kennedy would accept the missiles, and, of course, kennedy couldn't do that. the end of the story, june 26th, 1963, kennedy comes to berlin, huge crowds, and he says something that does not mean i am a jelly donut, and we can talk about that if you'd like. despite that -- thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. we will have two comments, first, mary beth stein, and both about ten minutes long. mary beth is the professor of national affairs at the george washington university, and he has received numerous fellowships and scholarships dealing with various germany and experts on terms of east germans in literature and also on the berlin law, and expert here today, and 11 years ago, we had the first panel, happy to be with you, and i look forward to your comments. thank you. whatever you want. >> it's one of the great paradoxes of history that the berlin wall was built august 13th, 1961 and torn down on november 9th, 1989 for the same reasons, to keep east germans from escaping the german democratic republic. the former event was carefully plannedded for on an early sunday morning in august with prior approval, and the war saw packed countries, the latter was literally the chaotic unraveling of a to therring regime. they had been told at the 40th anniversary of the gdr a mere three or four weeks before the collapse that the soviets would not come to the aid and stance -- assistance of the east germans in trying to deal with their problem of the mass refugees, and the grows number of demonstrators in east german cities, and the political circumstances between 1961 and 1989 could not have been more different. there had been gradual, yet visible improvements over the years not only between the superpowers, but between the two german states thanks to a number of important milestones. there was politics about which i'll talk in a moment, the agreement between the four allies of the berlin, and the basic treaty between the two german states. yet, between 196 is and 1989, one crucial aspect remained the same. the lack of support of east german population for the socialist union party. this, ultimately, is what drove the gdr government to build the wall and tear it down. there's a precise and engaging account of what's known as the second berlin crisis. the first of which was the berlin blockade and air lift. the second crisis was presip kateed by cruise ships ultimatum that west berlin be a free and mutual city. everyone understood what that met meaning the western allies should evacuate the city and soviets and gdr would move in. the crisis reached a climax with the close closing of the border, but did not end there. that's kennedy's visit to west berlin in 1963, merely two years after the building of the berlin wall. the bookends with the fall of the wall. the closing and opening of the border are the dramatic bookends. the intervening chapters recount with fascinating detail the moves and countermoves of the western and soviet allies. the wartime alliance fractured beyond repair and ease caylating cold war. equally fascinating, in the accounts are diverging interests of the british and french and american leaders with the gull that pursuing their own national interests and european policies often at the cross purposes of the u.s. government. they had no love for germany and was an appeaser to soviet demand. they encouraged kennedy to adopt a strong position against the threats, but he was underminding kennedy by trying to appear as a soul supporter and maneuvering to keep british out of the european communities. the berlin wall effectively lower the temperature on a highly charged international situation. professor's account effectively recreates the drama of the time, a drama that turns the key player knew or thought they knew and what has been discovered through arian -- archive material and additional research. before addressing political implications of the berlin wall, i want to dawn my cap as a professor of german, not to talk about the jelly roll and whether he said that. that, i think, was answered by the professor other others, but to talk about the narrative structure and perspective of the work. like most, the professor writes from the perspective of a narrator, and the historian whose cold from all available sources and written from the advantage of hindsight. however, there is an immediacy of perspective, and in the moment feelings when the author steps forward as the participant in an eyewitness to many of the very dramatic events and speaks from personal experience as he guides robert kennedy around west berlin and more intriguingly, nixon is incognita in east berlin. i enjoyed that episode, and i hope there's chance to talk about that, and i assume there would have been many more such episodes that could have been included in the book. the immediacy and drama of the time is what was referred to as the book's readability, and it's captured in chapter titles, quotes from published accounts, archived material, and personal interviews between the author and key players. the authors and relations for general clay is clear in the admiration i share, but the opinion on or perspective about other key players and developments remained largely guarded. if i critique the book, which is admirable, i have to say that i would have liked more unique insider perspective. perhaps a single chapter devoted to his role or activities of the u.s. mission throughout the crisis. this is the unique perspective that the author brings to a widely researched project. let me turn now to two of the key players to whom the professor had special access working for one and with the other. clay, represented both american and west berlin interests as was made clear. clay was the american world worr ii general and first hero of the first berlin crisis master minding the berlin air lift playing a role in preserving west berlin for a second time. as kennedy's personal representative, he gave the the president a radically different viewpoint from the state department and white house advisers. clay understood both the strategic and symbolic importance of berlin for germany and europe and believed berlin was an important -- was important for american influence in europe. he not only knew berlin and the berliner's will, but learned from past experience how to deal with the soviet threat and understood what was needed to withstand east german and coach yet pressures which was, essentially, a tift for taft response to every east german provocation along the border or highway, a similar response by the americans. much to kennedy's disstress, clay was behind the showdown of tanks at check point charlie, the hottest moment in the cold war history of berlin. finally, and for the west berliners, probably most importantly, he encouragedded u.s. investment in west berlin at a time when many west berlin companies moved to west germany. most importantly, however, was the advice to kennedy that reflected both american and west berlin interests baited on a deep personal understanding to the will and temperament of the west berliners. they turned out in hundreds of thousands in 1963 to hear kennedy say, but in many pockets of west berlin, particularly the exclave, it was clay who was the local hero, the winning of the hearts and minds after two long years of resentment of american's inactions. in the late 1980s, when i was living in west berlin doing research, i interviewed many people who had known clay, but they said with bitterness, while kennedy was off sailing in the crisis, clay was standing by us, and they recounted vivid and personal memories how clay had done so much to promote german american dproips with, quote, such as he was an elegant man or saved west berlin a second time. the unique perspective is kennedy wouldn't not have had a west berlin to visit if not for clay's influence and impact on kennedy's decision making. what i had not known and learned from the professor's book was the strategic timing of kennedy's visit. i never knew why that date -- turns out, it was to preempt the visit to germany and undermind what the gall was doing in his european strategy based on a close, franco-german relationship. much has been written about kennedy's speech before hundreds of thousands, one of the finest moments, and they have gone down as one of the presidential great quotations of all time, and like lincoln's gettysburg address, kennedy's text was rewritten in the last moment, and in doing so, he pitched it perfectly, expressing the right sentiment at the right moment in time, and like lincoln's, kennedy's speech acquired an iconic status. second, i would like to talk about billy, the agenting mayor of berlin at that time, and his subsequent politics becoming the federal chancellor of west germany. when he was chancellor of the federal public of west germany, his social democratic party embarked on a new course switching from a frame work based on a western alliance, the atlantic alliance, to maintaining a western alliance while improving relationships with the east, particularly, with the soviet union and the european states. through renunciation of force agreements. for bankrupt, it was rooted in two key factors,. the first was the less son he took away from 1961. he recounts in many of the memoirs that he'd written, the one i look at again in preparation for this talk was his autobiography, my life in politics, describing his frustration in dealing in the lack of response by the western and, particularly, the u.s. come daunts when the border was closed. he describedded the mixture of fury and protests that his government was forced to deal with on its own. he writes, we should not expect others to find answers we had to find for ourselves, and we worked on a frame work to improve and remake the status between the two east german states. the second factor in the off politic was an indisputable conviction that germans belonged together. they believed east and west german leaders must rid themselves of allusions, intractable politic, and instead work towards practical solutions that could ease tension and human suffering. the salient feature was really the humanitarian dimension. the policy of small steps forlated by the adviser was changed, continued confrontation felt would only deepen the division. he began by dropping language that had aggravated relations with the gdr, and in his inaugural address, he omitted the word "reunification," and reversed nonrecognition policy vis-a-vis the gdr. he was the first chancellor to refer to two german states, and initiate the first germany did not produce immediate results, but it laid the ground work for the later basic treaty between the two germanys. ironically, and i always found this interesting, their meeting reprized some of the basic die dynamics in effort of the offensive, demanding the de facto recognition of the gdr and saying they had harsh ultimatums and like kennedy had opted for a soft approach and hoped to begin with their points of basic agreements. now, what was the response of the soviet union party? it was skeptical and fearful because they did not want to change the status quo. they fully recognized the changed relations would, in fact, lessen control over the citizens, and that, indeed, is what happened over time. to my knowledge, brunt was the only key player from 1961 still alive in 1989 when the berlin wall fell. when interviewed, he said with great and understandable emotion, what belongs together will now grow together. he lived to see one of his fondest hopes realized. the jury's still out on how much the two haves of germany grew together in 20 years, but the statement captured the mood of the moment in the first petty days of the open border when germans came together to celebrate the unexpected and almost forgotten hope for unities. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, professor, and now we turn to livingston, distinguished career of the u.s. foreign service, and here in washington, currently a visiting fellow at the institute where we also sharedded many time together, glad to sit next to you after so many years, and he had been the founding director of the american institute for contemporary hopkins and former president of the and in the 60s in the foreign service based in west germany in berlin at the time of the construction of the wall and one of thee german hands, and he has a lot to say about the book and about the time, and i'm very pleased to have you here and looking forward to your comments. >> thank you very much. thank you for the -- i'd like to begin with the personal note as mentioned that i was in berlin wall lip in the u.s. mission there, and i was in the same section of vick, and, in fact, i remember some of the editing of my cables that was done, and so even back in those days, he was a real stylist. [laughter] let me just say for a minute, seems to me as we get, one of the main strengths of the book is the counterpoint between the personal and the summit meetings of kennedy and eisenhower and the meetings in washington, takes ability to show it in every chapter how it looked to a different amounts like himself on the ground. this counterpoint is a great strength of the book. he's drawn from a wide variety of sources, as beth mentioned, and i think probably dick was planning to write the book for 48 years because some of the end notes refer to authors' notes from august 1961. clearly, here he was planning something 48 years ago, and here we have it today. i'm going to skip over points i otherwise would have made, and beth suggested that the book is tightly focusedded, focusedded on the period of 1961-1963, and the core of it is focused on the time with clay from august 1961 to may in 1962, and one last personal word, the book shows that the loyalty to the former bosses, also more republicans, by the way, henry kissinger, and he has a lot of sections on kissinger's advice to kennedy, most of which was not taken, and then, of course, the core of the book, as i mentioned, is about the gung ho as some referred to him with clay. .. >> it was a learning process of a practitioner and his willingness at the beginning -- he was unwilling at the beginning to confront the russians and eventually develop confront the russians at the time of the cuban missile crisis. entire pattern of his behavior changed. we forget what he preteens that was. we forget the series of defeats in his first year, and it was terrible. there was a disastrous summer in july of 1961. then there was the building of the berlin wall. in august of 1961, all of which is important to mention. in the end he got what he really wanted. he wanted the peace treaty and he wanted the flow. which was much more important to the east german economy. which was the most important part of the plot. before i finish with this series of positive remarks, let me suggest four points but i think should have been emphasized more. the first is not forget that in 1961, khrushchev was at the top of his power. there is a large celebratory much like what has been going on in beijing in recent days and so, you know, it's not too difficult to understand why in his meeting at the vienna summit was really convinced that communism would work. today from the perspective of 2009 or even 1989, this seems ridiculous. but to understand why he believed this because he was at the apex of his power in 1961 that should've been stressed one. secondly, this does not sufficiently stretched important of the complex of the influence. which was all the americans all the time, and some of them did not act strongly. we didn't have any contact and we knew if we were spotted by a reporter, they were often talking to an official and it would be in the papers the next day. and then the election campaign was going on between eisenhower and kennedy's first reaction is he was trying to capitalize on this for election purposes. one should not forget that it was a contest which played into this whole thing. and i think that we need to mention not sufficiently. lastly, i think they should've mentioned a little bit more strongly that kennedy in 1963, he did not does give one big speech, but he gave his second speech which rewritten or rated his readiness to meet and negotiate with the russians, and see what he talked about in the university as well. and the belligerent speech that he gave as well. in conclusion, one point that i think that we should not forget when we criticize him for negotiating and to accept the division of berlin and germany. all, whether government democrat or republican, have avoided confronting russia directly on security issues which russia signaled as important. 1953 we did nothing to support the uprising of the east german workers. we did not support this uprising. in 1968 the soviets invaded czechoslovakia and we did not confront the russians. so kennedy was reluctant to confront them. in many ways to be expected with presidential politics over five decades. the second aspect is the mis-assessments and the bad advice given to him by experts. maybe mr. obama will think about about this because the experts were prepared and they gave him bad advice generally. and it had been so highly rated in the past. kennedy came to rely on his instincts and his brothers. well, that is something to be learned. secondly, it shows the difference in agency that enforces political position. all of those with whom kennedy was dealing with and also someone much older and they were influenced and had served in the first world war and had this is quite understandable. they are not anxious to get into another war. and in the second world war as well. you know. [laughter] so here it was nothing unusual. he was dealing with a teenager in short pants. but i think that sometimes it's important. maybe most importantly, it shows us his success in berlin. both in 1948 and 1961 and it was based on one very important factor that i think was meant should be stressed much more. that is the courage of the berliners themselves and claim had come to know that in the blockade in 1948. berlin is not conservative. it's in the leftist part of the city. so this was a leftist city. but it was still very so american. that they counted on the berliners, he made berlin the central aspect a relationship with germany as dick had pointed out. the berliners were our first allies before the west germans a decisive element in the crisis. slice wednesday rush out and buy a big book. go to your bookstore and get it. it's a very good book. >> thank you very much for your stimulating commentary. i would like to give the audience a chance to respond and ask questions. so many good points made by all of you. these germans played a major role and the refugees were forced to handle these germans and this is not a collective action. people wanted to flee because they wanted to have better rates and their career. and this was also part of this. and it failed thanks to those people who force them basically in east germany for very leftist reasons. >> don't forget that this is part of a long-term trends. the germans had been moving from east to west ever since 1944, and they are moving today. they're not losing population because they had a dictator there. even for economic reasons. >> mimi doe moved him from ohio to new york. [laughter] >> a few minutes about some of the comments made. >> i wanted to say one thing about the speech. which was i saw as i saw it kennedy was so darned smart to say the things that he did. because they actually included the word laws that will come down. you know, this is the kind of thing she understood that he could not save her and he made up the procedure as he drove through the city. the kind of speech that we needed. jackie kennedy said that any time -- conservatives always sorry but only a single speech was made by her husband in a foreign language. >> don't go to a bookstore. >> i have this and i would be happy to sign any coffee that you get. after someone's story. i asked a few people about this and they said, have you got any advice. and the first is the smartest man that we have ever known and he also had a great line. all three of those turned out to be true. i appreciate what everyone has said. and i'm wondering if we could have questions or comments from the audience. it's so great that you came and listened to all of us. 's. >> thank you. you come here for and i am from the bureau of research and director under kennedy. i think it is terrific as the book. stimulating and rewarding read. but i won't take your time. select your invention, a couple of things as i sat in the foot. was it is for me to see that you could write about the kennedy center without mentioning the dulles family. certainly it was central to winning the background of his kennedy and other senators were there during the late 50s when dulles was part of this and even the european oriented democrats are actually against dulles for his policies. and then there was alan and then we had the representative affecting the state department. remember at the beginning of the kennedy administration, it was said that tom, i know my sisters are working on this and if you have any part of it, let me know. and she was miss berlin wherever she was. [laughter] >> so she was part of this arrangement. and so, you know, that is missing. and as soon as the wall went up, eleanor was talking about this with all of the russians gumshoes very direct and personal. anyway, we refer so often the the washington advisers and they are the group of people my impression washington is that there a lot of people are putting a lot of input in a more junior level, perhaps. but when you look at this, as mike feldman, and dick goodwin and it was quite a rich pool of people there. the same thing is true when dulles was so upset. they continued lecturing them. [laughter] and there were a lot of stories about this situation. my final point is a more serious one. i think it is quite ill go along with you on the kennedy transformation. but i think that kennedy is much more complicated go to the beginning and the end than you indicate. i don't think that you suddenly influence by berlin. he was a republican of us want to share responsibly for whatever happened. he was very nervous about this. he didn't suddenly decide this was the latest move with the russians. and kennedy had many personalities and he was able to rise to many different occasions, a lot of them are contradictory and make contradictory statements. ultimately it seems that he would've thought the success was because he was very upset about military advice but he stuck it through four somersaults and he didn't want to press the military man on the spot. which is part of what it stands for. he tied the hands of everyone in the military, both in washington and abroad. it was nothing he didn't authorize from the white house. so i come away pleased that you have reached the analysis that you have, but it is probably overstated when it comes to the final john f. kennedy and whether he really was actually -- you know, whether he was doing this. >> i should perhaps say that you are absolutely right. kennedy was in quickly comforted a person. i'm not sure that he heard from other white house advisers. it is astonishing and every document seems to be. >> i couldn't deal with people's records that i cannot see. but as for kennedy, a very collocated man, but a very different man from what he had done and 63 to 1964. one can possibly trace this is when does with a series of hills summoned to a mountaintop. not necessarily a smooth rise or meaning that he had become fond of the military, which i think you're absolutely right. there several times that he would've liked to take this and throw him out the window. but the point was that good things in 1961 and 1962 and also later on as well, and also he did things like sending the brigade out there, which he would not have done earlier. he may have done him because he didn't want to get into trouble and he didn't have any arguments. so they said, let's just are. as you know, they didn't want clay to be there by himself as a republican. but nonetheless, i see development and kennedy. and whatever it may be, i think this is where trent had made his big mistake. how he had put this on, i found it very interesting. two other questions or comments, please? it was a good intervention. macs are there any more questions? >> can you state your name? >> let me flesh out something that was just alluded to in passing. my impression is that in the context of 1961, the heart of american policy was to treat it as a proxy for the cold war. was this really and was there any real alternative or weight that had been different or wise and it was more a german problem in the cold war problems. >> this was his view. it is hard to say in retrospect. and i would say that is perhaps impossible to treat it in this way. because the soviet troops were there. what kissinger was suggesting was that we should suggest a technique of negotiation. one of the memos that he signed have lived on through 1990. we are always coming up with ideas because they would be acceptable to the soviets. he said that if we make acceptability that tests those, you always lose. so he said that we have to explore things and we have to do things that had a positive impact on german and european opinion. he was yours is much concerned about the tactics of negotiations and of how you maneuver through this. i worked for kissinger later on the white house as was mentioned. i felt the same thing. but there was a man who always had a strategic objective. but that all around the strategic objective, there were tactical things a win that win in all directions and they may have been as many as people had accused of making them, done entirely for the domestic labor reasons or bureaucratic reasons, we just don't know all of that. i have spoken many times with him. but i would be in trouble and if i told you i knew the full range of his mind or purposes. nevertheless it was quite clear he thought that we should not display the soviet card. i would like to say one other thing that was mentioned in the book. after kissinger, one of the most important missions was to be briefed on atomic weapons policy. as you know this may a lot of people nervous. kennedy felt that a offering this was a red flag. but he had to find some way to assure that. because what he said is that the syrians could convey germany. they would end up at the french border and say thank you very much. and the only way to get rid of it is to bomb west germany with atomic weapons and not obviously was impossible. germany had been largely destroyed. so kennedy sends kissinger in order to brief him on american atomic policy. and they had a meeting that lasted a half hour and that lasted almost two hours. they cancel everything else and postpone everything else. in that meeting, kissinger told kennedy that this is where we're going to start using these weapons. you can be assured that the soviets would never cross west germany outside of it. and he went through quite a shift in astonishing detail. with such astonishing detail by now so that i want these notes the story. and so did the american embassy. kissinger never reported it, he just told kennedy that he had done it. but that is the kind of thing that he could do. and that's that's the kind of thing that he could do brilliantly because he had stopped this tribe and after that conversation, he understood that he didn't need to worry. >> it's like, okay, we are not going to drop nukes on forever. >> i'm not sure that he said that. but they were destroyed because they were regarded as so sensitive. there were so many questions about the use of nukes. >> i never asked him what he said. so i don't think that i'm necessarily in favor of this. you know, i think not. [laughter] >> other questions? >> i am michael michael bennet from the air force. he said that khrushchev respected strength. what did he think of eisenhower after the minimal u.s. response to the hungarian uprising and when pleading for help, with the wall have gone up during the eisenhower administration? >> well, one moment, i think we don't know what he said exactly after that. and i cannot answer that question directly. but i do know that in the context of berlin, that there was this moment when they have been negotiating it a little bit and had turned out nothing useful. so eisenhower decided i would like to get to know this man a little bit better. and he invited him to washington and to camp david. he had been escorted around the country. and then khrushchev met with eisenhower at camp david. essentially he did what he always did, which was to talk in such a backward way that nobody quite knew what he was saying. but they thought might be okay, but they weren't sure. and you know how it is. the famous moment when everybody was confused about what they should say. because i said i will describe and confuse everyone. [laughter] and that was part of his tactic. and khrushchev was delighted that he had been a part of it. he said now we are somebody. and he said now we are recognized by the greatest power on earth. this is very important for us. and i think it's more than not. one of the things i have learned as i have traveled is how so many countries always think that the americans or english or french are superior. and that they act superior. people will love it when i would talk to them like a normal human being. it was one of those moments i began to realize that there isn't much of the world a sense that somehow or another, we westerners on a different plane. but nonetheless, this was incredibly important for koester. the unit was a communist society and they were making their way up in the world. they have a lot of missiles. but they needed recognition and new people to say to you or someone. now, i can't tell you in detail what he thought about those sorts of things. but i didn't read that part of his memoirs very carefully. but that was kind of the way that he reacted. incidentally he gave up on berlin and he didn't push it because of other things. >> any further questions or comments from the audience? >> we have about five more minutes. let me just raise a couple more points. and first is that the readiness of the united states to negotiate behind the germans back. and the reluctance about germany itself johnson's refusal to make his trip there. and at the right, he felt powerless in the summer of 1961. and so just like he wanted to keep them under control and described as quite well, i think that we want to make sure that we keep our germans under control as well. the second point is very important. because it's an abiding feature. it is the power of the west german economy and caused the czechs in the polls to wish for a peace treaty as early as the 1950s. and i had offered to make a deal with the soviet union and buy out this at the very end. and the strength of the german economy is more important not only important to these countries, but a booming economy had attracted the labor. not only from east germany, but from all over europe. and this continues. and it does seem to me that this business is willingness to negotiate and this is a part that i hadn't really thought about before. the way the goal was able to exploit that to develop his relationship, which ended in his treaty in 1963. part of it was and they didn't say much. they were actually insistent upon their rights. and so the contrast between the americans and the french on one side and the british on the other and the british had no problem with showing their identity cards. not at all. but when he went through made a big issue out of it. so there are these ironies. >> kennedy was going to vienna and he said it is the best service you can do for the russians, as well as everyone else. and those were the last words that he heard and it may have influenced him a little bit. and it's nice that fancier because he can tell my editors about this book and i didn't want to do that because i wanted to focus on this period. i had wanted to write this for a long time. and i did not write it because i felt that i didn't have all the information. it was when i went to the kennedy library when i saw the tapes in the memoirs and i saw the book written by is this remarkable man. when i saw those things when i saw the east german documents, which have become available. i said to myself and now i can tell the full story. i was interested in telling this story not getting into other things. sometimes that his whim, i guess. but the point to me was that i think that kennedy grew during this period. i thought that this could have been the education of john kennedy. he's a determined and followed 1962 and khrushchev did not know that. that was his big mistake. and we have begun to sound but there were times when kennedy supported him. he said once you have a remarkable conversation and he said this is what you should do. and he said talks talked to the president, don't talk to me. it was beginning to shift away that not all people understood that became clear in october 1962. i think you very much for coming and for your attention. i'm very honored really that you develop the questions to this meeting because this is a very personal memoir for me, as well as a political book and research book as well. it mixes scholarship and autobiography and it's nice to see that people take it seriously. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you, everyone, foriting te biographies of the civil rights leader. he talked about mr. du bois at the history center. this is about one hour. >> thank you for making this event possible. it is a great event for me to be in my hometown. i did not really go up here. i spent many years here and my dad was president of a college and my brother was president of stillman college. and if there were another city in which my wife and i chose to live, and i thought i would give the flavor of the biography with the three readings that we have this evening. can you hear okay? okay. is that better? >> three readings from various sections of the biography chapters 10 and 11 and 14. and they could fall under the headings of the politics of history. that reading will deal with the magisterial study of the reconstruction era and this was published in 1935. in the second rubric might well be called chapter 11, the politics of knowledge. and that will deal with this, one of his greatest social science efforts, the attempt to secure funding from the general education board of the carnegie corporation to fund the encyclopedia of the negro. a third might well be called politics of the left and it deals with involvement in the waldorf astoria peace conference of 1949. by far the greatest achievement was to be a credible historical narrative in which people filled admirable intelligence, as well as the ignorance inherited through three centuries of bondage. 4 million men and women whose numbers comprise the majorities of two southern states and the sizable portion of the remainder with what a later generation of historians were gravely call agency it returns to the center of the reconstruction athletic as they steal away to freedom a great many of them, somewhat little some with little book learning, but very quickly voting their own kind into office. the treatment of these first days summons the voices of lyricism to full throttle in the coming of the lord, and the chapter in purple, in a passage that a historian had said that reconstruction was a mistake. it might have ended in here and give an approximation of the voices in order to avoid the comments. it was all foolish and tawdry comment negros dancing and poverty-stricken ignorance labors, destruction and revolution for the mystery of the free human soul. and the frenzy becomes majestic in uppercase. although his beauty, although his love, all that was truth stood on the top of these mad mornings "dancing with the stars", they treat in the wind and tossed its tears upon the sea. and he offers what he knows has been to continue to be the dilemma of race in america. of all that most americans want it. this was the least. everything black was hideous and everything he said was wrong and if they offer freedom, they were beast and if they did not fight, they were born slaves. and if they turn on the plantations, they loved slavery and if they ran away, they were wrong. if they felt they were to join. it celebrates a special it taxes into jubilee. there was joy in the south and it rose like a perfume. like a prayer, he lands. and then stood quivering, slimmed-down girls wild with beautiful hair. all broken mothers, black and gray, raised great voices and shouted is a great song arose in the loveliest thing born on the side of the sea. recapitulating unforgettably. it did not come from africa. where the ancients were it and thrive. it did not come from white america. however the surrounding tones had driven. not the indies or the hot south with a heavy west that made this music. it has great cadences and wild appeal and it thundered on the world's ears with a message voiced by man. guardians of southern history something the books potential was instantly on the tv. there is a feeling of lightness and the writing and an occasional passage that is provocative and is a mild adjective for black reconstruction and was syndicated to several alerting the region. some critics would insist in an excessive portion of african-american reconstruction in the strong. but it was an aide to senator of function in the formation of industrial wealth that was the first of several original conceptions of profound impact. the book's opening chapter shows us that black labor became the foundation stone not only of this, but manufacture and communists of the english system of buying and selling things on a worldwide scale. it was the fulcrum of the industrial revolution. it had been the treaty of 1713 that marked a historic moment when the small island one the means to become a global powerhouse. a significance that was underscored in the text and the tendencies to the suppression of the african slave trade to the united states as a harvard phd. by the terms of the treaty, we imported slaves into the global empire, by which they have the chief supplier of this. it profits from the atlantic slave trade and finance the textile manufacturing of the british maritime bourgeoisie of the african slave trade now steeped ever more deeply into hallmarks. the authors directly this was to be brought to full term by a west indian admirer and this is classic capitalism and slavery that the profits pouring in to trade in slaves and finnish woods underwrote to a controversial degree great britain's mark will take off. many who saluted this brilliance of the book tended to feel uncomfortable by become suspicious when dealing with this sweet and depth. much of what troubled and alienated the critics now seems less significant six decades after publication to contemporary students of society who have defined inside in black reconstruction that the former critics were ignored or overlooked. thus there is more than met the eye in the influential american slavery, a prophetic fallacy for conscripts including black men and women and children who toiled under the situation. thomas carlyle's list of them, people cutting each other's throats because one have preferred hiring the slaves for life and the other by the hour was a deadly certainty. it was still imperative to remind historians only four years before the release and it was a travesty of unique dimensions. once accustomed to poverty with toil and aggregation. once it is hidden beneath a different color of skin and a different statue or a different habit of action and speech and call consciousness disappears. economic situations on the part of the dismal condition of color coding the basement, however. it was as brilliant as one of the early essays written a quarter of a century earlier. and this included democracy and race in america. even this hardened over decades, masters and slaves and antagonism and it required the millions that excluded poor whites, little more than political passivity and police work. the south was not yet reserved. but with at least 350,000 people with mixed racial heritage in 1850, the majority of them free, the trend toward hybridization showed no sign of slowing. we now know that before this is one a historian maintained this part of relations among the latin american and especially the west indian neighbors. du bois emphasized that the pointers only begin to appeal across these lines on the basis of color with the onset of the civil war indicating that after all, he was wide and they had eight common object in keeping the white man's. consider the consequences of social democracy consists of the author, so long as the southern white laborers would be induced to prefer poverty with equality with negros, just so long was labor-management made impossible. leftists were deplored with any contention that white workers would endorse compensation by public and psychological rage. it would serve as an exception and a potent tool of social analysis in a successive wave of dark and different europeans were inducted into a white republican which people of color were excluded by a almost hysterical one drop rule. extrusion of people was inevitable for the victims themselves is a definable logic and blamed. it was used in the contradiction of an entire people being forced into the second-class citizenship in order to justify in policy and law full citizenship. set free without preparation and deserted by the national political party to which they had rendered such strategic and vital service, these people are uniquely vulnerable to being scapegoated and marginalized. whatever they did in slavery and freedom had to be discounted simply because to do otherwise was to complicate enormously the ideals and politics and economics of laissez-faire. it is one thing that seemed to many is a fabrication of historical license. includes the confederate one machine of slaves. it was depicted as part of having been so benign that the slaves were happy to serve for the fighting south. and the problematic for chapter of the book, therefore, it becomes a controversial part of the slaves is the second most important factor in the defeat of the south. the phrase itself was a provocation with misconstruction and even division. it evoked images of millions of workers with those acting to paralyze governments. and this includes labor union and the proposition that a letter of black men and women have been decisive enough to affect the course of history as it was theoretically too many of the socialist persuasion. it was stripped of associations with the general confederation of labor and the trade union of congress who voiced the general strike that amounted to little more than the common sense of self preservation exhibited on a massive scale. as formulated, the general entailed evacuation of the plantation of the slaves and perhaps a half million people and they wanted to stop the economy of the plantation system and to do that, he left the plantation. 145,000 of the 180,000 negro troops were slaves who had either escaped or signed up in the yankees marched through the neighborhood. what the negro did was to wait and look and listen and try to see where his interests lay. and this was part of the slaves mindset with very similar situations as it became clear that the union armies would or could not return fugitive slaves and that the masters of all of their fury were uncertain of victory. .. >> what was done in columbia reduces slaves' determination to break away from the plantation system as a crucial component in the north's victory. in looking forward, a chapter brimming with ideas and end with a poem by foster, a dear friend, he deployed the concept of the american assumption to explain the failure of reconstruction. this assumption that wealth was mainly the result of its owner's effort and that any average worker can buy thrift become a capitalist had ceased to be valid after the civil war, he claim, but its tradition lasted down to the day of the great depression at which point he announced, writing in 1935, it had died with a great wave of dispair. in his american assumption, there was a version of the creed of exceptionalism that scholars came to regard as uniquely american, escaped from the rise and fall of history and universal opportunity for individuals, endless progress for the nation, and yet split historical second in the heat of radical reconstruction, they maintained that the american assumption was temporarily counterbalanced, alarmed by the return to congress in 1866 of unreconstructed southerners who might repudiate the civil war debt and almost certainly reduce the national tariff, they characterized northern industry has frightened and moving towards the stand which abolition democracy had already taken, namely temporary dictatorship, endowed negro education, legal civil rights, and eventually votes for negroes to offset the southern threat of economic attack. the american assumption was from radical reconstruction whether it was special order number 15 # giving emancipated slaves possession their titles to titles to land in georgia and south carolina, whether it was the freedom's bureau in negotiates contracts and negotiating 247,000 new citizens in 4329 elementary schools, the first federal antipoverty program or protecting voters rpd the act of 1875, but much sooner than later than the version of events, the dictatorship of labor imposed on the south by the alliance of northern industry and democracy collapsed and dropped away flu american assumption. so it was back towards slavery, the title of the ultimate chapter with the wages of whiteness destroying any possibility of the solidarity of labor along class lines, dilemma of destiny em posed more than any other people of color pressing against the white republic, crackled again in high voltage prose of the souls, and one is widely inhibited and mentally confined as the american negroes. within the colored race, the philosophy of salvation is curiously twisted and distorted. from the defees of reconstruction to the dispair of the great depression, where had history taken them, he asked? what sign post pointed to a way out of the 300-year-old box. shall we use torch and dynamite? shall they go north or fight in the south? shall they segregate themselves more than they are now in states, in towns, cities, or sections? shall they leave the country. are they americans or foreigners. my country tis of thee, children saved and buy homes or dlictly commit race suicide? long ago in the flush of the harvard sociological study, du bois was certain as written in the autobiography that the cure for the race problem was knowledge and scientific investigation. the lynching of sam here in atlanta, the policies of the general education board and race riots in springfield illinois in 1908, this abused him of an ideal far more suited to enlightenment than in georgia in the rain of watson. the faith in the power of knowledge never dispated, but sought what promised to be the more effective strategy of journalism by uncompromising principles and social science. that conviction was never more manifested than in the propaganda of history, the black reconstruction in which the structures of calvin and alexander thundered proclaiming that history is true could empower true democracy if only history and historians chose to lie less. he was writing, get a feel, devastated by lies told by roads and dunning, by walter phlegmings and bowers and a library of others. there would never be a science of history until we have in our ecologies men who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race. men who will not deliberately encourage students to gather thesis material in order to prejudice for. the last chapter soared beyond an appeal to honest history into a realm where mortal philosophy fused with the cymballism of the creation, but -- i'm fighting a head cold. bear with me. if it was special pleading as bias in its own way as any white spu premise, it was partisanship in the cause of justice and democracy, as he proclaimed. it's the most significant drama in the last thousand years of human history. it was, he wrote, the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty into the newfound west. including they descended into hell, and in the third century, they arose from the dead in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world has ever seen. it was a tragedy that beggared the grief. it was an uphelve of humanity like a french revolution. we are blind and led by the blind and discern in it no part of our labor movement, no part of our industrial triumph, no part of the religious experience. why? because in a day when the human mind aspired to science of human action, a history in psychology of the mighty effort of the mightyist century was under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future. the inpsych peed ya prujt was at a curious cross roads. the more attention paid to it by the academy and foundations to the negro, the more resistance there was to privileging the scholarship of one authority whose claimed to interpret the problem of the 20th century was unexcelled two days after the commemoration of the 70th birthday, du bois sent a type carefully crafted four-page rebuttal to the 11th hour misgivings and formally conveyed to stokes by several general education board trustees. the remaining obstacles had been told by the my philanthropist ws objectivity, quote, they are only concerned about one thing, stokes warned in the letter of february 11, and that is whether we have fought through ways in which to assure objectivity of the findings, quotes closed. several trustees were particularly agitated by the opinion of a british anthropologist who had determined that scholarship in the united states betrayed either a white or negro bias. stokes was advised this distinguished an throe polings doubted the possibility that there could be complete objectivity even in historical matters where raisht pride on the one hand or racial prejudice on the other was at state. interoffice correspondence at 61 broad kay, the head quarters of the egb reflected the board's looming die lem ma in the months of january through mash much, 1938. whoever funding its portion of du bois might not prove unavoidable. the insis tense of the highly respected and highly political charles johnson, a leading african-american sociologist and philanthropies in mid-march that, quote, interest is gathering momentum, and that the merited foundation support under du bois was noted. the academic creed of the day proclaimed that objectivity was, if not yet attainable in its purest incarnation, a goal in whose pursuit a discipline voaf discard all relativism except actions that were inescapably human. the historian like the social scientist was in the words of the historian whoation work inevidentbly captured the fiction, a neutral or disinterested judge who must never degenerate into an advocate or worse, propaganda for the objectivity quest was to be a grave risk when history is written for utilitarian purposes. these are quotes. du bois's february 1938 memorandum to stokes claimed you could be objective and at the same time, you could be an african-american. well, du bois assumed after meeting all the objections of the funding of the funding was imminent, some $260,000. he assumedded it was about to materialize, and with it, the wherewith you know all of professional talent and sources sufficient to reformulate the problem of the century for this veepture met as much to him or the symbol and substance of the collaboration as for what could produce in the way of old revised and new findings interpreted about the negro. although the seven decade pageant that filled black america with sounds and light, it had been played out largely behind a vail color and meaning, however, that despite the visibility of the minority, there was occasions when the white majority was compelled to notice. he in the country were prejudice that forced him into a shoe string career as academic journalists and man of letters and exist especially in the margins where never once during an odd surmounting half century had there been a offer of an appointment or learn society affiliation with his genius. richard logan, his assistant, could no longer recall the brand, but he still retine tanned a vivid recollection 30 years later of champaigneed iced in the bucket, and the decision of the general board executive committee to refer to the full board had already reached atlanta when rufus, the new university president, returned from new york with news that the du bois proposal was slated for approval at a meeting of the geb trustees on april 6th, 1938, a wednesday. anticipating stokes' corroborating telephone call in the late afternoon on thursday, du bois and logan passed the attention over cigarettes and small talk as a bottle of excellent champaigne nestled in the crib of ice. logan was one of the few people with whom du bois ever descended into mere banter, but as logan responded to boasting, he knew du bois better than anyone perhaps other than his second wife. after a number of decreasingly anxious glances at the clock; it was depressingly obvious as the light went out of the late afternoon that no telephone call would come from stokes that day well, i have disappointing news, the president wrote days later, putting the best woft face on rejection, stokes complimented the president, the general education board, for being perfectly fine about the whole matter, and another for fighting for the proposal. the general education board, not flatly declining the request decided they cannot act favorably upon it. yes, stokes is clearly confident ending the letter with a sigh that you and i may not see the project through, and i hope and believe we will. as they confided, on thivity concerns continue to nag at certain trustees. head unvowed, they said quite possibly they are raising the funds is my own personality, and logan went to the grave convinced that the project had been undermind of both foundations by machinations. the lesson drawn from this mortifying experience is that there was once a time when the word of one quiet man could determine whether a project concerns negroes could be approved or not. the abdomen in addition was correct, but they blamed the foundation loss only somewhat less receptive to those competing $2 # 00,000 proposal for a free study of african peoples had been rejected by the cooperation two years earlier. so they continue to persevere, and he receives a word from a general education board, and -- well, i shall read this, stating frankly du bois's activities with the naacp overshadowed scholar i interest and more time necessary to create another impression, better objectivity, obviously, sympathetic program officer of the general education board lobbied the carnegie corporation to approve its portion of the stokes'-du bois's application despite action of his own foundation. dr. du bois is the most influential negro in the united states, stated the officer petition. this project would keep him bis -- busy for the rest of his productive life. particularly fond of frank, found him sympathetic, and the president had unself-ly prodded his own produce tees to bail out du bois's magazine, the crisis, twice mentioned the publication costs of the book on reconstruction and had a noncommittal interest in the negro. as it was possible there's action as a decision to defer rather than remains that they might act favorably on the request for an appropriation of 60% of the 260,000 budget that he would never receive such an appropriation communicated to du bois in a manner that was both indirect and guilt-ridden. his visitors arrived on campus on the third or the fourth day in november 1938 with little advanced notice putting aside the black vote, du bois conversed with a half hour or so with jackson davis of the general education board, offering regional business as the reason for their visit, the real reason was evident after general discussion of the project. two young swedish academics had just arrived in the united states to conduct studies was offices of the carnegie corporation. they were unfamiliar to du bois, but he agreed to discuss the projects with them and when, as davis informed them, they would come to atlanta towards the end of the month. near it all, a 40-year-old economics professor with a major reputation in europe had been conducting a broad based study recommended by mutant baker, the chairman of the board of the corporation in the fall of 1935. the astonished professor and social democratic leader of the parliament had the invitation in august 1937. his wife spent the academic year in 1929 serving the united states on a study grant from the rockefeller memorial foundation, arriving just as the stock market imploded. they developedded decided use about the american economy, but they knew almost nothing about negroes and the race problem. seven years later, they were asked to return so that they could undertake a comprehensive study of the negro in the united states. the key to the decision to seek a foreign scholar was contained in the carnegie study to be conducted in a wholly objective and dispassionate way. the president was convinced that the special factors, prejudice, professional jealousies, regional sensitivities, put octoberivity beyond the reach of home grown social science when dealing with the national race problem. notwithstanding what the other prominent americans social scientists had to say to the contrary. in the quest for ideal european, they considered -- eliminated to swied herb scholars and anthropologists and political scientist, a retired dutch colonial administrator, a brit ire economist, a south african, a governor of nigeria, former headmaster of lug by -- rugby, and a leading an throe polings of the day before deciding the swedish economist possessed the problem. signaling his acceptance, but only after being persuaded by a rockefeller foundation friend to withdrawal a declaration. they concluded that the carnegie option might be the last exciting project before the on set of middle age. why not the negro as well as anything else he said years later. the deal was sealed in the spring of 1938 with the handshake over cocktails in new york century club where they were entertained by the carnegie trustees after delivering lectures and proceedings and honorary degrees. if you bear with me, i'll read one more page. it brings du bois to 1949 when he's going left and really out of the mainstream. to put a mildly. this deals with, as i said, the famous historian peace conference. invited at the beginning of the year to serve as a member at large of arts, sciences, and profession, asp, du bois immediately informed an atron mother of the acceptance, although he must have been surprised to see his nemesis listed with palling, downs, and the four regional chairs of the restructured peace organization. during three days in late march 1949, the cultural and scientific conference or historic peace conference, had the east side, the catholic war veteran ticketed hundreds of citizens affiliated and unaffiliated filled the sidewalks and baseball of angry messages and radio gave the conference the advanced billing reserve for natural disasters for partisan review and ad hoc ban of several hundred cold war liberals calling themselves americans for intellectual freedom, the peace conference was a communism front whose perniciousness was deadly because of the presence of so many of the sincerely misguided. sidney hook, mary mccarthy, and dwight mcdonald patrolled corridors and wedged themselves in the panel discussions to combat. howell writing for partisan review sneered at the solemnness found no names and they led off the conference, and there was no mention of the fact that the state department denied visas to latin america and all in western europe thereby eliminating picasso and others. du bois's writer session, howell described the performance as that of an reluck at that particular time norman mailer, a perfect illustration of a unexperienced mind, quote-on-quote, expressing disillusionment by confining the world to the terrible prospect of war. du bois's second wife naturally thought that the speech in madison square garden on march 27 #th, the final night, was the high point. he spoke to the delegates with an intensity that conveyed a depth of the revulsion, centered by spotlight, enhanced by the microphone, proclaiming the culture and scientific con fliewns for world peace a success in a time of hysteria, suspicion, and hate, they brought together one of the largest gatherings of the creative artists and thinkers the world has seen. they were not now nor probably ever would be in agreement on all matters, but in one final respect, our agreement is complete, no more war. he was there to introduce, but had not yet said enough, and when the applause subsided, he continued that the nations knows we are not traitors nor con conspirators and far from plotting force and violence, it is precisely force and violence that we bitterly oppose. they spoke of the failure of the league of nations and now the unit nations to address the cancers of the imperialism and racism. 8the years fall away. i tell you people of america that the dark world is on the move. it was and will have freedom, autotonmy and equality and will not be diverted in fundamental rights, spinning, political hairs, white, if they will, i'm there, but the vast majority will march over them to freedom. still, he was not quite finished. race war was not the answer. what we all want is a decent world where a man does not have to have a white skin to be recognized as a man where sickness and death are linked to our industrial system. then he was done. this is not an end. it is the gateway to a full and abun -- abundant life. it was noted the policemen in the garden applauded. thank you. [applause] david will be happy to take questions, but this talk tonight and your questions are being taped for c-span, so we ask that if you have a question that you come down here to my left, your right, and talk into the microphone so you can be -- have your moment in the sun at 2 a.m. on the television at some point. [laughter] >> a question or two? good evening. >> [inaudible] >> that story is, indeed, a hard one to tell. it's not an uncommon story of a man whose commitment to great prince. s and abstractions means people nearest and dearest to him find the oxygen is sucked out of the universe, and they shrivel and are really denatured by the close contact, over don't come off well. the mother, the wife, the daughter waiting to be noticed by the great man, and periodically, he does, but the psychic was large, and, of course, there were ironies here and du bois was a great feminist of the early part of the 20th century to redu bois on women's rights is to read some of the most salient, cogent prose going, not just that women should have the right to vote, but that women should have complete control of their bodies, and equal pay for equal work, and yet the treatment of his wife was a -- they made somewhat a mockery of the principles. similarly, what was the second point about being close to him and suffering, yes, he wrote in a children's magazine that he created in collaboration with jesse that may res enate here, children's magazine called the brownnies, a monthly magazine for children of color. again, a wonderful nurturing publication for young boys and girls of color, but, of course, in his day-to-day dealings with his daughter and granddaughter, he was not paying attention to the text of the book. >> [inaudible] >> well, let's see, relief, i think, is the major thought of the moment. [laughter] what i found is that there are people who are different from other, not just the rich, and du bois is one of them, and there is an intelligence at work here that's really wonderful to behold, and the opinions are problematic and some are really wrong, but -- [laughter] he is in his principle quest for solutions to social problems and willingness to put his pen on the line, he's standing outs in a country that's not so many of his character. what else? i think what i was pleased to see that going into this business, you know, i knew, as you do, that the one thing that du bois said was that the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line, and at the end, i see that i'm quoted as saying in the flier that the atlanta history center is distributed announcing the lecture, i said that in the end they said it was really the problem of the cash line, and i think that his evolution for concerns of race rights in confining terms to blacks in america, people of color in general, the evolution of that and a rather romantic conception of the qualities of people of color, the evolution from that object to one of economic democracy globally and a critique of the market economy as a wonderfully, deadly phenomena impressed me greatly. it seems to me that even with the collapse of the soviet union and the problems of china, the caveat is that often the seating of social problems to the market for solutions is very up wise, extremely costly, and in the en, it'll rise up to bite us in the behind. those are some of the things that i took away from du bois. >> [inaudible] >> please do. >> [inaudible] [inaudible] >> secondly, having been born, growing up in atlanta -- [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] >> that's a tall order, and i'm delighted to have the questions, and i think i'm really going to say that i hope i'm going to sign your book later in the evening because those things are certainly addressed. i -- the question about really underscore, though, that i think i should say something about in the time remaining, and that is the seeming paradox of the man who is so committed to human rights and racial rights ending up using totalitarianism in order to get them. it's a paradox, and while you argue is makes sense from a pragmatic perspective, you know, that the enemy is your friend, use him or her and that ideology, you expect more from this great intellectual and humanist as i've spent too much time depicting, and sioux a biographer is troubled by discoveries of that sort, but my job is to simply recover the life and recapture the life, and i don't have to be overly much vexed by these oxy morons or paradoxes of which are there so many, but as a biographer, that's just wonderful material to use. >> [inaudible] >> the long -- the first president of the atlanta university, yes. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> [inaudible] my reading is of the situation that suddenly they deal with reality of segregation, but i'm wondering how -- what was the hope? [inaudible] >> the frustration of white supremacy and jim crow was such that du bois bumped up against the edges of the box, and so sometimes he would offer one solution, and sometimes he would offer a solution at the time and confusing those who marched with them and gaining allies who were disingenuous, and the example is du bois going out of the naacp wrote editorials with the title "segregation and self-respect" saying that this was a fact of racial life and endured for quite some time, and, therefore, it better be smart about making the best segregation possible, and, therefore, he suggested some sort of socialist solution. they said, as many people did, look, we can't have a luxury of that kind of intellectual hypothesizing because we heard entered into the records your thoughts and prose by bill and several congressmen said the new deal should be color coded with separate wage scales for whites against blacks, and they are quoting you, and so, you know, it's not utilitarian. it's a difficult thing, and i think that the inconsistencies refleblght a second line trying to find a way out. >> [inaudible] >> good evening. >> [inaudible] >> yeah, it's inspiring to hear talk about how the idea gestated with them, and it's clear they had the source, and cradled the idea, and it succeeds, remarkably well, and there's a large contribution to it. i make a fight and claim of no objectivity, perhaps, but it's -- it's got some troubling flaws, i gather, each specialist has drummed on to and said, realm, they've not done a good job here or there, not surprising, and i suppose now that henry louis gates and others sold to time warner for $10 million, just the source money to work out the glaichs. -- glitches. [laughter] yes, sir? >> [inaudible] >> i read the book, bought it last week. >> oh, great, thank you. >> [inaudible] >> that's it. there's no malcolm x that i could find. >> [inaudible] >> that's really a delicious speculation, and i decline to do so because i'm still a historian, and it's not what i believe in doing. i can tell you what i'd like it to if he was around. i think he probably would not have understood that alas. i think it's, dealing with the gentleman here who is very elite, must have been the most elitest member of the communism party of the united states. [laughter] i think he would have mistaken this persona and not, perhaps, have been patient enough to see and give him for time, but i think there would have been ide loming call problems there as well. well, thank you very much. >> well, first, i want to thank the new america foundation for having us. i am particular and very honored to be a moderator because up until now, this late date in my career, no one's ever found my moderate enough in my views to be a moderators. [laughter] i'm really happy tonight, the first time i like to moderate a panel, and it's, obviously, a great honor to talk about this on the 50th anniversary, and, obviously, it's a book that has put this bark on the culture and it's a very, very rare book that makes the argument that it changed people's lives. it's under criticism for affecting a group of small people for not talking about working class women who had no choice but to work all along and not talking about people of other sexual preferences finding themselves askew or outside conventional life. what i want to do today is talk about the ongoing power of the classic, and i recently taught this book to the undergrads at nyu who some of -- a couple here in the audience who did not ever hesitate to tell me if something is boring, irrelevant, misdated, longer worthy of their important attention. it was amazing to me that in this class, it changed the light, and the book spoke to them in really interesting ways, and so i want to talk about the new femme anymore -- feminine mystique and the old mystique whether it's repressed, and, you know, it's pretty complicated. we, obviously, live in a world that's so transformed by both this book and the movement that followed this that it's hard for those of us, most of us in the room, who were born after this came out. it's hard for us to imagine those days at all, and i just think about the rapiddivity of change in my family -- with mom sitting here i have to bring it up -- my father said only ugly women became lawyers, and i group up in a world where my mother removed the palace that my grandfather gave me and told me the next morning saying it was lost. [laughter] you know, 1970 new york city, and my daughter, we watched obama-hillary clinton election, she was tiny, like five, and she said -- i said, you know, she was a big obama supporter, and i said, you know, wouldn't it be cool if there was a woman president? she looked at me destainfully and said, mom, of course there's been a woman president. it was like amazing that it was in that short time that we went from ugly women to becoming lawyers to of course there's been a woman president in a 5-year-old girl. that said, it's very hard for those of us who grew up in the world in which our feminist class, you know, books are causing people to talk today have names like the end of men. we live in a world in which more women than men get college educations in which women are, for the first time, in the majority of the workplace and in the majority in manager positions. it's hard to look back into the other time. i was abstractly understanding things were different, we don't know or see and feel it, exactly. i interviewed the paris review, and she told me that when she was in college, she had not a single woman professor, shockedded, astonished, and i know life is like that. for my first question, i was going to ask our two panelists who were alive when the feminist first -- [laughter] just describe, for a moment, one -- your experience when you first read the book, and is it overblown or exaggerated to say this this book changed people's lives? >> oh, i don't think there's any question. of course it changed people's live, and it's still changing people's lives. it is passed down through the cultures, and it was the greatest social revolution probably since the suffrages, and that movement took a hundred years. this movement will take a hundred years. we're only halfway through, and we have to count on younger ones to really push it along, but i remember reading this, the feminist mystique in my mor's batroom, one of the few books she read, and it was not possible for her to move on it because, although she was a gifted singer, and she was quite attractive, a natural businesswoman, eager to work, but she lived in a suburban housewife role with two children, and my father refused to let her work because that would have suggested, as many men thought at the time, that he couldn't support his family. she was frustrated. she, you know, it was either valium or vodka that kept women going. it was nots until she was in her 50s, they were divorced, and she went to aa, met another man, and she became a businesswoman. she lost, you know, half her life. i thought i would be different, you know, certainly, saw that that root was not the right one, and what happened to me? i married a mar who i loved, but he was going -- starting medical school, and so i thought, ah-ha, this is cool, i have to support us. i have an excuse to have a career. that was my strait ji. i was totally rejected by the other wives of medical students because i was such an odd ball wanting a career, you know, that's just so ballsy. we got divorced. having put hubby through before there was any sense of recognizing for that thing, i was a single mom. that changed my trajectory, and i was a feminist. at the time, i mean, i started the tribune, in the women's department, the only place to get a job as a woman's writer, and i had to sneak down the back stairs and dare across to go to the dmv, the sitting room where women were not allowedded, to get in the office of the sunday magazine editor and pitch him a story, and, thereby, i developed a mentor who allowed me to, you know, move ahead. gloria, a little older than i and much more politically sophisticated, like, what did she do? take the job as a bunny to get a story, and that hung on her forever, but it was only clay who was starting the new york magazine where they were an editor for a long time, who had a mother as a journalist, and they really had no attitude about women. he thought they are talented, move them up. we paid them a little less. he actually not only fostered my career, but he gave gloria the first column written by a woman in politics, a political column that lasted for many, many years, and then when she wanted to start the news, of course she couldn't raise money. who was going to give money to a woman who wanted to publish a magazine about, you know, women? clay said, this is a great magazine idea. iemg going -- let's put it inside the covers of new york, so he midwifed this building, a magazine, 30 pages inside new york magazine with the cover on the outside as well as the inside, and it sold out. it was a great exhibition of collaboration of a male mentor and female which we lost site of today thinking only women help women, but why not seek out a sponsor already at the top. >> when you read this, you remember where you were, how it affected you? >> no, i don't remember where i was. i'm not sure i know exactly how it affected me, but i do know how everything became the forward effect again, and i can only say that there was no -- there were so few possibilities for women that we were expected to be married by 21 or 22. we were expected to raise children. we were not expected to do anything. we were not expected to make money, and we were not protected against what would happen if we were divorced or someone died. we had no resources to earn our own living, and the vulnerable led us to behave towards men as if they were demagogues. some of them were, maybe, and some of them maybe not. when the feminist mystique came out, betty, who was betty herself, we have to remember this put into words what was in the people's hearts and couldn't have said, and she said it, and the effects across the country was like an electric shock, like somebody -- i don't think of anything else perhaps martin luther king, but i can't think of anything else that happened in my lifetime that actually felt together, marched, as women, we had a voition, we were different, somebody had to pay attention to us, and it was overwhelming, which is what made me individual lant about barbie, but i remember -- i remember going to the brooklyn museum to see a dinner table with plates of all different -- dedicated to women throughout history who made contributions. now, i'm not judging this as a work of art. that's not my feel. i can tell you i was there with katie and her younger sister, and i felt as if the world was turning. we were going to do this thing, and we may have thought it was simple leer than it turned out to be. i may not have anticipated what happened if you had three children, a corporate lawyer job. there were a lot of things we didn't figure out completely, but the exhilaration of it, the extraordinariness, i just want to say one more thing, and i'll stop. i -- i took a writing class at sarah lawrence. the year was 1956. the professor who was a poet, it was an all-girl school, sat around the table, and read the paper. a woman went to reno to get a divorce, and you had to live there for six weeks, and she came back with a detailed report of everything that happened in the six weeks in reno. he said, what makes you think anybody would be interested in the divorce? there was this silence, you know, because i couldn't have been the only one visited by this. [laughter] there was also the possibility women can't write because we adopt have subjects. what would my subject be? what would i do? i was not in a war, and, you know, the sense we were pushedded aside, and, yes, there was lessons, and heard it a hundred times, but the voices that everybody has now, the voices that i really believed they liberated into our world are so many and so amazing and so grateful i lived to see it happen. [applause] >> i was going to say to everyone given how radically this transformation occurred and just when you think about it in terms of, you know, the history of social changes, how rapidly the change occurred, how unbelievably fast the world transformedded so we went from the feminine mistake that took place to, you know, the idea of a woman working is so subversive and transgressive to where we are now, ect., ect., and we can say there's all kinds of problems, to be addressed, but, certainly, in terms of opportunity, women have a kind of opportunity that could not be imagined in 1963 when they sat to write the book. >> right. >> so i want to talk about whether weave -- we've cast aside the feminine mistake, and have we given up this kind of romantic notion, which now we call the stay at home mother, have we given up thed idea of family, this kind of all of that, the fantasy of what conventional life is like and what motherhood is. do you think we walked from that? we don't read this and recognize that. >> i don't think we've walkedded away from that. i mean, something that interests me when we talk about this is that, i mean, it's so exciting to hear you talk about we really thought we could do this because you bloody well did. i mean, you know, listen, when you started talking about, oh, you know, hear all the things that changed, what we couldn't do then, and now her daughter's asking her, of course, there's a woman president, but what i think is remarkable, i mean, the single most striking thing to me looking at the book now was that this notion of we don't appreciate the change were the notions people had when they wrote the book. that blew my mind saying, you know, spent the first half fighting for rights and second half not appreciating them. that quote i wrote down is rights have a dull sound to people who grew up after they have been won. this is exactly our reaction now, of course. i think the question is related to that because i think that we have won all the right, and i think there's a feminist now, do everything, and this is not their opportunity that feminism enabled, but the fact of the matter is you can want do every single thing, and -- >> at the same time. >> yeah, at the same time. >> it's the feminine fallacy. >> yeah, i mean, it can't be done. i don't think we've given up the idea at all of families or of motherhood, and i think all we've done is said we can do it all at once. >> i'm glad we have not given up. it's not a fantasy to have a family. it's a wonderful thing. >> yeah. >> and i think the vast majority of women do want to have a family. >> yeah. >> at some point. also, of educated women, something like 40% of women don't have children by the age of 40 which is pretty dramatic, but we had attachment parenting that came up in the last decade where women were encouraged to, you know, really be, very, very close to the children for at least the first five years, and interestingly, even studies that have been done about women who once they were educated to the idea that if you really drop out, go off ramp as was put it, if you go off ramp, to have children, be home with them, you won't get back on where you left off, and you will pay in all kinds of ways, seniority positions and pensions. women are choosing to do that, majority of women are choosing a nonlinier path and taking some time out. the great encouragement is to stay connected in some way and/or become an entrepreneur to work from home, which is really -- >> not everybody has that skill set. >> that's true. >> that's true. >> that's true. >> look, i think we may have forgotten that after this was published, we had a war, and within -- i won't even call it the feminist movement, but within and between women who made different choices, and i -- i mean, i have to say we better not glorify this. there was real nastiness going on between the women who had jobs, working for careers, felt themselves infin nitly better or felt threatened by the women baking cookies. those baking were livid and so put down and humiliated but those climbing up the ladder, and it was extremely unpleasant. >> that cookie baking never lost the punch; right? that's what hillary clinton said as first lady. i could have baked cookie, and people were appalled. >> i just want to read a quote from this which shows how it was, and as women moved into the workplace, and there was another -- a woman faces on the way out of the house trapped in the hostility of other housewives. >> now, betty, over and over again said that she was for choice. >> right. >> she did not say you need to be free to choose the kind of life that you want which including work or it may not. she was not -- it was just not kind to the housewife staying home. i think that politically she saw quickly you cannot dismiss many, many hundreds of thousands of people's life choices. you have to respect them, and you have to make it possible for them to feel pride in themselves or they will come and kill you. [laughter] i really think that's true. >> you don't want to be denigrating. i don't think it's in feminism's interest or interest of reality to be denigrating how difficult child caring is. that's work. >> you know, i'm very encouraged by the feminist spirit among millennials, young women. they really have it, way -- a lot of them. one of the things that i found interesting is a woman quite well-known now, who is a co-president of a company, melody thompson, who started out at 22, joining the only black owned investment firm in the country, and she was identified right away by the president as being a version of great talent and promise, and when she was 24, he took her to meet one of the biggest ceos in the country in the investment business saying, i'm grooming you to be president, and she then elected to be his grasshopper, jumped whenever he spoke, did everything he could want, including writing thank you notes to the parents of his children's sleepovers. at 28, he made her president. she was completely career oriented up until her mid-#30s when she said, gee, it would be nice to have a date or meet men, and she went out with, you know, someone fairly prominent, the filmmaker of "star wars," and they are engaged, she's 43. she'll probably never have children because she never had the time. what she says about young women who come to be mentored is if they talk about work-life balance, she knows they will never move up to senior positions. in her firm or any other. they will have to unidirectional for ten years of the career. a lot of women don't find that appealing to, you know, also be a ceo where you have to give 110% of your time for that. for those who are aspiring to that, more power to them, and i hope we get more and more of them, but it is really a narrow portion of, i think, the female population that finds that appealing, don't you agree? >> that's because we only have half of a revolution. if we had actually changed the world and changed min, we would have the world that makes it possible. what we have is half, and we're not satisfied with half, and half is not going to work. >> right. >> i think it's not because the failure is not permanent. it's something that is happening now because we have not changed the whole society. all we did is change what women want, and now we have to change what men want, and now we have to change what society is willing to do for a family so, for instance, universal day care. we have to make this world completely different for ourselves, and then -- >> i think that's such an important point. one of the things that makes me so sad is that we were really close, that 1971 thing that walter mondale pushed that was bipartisan, comprehensive child care -- where they were going to have universal, you know, preschool and day care like they do, and in scandinavian countries, and nixon vetoed that saying we don't want the vast moral authority of a vast government between a nontraditional family structure which made a messy life, unconventional, what was written about, and that would have changed so much, still would, i think, that that would change so much. >> well, just paid maternity leave. >> of six weeks. >> that would be nice too. >> it's going to have to come through private companies because the government is not going to be able to do it. government can't pay for entitlements it already has out there. we can't march on washington, but work on companies. >> i think there's enough pressure if young women, you know, coalesce in a new movement towards that, that can happen. google just expanded -- google in new york, expanded to 12 weeks, i think, 12 weeks paid maternity leave because they had too many women leaving. well, duh, you know, that's what happens. [laughter] once they got -- they've improved their retention rate, and it's paying off for them. >> there are women ceos who stepped forward, and, obviously, notably sandberg, and she's really perceived, i think, as astonishing announcement of visit -- visit rail. we want more women ceos, but the same people who say that hate the women ceos we have. we look at them, and we really can't stand a million things about them, and it's worthying a little bit about why, and some of the critiques are interesting because she is trying to use some of the things that we think about, you know, this next stage of the revolution, and, she is trying to succeed in a high level business structure while in the sacrificing family, and kind of to a great deal of anger from women critics from feminists, from lots of nice thinking liberals. i'm curious what you make of that, her effort, and the kind of hostility to her in trying to think a way through this thorny problem. >> it's so inconceivable to me working in a job like that. i can't relate to it at all. everyone here, can anyone relate to having that kind of corporate job? i have no idea what it entiles. i don't know what it means. [laughter] >> what did she get? >> built a nursery. >> that's the other one. >> fixing them up. >> [inaudible] >> there's a book about leaning in, talking about how women shouldn't leave the workplace before they leave the workplace, how they speak honestly. there's a lot of practical advice that's pretty much a very -- it's not a lofty betty tone in spite of the critiques, but nuts and bolts way, goes home at 5:30. people attack her because she has this privilege, and she is, obviously, very rich. begin, i think, a weird thing to attack a very successful ceo for. >> it's kind of the same thing as what, and they are valid, what a lot of the criticisms were, this is a white privileged, well-educated elite situation. that's true. that's a valid critique of the book and valid to say, well, you're the ceo, there's the power to say, guess what i'm leaving at 5:30? on the other hand, elites are elite, and they have power. if someone in an elite position are putting things in a good direction, that's not so bad. >> it's not reproducible, though. that's what, i think, is the beef. it does make many women who are struggling terribly to try to figure out the balance, to be fair, to actually go through that terrible baby hunger that women feel at six months when they are unpaid maternity leave is over, and they have to go back to work because they have to work, and they don't want to leave their child. i mean, that is a reality for most women who have children and a good job. they don't get to go home at 5:30 to have supper with their kids. forget it, if they are going to move up. i think it's natural antipathy to having a book say, well, you are not working hard enough. figure it out, girls. >> i don't think that's a fair representation at all of what was said in the book, i have to say. >> there was a great piece on newyorker.com that those who criticize the book have not read the book. i think that she is not quite saying women are not working hard enough. i don't think -- i think that's an unfair dislation. i don't know if you read it, but i think it's unfair of what she is says. >> there was a writer, i don't know if you remember lois gould, and she said that in this culture, if someone raises their head out of general luck, takes a deep breath, and says something, someone on the shore will throw a rock at that head. [laughter] that was pure lois, but it's completely true. there's a hostility of women towards women that i think we have not begun to deal with, and as any woman who says anything slightly at a variance from what the dogma says you should say like katie, will get viciously attacked by another set of women and could be the other -- i mean, it's not a question of one right side and one wrong side. i'm not saying that. i'm just saying that the urge to attack is very strong, and i don't know what we do about it. i don't know how we can cut it county, and i certainly don't want a sticky sentimentsal we all love each other and tell each other how good we all are. that is not doing it. it's something about how social movements, any kind of movement, anything that moves, is going to attack. it's going to get attacked. it is. >> that's right. that's retelling one of the things that happened is in representing the position, the way we view her, there was two prominent journalists who really irresponsibly quoted a quotation of her, and one was on the front page of the times, the other doud, who said something i'm paraphrasing that i run a social movement, and they stopped the quote there, but the long quote, which was boring, was, like, mainly, like, working for a nonprofit or something, and by taking that first part of the quote, it makes it sounds like she's got these grand visions and aspirations of life and wants to be gone or betty, and, of course, people pounce and mock her, and it's one telling that quite well thought of journalist of the "new york times" does something so borderline unethical to the extent that the times printed a correction because it's wrong to misquote somebody like that, but it's also telling that let's just say if she had said the original quote, i want to run a social movement, should we all take out guns and shoot her? this is like what mom is saying, and i feel for a woman to have a grand vision or grand idea automatically causes a lot of anxiety and anger and hostility. >> yeah. >> i only point out that speaking of women who were not, you know, were all in love, one big cuddle bug, betty was a piece of work. lesbians were a lavender menace to the movement and warned against the man hating, bra burning part of the movement. shefsz not somebody who said, oh, if you're a feminist, you're fine with me. >> right. >> well, wait a minute. you're distorting history just a little bit. >> fix me up. >> all right. [laughter] >> there was a group within the feminist movement that was -- that disapproved of the family side of the feminist movement so that they got to be a lot of hostility. betty, on her book tour for i don't remember which one of her books, was greeted at various libraries by not only tickets, but bomb threats, and they did not come from some, you know, bearded pakistani terrorist, but they came from, you know, some women's groups that were very, very angry at her, and so that this is, you know, we really have to remember that i don't -- i don't believe -- i don't know who started that fight. it is true that betty was not a woman's woman. if there was a room full of ten women and there was one man over in the corner, betty would go to the corner to talk to that man. that was part of her charm. [laughter] that is what i'm -- when i really think we -- was that there was a -- for a while, fortunately, died down, but it looked as if it could explode the whole movement completely. >> yes. >> that's right. >> and, you know, for those of us who were there, it was not a matter of the lesbians are wrong, the family women are right, or anything of the sort. it was what are you doing to our movement? >> yes. >> there was another part to that. there was the man haters. there really are were a lot of man haters, given the name "the ball busters," the strident ball busting, man hating women, and the movement got that wrap in the mainstream, and it was very threatening. i was not a femme initial until 1970, and either did gloria because i didn't want to be a part of that, and i was scared that my, you know, the man i loved would think i was. i mean, i went on the marchs, and i, you know, did the things, but i had a real struggle between -- i don't want to give up the loving, compassionate, nurturing, sexy, man loving side of myself to be part of this movement. do i have to? that was a real struggle for many of us. >> this is such a funny line -- i can't remember if it's in the book or if she said it in an interview, that that people -- some women or some people read her as saying, you know, join the revolution, all you have to lose is your man. she said, no, all you have to lose is your vacuum cleaner. >> fab deny u -- fabulous marketing; right? >> i want to think a little bit more about how we can identify our own problems which have no name and our own feminine mystiques, which, by definition, are hard to recognize living in a culture. how do you talk about it? i want to think a little bit about that. one of my amazing undergraduate students said it's like we have that feminine mystique with new other stuff, both of them. that speaks to having it all question we talked about earlier. the french feminist wrote a book called "the conflict," talking about our new style of parenting. she called it "the child is king," in ways in which we parent which are taking this ominous amounts of energy that could be spent on, perhaps, like, other more fulfilling intellectual pursuits. what do you think are new feminine mystiques, new problems that don't have a name? >> i think it's so funny that's coming from a french women, and you have bringing up bebe, a giant best seller by a woman who says if we are like the french and not make the kids into kings, but, anyway, i mean, the -- i don't -- i don't think this is the most important problem, but it is, i do think, i do think it's a misconception to some extent that the kind of pornification of the culture means we're sexually liberated. i think that's a myth. it's not the most important thing, but i think it's a myth. >> i think -- we did a whole book about the interview with young women about, okay, why are you flashing for girls gone wild? why are you, before you're -- before you've -- when you have not experienced sexual desire, why do you think it's your responsibility to look as skanky as possible as one girl said to me. i think that there's confusion about the difference between -- and there's confusion because it's confusing, the difference between fulfilling a new role, the angel in the house, and being totally, sexually liberated, and i think it's confusing, and it was another issue confusing talking about what caused the infighting. sex and porn was pretty fractious. >> we didn't have porn then. >> yes, we did. we had many demonstrations against it -- >> that's right, we did, yes. >> hustler against hustler. >> i'm not clear why this is a -- why this is a feminist issue that divides young women that -- i don't understand what you said. this thing that -- >> okay, so i think that, you know, first of all, i'm starting from the assumption there was such a thing as antiporn feminists who were, you know, arguing against that, and so-called prosex or sex positive is what it was changed to, feminists who thought it was about freedom, choice, and if they want to participate in pornography or watch it or, you know, sell it, that's choice; right? that's where this is starting. i think that no american -- i mean, i think that antiporn feminism failed about as spectacularly as the shakers. look at the culture now. you cannot say it's less porn mid than it was then. there was a confusion about women came so far they are free to express themselves, living in a sexually liberated world, or does it mean we internalized our obligation to be sex objects to a different extent? it's a confusing question. >> uh-huh. >> i'm just wondering whether, you know, we wouldn't want to rephrase that as the puritan effect on our culture which still rages no matter what we do, and i, you know, i don't see this precisely as a feminist issue because, surely, it affects, you know, our mates and sons equally. how can -- >> the feminine mystique saying to the new men too; right? >> whomever is paying, but -- [laughter] the one she was waiting for. look, i -- it's just that the sex issue, which i imagine every generation struggles with in a slightly different, you know, slightly different name to it, but i would be happy if we were able to solve the question of, you know, how do you get -- how can a woman get through her work life and her family life without losing her mind. if we solve that problem, that would be wonderful. then we go to what can we do about horny, human nature? that, you know, i think is an under problem. >> well, i want to ask one last question, and then, obviously, there's much to talk about with this book, sort of, again, amazing to just that it's a 50-year-old book, but i want to ask one question about broad broadening out. she had serious political ideas, but she was not expressing overtly. we talk about the countries, calling it, quote, studied resistance to political ideas, which betty was aware of, and at some level, she was critiquing a lonely crowd america, critiquing this ideal life that was not just about women, but men, that everybody living in this commuter culture trying to get these things and accumulate them and live these conventional lives, and i think that's what i'm wondering what she makes of our world now because i think that if we think of betty and sub texts to the book, i wonder if she makes of our dream of conventional, and you can speak more about it, but our idea of a successful family life. it's narrow in this country. not that different than what it was in 1965 #. do any of you have any -- >> well, it's very different because both men and women spend much more time preparing themselves educationally and occupationally, postponing until late 20s, early 30s. it's a ten year jump from when ann and i were young, women married at 21, men at 23. now it's more late 28 or -- for highly aspirational women who may be mid-30s, late 30s, 40s, having children, reproductive revolution that allowed people to postpone that was fantastic. we are in an entirely different economic situation. you know, we are somewhat, some say, a declining country economically, and the job opportunities for young women coming into this, you know, long recession, are so -- so truncated, that one of the good things i see now women aware of this, having worked through college, and if they pay for their own college and graduate school, they come out, mid to lit 20s with 200,000 college loans to pay off. wanting to be a social entrepreneur which some do, they can't do. they have to take a job in some high paying positions, and if they went to law school, they are going to go into corporate law, boredded to tears with that, but they have to do it for five to ten years to get the money to then be able to do their passion. that's a big difference. you know, when i wrote passages in the 1970s, the most famous business book, and it remains to today is what color is your parachute? the thesis there is start out following your passion. who can afford to do that as a 25-year-old who finished college? they have to work, gain, get some, you know, it takes a decade to pay off the college loans for most people unless they came from a wealthy family. i think there's -- the other thing that's a big advantage is the boomer generation, which was the generation that inherited the -- we started it, a little older, inherited the feminist revolution and moved it forward, 80% white. the generation of young people today, thank goodness, is far more diversified, and there are a lot of young african-american, asian-american, indian-american, hispanics who voted for obama who are very much responsible for the reelection of obama, and who are helping to mentor younger poor women which were left out of the first feminist revolution. poor women, we really didn't have a lot to do for them or even lower middle class women. there was a lot of intention about it, but they didn't get included a lot. neither did women of color, but now it's horizontal in that way, and what i find exciting is young women starting at, like, 18 and 22 to help younger poor women to learn code, learn how to do code, learn how to build websites, learn a skill that's like the typing of the past that allows them to get in low level positions and move up because they know the technology of the future. >> betty undoubtedly was, would have been austerized and killed. there's no way she could have expressed anything that could have been principled to a marxist position in any book that was going to be read by -- >> no, of course, but i'm saying look at her class critique then and apply it to now? >> yeah, i -- >> would she look at the culture now saying we are into small, material things, not reading vacuum cleaner ads, still -- >> well, wait a minute -- >> telling us how to live. >> that's probably all true, but if you are going to use the word "marxist," remember what happened in the whole country is we saw what marxism brought in russia, and having seen what that brought in russia, the word becomes a dirty word, and the idea is not good either, so what now happens is that, you know, i think we are in a very imperfect world, but it's a perfect, imperfect world without ideologies that we can hang on to, so i imagine most people here are not sitting around having coffee, fighting over ideologies. you may be fighting over various sorts of things you want to accomplish, disagree with political disagreements, you know, trying to find out what's going on in your world, but you are not sure this is the answer. that's the thing that changed enormously, i think. >> i think we should open it up for questions. yeah. either to anyone or everyone or whatever you -- >> hi, i'm -- okay. i just want to make a comment. i was at a panel at nyu about women in the law, and it was nyu's first annual conference on women in the law, and, actually, i'll have to admit the reason i was there is because my mother was a speaker. she was past president of the national association of women lawyers, and she started an annual survey. she was first a cosh yowlings, and growing up, she was told she had to be a teacher, that basically at the age of 40, graduated from law school, and ended up going and was a major partner in two major law firms, and then she always felt upset by what she saw and how the treatment of women in law firms and even though she rose to be a managing partner of a major law firm, she started a survey, an annual survey of national law firms across the country, and what she found is 15% of women today in 2013 make equity partner across the board in just her annual survey about roughly 15% of women are able to make equity partner in the law firms across the country was the statistic they found, and that's actually really sad, and, you know, someone got up in the audience saying, realm, you know, a lot of times women want to leave and climb the himalayas or look atmy shelly obama, and she was associating the law firm, saying, you know, people leave our law firm to do great things. well, you know, that's not really the point is you can climb the himalayas and leave the law firm, but the question, i think, that we have to focus on is why are they leaving the law firms? you know, but what is it about the structure about the law firms in not allowing women to advance to become equity partners. there's plenty of associates in law firms for five years and basically forced to leave in one way or another, so i just wanted to ask you, the question is, i guess, you know, what structurally, what needs to happen concretely in america's workplaces? >> i'm not a lawyer. >> i mean, i would have to address, you know, law firm, and betty writes about working for fulfillment, and what's complicated, many don't work for fulfillment, and i think a lot of people working in law firms, trying tore partners in particular may not be working for full fulfillment, and that sometimes, and i think that is -- i'm not trying to stave the himalaya question, but i wonder if this model she has where the educated women should be using their brains in some way, i think there is something in law firm culture for both men and women that's distorted and punishing. i think the question of whether you can have a life outside of the law firm for either a man or women, if you're a young man at 34 and you have a newborn baby, like, are you ever going to see that newborn baby? i mean, you know, i think for both men and women, it's a pretty

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