All programs are available as podcasts. Hi. I have got with me a wonderful author who has written a fantastic book. John, you are a distinguished law scholar and distinguished historian and you have given us a book for the ages at exactly the right time that we needed in the midst of a pandemic. You said that your goal is to do a citizens guide. What did you mean by that . Great question. I wanted to write a book that would be a first draft of the history of law epidemics for the year of covid and beyond. It would speak to an interested reader, not just a specialist in the field. I thought my value added may be to translate to readers that are just fascinated by the blizzard of legal issues that have arisen no. Of course, we never thought about it now. Particularly, what can we learn from them and what will we know when its going to be over. I want to begin, john, if i can, at the end of your book. Then i will pivot back to ask you more about this question. America has two histories. O
And the brooks still worth reading. Thank you for your time and good nights been a good afternoon. I want to welcome you on the half of humanity tennessee to the southern festival of books. I want to particularly thank our key sponsors, Metro National art commission, and chrome content, tennessee art commission, vanderbilt university. This session is entitled dreaming america. We have a panel of three authors and three books and our first we will read some, but im going to reduce the authors first. I will begin with amra sabicelrayess. She grew up in bosnia. After surviving ethnic cleansing and more than 1100 days under the serbs military siege she immigrated to the United States in 1986. By december, 1999, she earned a ba from Brown University and later obtained to master degrees in a doctorate from Columbia University currently, shes a compass a professor eric on the egg working on understanding how and why societies fall apart and what role education plays a rebuilding decimated cou
Law scholar and historian and given us a book for the ages in the midst of a pandemic so you said your goal what do you mean by that quick. Great question i wanted to write a book that would be a first draft of the history for the year of covid and beyond but to speak to the interested reader not just the specialist in the field i got the value added to readers you are fascinated of the legal issues in the last six months that really be on most peoples agenda until now. We never thought about past epidemics but we are now what we can learn from them and what do we know when it will be over so at the end of your book to ask you more about this question america has two histories one is far more appealing in the months and years ahead they will hold the power between them lets hope they make the right choice. I will be asking you more what that choice is at the end of the interview but for now , what is the ugly part of america . The ugly part is the discrimination against racial minoriti
And. Probably here that many of the degrees. Here is. Oriented. Illusionary and. Pretty natural to want to get. Stuck on hold when you fear for your life not just with last year i mean injuring yourself actually. The sentence to sentence china understand where youre coming from. And not. Agree with you so racism is unacceptable but selfknowledge is a good thing and its a good thing to understand ourselves and so we do know that humans we have evolved whats called a behavioral immune system so a biological immune system is not enough to keep us away from germs because we cant see them so weve developed a system of using cues visual cues so the sights and Disgusting Things will keep us away the. Sort of rotting meat we wont eat it and of course weve evolved a mechanism to be wary of foreigners because historically when foreign groups intermingled with one group would bring in viruses which the other group had no exposure to so yes we have evolved that mechanism in the varies some people
Lets start by talking about what was your inspiration for writing this book. Guest i had been writing about education Reform Efforts which there were many and i was also somewhat involved in the Reform Movement i was on the board of the Charter School when i became fascinated by what was going on partly because i think education is so important, i think it is our best hope for addressing inequity in society and breaking the cycle of poverty and also intellectually what is interesting to me there was a mystery i wanted to solve essentially which is what happens when kids got to high School Everything seemed to fall apart, school seemed to be improving at the middle school level and i would go into classrooms and the kids looked eager and engaged but when you went to high school classrooms, it was a different picture and the scores were not including. Nobody seemed to understand why. Although theralthough there havt of attention over the years on the high school problem. So, but i stumbl