She previously was obamas assistant to the president for science and innovation policy and coled the fcc transition between his and the bush administration. As an academic, she teaches courses about Climate Adaptation and leadership. Crawford is the of several books, including captive audience, the Telecom Industry and monopoly power in the gilded and fiber coming Tech Revolution and why america might miss it. Joining her tonight is randall kennedy, the Michael Klein professor of law at harvard law school. He received degrees from princeton, yale and Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and is a former clerk to Supreme CourtJustice Thurgood marshall. He is the author of race, crime and the law a winner of the Robert F Kennedy book award and the persistence of the color line, racial politics and the obama presidency, among others. Tonight will discuss susans new book charleston race. Water the coming storm, which Publishers Weekly that crawford persuasively links the precarious position of the citys black neighborhoods to the other legacies of slavery and racism, including schools and the lack of Affordable Housing for low and middle income families. While david goodrich, author of on freedom road, that this is an important and pressing present book, presenting a clear eyed view of the inevitable track of Sea Level Rise, and how it intersects with the prius, with the historic and present issues of race in charleston. And it is a powerful portrait of the coast, the cost of climate denial coming due. Please join me in welcoming. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. Its wonderful. Be here and i guess, first and foremost, i want to congratulate on your wonderful book. Thank you so. So lets start off by. Why dont you tell everybody what your book is about . Describe your book. Happy to do it. Well, first of all, thanks to the harvard bookstore. Love harvard bookstore. Thanks to all of you for coming. Students, friends and family. Im so happy to be with you. And also, a really special to randall kennedy. This is a very generous thing for professor kennedy to do, and im truly grateful. So theres a story here. Wanted to go down to charleston, interview mayor joe riley, whod been married for 40 years in charleston and was known as americas favorite mayor. He really changed the city over those decades. And i got ready for that interview by talking. A longtime essayist and, journalist named jack hitt and jack is a wonderful man. And jack said, ask him about the water. And said the water. So i go down to talk to mayor rileys a guy. Beautiful khaki suit, little bow tie, very charming. And i ask him about water and he clammed up. He didnt want to talk about it. All he would say, its going to be very expensive. So that started me on a quest that seemed like a question that needed be tracked down. And over the course of the next four years i came the following conclusion its confederate disneyland and its about to be seaworld. So not to be too glib. The tagline really does capture a lot about this place and as if i hope do you do you read the book youll see that ive done my best to center voices of black residents of and what its like to be them, what like to live there, try to pull in all the science about whats to happen to charleston and talk the message. The takeaway from the book we really should be planning at every level of government. Charleston isnt doing it. Theyre focused on 2050. They will look any farther than that. And our government has no plan. So thats the takeaway. And im hopeful that by the end of all my jabbering about the book, someone in the biden ministration will wake up and start planning. That. There was a rave review of your book yesterday in the times and among the compliments that the reviewer gave was the following. Crawford excels at writing political cowardice. What give . What are some examples of political cowardice that you know is helping to push charleston toward disaster . As you see it . Thats interesting. Well, charleston, like many places in america, is a place of denial and boosterism and a media, a little story that captures that real political cowardice in our cities, that there was a 120 foot tall statue, john calhoun looming the city for a long time when actually you got to read about john calhoun. Hes a very important figure in the history of our country. He really felt that slavery was a positive, good for country. Charleston was so of him. They renamed their major street street in his honor after his coffin was carried down the street. Anyway he he looks he looked to me, really, when i first saw that statue, just a totem, White Supremacy that he was ghastly, horrifying. Standing up. And the mayor, current mayor john glenn burke, had all the Legal Authority he needed to have that statue down. And there were lots of cries for that over decades, but only when he felt he had no at all did he have that statue taken down. Im not one for putting everything into symbols. But that was just cowardice. He could have decades ago. Also, as they look at the waters coming, i have learned that joe riley often talked to the engineers, the army corps of engineers in eighties and nineties who were warning about Sea Level Rise and really refused to talk about it in public and to do about anything about it in public for a long until almost the end of his time in office. So those are two small examples of political that tie together. What can he do and what some interventions that would be effective in turning the tide so speak. Well let me tell you whats going on in charleston. It flooded 89 times in 2019 and 70 times in 2022. It used to flood maybe four times a year when people like jack was a kid. Water rising very quickly. Look at the Washington Post yesterday. Big piece about that. Water is rising at twice as quickly as the rest of the global along the southeast and the gulf coast. In very short order, there will be three additional feet of sea level slopping up on charleston, which is unbelievably low. Most the land in right next to the city is at ten feet above sea level or, less so a high tide plus, maybe a little wind blows that water up, up the low country. So what could they do . They could be planning now to be very public about the risks facing. Everybody in this region and planning now to with other cities and in the area to be building places high and dry and places affordable, places for people to live in the future. Thats difficult for charleston as a region even to do because the incentives and all programs from the federal level down to the state level, on the local level are headed in exactly the other direction. Theyre all aimed at recovering from disaster, not planning ahead. But the first thing to do would be to acknowledge the risks and be very public about the need for federal assistance. Federal money to help rescue the citizens of this place, particularly lower income and black residents of charleston who cant afford on own to make what is going to be a grief transition to, another place. Lets intervention. Well went to visit my mom today at cadbury, where she is not very far from here. She just nightie and when you are at least 65 medicare pays for Hospice Services shes in hospice that involves a huge network of people that come and visit her do Different Things for her theres nurse theres a social worker theres a spiritual advisor. It just feels like all helping hands helping both my mom and our family through a period of very difficult transition. Well we could doing the same thing for coastal residents all around the country we could have a huge spray a very wellcoordinated wellplanned programs that would help in what is going to be a very painful transition over the next decades. It would take a lot of planning. The only country thats thinking about this right now is the netherlands. They are willing to say that its likely that theyll see 6 to 8 feet by 20, 100 and that their existing very expensive walls and other infrastructure wont make it to beyond 2050 or so. And that time not to waste money by planning ahead for people to germany. Thats the tagline for them. Lets move to germany. But but at least to not get in their own way by paying for very expensive infrastructure thats in the place that will create path dependencies that are painful. So at least we could be doing that, but they really stand alone in the world right now for doing that kind of planning. Oh, it shout out to my assistant caleb quinn, who is here, raise your hand, caleb. Who would double check that fact for me recently . So i talked him if if i got that wrong the subtitle of your book is race water and the coming storm. I want to focus on the first word in your subtitle so, you know, your book charleston race, water and the coming storm i want to race now in your remarks thus far race has come up and your book i mean its race consciousness is is very strong i mean from your title to your identification of various characters in the book and in your analysis a very strong emphasis on race question question why are you so race conscious in your analysis seems to me that you cannot talk about charleston in the south without talking about race and in particular, the role everything i teach is my students here know has something to do with whats government good for and its very clear that from the beginning, in lots of ways, government and the rule of law in this region has aimed at either keeping black residents in place or actively making it difficult for them to lead Thriving Lives. So that plays out over centuries, as youll see in the book. Lets just think a few just a few examples. South carolina was alone among the british colonies began with enslaved people from the beginning. Charlestons entire economy was on the backs of enslaved labor. Very, you know, maybe cheap for them to make a ton of money, cotton and indigo and other crops. The gold people who were freed after, the war and Promised Land theyd come from west africa have been enslaved in charleston and then the experts on rice and indigo thought that they would be owning land after the civil war. Well, in fact, the land was taken back from them. Reconstruction was destroyed, and now being further displaced by Economic Growth and development. Look at the city of charleston. Whipped slaves on behalf of their owners when the owners didnt the stomach to do it themselves and literally poured salt in their wounds. So the civil war began in charleston because. The secessionists found it more sympathetic place in charleston. They did in columbia. And the food was better food and hotels were better. Civil war. Joe. But which is true also. So race is entangled everywhere. And its also tied very tightly to the question infrastructure back to what is government good for sewage services, electricity, clean water reached black settlements, charleston or didnt reach them for a long. Places on the peninsula that were drained tended to be the white areas of the city. The city even brought in planters in the thirties to talk to them about where black areas should be very clearly designated on maps and white areas and systematically underfunded. The black areas in all kinds of ways and that these same patterns are playing out today when it comes to protection from Sea Level Rise so and our whole government this way frankly that because everythings done on a cost benefit analysis and the white areas tend be better off they get protection that black areas wont get. And so you know there are lots of ways that race plays an important role. And it struck me that what had been a majority black city as recently as the seventies, when riley came to be mayor, had flipped to be a tourist paradise. Thats the disneyland part. Theres 7 Million People who visit every year, mostly white people really enjoying the food and not thinking very hard about where the money came from or what the whole thing represents. And theres been a kind of antebellum Industrial Complex going on in charleston for a long time, tourism focused was an entire White Society singing spirituals the thirties for fdr, to his great delight. So anyway, theres a lot of entanglements between charleston and race that continue today and deeply underlie what the city is even willing to talk about when it comes to stories. I want to push back a bit and you know your book as you know weve i mean, pow, pow pow, pow palmetto tie. Im from South Carolina. No question. But that race and racism and racial, you know, is large in the history of South Carolina. My question, though, is if were thinking about ecological. Policies now, if were thinking about ecology called disaster now, you were the way you put it makes it seem as though we have policies ongoing right now that are fairly described as racially discriminatory. Thats what i think somebody would infer from what youre saying. Is that what you mean . And if thats true, tell me, what are some of those policies . Thats terrific. Well, because of history, School Practices like redlining black neighborhoods for, you know, investment by banks and mortgages and not allowing black communities build wealth and housing and underfunding things like drainage and, you know, other things that relate to Sea Level Rise. It turns out that we know that people of color disproportionately suffer from the ravages of Climate Change. And in this flooding question is stark that often black residents settled in lower areas. So theyre not were not starting from a level Playing Field at all. So theres a heightened discriminatory effect of what we might view as an even handed policy. Lets just protect the places that are worth war. Well, the effect of that to leave behind huge swaths, the population and this is my point about whats government good for. I did a lot of this with internet access. Everybody with a belly button should have internet access. Everybody with a belly button should be able to live in a thriving, protected, safe place. And yet we dont take that approach. Seem to think that only the most valuable residents be protected or get to by what should be basic infrastructure. So this book is all about what basic for human life and what do people need to thrive and . It is apparent to me that we are not treating that question with sufficient seriousness when it comes to level rise. Okay, i want to stay the race issue again, so i know, you know, you youre a doer. Yeah. You you want to effect change . Mm hmm. Question does talking so much as you do in the book i mean, you know, does talking so much about race get in the way of your reformist, you know, impulse i mean, after all. You could frame it the way frame it. On the other hand, you could frame it differently. And does does the the race question bring in a level of contentiousness that works against reform . Thats been my question. Yeah, its a good question. I think that. Ultimately what im what im most focused on is that we are failing to plan for everybody. And in charleston, the voices that arent heard are black voices. And so its not me talking about race in book. Its people who live there talking about what its like to be them and is apparent that theres a theres a of a smooth, blind, uncaring approach tightly tied to whiteness frankly and also to a feeling of complacency that needs to be disrupted. So i am actually happy to have this be a contentious and difficult conversation. It should be. We have left a lot of people behind historically continues to happen and. What we need to be doing as a country is acting much more as a collective. And when people are in in danger or harmed, we are capable of enormous empathy and compassion. Remember. Right after katrina, the reaction to katrina was not based on identity, was based on concern for the human beings that were left there. Most of them happened to be black. Right. And that actually brought attention to this issue. So i think its essential to talk about race with this subject and i am proud bring in bringing such a contentious story to light. The theres lots of. You know, reading your book book. You you bring to the fore a lot of disturbing facts and a lot of disturbing, you know, omissions. Yeah. But you also have in your book, you you profile people who are trying to like, say, early turn the tide. Right. Who are of those people . Because you you talk about people and you obviously admire them who name a few. Somebody i admire deeply is reverend joseph darby, who is an amy in charleston. And often quoted in the national press. He a wise, calm, smart, funny guy who spent hours with me. I had the great privilege of profiling him in this book. And he is a leader for lot of people in charleston and is softer voiced leader. I think, who is able with and agility to penetrate almost any room. Actually, if i could read to you a little bit from reverend darbys statements, i actually brought the book to i got to talk to you about it. He he shed so much light for on on things here is talking about what happened after the mother massacre. He says that black people in charleston order to survive and go on with their lives gotten used to simply waving unfeeling and astonishing behavior on the parts of the whites around them. The forgiveness expressed by black in Mother Emanuel Ame Church following the 2015 massacre was completely misunderstood by so many. Forgiveness doesnt mean everything is, okay, darby says. It means youve got people whose faith was nurtured in slavery, people whose ancestors were slaves, people who, for the most part, unless they could escape, had to endure a life that was filled with brutality with rape, with division of family, with. How do you ensure that and not strangle the person whos doing that and know that youre going to get in return. You learn to say, im going to leave you in gods hands and you move on. What the people at mother emanuel were saying. They were not saying just i forgive. They were saying, im to leave you in gods hands. And let god deal with you. Thats, you know, i want you