Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141125 :

the leadup to the filing of the action including prior litigation in the 2011 reauthorization of the voting rights act. he will also discuss recent change in several states texas, north carolina, ohio, wisconsin and how and whether preclearance would have affected implementation of these laws. after he speaks, dan will provide more about the process. the context with the case including voting rights act preclearance was and wasn't doing, he will also discuss what has happened since 2013 including new tate laws and practices and litigation challenges that under the constitution in section 2 of the voting rights act. with that i'll hand it over to brendan. >> thanks, chad for, for inviting me to participate in the panel. i want to start by saying i'm here to give my perspective as someone who participated in the actual litigation of the case and to provide that unique perspective for you all to hear. basically the backdrop of all of this is here in the united states we have dual regulation of elections. we have states with primary responsibility and then we have u.s. federal constitution which provides certain fundamental guarantees covering, among other things, voting rights. with that situation, you have basically stays with primary power except they can't do anything that would violate united states constitution. then congress also has the ability to, quote, enforce the fundamental rights in the united states constitution. that's where the voting rights act comes in. so 1965, congress made the determination that certain additional measures needed to be taken to enforce those fundamental rights. so there were a bunch of different provisions of the vra, one of which was section 5. what section 5 did was kind of unique in comparison to some of the other things that were going on in the voting rights act. it set up, for lack of a better term, a prior restraint, basically said states can't do anything, change their election laws in any way until they get approval from the united states attorney general to make that change, which was -- it's hard to overstate how much of a shift that was from kind of the baseline system that we have here. it kind of flips it on its head. that was certain areas of the countries. those were designated in section 4b of the voting rights act. the formula, who has to actually go through that process. everybody else was just kind of under the baseline system. so that's where section 5 comes in. it was controversial from the out set. what's interesting, congress put a provision in the act that allowed jurisdictions to bring constitutional challenges to this. that's something that you see sometimes in election laws where there's some question about the constitutionality of it. this was not an exception to that. the state of south carolina and a few other states took congress up on that offer and challenged it immediately. supreme court upheld section 5 and other voting rights acts at the time given the circumstances that existed in the early 1960s leading up to this, it was -- that was a justified use of the enforcement power. it was challenged again on a couple of other occasions, section 5 was and again upheld both times. the thing about section 5 also was it was limited in time period. so you had a situation where initially it was only supposed to be in place for five years and then re-evaluated. in fact it was. so 1970, they reauthorized it. 1975 they reauthorized it. 1972 and said to expire 2007. by the time 2005 came around, they were thinking about this again, still in place. basically unchanged in terms of the coverage formula. so congress took up the task again at that point. the relevant committees of both houses of congress held hearings on whether this continued to be justified. they took in a lot of evidence. some of it, in my view, better than other evidence. but they held a lot of hearings. they compiled what's been described throughout the litigation as a 15,000 page record they thought justified this particular action. nobody could say they didn't work hard at this. so that was basically the reauthorization process. what was kind of important at the time, though, there were serious concerns about going forward kind of on the same basis that had formed the justification of the original act. going forward on the same coverage formula is history enough to justify this type of thing. or do we need to look at more modern circumstances. what's really going on on the ground today. ultimately, not to impugn the academy, they got bad advice about updating the coverage formula. some folks came in and testified and said, basically, history is enough, plus current circumstances in those jurisdictions. you don't need to look at everybody and say where is this going forward. what you should do is look at is it justified in areas of the country where you had this all along. i think ultimately kind of wanted to get to the litigation. there was also testimony about things happening in other areas of the country, things happening in areas of the country covered by the voting rights act that did not justify continuing coverage. and so the testimony was kind of a mixed bag on that. from the perspective of a litigator and someone who brought the case that we're here to talk about today, in our view, at least, and in the view of covered jurisdictions, there wasn't a lot of evidence of constitutional violations, violations of the united states constitution to justify continued use of this particular provision. so at the time there was -- that was something debated, a couple of senators thought there was a constitutional problem with it. they ended up voting for it, in any event and kicked the debate to the courts. so that's where the first challenge to that after 2006 was a case called northwest austin. they saw two things. one was to get out of coverage. they asked for what's called a bailout. they asked for the courts to declare they were basically on good behavior for ten years. that would put them on a parole system for lack of a better term. they would be out but subject for continued monitoring. they asked for section 5 to be declared unconstitutional. that went up to the sprupreme court in 2008, 2009 time period. in 2008 the supreme court ruled on the bailout question, allowed them to bail out and kind of ducked the constitutional question which raised it again for someone to bring a challenge. that's primarily -- that's background to tell you how basically we got where i came in. we've been doing some work for the project on fair representation, which is a group of thugs who are interested in fairness in elections and things of that nature for some time. some led to litigation, others have not. we've been doing a bunch of memos for them. by the time the northwest austin decision came out, we thought we had a good shot at getting actual litigation. so thought about discussion with people the possibility of bringing on a jurisdiction and actually challenging the act. we did that. we had written a couple amicus briefs. nobody paid any attention to those in the supreme court. up until that, that's where it was. we ended up speaking in shelby county, covered -- the state of alabama was covered and shelby county was a county in the state. so by virtue of that, it was a covered jurisdiction. shelby county itself had been kind of a model of voting rights, to be honest with you, for a decent time. there had been cities and towns in the county with their own issues complying with section 5. shelby county was pretty good. so we signed them on. they decided to file a complaint. so we did that. one of the things we decided to do from the out set was bring two claims, which ended up being important. section 4b, coverage formula. the second was to bring a challenge to section 5. so because of some things that the court had said in northwest austin about coverage being outdated, we thought breaking it down in that way would crystallize the the issue for the courts when they were addressing that issue. that's ultimately the way proceeded, rather, and ultimately the way the court ruled. it ruled on section 4b finding coverage formula was outdated and did not respond to current conditions. did not rule on section 5 issues. so basically the baseline we have today, if congress creates new section formula, section 5 will be back in place. as of right now it's not, because there's no valid coverage formula. >> let me just start by thanking ifes for bringing us all here today. for inviting me and to thank all of you for being here. it is a great honor to be among such a group of people from around the world who care about democracy as much as we do. the foundation of democracy, any democracy, is the right to vote. this right has long been recognized as fundamental by our supreme court, even though our constitution does not explicitly protect voting rights as such. our courts since the 19th century, however, has said that the right to vote is fundamental because it is preservative of all rights. none of our interests, be there in education, employment, health care, whatever it might be are safe unless we are able to vote and participate as equals in democracy. i say this by way of introduction, because although this principle has long been proclaimed in the united states, it has not always been respected. and even today in the united states, there are practices which diminish, dilute or impair voting rights by some of our citizens. so let me in my brief remarks start by providing some context both on the united states unusual electoral system and on history before moving to the question of what the preclearance provisions of the voting rights act were -- wpt doing at the time the shelby county case brendan discussed was decided last year. first some context on the u.s. election disem. election system. we are very unusual in two major respects here in the united states.election system. we are very unusual in two major respects here in the united states.we are very unusual in tr respects here in the united states. the first is the profound decentralation -- decentralization. we have no ability responsibility for managing elections here as is the case in most other countries. rather elections are run for the most part under the laws of the 50 stays, and they are actually administered at the local level literally by thousands of counties and municipalities, each of which has authority for actually running the day-to-day operations of our voting system at the local level. so we have not just one voting system, nor even 50 in the united states, but literally thousands. the other distinctive characteristic, some would say pathology of the u.s. election system, is partisanship. what i mean by that is that in most states the chief election official is someone who is either elected or appointed by their party and runs for office as the candidate for their party or is appointed by someone who is elected as a candidate of their party. that is to say, the chief election official in most states is in that sense a partisan. this cease an inherent conflict of interest between the chief election officials responsibility to serve the interest of all voters to create a level playing field and that official's interest in serving his or her party and advancing through the ranks of his or her party. it is a problem, by the way, well recognized in other democratic countries which is why they enjoy some degree of insulation from partisan politics. this unfortunately is a lesson we in the united states have yet to learn. next let me give a little bit of historical contest. for most of this country's history, racial minorities, most notably african-americans have been systematically denied the vote in much of this country. that was still the reality 50 years ago in 1965 when the voting rights act was adopted. there is no question, as brend ab pointed out, that things have changed considerably in the intervening period. at the time of the voting rights act, blacks were systematically kept from voting or even registering throughout southern states, which still for the most part states that were covered at least as of 2013 when the court decided the shelby county case. so what was the voting rights act doing and what wasn't it doing? there has been in recent years a lot of discussion in the united states of vote suppression. practices that make it more difficult for citizens, especially racial minorities and poor people to vote. voter id, which you'll be hearing about in next hour's panel is the most prominent subject of criticism by those who claim voter suppression. but there are other practices such as registration rules, limits on absentee voting, also criticized with instances of suppression. perception preclearance of the voting rights act were an effective tool in the vote suppression practices. the reality, however, was they were quite rarely used to stop those practices. where the provisions of the voting rights act were most often used were with respect to vote dilution at the local level. so for example, new lines were drawn with city council elections in the united states, state and local legislative bodies generally have responsibility for not only running elections but for drawing the district lines for which people were elected office. allegations were made these lines dilute the strength of minority votes. the preclearance provisions brendan discussed were mostly used and, in my view, most effective with respect to these local practices, at large elections, redistricting and so on. that's what was really lost by the supreme court's decision in shelby county. i'm not especially interested in relitigating that decision here. i disagree with the court's decision. i tend to think places that had problems 50 years ago are still the places with the worst problems of race discrimination today. that said, these issues that i've discussed, and i presume we'll discuss further in this panel, making it more difficult to vote and have one's vote counted, these are national issu issues. at some point i would like to see united states congress take action to establish a baseline of rules for registration, identification, and early voting so that the many people who move across state lines in the united states know what the rules will be for voting when they move. as it stands now, if you move across state lines, you may face entirely different rules regarding registration, when you can vote, and so on. we have, in my opinion, a lot to learn from the rest of the world in the way we run elections including voting rights in the united states. >> i think adding to that list of federal issues, the way people interact with voting, what's the machine, type of voting that takes place so its consistent. some machines are more accurate than others. also a huge issue in the united states is absentee voting. a lot of litigation comes up about absentee voting and that's different for each jurisdiction i think now we can turn to what happened after shelby county and what's happened since then. >> sure. so basically there was a call almost immediately to update the coverage formula, which is what was struck down in the supreme court decision in shelby cannot. it took a bit for a draft bill to come out and eventually one did. so i was asked to think a little about what are the options for updating it if there was a desire to do so and kind of what's the situation if they don't do that. i think i'll start with the latter question. section 5, as i mentioned in the beginning, only one roigs of the voting act. section 2 is nationwide and does address dilutive principles and practices the director was speaking about. in fact, mainly used for those purposes. the trouble -- the unique feature of section 5 was it stopped things in its tracks before a practice took place whereas section 2 comes after the fact. that was actually what was although as opposed to the ability to practice. there is targeting practices in section 2 of the voting rights act. there's also section 3 of the voting rights act called bail in which creates a situation where jurisdiction found it violated u.s. constitution in terms of voting rights, that jurisdiction westbound brought bought type of preclearance section 5 used to have as a default rule in certain areas of the country. that is responsive to ongoing constitutional violations. that less than current in jurisdictions. constitution itself. bring an action against the state, local jurisdiction based on a violation of folks' constitutional rights. all these things still exist. the one thing that does not exist is the prior restraint, the thing that stops the practices before they start. so to my mind, what's going to need to happen, folks are going to have to think long and hard about is that prior restraint something that has to come back are are claims and causes of actions on the book dealing with voting violations that exist today. there are things that go on across the country and nobody will deny it, i think, that violate the united states constitution. that's the question, in my mind, is whether that's going to be necessary. to my mind the draft bill released i don't think appropriately addressed that particular concern. i think it was more of a move to do something quickly as opposed to trying to strike the right balance. in that respect modification of the section 3 bail in that would respond to not constitutional violations but other types of violations. in my mind in reading the supreme court's decision, this is just an outside observer -- well, i wasn't an outside observer, reading supreme court decision which i had no particular insight any more than anyone else, i don't think that kind of bail in would be constitutionally sufficient. i think a coverage formula of the type that's not going to respond to constitutional violations but respond to other types of violations or statutory violations is probably not going to pass muster either. those are things we need to think about. i'm not in charge of these things but kind of observing from the outside. to my mind if congress was going to go this route, it would be subject to challenge again and would have a reasonable chance of succeeding. those are my views on kind of the landscape where section 5 stands after shelby county decision. >> i don't know if we have specific discussions about states. >> sure. >> let me actually talk about two things first legislative picture at the federal level brendan addressed and secondly what's gone on in the courts. the bottom line, in terms of what our congress is likely to do is nothing. we have enormous party polarization and stalemate. there has been a bill proposed with mostly democratic support, which, as brendan mentioned, would create a new coverage formula and would require disclosure of the impact of voting changes. there are some features of this bill i really like. others about which i'm less enthusiastic. but the bottom line is in this very divided congress it's not going anywhere, nor is any voting rights bill going anywhere. as i mentioned earlier, i'd love to see a bill that imposed greater standards at the federal level over all these issues and might resolve some of the contentious debates we've had in recent years. since 2000 over voting. but that's not likely to happen any time soon. so as is frequently the case, where these controversies wind up being ultimately resolved is in the courts. we've seen significant increase in litigation over voting rules in recent years since 2000 election, which first brought these matters into court. and some of the restrictions that i mentioned earlier, voter identification, limits on where and how you can register to vote, restrictions on absentee and early voting, rules regarding provisional ballots, voting technology. all of these practices have been challenged in court. in my state alone, every single one of these practices i mentioned have been challenged. this is to be expected. when you have partisan legislative bodies making the rules for elections, when you have partisan elected officials for the most part running elections, questions about this conflict of interest that i mentioned earlier are inevitably going to arise. and in our system, the institution that is most insulated from partisan politics is the court. so in my view, it's quite appropriate that the courts be the arbiters of these disputes regarding the fairness of election rules and whether or not there really is a level playing field as chad mentioned. we've seen litigation very recently over election rules. four cases are especially notable. a case in my state, ohio, regarding restrictions on early voting as well as same day registration. a case in north carolina involving a law enacted right after shelby county that imposed variety of restrictions on voting including early voting, same day registration imposing a voter id requirement. and lawsuits in two more states, wisconsin and texas, both involving voter identification rules. the lower court have not come out the same way on all these cases. they are percolating through the lower court system. it remains to be seen exactly what the supreme court will do. the supreme court actually issued or got involved. it did not issue an opinion on the merits in any of those cases. i tend to think its involvement had more to do with its concerns about court orders issued very close to the election than it did on what exactly the court thinks on the merits of these cases. at some point i suspect these issues are likely to come back before the united states supreme court. possibly very soon. >> on any states in particular? >> sure. particularly in the context of section 5 since that's what we're here to talk about. it's important to point out the states just mentioned, north carolina zoned by voting acts, 40 of the 100 counties in north carolina were covered. the rest of the country and state of wisconsin. particularly in light of the fact supreme court ruled on coverage formula, this is a good illustration of some of the issues with the coverage formula as it existed at a time when reauthorization in 2006 and the time it was struck down. we're seeing a lot of hot button fundamental voting rights cases coming out of cases like ohio and like wisconsin. i think anybody could agree they are just as likely to come out of those areas of the country as anywhere else. we could debate whether coverage should properly have covered original areas today as well. i think everybody would agree the state of ohio in the last three to five years has been as likely a place as anywhere else to have a big decision come out on fundamental voting rights. it pertain to early voting in the last couple of elections but same day registration. there's other things as well. wisconsin has been in the news as well for voter id. in terms of the coverage formula, i think that's actually instructive. what we've seen before, during and after kind of the timeframe of when the shelby county decision came out from the supreme court is that we're not seeing this isolated problem in certain areas of the country. we're seeing problems come out of other areas as well. >> if i could just respond, i really almost entirely agree with what brendan just said. and i do think this goes to a common miss perception about the shelby county case. the perception is that we've seen this massive wave of voting restrictions since shelby county. there's really one state where you could say voting restrictions were adopted as a correct response to shelby county in my view. north carolina. whose state legislature enacted this bill i mentioned a few moments ago. the fact if we're going to be honest about this, in 2010, republicans did very well in elections across the done so that in 2011 we had a lot of republican governors and republican dominated state legislatures. and in this country, racial minorities, particularly african-americans and latinos vote overwhelmingly democratic. so the allegation and the perception at least among many democrats is that republican legislatures have adopted these rules in order to make it more difficult for democratic leaning people to vote. that's at least the perception. it was really the turnover of state legislatures in 2010 that triggered this wave of voting restrictions rather than shelby county. it is certainly a national issue, voting rights, which is why i in the end like to see a national voting rights act, a voting rights act for this century. i prefer that to the geographically limited coverage formula that we had under the old voting rights act. >> in this conversation i think it's interesting to know the coverage formula from section 4 determined which states that the civil rights act really applied to in regards to preclearance of the election law. section 5 was what allowed the federal government to look at those laws. there's still section 2 in the civil rights act that allows the federal government to prosecute individual cases when they find something that runs counter to the constitution or voting rights act. i don't know if either one of you, to put you on the spot, if you think about how turning to section 2, if it's still an effective tool, yes or no. i think the reason why it's interesting, that's more the way you all would prosecute something, an individual action of an individual person or party, which is still available under section 2. >> since brendan responded to this earlier, why don't i take the first crack at this question. it's a very important one. section 2 of the voting rights act prohibits election practices that result in the denial or abridgement of the vote on account of race. it's mostly been used in vote dilution in the past, challenging the way legislative districts are drawn on the ground they weaken the collective voting strength of a racial minority group. the important difference between a section 2 case and the old regime under section 5, as brendan pointed out, plaintiffs have the burden in section 2. they have the burden of showing a strim tore result. and these cases, can be extremely expensive to litigate for both sides. so there are differences in the legal standard as well. i don't know if we need to get into those here to understand what was really lost by the shelby county decision. so what was lost, i think, is the ability to check voting practices at the local level that are never going to be the subject of the lawsuit. some local school board adopts new legislative districts or at least a little to weaken minority votes. the justice department under our old system had responsibility for reviewing all those changes and either granting preclearance, denying preclearance, or as it did in many cases requesting more information. so i think that the preclearance requirement of section 5 was a pretty effective check on minority vote dilution in these places. it did impose some burdens on state and local government. i wouldn't deny that. but they were modest burdens certainly in comparison to the burden of actually marshalling expert evidence necessary to bring or to defend against a voting rights lawsuit. so i do think something important was lost by the elimination effectively of preclearance. brendan and i may disagree on that point. i do think we agree that that's for better or for worse the main work that the section 5 preclearance requirement was doing before shelby county. >> i think what's interesting is the burden of proof almost always is on the. >> in an election case. i think in most of the countries we work around the world, the person filing the complaint has to prove the claim by the standard of evidence. as we've all known, how does that. >> get access to the evidence they they'd to prove their case. and in an election situation the time line can be so short, it can be really difficult to gather that evidence. so there's an interesting election issue here in regards to how a. >> can actually prove their case and move it to the next level. as a litigator, brendan, i wonder how long did it take to bring shelby county litigation. you didn't have 48 hours. >> we did not have 48 hours. it was a facial challenge to the act. this was not a challenge to a practice in shelby county, which is what you would find if someone were challenging a new voting restriction. this was brought by the county against the attorney general. so the goal was to declare section 4b or section 5 unconstitutional. we filed the complaint in 2010, april 2010. it was decided in june of last year, 2013. that took us three years. it was expensive. section 2 cases are more expensive. they are very fact intensive. the professor is absolutely right about that. as chad also pointed out, that's the norm in our legal system and many systems, the. >> has to prove their case. when we were looking at section 5, not only prior restraint on the change in practice, also it put the burden of proof on the jurisdiction to prove it wasn't discriminatory, to prove it was a huge change. i would argue as difficult if not more difficult than a. >> having to prove their case kind of after the fact. proofing you're not discriminating is difficult. you can do it with statistics, testimony from legislators, do it by taking a results oriented approach. but in the end if you don't prove your case, you can't change your law. actually, a representative of the state of florida in a preclearance case had to do with early voting and some other changes a couple of years ago. that burden of proof was a huge issue in trying to convince the court that the change should be precleared. there was a cutback in early voting hours. early voting days. the same number of hours ended up being provided. the question was, okay, does this discriminate or does it not discriminate. there are a lot of different ways to prove that. as a jurisdiction having to prove a negative was very difficult. someone said it was intentionally set up that way. i think that would have been a particular instance in which addressing it after the fact would actually have shed more light. we would have probably ended up in a better place than having to address that before the thing went into effect. >> thank you. we want to get to a point where we can have questions from the audience. we'll turn to that now. i would like to say, the discussion is interesting, because as we discussed, the voting rights enshrined are defined by the courts. bush v. gore from 2000 pushed a lot of issues to the forefront. it's interesting to see where we've come. are we better, are we worse? i don't know. one thing to consider election administrators. a lot of machines or reform that took place, voting machines are now 14 years old. so what's going to happen. you'll see this when you do out and look -- when you go into observation. you'll see old machines, different machines. it's very interesting. it is unique, i think, that the courts are trying to be the referee when there's all these different jurisdictions, which is a different role than what you all are used to. with that i want to thank the panel for their remarks and open up the floor to questions. [ inaudible ] >> section 5 and section 4, what changes in the law by way of section 5 and section 4. legislation of section 4 and 5. kindly tell us what is the language and what is the substance? what is the motive of section 4 and 5. >> i'll try to repeat the question. for future questions, if you could just identify who you are so we all know who is asking the question, i'd appreciate it. the question is what's the specific language of sections 4 and 5 and how has litigation changed that? >> a bunch of things pertaining to literacy tess, not jermaine to this. section 4 basically created a formula whereby jurisdictions singled out would be subject to additional restraints. section 4 said any jurisdiction voter turnout was below a certain threshold in particular elections, 1964, '68 and eventually 1972 would fall within the formula. that's generally the way that it worked. so what that did was you would have an agency of the united states government go and take a look at the statistics and say these particular jurisdictions fall within what congress said the formula would cover." section 5 was one of the things that happens virtue of falling in that formula. there's a couple of others. section 4 was targeted just at who was going to be targeted for those consequences. section 5 is the provision that created the restraint on changes in election procedures and said you local jurisdictions, if you're covered you can't change anything until we say so. and set out criteria for whether changes should be made or not. >> i think section 4, maybe we can discuss it further, it was based on historical practice, who historically had discriminated. once you met that equation, then the other sections applied to you. that's what was kicked out. >> to sum up, section 5 required certain states to obtain advanced permission from the federal government before changing their voting rules. section 4 prescribed which states had to go through this process. and originally when the voting rights act was enacted in 1965, it was exclusively southern states. those were the states with the worst problems when it came to the disenfranchisement of african-americans, like mississippi, alabama, south carolina, georgia. they had the lowest rates of african-american registration and participation. so the formula was designed to capture the states with the worst problems of voting discrimination in 1965. >> great. yes? >> thank you. from indonesia. you say election in the u.s. is decentralized, means every state has their own regulations. so if some voters live in virginia, at the voting day they must travel to california. my question is first, do they allow to use their right to vote at the voting day going to the polling station. and if they are allowed, what kind of valid paper do they have to punch? is it virginia valid paper or california valid paper. thank you. >> great. thank you for the question. the question is if someone travels to another tate during lec day, can they vote at the other state. and if so, what kind of provisional ballot would they use or what not. so if someone is going to take r example on vacation or a business trip from virginia to california, they're still residents of the state of virginia, they're citizens of that state under our constitution and therefore would have to vote a virginia ballot, the states in which they reside, which is going to be very different than the ballot than someone in california would see. so if you're going to be away from your jurisdiction on ele electielec election day, what you would typically do if you want to vote is cast an absentee ballot before the election. every state allows people to request an absentee ballot that is typically sent through the mail and returned through the mail so that is how you would vote if you were someone from virginia who was going on a trip to california and was therefore going to be away from your home on election day. >> and i want to add to that, that in a lot of the litigation now, if there are recounts or challenges to an election in the united states, many times the question of absentee ballots and if they're legitimate voters and whatnot, this is where a lot of the litigation happens is looking at these absentee ballots, as you can imagine. any others? yes? >> i am the electoral board member in calhoun. we conduct democratic elections since 1960. but up to present, we are facing general contestation of elections. candidates who didn't get the elected voters like they were expecting, will demand the whole process to be nullified. so we have a lot of process at the supreme court of our country. government and the electoral body developed important investment. we have a biometric system, we try to decentralize our system both for local elections, senate elections, house of representatives elections. but the regulation is uniform because we have a united country, not a federal country. not a federal -- a federal level, state level, our country is a democratic one. but my question is this, how does the american system build the confidence of voters on one side and the political parties and their candidates on the other side? because you describe many, many, many differences between states of the american federation, despite these differences, the general impression we have from outside and when we came, we watch at the tv, is that the american people have confidence in their electoral system. how does this system do to build such huge confidence? >> the question is, how is there such trust in the u.s. system when it's so diversified, u how do the courts and the election administration participate together to build trust, both of the candidates and the voters? i hope i have that right. and i'll just -- i'll turn this over to the panel, but very quickly, the largest way to increase trust is to win by a large margin. the courts, the legal system also is diversified. so the courts play a huge role. but with that, maybe we can turn it over. >> i mean honestly, it's a long history of doing the right thing. we have got a couple hundred years of history here of folks respecting the rule of law and knowing who the final authority is on whatever the particular question is at hand and respecting that and abiding by it. you don't have -- if a court decision comes down after electing bush and gore, you might have a lot of the complaints about the results. you don't have any way of defining it, for instance. so i think that's the most important aspect of, you know, instilling confidence in our elections is even if you disagree with the result, the state of mind here is that people approach these questions in good faith and that things work themselves out in the end. so we don't presume bad faith on people's parts in this country generally when it comes to these things. when you see anomalies, you first assume it's a mistake and only later deal with the convince consequences if it's not. how did we develop that? it's an excellent question, but all i can say is that we have an excellent history of presuming good faith and abiding by the final decision makers about whatever question is at hand. >> there has not always been such great confidence in the integrity of the u.s. eelection system. you go back 100 years, boy, we had a lot of problems in our system. ballot stuffing, practices like this, these were not uncommon around that area, late 19th, early 20th century. sometimes later in certain places, most notoriously, chicago. even if you go back a little over a decade, there was actually a survesurvey, a cross national survey that was conducted after the 2000 election by found that among democratic countries, the level of confidence among u.s. voters in the integrity of the previous election was extremely low. i mean, you know, on par with, i don't want to single out any country. but countries that are not considered democratic at all. i do think that confidence in our election system has rebounded considerably since then, it's partly history, let me suggest it is also, i think, at least in part, the fact that there's at least some division of authority which chad referred to. yes, we have partisan state officials, but this decentralization, right, while it has disadvantages, has an advantage as well, it makes it more difficult for any one party to capture elections, say, in all of our 88 could have beens in my sta-- counties in my stat ohio. we also have divided authority that courts, state courts and federal courts are looking over the shoulders of legislatures and election officials, to my view, this is a very salutary thing, courts that are acting as a sort of backstop, stopping partisan manipulation, at least where it goes too far. >> great, thank you very much for that. this is going to be the time to conclude the panel. thank you very much for your attention. i think this is a unique panel in that it really does illustrate how diversion our just jurisdictions are and how this country has tried to deal with the different issues in our electoral processes. so thank you very much for your time. i also have some quick housekeeping to do. i want to say that the first breakout session which is voter id, starts at 11:00 and it will be in the dupont ballroom which is on the second floor. the second one is on measuring public opinion, that's also at 11:00. that's in rooms 3016 and 3017 on the third floor. and also what is trending in local media elections. that starts at 1:30. and the breakout session also at 1:30 is the county debates in political discourse. again in the ballroom on the second floor. with that, thank you very much for your time and please join me in thanking our panelists. >> here's what's ahead tonight on cspan 3, next a discussion on political correctness in higher education, then from the national press club, a look at vaccines and disease outbreaks. she also talked about freedom of speech, the speakers who either decline to attend, are disinv e disinvited from graduation ceremony office student protest. this is an hour. good afternoon, and welcome to the city club of cleveland. my name is paul harrison. i'm pleased to introduce today's speaker, president and co-founder of the american council of trustees and alumni. as stated on its website, acta is -- >> on academic freedom, the website states that the ideas of academic freedom and free speech are at the core of academic speech. and freedom in research is essential to the advancement of truth. today's forum offers a wonderful opportunity to juxtapose freedom of speech and academic freedom and just a moment to reflect on our 102-year history at the city club of cleveland. we proudly refer to the city club as -- in 1923, the city club invited famous labor leader, socialist and perennial presidential candidate eugene deps to speak and he accepted. asking mr. depps to speak, caused -- ultimately mr. depps determined to decline the invitation and he wrote that he was feeling disinclined to intrude whether there's any question of my being welcome in a forum devoted to free speech, end quote. in may, former secretary of state condoleezza rice declined an invitation to give the commencement address at rutgers following student and faculty protests over the bush administration's war in iraq and the use of waterboarding to obtain to detainees. ms. rise referred to her 30 years as a professor and also to her service as provost and chief academic officer at stanford university, and stated that, quote, i am honored to have serve mid country, i have defended america's right to free speech. that also led -- smith college sand haberford college. in the haberford case the school chance leer issued a statement, quote, though we may not always agree with those in leadership, i believe that it's essential for us as members of an academic community to reaffirm our commitment to a respectful and mindful process through which we seek to learn through inquiry and intellectual engagement, end quote. amend that brings us to ms. neil s she has appeared frequently on radio and television. cnn, fox, npr and others. she twice was appointed to the national advisory committee on institutional quality and integrity which advises the u.s. secretary of education on federal accreditation. she earned her junked graduate degree. and she practiced law in private practice as a first amendment and communications lawyer, so she's done a lot of stuff. i'm pleased to present on behalf of the city club of cleveland and american college of trustees and alumni. >> really, i must say i like any organization that begins free speech with a gong. as i did my research on the city club, i really was so impressed and amazed to see a begone of free exchange. zbich your past history and given your principles i don't really think i need to make a statement at all, but i will in any event. i want to start the day by going back to imperial rome. laughing at the wrong joke could cost a man his life during the reign of corrupt and crazy -- let's scroll back to the year 65 or thereabouts, upon making a gastrointestinal noise, let's call it farting. the reaction was something that only monte python could imagine and yet it actually happened. romans scrambled, put on their togas and get out of the potty, les a tattling informer find them smiling and charge them with treason. hilarious, except the executions and forced suicides were not. nowadays, inappropriate laughter may not be a problem in public latrines, but any number of politically incorrect observations can bring blacklisting, disinvitations and other punishments on our college campuses, campus sensitivities are on high alert and the topics that are potentially offensive and increasingly offlimits are growing. you have heard the term disinvitation season. this is part of that phenomenon. choosing a campus speaker used to be about hearing a distinguished person, often someone who had taken a controversial stance. but on the politically correct campus, many students and faculty now are more interested in hearing a challenging perspective than what they are in what t"the huffington post" called freedom from unpalatable speech former secretary secretary of state condoleezza rice had to bow out after she -- human rights honoree to speak and then rescinded the invitation over student protest. there was a specific university invited charles murray to give a talk, in this case not a commence fbment address and then backed out because murray and iminnocent american social scientist was too controversial. christine lagarde, first female head of the international monetary funding, was invited to speak to the graduating class of smith, only to back out after students protested her support of imperialist and patriarchal regimes. on the pc campus, shouting down a controversial voice is not necessarily seen as an evil, but a virtue, a small group of closed mind eed students an s faculty is all that is nedded to cut off discussions that their view, is the only view, the correct view. for those who believe our colleges and universities have an obligation to foster a robust exchange of ideas in the pursuit of truth. it wasn't always this way. back in december 1820, as he founded the university of virginia, thomas jefferson laid out the foundation of academic freedom. the university will be based on the eliminatable freedom of the human mind, he wrote. for here we are not afraid to follow truth no matter where it may lead. again in 1859, jon stewart mill outlined the matter elkwechbtly. the peculiar evil of silencing the expressing of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation, those who desent from the opinion still more than those who hold it. if the opinion is right, they -- if wronged, they lose what is almost as great a benefit. the clear perception and lively impression of truth in come collusion with -- in 1915, the american association of university professors issued it's seminole declaration of principles as defining academic freedom as a two-way street, fact k students fleem to learn and faculty's -- to train them to think for themselves and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently. now for many years, there was fairly uniform agreement among academics, but nothing is more central to the light of the mind than the robust exchange of ideas. over the last 50 years, the concept of academic freedom has been under attack and attack from within. in its place has been an academic regime that is regularly put sensitivities and civility first and free speech second. the notions of truth and objecttivity, the very conditions that junked score the academic freedom definition of thomas jefferson are regularly regarded today as antiquated and an obstacle to change. today it is the notion that certain areas of life and thought have only one acceptable point of view. in other words, there is no need to search for truth, because the institution has already determine what the truth is. political correctness has provided the empet tus for all too many university administrations to punish students and evening faculty members for expressing certain offensive thoughts often touching race, gender, sexual or gener gender or generalation. -find himself ridiculed or even sentenced to sensitivity training or worse. the p.c. mentality is alive and well. what we see as i will outline in just the next few minutes is the weakening of the core curriculum, the disappearance of academic disciplines and perspectives, the emerge negligence of speech codes and trigger warnings. it shortchanges students for the future and ultimately i would submit to undermine our competitors. let's start with college curriculum, at one time faculty sachkd administrators had the courage to define what is great and what is important for students to be able to know and do. students could make some choices, but they started with a largely prescribed liberal arts curriculum leading to a major that would equip them to partation in the common conversation of well-educated people. not today, a major like english today is not so much about important writers, genres and works, shakespeare, milton, chawser are no longer -- underrepresented cultures and ethnic or nonwestern literature are. advocacy, therapy and sensitivity training regularly supplant regular -- all of which are quite fine courses, but the question is should this be a student's only exposure. so for starters we'll look at union college. students there can substitute such courses as narratives of haunting in u.s. ethnic literature for foreign language study. at wellesley, rainbow cowboys and girls, classic sexuality in westerns will satisfy the language and literature requirement. at uc boulder, the u.s. context requirement may be satisfied by foreign films. where the u.s. culture and civilization requirement can be met withmental illness in the media. takes jechder, power and pop culture, devoeding buffy the vampire slayer. my organization looks forward to doing a special column on halloween on these courses. while most contempt on the pc campus is peaceful. sensibilities are not. at ohio state, is desooichbed to sensitize student toss issues facing asian americans. a lab of her own at the university of colorado, colorado springs, satisfies the natural -- science and mathematics, with an emphasis on women's contributations to these fields. this course will also offer a feminist critique of the traditional methods of science. and let me remind you that is in place or in favor of the national science requirement. at college today, one cannot assume that learning is for learning's sake either, education is often directed -- to promote a political agenda. if you enroll in the social justice minor program at the university of minnesota and register for the color of public policy, the profess sorry has already reached a conclusion for you, advisie ining students in catalog that they will be introduced to the trouble churl and institutional conditions through which people of color have been systematically marginalized. to obtain credit, a student must also engage in 30 hours of social justice organizations. i think we can all agree that in years past, our college curricula have too often marginalized minority groups and provided a portrait that failed to outline the complex story that is our past. in the rush to expand that story, much of the old story has been left out, leaving students and citizens with only part of that sweeping narrative and one pack with a tightly controlled political agenda. the survey conducted by the american council of trustees annually of more than 1,000 liberal arts colleges around the country, finds that a mere 18% expect their graduates to take place in american history or government before graduating, a mere 13% require knowledge of foreign languages. . >> for as little as 200,000 today, our colleges are asking students to construct their own curriculum. given the state of affairs, the alumni asks the survey organizations to assess recent college graduates feelings about their education. >> faced with the challenge of finding a job. recent college graduates in large numbers, 70%, the absence of a strong core curriculum and exposure to a broad base of foundational sublgts. as one student recounted, i took a lot of courses, i just wish they had amounted to something. and even more pernicious by product of the p.c. campus is the disappearance of academic disprins and perspectives. casey johnson is a terrific professor at a public college. co-authored the book until proven innocent. casey stud yayed the challenge of disciplinary diversity caused by mail correctness. in the last generation, he writes, with accelerating speed, the percentage of professors trained in areas offist history, some would deem as traditional hoz plumm has perm frat -- the result is that even students who want to encounter courses thought by those trained in u.s. political, diplomatic constitutional or military history are often unable to do so. but aim happy to say that students who go to ohio state are exceptional in there regard because osu has remained very diverse in its history. no more than harvard president larry summers has acknowledged this problem. stating that the threat is overreaching legislation in trustees than it is in the faculty orthodoxies that make it very difficult for scholars to hold certain views to advance in certain fields. pro israel scholars find a home in mideastern studying and american historians whose scholarship celebrates american past too often find themselves as pariahs in their field. nowhere is it more found than when it comes to campus speech codes and tribunals that enforce them. each year the foundation of individual rights and education issues a spot in free speech. >> now these policies as one might imagine, gag orders on censure ship policies, at sea world, the speech comes with benign themes. respect and civility. policies governing speakers --. s case western, kenyon, overland, shawnee state. the university of cincinnati, university of toledo. the code begins with a statement sexual harassment. but for you lawyers in the room, the succeeding definition is broad and the distinction between harassment and free speech, is anything but clear. prohibited sexual harassment improved. little did we realize in those days that an awkward date was called for litigation. regularly and fully report sexual assaults including sexual harassment. are now at risk of rape and harassment. the tribunal speech does not have to acquire rules of due process. the age of niro. so let's go back to the -- originalably used for the mentally ill to help prevent traumatic stress disorder. triggering now the latest rage on college campuses. recently passed a resolution urging university officials to institute mangdory trigger warnings on class syllabi. professors who oftened content that may friger the onset of post traumatic stress disorder, would be required not only to provide advanced alerts, if it upsets you can avoid the subject rather than facing it. in this world, sensitivity and civility are deemed equal to or in fact superior to academic freedom. a point recently made by the chancellor of uc berkeley to allow disapproval. but in the words of scholar steve woodward, if we make the fostering of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civility or mutual respect, primary and dominant value, then we risk sacrificing the university's central purpose. when i was first approached to give this talk, we explored a number of titles, including political correctness and it's impact on american competitiveness. in an important way, i think this title understands that what happens on college campuses does not stay on college campuses. first amendment scholar outlines the problem. administrators on campus, he writes, have been able to convince well meaning students to accept outright sensorship by creating the impression that freedom of speech is somehow the enemy of social progress. when students begin leaving college with that lesson under their belts, it was only a matter of time until their motivation of bad intellectual habits on campus, started harming the dialogue of our entire country. what happens on our campuses profoundly influences what happens in our businesses, in our hometowns and in our policy making. and i think woe should be concerned. when students are not empowered to speak for themselves, when they're not presented the multiple perspectives and disciplines, when we are led to believe they can can be free fr all of us are being de3r50i6ed of thoughtful -- you'll understand what i mean. they don't blame political correctness exactly. but they do say in large numbers, that they are seeing colleges graduates who cannot think critically, write clearly and who are historically illiterate. the last two surveys of college graduates conducted by the department of education, held a majority were unable to compare perspectives in two editorials. recent surveys conducted for the american council of trustees and alumni found that college graduates could not identify the terms of members of congress. they did not know that the constitution provides for the separation of powers. they thought that d-day occurred at pearl what are ambassador. -- harbor. it is true and we can all agree that knowledge is more than wrote learning, but when courses don't provide a broad squeweep history, when speech suggests that free speech must take a back seat to sense at this times, we should not then be surprised that our college graduates are not always prepared for life after graduation. and indeed choose to impose the same principles and the same constraints that they learned on the college campus. where does social hygiene end and personal liberty and privacy begin? in research now under way, sociologist april kelly weez nevweezner tells me that she has found an increase in people graduating after college, she has found that students are accepting speech limitations and speech codes more so than in the past, including banning certain books and controversial people from teaching went have taught this generation, she wrote me in an e-mail that protecting people's feelings is more important than the search for truth. and while speech codes and other symptoms of the politically correct university, to protect students from harmful speech, students today do not discriminate, believing that anyone who says something offensive to anyone should be restricted. in the wake of uc irvine's student effort to present the israeli ambassador to the u.s. from speaking, former assistant -- what he believed had happened, and i quote, they believed th ed thad that consti rights were nor marginalized groups not for themselves. these students took it upon themselves to define the privileged, they found that jews were among the privileged. no need to protect the free speech of jews. every reason to silence them. in a book entitled freedom from speech, and i urge it for all of you, the national obsession with punishing jokes, rants, drunken tirades and even deeply held beliefs, he writes, shows a growing hostility toward free speech as a cultural value. people all over the globe are coming to expect emotional and intellectual comfort as though it were a right. on the p.c. campus, respect for the authority of ideas takes a back seat too often to the idea of authority. now i'm happy to report after all of this, that the american council of trustees and alumni is not at all glum. in late august, a group of policymakers, truce tees, factuality and others, came together to demand a different academic culture, in the report, governance for a new era, formed by ben o. schmidt was -- former governor of michigan and now president of business round table, jonathan cole, provost of columbia is bold and to the point. the signatures call upon colleges and universities to put an end to disinvitation, to insist on disciplinary dpi versity, so ensure a strong core curriculum, and to demand the integrity of the hiring process. they call on college and university leaders to make clear that a diversity of opinion is essential and that the free exchange of ideas is the bedrock of a rich education, they urge presidents, deengs and faculty to address entering students on academic freedom and freedom of expression and we have already seen this happen in a powerful welcoming speech by the -- these leaders state boldly and i hope you will agree, that american universities must return to first principles. they recognize the predominance of political correctness of our campuses amounts to nothing short of a war on youth, endangering the empowerment of our next generation of leader, they recognize that american higher education has been long been the envy of the world and will continue to be only if true econom academic value is free. >> we turn to our panel momentarily for a traditional city club question and answer period. please start formulating your question now and please try to keep them brief and to the point. we welcome all of you. television broadcasts of city club are made possible by cleveland state university and pnc on our live webcast and supported by the university of akron. one week from today, on october 10, city club welcomes steven vetters, ceo of the press clubs of america. today we welcome guests at the table also by western reserve partners, we thank you very much for your support and we also welcome students from two high schools, sharden high school and maple heights high school. student participation was made possible from general gifts from the corporation. please stand up and be recognized. i'm sure you're starting to formulate your questions right now. and speaking of which, we would like to return now to our speaker for our traditional question and answer period. we welcome this from everyone here today, including guests, holding the microphones today, are marketing an outreach specialist, kristen bianca and ted teddy isenberg. >> ms. neil, thank you for your remarks. you describe an alarming situation. my question is, how did it come about? is it generated by students? is it generated by students influenced by facultfaculty, wh to be tenured and largely one political mindness? give us some clarification of this. >> we could go on for some time, couldn't we. i think there are a number of causes. we can look in the '60s when what is known as most modernism is things that is rel vafblt and it looks at issues in terms of power, and i think many of the post-60s faculty very much prescribe to that philosophy so that philosophy increasingly became part and parcel of what we have seen on college campuses. i think that is very much the case. i think there has been within the academic hiring process, often a tendency to hire one with whom everyone agrees, this one has come up frequently in the question of whether or not professors are all on one side of the political line. and the american council of trustees and alumni, frankly we have looked at this and i think it's fair to say that a number of studies would argue that in fact many faculty members are more of one persuasion than another. but our basic perception is that in an of itself is not important. what we get back to really is professional responsibility and professional rights. i think this gets back again to the academic freedom definition. when i told you in 1915, the aaup said that academic freedom was a two-way street. students freedom to learn and faculty's freedom to teach. one thing that has happened in the last 40 or 50 years is an increasing de-emphasis on students freedom to learn and an increasing emphasis by faculty on their rights to teach. and i think there's frankly a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the regular public, but actually the faculty themselves ask what are the limits and what are the frame work of academic freedom. so i think over the years we have seen a growing sense that academic freedom can be used as an excuse for irresponsible behavior in the classroom. faculty has a -- that committee was never realized and i think that has been one of the larger problems in the academy in so much as the faculty themselves have not been willing to police themselves. and that 1915 statement i think quite rightly says that we do not want to be policed and it is incumbent upon ourselves, it is incumbent upon us faculty to police ourselves because if we do not, other also surely do that for us. and i think that is a situation where we finding ourselves now, that many are concerned, rightly so on the outside, trustees, policymakers, that we are not seeing the students' freedom to learn and the faculty's freedom to teach and it is a defining moment and they hear very legitima legitimate complaints from the outside as to whether they're properly preparing-sew. >> before the anti-harassment policies came into effect, do you think there was a problem with harassment that needed to be responded to. and now that the situation has got on where you have described it, where do you find the middle ground, and what do trustees and alum alumni, not just your group, but trustees and alumni who may have a problem with these kinds of policies. >> there have to be distingsations made between things that are illegal and things that are not. i think with the definition of sexual harassment. these definitions have got on so broad that they are no longer getting at what is illegal, and they are actually including vast expanses of protective speech. you're right, we don't want to have a claej campus that is rude and that is engaging and intimidating. maybe rude, but we don't want a college campus that is engaged in intimidating, persistent intrusion with people. by there are -- but that is a level of persistence and intimidation that we're not finding as the line that is drawn by most institutions, i think in an effort to respond to a desire to treat people fairly and nicely, we have gone overboard and as a consequence now find ourselves in a situation where too many things are off limits. >> professor at kent state university, i deeply appreciate your comments. but i wonder if the priority of putting political correctness ahead of reasoned discourse is that our society, that instead of it being a cause, that it's a symptom of a broader thing that our society has lost its appreciation for the well reasoned dispassionate discourse of controversial ideas, in lieu of the entertainment value of discussion of controversial issues. jerry springer show and things like that. >> i actually do tend to point my finger at colleges and universities and i do think that they have perpetuated an atmosphere on the college campus which is not open, which is often not open to the free exchange of ideas, so that people who dare to have a different opinion, whether it's on race, class and gender, or climate change or whatever, more often than not silence themselves rather than to address these issues. so rather than complaining about entertainment, i think as we look at our public discourse, which has become increasingly sort of shouting rather than engaging, i regret to say they do think that we have led students on into believe that sensitivity and civility and not disagreeing is more important than having a robust exchange of ideas. and so, while the entertainment may play into that, i feel that we have to really point our finger at our academic institutions and that the health of our society depends profoundly on the health of our educational institutions and this is one pathology that we need to worry about. >> what influenced you to focus on political correctness and have you ever witnessed or experienced political correctness in your lifetime. >> well, i started out as a first amendment lawyer so i have always been interested in first amendment areas and quite frankly as you heard from the head of the organization, there have been any number of recent speeches where people have been shouted down and were not allowed to speak and so this is something that deeply concerns me because i think as i arct articulated whether it's thomas jefferson or others, the ability to hear differing perspectives can one can weigh them one side or the other is very, very important. it is just a bedrock principle of the first amendment. and i think we can look at grandice and others, what did he say? if eye have offensive speech, what's the best answer? more speech not les. i think it comes from my love of the first amendment, i was a journalist for a period of time, i grew up in a journalistic family. i think the exchange of ideas is essential. and most profoundly in the country in way we live, but our government relies on educated citizens it's something that our founding fathers were all very -- college and university trustees, they understood that our educational institutions war instrumental in obtaining an educated citizenship. >> ms. neil, in recent years, there's been a significant number of very large contributions to american universities coming from foreign governments and from individuals who have specific agendas. sometimes these gifts have resulted in chairs being named and departments of studies being established. to what extent do you think that these kind of contributions which are important to universities continue any kind of a problem for academic freedom. >> i think you put your finger on a very serious potential threat to academic freedom and i urge you all to take a look at a booklet that we have put out called free to teach, free to learn. one of the topic that is it talks about is the influence of foreign governments on college and university campuses. i know you all have probably read recently in "the wall street journal" talking about some of these confucius institutes about a fear that the governments were paying their way into college and university campuses to put out a particular vumt. i think colleges and universities have to be very, very careful before accepting those kinds of gifts. because again, the whole point of academic freedom is to follow truth wherever it may lead. and if a gift is so prescriptive that it means certain areas are off-limits, then it fundamentally undermines academic freedom. it raises another interesting issue as well. because we often help donors who would like to see certain areas of a field covered on a college campus. so for instance, if someone wants to introduce a free markets economic course and it's not otherwise available. we encourage donors to do that and we do it because sometimes students can not find otherwise on campus exposure to those areas. but it does raise even enough instances of the question of academic freedom that have to be looked at very closely. and it also underscores the institution's failure itself to provide that diversity of perspective that it needs. so it's self-correcting. the institutions, if they are open to a diverse or even disciplinary and other perspectives and make those vashl available, they will have railro already have done it on college campuses. >> ms. neil, you have a broader perspective on the topic i'm going to get into than most. so i ask you, what pattern, what emerging trend to do you see in the evisioned role of three hallowed parts of our education system, high school, college and post college stud yay, advanced study? on two metrics, one is protection of students, let's focus just on the students for a moment. protection of students from adverse things that might happen to them, and also on the metric of breadth of stud yay, broad swrrgs specialized andary owe. i see high school in a very special way, college in a different one, and advanced study different. but i would welcome your views. >> uh-huh. i think that you're right, i think in years past, and i think bloom talks about this, that you can rely on high school to provide a solid general foundation. with expose area to the foundational areas of knowledge, such as math and science and literature. and i think for better or for worse, that has not been the case. so the colleges and universities do finding themselves having to provide that foundation that some of our high schools have not been able to do. now as i indicated, what we're finding today is what i like to call the anything goes curriculum. and this gets back to the very first question, you had the influence of post modernism that affects a lot of things that were taught. but our colleges and universities have frankly been spinning. so the university did not have to pick and choose, they could keep adding, a at one point called it education by adding machine. so again, professors have things they want to teach, schools really didn't have any limits on their resources, so it was easier just to let teachers teach more and teach moore. so now what we have are often hundreds, even thousands of courses that will meet distribution requirements rather than a prescribed liberal arts education that ensures that foundation. why is that foundation perhaps even more important unanimous it was now? again, i think it was because you were getting so many students who come from very different preparations. and a general education curriculum that is well structured can help bring people from very differing preparations together over a certain set of common material. and this gets back into the yae earlier question, i think we worry these days about the range of civil discourse, and this t gets back to me again, for the lack of a common foundation. in thomas jefferson's day, obviously it was a little bit easier then, madison and jefferson, they were talking to each other, they could be sure that they knew what each other was talking about. they read the same things ai do colleges and universities are missing out on using the curriculum to provide that common conversation that can help us unite. it won't mean that we all agree, but we will have a foundation on which to have a discussion. i see these kids today who love to watch the voice and other shows and i love these shows -- and i love those shows, too. one of the reasons i they find them so enjoyable is that then becomes the common conversation that they have. instead of talking about a book that they're reading in common, they're talking about "the voice" or what they saw on television. so i do feel that we are at a time where we can help that common conversation and we can help our preparation for life and for community and for civic engagement if we go back to a much more structured curriculum that will ensure that we vaul that broad exposure and that will also, i think, make us much more nimble in an economy between the ages of 18 and 45, on average, someone will have 11 different professions. and so, having that foundation and having that breadth, i think, is what in our current economy we really need but regrettably we don't have. >> ms. neal, you've essentially made the argument for the small liberal arts president who says we need a basic liberal arts agenda for our students. my question is -- i have two questions. one is, can you give us some examples of colleges or universities that have kept the broad curriculum with standards and the other i would be interested in is people who have -- specifically programmed controversial. and the second part of the question is, are these positive examples more typical of the small liberal arts colleges, the larger public institutions and maybe nationally known institutions or maybe the group in between? you know, the regional colleges, the sort of mid-size like cleveland state here university. >> we did an assessment of a top-rated liberal arts college, according to "u.s. news and world report." the amhersts of this world, the williams. and i must confess to you that these are probably the worst when it comes to having a prescribed liberal arts curriculum. we often hear that people no longer appreciate liberal arts education and we often hear this from the campuses. but after we did this research to see what was the framework of the curriculum that was offered to these students, we came away with the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with liberal arts. that what was wrong was the way the colleges and universities were imparting the liberal arts. it was a self-inflicted wound where essentially, again, you could go to amherst, they pride themselves in saying we don't have anything that we require. we allow students to make their own curriculum. i'm not denying that the kids that go to amherst are those that -- highly selective institution, has many, many very smart students and i'm sure have been well prepared. but it's interesting to look at a new book, which again i commend everyone called "academically adrift" by richard and jaseppa put out by the university of chicago. what they found there is that after $200,000 of investment, students were graduating with very little cognitive gain. in the first two years they found that only 45% had had cognitive gain in the in the six years -- that's a whole different issue which we haven't gotten into, only a third showed cognitive gain. and within institutions was where they found greater variety. that is by way of saying, so you might be well prepared coming into amherst and can do fine, but there is great variation within these highly selective institutions so that some students are being allowed to graduate without that foundation and that fundamental strength that they need and should merit coming out of a very pricey liberal arts college. now, do i have some examples of some very good places? sowani is certainly a place that we've looked at and found to be quite impressive. they have not only been attentive to their tuition, but they do have a strong curriculum. in terms of others, there are a small liberal arts public college in oklahoma that has done a beautiful job in i think it's called the college of oklahoma arts and sciences. again, a very strong curriculum. blue field college in virginia, again, a very strong curriculum. so there are schools -- and, in fact, interestingly, there are schools now which are viewing this as a means to carve out a niche and a means to compete because they are then able to say, if you send your child to our institutions, you can be assured that that student will receive a strong core curriculum. now, this isn't to say that you can't get a good education at almost any institution. you can. you can. but you will have to do it yourself. and the american council of trustees alumni believes it really is incumbent on the adults who are in charge of these colleges and yuuniversiti to make the choices and judgments of what students needed to do. if they're not going to make those judgments thenky sit at home and i can take ♪ s and i can do the teaching company and i can teach myself and make my own judgments because frankly that's what i would have been doing at the college campus but i'll be $200,000 wealthier. this is what we're really calling upon. it's a hard job. it's a job that faculty don't like to undertake because all faculty are in fields that they love and each one of them feels that his or her field is the most important field. but, in fact, you can't teach everything in your four years and i think that it's important for institutions to have this debate. they won't all come out with the same answer, but they will have come together as a community to try to decide what they believe and graduate of their institution should know and be able to do. that way, the marketplace will also have a signifier. if you go to place, you have got thn kind of an education. the way it is today, it is so defuse where it is pick and choose on behalf of students. and an employer can't really know what that particu

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