so there's so much history out there. this is just a little piece of it. who knows. maybe some of you will be able to add even more to the growing body of work. so i'm going to stop right now and see if there are any questions. do we have time for questions? maybe one or two questions? after the ceremony, okay. well, thank you all for listening. [applause] >> jesse holland is a congressional reporter for the associated press. to find out go to jessejholland.com.

>> jonathan cole former provost of columbia university presents a history of the american university system. columbia university in new york city hosts the two hour and 15 minute event. >> well, we can begin. i want to welcome everyone to this evening's discussion of higher education that is occasioned by the publication of jonathan cole's new book "the great american university: its rise to preeminence and it's national role and why it must be protected." my name's claude steele. i'm the provost of columbia university. my role is to be your host and moderator and emcee. and after the remarks have been

made i'll probably moderate the discussion a little bit. it should be a very interesting discussion this evening. it's just all too rare that the topic of what makes research universities so valuable to society that gets talked about. even in those universities. a real hope of mine is that jonathan's new book, which so magnificently addresses these questions will help to change that. that it will help us all take a step back and get a better understanding of these institutions, institutions that have been so central in many of our lives. and that it will help society get a better sense of the value that these institutions hold for society of the distinct kind of contribution that they make toward the american way of life and the world for that matter. i am as just noted the new provost at columbia having begun my term on september 1st of this year. i've known jonathan for a good while now.

he was a member of the board of trustees of the center that i just recently directed at stanford. and for all these reasons i allowed myself to think that maybe on the first day i arrived on my job i might open my top desk drawer and there would be a letter in there from jonathan. [laughter] >> telling me how to be a good provost. and what the challenges of the job were. and how to go about them. and how to think about them. how to frame the issues that are central in higher education today. you know, i expected a brief letter. what i found was a 600-page book, so -- [laughter] >> i can't tell you how grateful i am for that book. i consider it a great service to higher education. it's a letter in the top dresser drawer of all of us who care

about higher education in america and in american research universities and it's a service of the broader society as well from reminding it or maybe informing it for the first time in many instances of the value of these institutions. of their indispensablity in our lives. a quick glance will reveal an immense amount of labor and life and experience that has gone into it. i don't know of another book quite like it. nor one that seems so well timed to our particular time. my hope is that it will create a certain moment or at least contribute to the creation of a moment. a moment in which we, as i said a second ago, reflect on the role of higher education in the modern research university in american society. a moment that renews our motivation to preserve and further develop the things about these institutions that make them so important. the book helps to create this

moment, i think, in several ways. first, it gives an overview history of the modern research american -- the modern research university in american society as a combination of the british idea of an undergraduate college and the german idea of a research-focused graduate school. in describing this emergence of this unique hybrid, jonathan reveals, i think, the unique nature of these institutions in our history and why they have become the model for the world. next the book offers perhaps the best compendium of achievement of these institutions that i know of. a compelling description of the contributions these institutions have made to society and the huge role they play in a national system of innovation. i will be cribbing from this section for years whenever i need a concrete of contributions

that universities make to research institute. and there's a value system that sustains these institutions. the freedom of expression and thought that has made them so effective. and the threats to this value system that have arisen in a broader american society. so you can see from this listing that this is -- that this book is no passing discussion of the modern research university. it is both comprehensive and deep. it is as near a complete education about these institutions as you will ever find between the covers of a single book, i believe. and here to discuss this book we have an extraordinarily distinguished panel of commenters tonight. the schedule for this evening will be that jonathan will make remarks for 40, 45 minutes or so. and then each of the panelists will also be given about 20 minutes to make remarks. and that will be followed by

questions from the audience. and there are two microphones that you can see there waiting for you. to give you a sense of who the panelists are and thus some of the perspectives that are represented this evening, i thought i would introduce them now at this point in the program. and that would avoid me of having to get up and down introducing each of them individually. the first commentator will be geoff stone who was a long time proas low as after receiving his law degree from the university of chicago in 1971 and clerking for among others justice william brennan of the u.s. supreme court, geoff has been on the faculty ever since. and in this -- in the time since he has served in his time in chicago he served dean of the law school for a good period, five or six years and as provost for 10 years.

he will bring his own great experience to this discussion. he teaches rights and rights primarily in the area of constitutional law. he has written numerous distinguished books. several of which have gathered an impressive number of awards. he is currently editing a 15-volume series entitled "inalienable rights." you'll have to pronounce that when you get up here. including chapters by the luminaries of political philosophy and history. a past book that is especially relevant to tonight's discussion is "eternally vigilant: free speech in the modern era." our second commenter will be matthew goldstein who is currently the chancellor of the city university of new york. his alma mater. dr. goldstein has served in many academic senior administrative

positions over the years. he's also held faculty positions in these schools as well as others. and his scholarship is in the area of statistics, a field in which he's published a number of major textbooks and other writings. he too is a member of the american academy of arts and sciences, the new york academy of sciences and is the recipient of a long distinguished list of prizes and awards. he will bring a wealth of leadership experience to the discussion tonight. finally, our last speak of the evening will be richard axel one of columbia's most distinguished faculty members. he's currently a university professor and professor of biocondemn industry and molecular biophysics and pathology at the columbia college of physicians and surgeons. i don't know anyone at columbia but the only person who rivals richard for having been here -- having had the longest association, i should say, with columbia university, is jonathan himself.

i believe richard's tenure here was interrupted by a time in med school at john hopkins but otherwise has been here throughout the duration of his career and college career. richard has done a few other impressive things along the way. one major thrust of his work as i'm sure many of you know has been in clarifying how the olfactory system works. our sense of smell has remained one of the most mysteryious senses. and achievement for which he and dr. buck were awarded the 2004 prize in physiology and medicine. richard is also a member of the national academy of sciences, the american academy of arts and sciences and the american philosophical association. that concludes the introduction

for the commenters to the panel. now, let them turn to our -- no, i have to introduce you jonathan. you can stay seated. jonathan is currently the john mitchell nascent professor of the university and provost and dean of faculties emeritus at columbia university. he was provost and dean of faculties for 14 years. the second longest term i think in that position as -- in columbia's history. and even at this early stage, i can appreciate that achievement. and before that he served as the director for the center for the social sciences from 1979 to 1987. and he has been vice president of the arts and sciences as well. he enjoys the distinctive status of having spent as i said earlier, his post-secondary life, i think, as columbia university having begun as a

freshman by my count from 1960. he has a number of -- an awful lot of scholarly work. most of it has been focused on the development of sociology of science as a research specialty. and he has been published -- this work has been published of a large number of outlets. in recent years his scholarly attention has turned to issues of higher education, particularly, focusing on problems facing the great research universities. well, i could go but i needn't anymore. so i will just turn this over to jonathan. thank you. [applause] >> well, thank you very much, claude. and i want to thank the people who have come to participate in this panel. it's generous of them to spend

time not only taking a look at the book but to share with me the possibilities of discussing this topic further. so geoff and richard -- who else is there? matthew. it's great to have you here. so thank you very much. as claude said, i spent my entire life at columbia university. my adult life anyway. coming in 1960. and it's the set of experiences that grew out of being a student here, a faculty member here. and then as an administrator here which led me to not only meet a great number of people who were leaders in american university and faculty members who were producing the kinds of knowledge that i speak about in this book, and the people who were transmitting knowledge through extraordinary teaching. and it is all that combined that led me to want to write this book.

it's written to reach the educated public, in fact, the graduates of the stanford, columbia, berkeley, university the michigan. the universities and colleges of the united states and hopefully those around the world as well. now, some say i bleed columbia blue and they're probably right in saying that. but i hope that i have in the book a large enough perspective to be able to create a landscape, if you will, for the american university system. let me begin in trying to describe this big book -- it's a big thick book with it being yea. it's taken from the very beginning of the book and i'll quote it and then i'll try to introduce the other sections of the book to you. let me begin. she stepped onto the stage before 150 of the nation's leading scholars and scientists.

to describe her biological research and discoveries. moving with controlled animation, bonnie bassler a statuesque woman with a cat-like smile began describing her path-breaking work. the subject was cell to cell bacteria. for 20 minutes professor bassler moved this audience of the american philosophical society with stories of the molecular mechanisms that bacteria used for intercellular communication. standing under a portrait of benjamin franklin the founder of the philosophical society she recounted her quest to understand the chemical mechanism to allow these tiny bacteria which would be impotent acting alone to detect multiple

environmental cues and to use a process called quorum sensing that allows them to function as multicellular organisms. acting together the bacteria gained the power and the potency to organize collective activity, possibly to strategize and to assault the body and cause disease. using quorum sensing, the bacteria are able to count themselves. and after reaching a sufficient high number, they launched their attacks simultaneously. that way the bacteria have a better chance of overpowering the immune system. bassler has demonstrated this form of chemical communication can be found in some of the world's most virulent microbes including those that cause cholera and plague. now, working with her students from around the world, bassler is doing fundamental science at an extremely high level at her

laboratory at princeton university as well as collaborating with others at america's great universities. but she has also embraced the idea held by franklin of doing science in order to create useful knowledge. the bacteria diseases that bassler studies have special relevance to biological defense against bioterrorism. since many of the pathogens she studies are among those that experts believe bioterrorists would try to use. she works for the goal of developing molecules that will have potential use as antimicrobial drugs aimed at bacteria that can cause lethal diseases such as anthrax. she wants to find a way to stop the bacteria. now, bassler is just one of many extraordinary gifted people found in laboratories and classrooms of america's great universities. like them she's the product of the greatest system of higher learning that the world has ever known.

and her works build on the past achievements of these academies to advance our understanding and well-being even more. what she and others are doing is transforming american society. developing knowledge that helps to generate new industries to improve public health and to create higher standards of living for america, americans and people throughout the world. these kinds of people exist, of course, in other countries. but they seem to exist in abundance today at america's greatest universities. now, what is the evidence, in fact, that the united states dominates the set of greatest institutions of higher learning in the world? well, if you look at a variety of studies that have been done, you will see that we account for about 80% of the top 20 universities in the world. 75% of the top 50. and 60% of the top 100.

we also by other educators after the second world war have dominated the received nobel prizes having earned probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of all nobel prizes. since the war. and if you look at the literature in the sciences and other fields, almost all fields, in fact, you will find that the most highly referenced papers, the ones with the greatest impact are generally produced by americans. at least we dominate in many fields the production of very highly important papers. now, i want to alert you to the fact that today not one german university is among the top 50. not one russian university is among the top 75. there's not one chinese university by their own reckoning that's among the top 200. now, interestingly enough, when most people -- when we think about great universities, our

own great universities, we don't think that lasers, fm radio, magnetic resonance imaging, global positioning systems, the barcode, transistors, improved weather forecasting, cures for childhood leukemia, the pap smear, message for surveying public opinion and many others, for example, the algorithm for google, the discovery of radar, dna fingerprinting, fetal monitoring, the nicotine patch, the heimlich maneuver discovered at cornell. we don't think of these as having their origins at the great american universities. most people in the educated public think that these universities and think of them in terms of their ability to transmit knowledge to undergraduates and is part of professional education. in terms of teaching this

transmission of knowledge rather than the creation of new knowledge and how teaching and research are coupled at that moment on the research enterprise. now, this is a big book, as i say. and it's about higher education. and it tries to tell the story of how our system of higher education became the greatest in the world in producing this kind of great knowledge. how that knowledge through discoveries, inventions, devices, medical miracles have shaped our lives and the way we think. and why these pillars of excellence need to be protected against current threats of their preeminence. it's a big subject. a thick book. but the central message is, the central themes of the book can be summarized fairly simply. let me do that and then i'll elaborate somewhat on the time that remains. first of all, we tend not to think of this as a young system. but, in fact, the american research university is

relatively young. and highly embedded in the larger american society. after all, the first research university was founded 100 years after the signing of the declaration of independence in 1876 in the form of johns hopkins. and the research university doesn't really get going until the beginning of the 20th century. in the next three decades, by the 1930s, the core values of this system were put into place. the essential values in which the system was built and without which its greatness could not have been achieved. the structures were in turn built on those value systems. and they would be built in a way that would express themselves in the ability for us to have unmatched discoveries coming from these institutions. the takeoff does not really begin until -- at least i date

it january 1933. and it doesn't reach its full speed until after the second war. i'll come back to that moment in time. it also benefited enormously by perhaps a tipping point in which the united states government became deeply involved in scientific research after the second world war. and its choice to use taxpayer dollars to fund research in a way that had not been done before and on the scale that had not been done before. it's not that the government hadn't been involved in research universities. they had begun to get very involved even during the civil war. when the moral act created a land grant institutions in 1862 in the middle of that civil war was nonetheless tasked by the administration of abraham lincoln but it didn't really reach full throttle until after the second world war.

and what makes them truly the best in the world is not at the end of the day the quality of the undergraduate education there but the research discoveries, inventions, innovations, et cetera that have been coming out of these universities for some time. now, what's extraordinary to me is that this story has not really been told by the leaders of american higher learning over the years. and i consider it a personal failure until i wrote this book, of course, of not trying to communicate to the broader public what it is about these universities that make them in their entirety quite extraordinary. and i don't want to. i want to be very careful. i don't want to underestimate the importance of undergraduate education or the transmission of knowledge. but it is not that which differentiates us greatly from that those types of education that we can find abroad in the

great liberal arts colleges in the united states. when i talk to alums at columbia and i talk to many of them over the years, they would ask questions, very intelligent questions about how is the university doing. and particularly focusing on how is the columbia college core curriculum doing? are we maintaining the integrity of the curriculum? and i was struck by how infrequent, almost never i came across the following kind of questions from one of these alimbs. -- alums. one of the great discoveries that had been made in columbia over the last five years -- what discoveries that are coming from columbia are changing our lives in important ways? they were questions that weren't asked but in some sense we hadn't educated them to ask those questions. so we had the right values and we built the right structures on those values. we also had exceptionally

talented people brought into the system from wherever they might be found. we had enlightened and bold leadership from the inspection of the research university from gilman onto the current day. we had a deep commitment to the idea of free inquiry and the autonomy of the research university from the state. and that differentiate us from many different countries. european countries would generally have state-controlled universities. and there's little autonomy in the research mission. from the state. it also in many other countries does not fully recognize the importance of free inquiry and academic freedom. and then we've had unprecedented vast resources put into the system that has enabled us to build excellence. resources that went far beyond what european nations could do after the war when they were trying to recover from the war.

and far what asian nations were able to do until very recently. so what were some of the factors that contributed to the evolving idea of the american university? and there are a few. first of all, until the turn of the century, these were small colleges basically. harvard and yale and princeton and the privates as well as some of the publics were relatively small focusing on undergraduate education when interestingly enough when daniel gilman created hopkins and began to raid harvard of some of its best faculty it, sort of woke up charles elliott to the idea that maybe we have to compete with hopkins for talent. and he had said about the incorporation of the german model into the american model by hopkins, he said it would fit harvard freshmen about as well as a barnyard would suit a whale.

well, he soon changed and became highly competitive in the world of research universities. it was a belief in research and technology, the federal government, as i say, became involved. there was a tremendous competitive spirit that existed at the time and that was it was carried over into the universities themselves. if you look at the university of chicago, that was founded in 1892, and you look at william rainey harper, the first president of that university, he was immediately taking ro rockefeller's money and was trying to recruit the best talent that was available elsewhere. and he was very successful at doing it. and very rapidly catapulted chicago into one of the great universities in the world. the model itself was a hybrid. it came from an amalgam of the deep interest in the research

activities of the british -- of the german universities in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. and the undergraduate model of the colleges at oxford and cambridge. we put our special stamp on this. and we transformed it in interesting ways. for example, we're much mar higher arkal than the germans. the germans who came over here were struck by the fact that students, graduate students, would actually talk to their professors and use their first names. and even talking to them which is something that hadn't necessarily been done. now, let me talk very briefly about those values that i said are essential for great universities. and there are 12 that i talk about in the book and go on in some detail. many of them come from science and the development of science. and have their origins in 17th

century science. my teacher robert merton elaborates on it. one is the idea -- the idea and the aspiration to meritocracy or universalism. that is to say people are judged on the quality of their mind, the quality of their ideas, not on their statuses, their ascribed status. not by where they were born into but what their achievements and their possibilities were. there was the organized skepticism which insisted that we question any claims to fact and truth and demand evidence be put forward in order to sustain claims to truth and fact. there was, of course, this very heavy value placed on the creation of new knowledge. there was the notion of the open and free communication of ideas. that there would not be borders that could not be permeated

within the academic community among and between universities. it was the norm and the value of free inquiry and academic freedom. there was the notion that these institutions were fundamentally international. that there were no scholarship that were restricted by borders. it was the idea of the peer-reviewed system. the idea that essentially the people who would judge other's work had to be experts in the field. they had to be knowledgeable in the field and those were the people who would establish the criteria of excellence. and would judge their peers as it were. and remember even in the early part of the 20th century there was enormous power that existed in the hands of presidents to do this. and, in fact, it was elliott himself who said god bless the rise and disciplines and of peers so that they could help him judge the quality of the

people he was hiring and promoting at places like harvard. there was a great set of bold leaders. and there was also a sense of you governed increasingly by authority. the rule of the governed rather than by sheer power. and there was the commitment to the common good. and that is after all what a lot of the research is designed to do. to produce common good. some of it has intrinsic value and it's very, very fundamental. sometimes we'll see it's not clear the things which seem to be of fundamental value downstream have enormous practical implications. the laser is one example of that. and when it was first discovered by charles towns in the physics department at columbia later transformed into the laser but it was described by towns himself as a discovery in search of applications.

well, we found a few applications for the laser and it's affected all of our lives. now, i mentioned earlier and i want to come to it that a tipping point was probably january, 1933. and why? as many of us know, january 1933 was the month that hitler came to power. fdr became president of the united states. he took the oath of office and james conan would like us to think that it was the moment of president of harvard. i think he's been somewhat forgotten. but in any event after -- you have to recognize that germany in the first three decades of the 20th century dominated the production of knowledge. they dominated the receipt of nobel prizes. it was power houses that americans tried to succeed. we traveled to germany and austria to soak up what they had

to offer us. eventually what they gave us were great leaders. and i'll come back to that. but the fact of the matter is, the professors at the great universities of berlin were purged very quickly. and they were purged on ideological grounds. the point is that the basis on which the purging was done was on the basis of religion, on the basis of extraneous characteristics having nothing to do with the quality of their work. once that purging took place, 50% of the high energy particle community in germany left. and they emigrated. they emigrated to england and they emigrated to the united states. it was the great intellectual migration of the early 30s and actually right throughout the '30s and they were placed in american universities. as was said at one point, you know, we have the core of the best physics community here in the world and we are young and what we are in need of are leaders.

and what was imported in effect were the leaders who could be placed at these universities to create one of the greatest physics universities in the world. and that was done. and incense, an ironic sense the great tragedy of university, the unbelievable tragedy of europe led to in an unanticipated way the further ascendance of the american research universities. and great people came. einstein, paul aselfeld and others. they offered vibrancy and an extraordinary combination was created between those who were here and those who came. now, i also suggested that one of the critical moments was the production of the science policy, a very prescience science policy that came into being after the war.

and here's how it came in. i don't know how many of you have ever heard of the name vanner overbush. he's not related to the bushes of more recent times. by the way. but he was an extraordinary engineer. at the time he mobilized the war effort among the intellectuals and scientists of the united states. he organized a great deal of the manhattan project and developing radar at the rad lab at mit. and a whole host of other things. he was on the cover of ice magazine. well, after the war was over and clearly the scientisce might no have won the war in the united states but it was part of the victory. roosevelt asked me, well, what's going to happen now that all these scientists are going back to these universities.

what's going to happen to our position particularly interested in our military superiority at the time. and bush said it's going to be a disaster unless we do something. so roosevelt said, well, go do something. and what was created out of that, go do something, was one of the most extraordinary science policy documents ever come in to being called science, the endless frontier. authored by a set of committees but really by vannerover bush and what was the elements that made it so important? first of all, what bush wanted to do was to use taxpayer money -- he knew that while foundations could offer assistance in growing research, it was nothing like the public coffers and especially the federal dollars that could potential really build science technology and other areas in the growth of knowledge. and so he wanted to use this. and that was extremely important. he wanted to establish a

national research foundation that was independent of government or quasi independent of government. he failed on that. congress wouldn't let him do it and it was the national science foundation that was formed. he wanted to outsource research. in short, he didn't want to take the route that european nations had gone which were basically to control the research by creating government-supported institutes, government-controlled institutes. he said let's run the money through the universities, outsource this funding and do it on a competitive basis that would be guided by the peer reviewed system and that's precisely what was done. that is the best quality proposals would get funding. the creation of the reorganization, the nih and the creation of the nsf and the very, very rapid rise in their budgets were instrumental in the growth of these universities

because the money was coming to the universities for research and there was another element of it which was critically important. he believed in linking teaching and research especially at the grassroots level. in fact, we know today that doctral students are instrumental in many of the most important discoveries that are made. so it's not as if we're divorcing teaching and research or the transmission of knowledge. we're, in fact, coupling it in the american system making it far tighter, in fact, than it was in the european system where research that takes place in institutions like cnrs tends to get decoupled from the university system. okay. the legislation was passed. this grew. i'm going to spend less time because i want to get on to the threats to the university on

some of the great leaders that have been extremely important. i want to just focus on one because he was a provost. and by my accounting, the greatest provost in the history of american higher education. and that was frederick terman. son of terman i.q. testing. if i bleed columbia blue, he bled cardinal red. i don't think it was cardinals at the time but it was cardinal red. he was a lifer at stanford. but he had worked during the war for vannerover bush if you think networks weren't operating there at the time and they were. he got to not only know vannerover bush but he headed the antisubmarine effort at harvard during the war. he actually ran a group that was numbered in the thousands, larger than the total population of faculty and staff at stanford when he returned to stanford. he went back to the engineering school.

he became provost in 1957 in the next decade. he transformed with the help of wally sterling, who was very important to the president of stanford at the time. he transformed this from a rather sleepy college, a good sleepy college and a good university into a world class institution. and he envisioned the future the way in which very few academic leaders did. and i'll contrast him for a moment for one of our own. what did he see? for example, he saw the opening up, the enormous potential of biological sciences. 57. so just a few years earlier watson and crick discovered the double structure of dna. and he realized at that point that the combination of basic biological science with medicine was going to be the future. and he and sterling against a

great deal of resistance brought the medical school, which was located in san francisco, down to the stanford campus. began to link the biological sciences and medicine. began to recruit in clusters some of the great minds like josh ledderberg, for example, of wisconsin to stanford. and he would get them moving and running in a way that was unusual, extraordinary and cost a lot of money. for example, putting up the three buildings at stanford that involved the new medical school involved the capital campaign. and the capital campaign had a target of $15 million. we're trying to raise 3 billion, $4 billion, $5 billion here and there, a different scale but not necessarily easily done. he had an insistence on quality. absolute insistence on quality. and he did very clever things to do it. i always admire him for this clever thing. why didn't i do it?

he had friends and i think he himself at the time was a member of the national academy of sciences. and he wanted to recruit great talent. so what did he do? he looked at the roster of people who had been elected to the academy and he looked at them very carefully. and he passed those by. and he looked at the people who had just failed to make it. the youngsters who we could get cheaply and the ones who were apt to be members of the academy five years down the road. and he went after them and he recruited them. and he did an extraordinary job in building many of the disciplines at stanford. and, of course, we know, those of us who know this story -- he was in many ways the father of silicon valley. he understood after the war -- not only was the government going to invest in universities but that the externalities from that research effort were going to lead to high tech technologies and if they could be located near the university

the impact for the region and the university would be extraordinary. what did he do. he had mr. hewlett and mr. packard. they were young students. and that's where the first hewlett-packard machine came out of. eventually spun off. so he had -- he was a visionary. and he was tough. and he believed in quality. and he saw the future. that's the most important thing. he really understood that we were an adaptive organism these universities. and he was adapting the organism to the new realities and the new context. i'm going to contrast him with one of our own. a professor of mine, actually, and that's jaques bosan is an icon at columbia. and he was provost at the exact same time basically as chairman.

-- asterman. -- as terman. he had nostalgia for cardinal newman's university of 1852. the cloistered university that would be free of government interference, government control, bureaucratic organization, et cetera, et cetera. so the professor a very brilliant man looked backwards. and he never saw the future in how columbia would have to upgrade its facilities, expand its facilities, move towards a greater investment in the areas that the government was sponsoring. and so you saw very -- two different types of people with two very different results because in many ways his orientation hurt columbia for a decade or two afterwards. okay. let me shift to the third part of the book but i want to

capsulize in giving you a book. the first part is the rise of preeminence in where we are did and to give you a sense as well as in the physical sciences and engineering, computer science as well as the social sciences and humanities. how the discoveries that have come out of these universities as claude suggested earlier have transformed our lives in ways most people in the general public do not know. and it's important that they know that this is the source. we're not developing new industries but we are producing the basis of the development of new industries, new ways of using science technology, social science to produce millions upon millions of jobs. and many people don't think that the social on behavioral sciences did so. but they did. if you look at the industry that

has to do with advertising, public opinion polling -- all kinds of large industries, ngos of various kinds have come out of the work that have been done at these universities and social behavioral sciences. and that's the second part of the book. and i leave it to you to look at it and i hope you will. the third part of the book talks about the challenges it faces they are looking for and and i want to summarize them very, very briefly and i want to open it up to questions later. but one thing i want to make sure that you understand is that these universities have huge economic impact. i mean, i mentioned silicon valley but think of what stanford university at the moment represents. it reports that members, students and alumni have founded more than 2400 companies since 2008.

now, this includes cisco systems, google, hewlett-packard and it generated $255 billion of total revenue among the silicon valley 150 in 2008. mit similarly. it reports that 4,000 mit-related companies employ 1.1 million people. and by the way, again there's a multiplier effect of two or three or four or five times of that number of suppliers and numbers who feed these companies. and it has -- these companies have an annual world sale of $232 billion which is just a little less than the gross domestic product of south africa and of thailand. and which make mit companies among the 40 largest economies in the world. when the university of california, which i will come back to in a moment is dismantling its university system as we speak, it is also

dismantling the necessary conditions for economic growth in the area and, in fact, the wealth of their own community. okay. so what are some of the challenges and what are some of the things that we have to be very careful about if we're going to maintain our preeminence? well, i want to begin in some sense by making at least the claim that the source of the challenge is not the one that most people think about, which is the threat that foreign universities will surpass us in a short period of time, the chinese universities, for example. or the japanese universities, the asian universities or those that are in europe. the european universities are in total disarray. i mean, extraordinary disarray. the chinese universities have far to go before they can really challenge the american universities. by the way, it's not that this won't happen.

and it may well happen in the next 25 years or so. but i don't think it's imminent and i don't think that's the imminent threat. to paraphrase walt kelly's wonderful cartoon character pogo, the fact of the matter is i believe the enemy is us. and in what ways is the enemy us? well, you can see the way in which antiterrorism legislation was used and abused in the period between 2001 and quite recently. in fact, the legislation is still very much on the books. and whether it's being acted on or not, we don't know. there are huge numbers of immunologyists working on trying to find cures for diseases, antidotes, vaccines, et cetera who are subjected to fbi searchs or reporting very closely follow followed, look, i want to be clear some of these select

agencies with these laboratories are nasty things. you want to know where they are. on the other hand, but if you prevent scientists from saying that i want to hire into my laboratory a post-doctral who comes from iran which is not a scintilla of evidence they're a security risk and you can be indicted, criminally indicted, if that student stepped foot in that laboratory, i think we have a problem of government interference and knowledge and the growth of knowledge. now, there are other important ways in which the government has begun to interfere with the growth of knowledge. one, of course, is restricted visa policies which all of us know about. it's becoming increasingly difficult for people to move freely from their countries to the united states. and if there is one industry in the world in which we actually have a favorable balance of trade, it's higher education. and to the extent that we

restrict this for -- without real cause, is really impeding the progress we can make because we cannot depend on our own talent base in science and technology at this point in time. it's another issue that i'll leave to one side. there's also been efforts to influence the publication of scientific papers. if you happen to be a foreigner and living in a country which is considered one that we are efforts, of course, for us to impose ideological positions on the conduct of science. and that perhaps is most troubling. the policies which existed upon growing stem cell lines, for example, and embryonic stem cell research. the restrictions that were being made on people as extraordinary as james hanson who works here

and for nasa on the speeches that they can make. they actually had to have the government politicians okay the speeches he would make before he would give. and he refused. that became cause a cause celeb but this was going on with the government and with government scientists. the efforts to alter truth and facts about reproductive health and other health issues. the ways in which the cdc altered its website to emphasize abstinence rather than the use of condoms. there were the ways in which the government tried to infiltrate if you will, the peer review system bringing political appointees into the peer review system. and trying to get rid of extraordinary sciences like the elizabe elizabeth the professor because

of her policy. okay. what i think this is also symptomatic of is the politization of science involves a certain kind of anti-intellectualism of a kind that richard taught us a great deal about. a kind of movement towards antiscience, which is a problem -- is problematic. the imposition of religious values over scientific values or at least trying to influence the growth of scientific knowledge on the basis of ideology. remember how ideology -- when the government imposes it, can have devastating effects on universities. now, let me try to conclude this talk because i think i've gone

through my allotted time if nothing else. and i hope that you will take a look at the book. where i elaborated in greater specificity. i don't think there's any really good reason the united states cannot maintain its position among the preeminent research universities in the world. it continues to be, in fact, in our own bellies, in our own universities, an enormous unrealized potential within this system. we should not fear foreign competition. even if the competition exists, it should be good for the growth of knowledge. if we can compete with other nations to find cures for cancer or different forms of cancer -- to discover new genes and new ways of treating patients and this involves producing knowledge that moves us forward in a whole variety of ways, then that's a good thing for the broader system. and, in fact, will probably make our universities still better

'cause they are highly competitive. but there are choices, in fact, to be made. we're capable of blowing it. and if we follow the path being taken by many states in dealing with the great universities, we may well lose the luster that we have. that's the great test i believe that we face. and it remains an open question whether we'll pass it. thank you. [applause] >> as claude noted his introduction, i had the great privilege of serving as provost at the university of chicago for a considerable period of time. and one of the real pleasures of that experience was -- it gave me the opportunity to get to know jonathan cole and to have a

chance to work with him. during that time. and i just like telling me after i was in a meeting with jonathan -- i came back back with a meeting with two of the best provosts in the united states. [laughter] >> joanna knows me well enough to know how arrogant i am, right? what i meant by that -- by jonathan was the joke on myself, which is true. when i became provosts one of my predecessors in chicago said to me that to be a great provost you must radiate the values of the university. and that's true. a provost is chief academic officer in the university someone more than anyone else in the institution has the ability and capacity to inspire colleagues and students to achieve what matters most to the institution. and what was always most impressive to me about jonathan was the way he radiated the values of the university.

and by that i don't mean columbia or chicago but i mean, of the university. and if there was any american who would write this book, it was appropriately jonathan. as jonathan observes in his book "great american universities" the potential of ideas from interference or repression is absolutely fundamental to the university. indeed, it is no small measure our deep commitment to academic freedom that in my view has allowed american universities to be great. it's imperative, though, that we never take academic freedom for granted. for that freedom of thought and inquiry that we enjoy today in the academy is the product of centuries of struggle and in the first part of my talk, i will briefly trace the history of academic freedom because unless we know how we got to where we are today, we may not understand just how unique and potentially

fragile our academic freedom really is. and the final part of my talk i will offer a few thoughts about the challenges of the future. although the struggle for academic freedom can be traced at least as far back as socrates eloquence defense of himself that he corrupted the youth of athens the modern history of this struggle as it's played out in university context begins with the advent of universities as we know them today in the 12th century. and the social structure of the middle ages universities were centers of power and prestige. they were largely autonomous institutions conceived in the spirit of the goulds. -- guilds. they elected their own officials and set their own rules. there were, however, sharp limits on the scope of scholarly inquiry. there existed a hardcore of authoritarian established doctrine that was obligatory on

all teachers and scholars. it was expected that new accretion of knowledge is consistent with the truth anchored in christian dogma. dogma. as scholars and teachers gradually became more interested in science and began to question some of the fundamental precepts of religious doctrine, the 5ñ ,ñsñ

>> this was the general attitude in america as well as in europe. in freedom of inquiry, it was limited by the constraints of religious doctrine until well into the 19th century. in 1654 harpers president was forced to resign because he denied the scripture of validity of baptism. the latter part of the 18th century saw a brief period of relative secularization at the american college as part of the electorate. by opening up new fields of study and by introducing a noted skepticism and inquiry the trend toward secular learning began gradually to liberate college work. the teacher of science introduced for the first time the discovery rather than the mere transmission of knowledge into the classroom. this shift was short-lived. for the opening decades of the 19th century brought a significant retrogression. this was due largely to the rise of religious fundamentalism in

the early years of the 19th century. that in turn led to a sharp against the skepticism of the enlightenment and a concerted effort on the part of the protestant churches to reinsert their control over intellectual life. as result of this development in the american college in the first half of the 19th century once again again found itself deeply set in tradition. you look to antiquity and christianity for the laws of living. it was highly journalistic and author terry and. its emphasis on traditional subjects in mechanical drill and rigid discipline stymied free discussion and squelched creativity. three factors in particular shift stifle academic freedom in this era. first the college teacher was regarded first and foremost as a teacher. because academic honors and to entirely on teaching. there was no incentive or time for research. and was generally agreed that research was positively harmful

to teaching. in 1857 the trustees of columbia college attributed the low state of the college to the fact that some of his professors wrote books. second, educators in this era generally regarded the college student as intellectually naïve and morally deficient. stamping in with all that phrase implies, was a predominant pedagogical method. and learning was understood to mean little more than memorization and repetitive mechanical drilling. third, freedom of inquiry and teaching was by the by the preventing of theory of doctrinal moralism. which assumed that the words of any idea should be judged by its moral advantages. and attitude that is. the most important moral problem in america in the first half of the 19th century was of course slavery. in both north and the south colleges rigidly enforce their own views on this subject. by the 1830s, the mind of the

south had close complete on the question what became known that a professor at university of north carolina was sympathetic to the 1856 republican presidential candidate, the fact that he publicly repudiated his use, the students burned him in effigy and he was discharged by the trustees. situation in the north was not much better. the president of the franklin college was dismissed because he was not an abolitionist, and judge was dismissed from a lectureship at harvard law school because in his capacities as a federal judge he enforce that fugitive slave law. between 1870 and 1900 was a genuine revolution in american higher education. dramatic reforms such as graduate instruction in and scientific courses were implemented. a great new universes were stopped at cornell, hopkins, stanford and chicago. new academic goals were embraced. to criticize and augment as well as to preserve the tradition

became an accepted function of higher education. this was an extraordinary departure for a system that previously aimed primarily at cultural conservation. to forces in particular hastened this shift. the first was impact of darwinism, the second was the influence of the german university. by the early 1870s darwin's theory of evolution was no longer a disputed hypothesis in the american scientific community, but determined efforts remain to exclude proponents of darwinism whenever possible. these disputes were often quite bitter. the conflict brought together like-minded teachers, scientists, scholars and philosophers who believed in evolution and to develop new standards of academic inquiry. and their view to dissent was not to obstruct, but to potentially enlighten. the great debate over darwinism

would far beyond the substantive problem of whether evolution was true. it represented a profound clash between conflicting cultures. intellectual styles and academic values, and it pitted the clerical against the scientific, the scientific, the sectarian against the secular, the authoritarian agency nurses and the others. in these conflicts science and education join forces to attack both the principle of doctrinal moralism and the authority of the clergy. a new approach to education at the intellectual discourse grew out of the darwinian debate. to the evolution is, all beliefs were tainted and verifiable only through a continuous process of inquiry. the evolution is held every claim to truth must submit to open verification. that the process of verification must follow certain rules and that this process is best understood by those who qualify as experts. in the attack upon clerical, the

most effective weapon was the contention that the clergy were simply incompetent when it came to science. the result of this attack was almost complete disappearance of the clergy as a serious academic force. in 1860, 39 percent of the members of boards of private colleges were clergymen. by 1900 the percentage had dropped to 23%. by 1930, the percentage dwindled to only 7%. the other factor that played a role in the late 19th century was the influence of the german university. the modern conception of university as a research institution was in large part a german contribution. the object of the german university was determined methodical and independent search for truth. such a vision of the research of universiuniversity attracted individuals of outstanding abilities, rather than the big dogs in disciplinarians.

the german professor and joint freedom of teaching and freedom of inquiry. the german system held that this freedom was the distinctive prerogative of the academic profession. and that was the essential condition of the university. indeed a single great contribution of the german university to the american conception of academic freedom was the assumption that academic freedom defied the true university. as william rainey harper the first version of the university of chicago observed in 1892, when for any reason the administration of the university i attempt to dislodge a professor because of his political or religious sentiments, at that moment the institution has ceased to be a university. although american universities borrowed heavily from the german in this era, there involves two critical differences between american and german conceptions of academic freedom. first, where as the german conception encourage the professor to convince his students of the wisdom of his own views, the american

conception held that the proper standard for professors in the classroom was one of neutrality in the controversial issues. as president charles elliott of harvard declared at the time, the notion that education consists in the authoritarian inculcation of what the teacher deems true is intolerable in the university. second, the german conception of academic freedom distinguish sharply between freedom within and freedom outside the university. within the walls of the academy the german conception allowed wide latitude of utterance. but outside the university, the german view assumed that professors were obliged to be circumspect and nonpolitical. american professors rejected this limitation. drawing upon the more general american conception of freedom of speech, they insisted on participating actively in the arena of social and political action. american professors demanded the right to express their opinions, even outside the walls of

academia, and even on controversial subjects. this you've academic freedom is generate considerable friction by clinton that professors should be immune not only for what they say in the classroom and in the research, but also in what they say in public discourse. this expanded conception and powers professors to engage in outside activities and views that can inflict serious harm on the universities in the form of disgruntled trustees, and ended alumni's and donors. these issues were brought to ahead in the closing years in the 19th century when businessmen who would achieve a vast industrial wealth began to support universities on an unprecedented scale. for at the same time the trustee at a prestigious university was increasingly becoming an important symbol of business prominence, growing concern among scholars about the excesses of commerce and industry generated new forms of research, particularly the social sciences, that were often sharply critical of the means by

which these trusty philanthropist had amassed their wealth. the moguls and the scholars thus came into direct conflict in the final years of the 19th century. for example, a professor was dismissed from cornell for prolabor speech that annoyed a powerful benefactor and a prominent scholar at stanford was dismissed for unknowing donors with his views on silver and immigration issues. this tension continued until the beginning of world war i when it was to work by an even larger conflict. during the great war, patriotic zealots persecuted and even prosecute those who questioned the war or the draft. university staged almost total collapse of the institutional safeguards that had evolved up to that point to protect academic freedom. for nothing in their prior experience prepared them to deal with the issue of loyalty and a type of national emergency. at the university of nebraska, three professors were discharged because they assumed that attitude catches and to encourage a spirit of

indifference to the war. the university of virginia the president was discharged because he made a speech predicting the war would not make the world safe for democracy. and that collated the board of trustees lost a general campaign of investigation to determine whether doctors were in fact being taught at the university. similar issues arose again with a vengeance during the age of mccarthyism. in late 1940s and 1950s, many if not most universities excluded those accused of communist sympathies from participation in university life. the university of washington fire to three tenured professors, the universe of california's best 31 professors for refusing to sign anti-communist oath. there will be no witchhunt that yale because there will be no which is. we will not hire communists. many universities faculty memos were in place in the campaign.

most recently as jonathan carefully documents and already mentioned this evening, the books administration tortured academic freedom in the 1990s by restricting research into sensitive areas implementing restrictive visa policies for prospective researcher students and speakers, prohibiting the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research, for essentially religious reasons. and enabling the nation's your review system for political ends. so what can we learn from this quick survey of the history of academic freedom? several things i think emerge. first and perhaps most important, academic freedom is not the law of nature. it is a practical, highly vulnerable, hard-fought acquisition in the stroke for intellectual freedom. and it needs to be understood as such. second, the real threat to academic freedom comes not from the isolated incident that arises out of a highly

particularize and often publicized dispute, but rather from efforts to oppose all of orthodoxy that would probably silence dissent. third, every form of orthodoxy that has been imposed on the academy whether religious, political, patriotic, scientific, moral, philosophical or economic has been opposed by groups who are completely and sincerely convinced of the rightness of their position. but with the benefit of hindsight, every one of these groups has come to be viewed by thoughtful people as inappropriately and tolerant and vast and as inappropriately and tolerant and wrong at worst. finally, what should be our concerns for the future? for the most part, they are i think mere extensions of the challenges that we have faced, not always very well in the past. let me give you just four examples. first and most obviously, there is the corrupting temptation of money. from the very beginning of the

modern university, the need for resources has generated dangerous conflicts. how much it should within our values to please and to avoid alienating our donors? i was at university several months ago, the most generous benefactor met regularly with the president and provost to make sure that university was headed in the right directions. there is no doubt that the president and provost were pandering to his ill-informed wins. and i was appalled, but this sort of thing usually occurs naturally in universities all the time. the fact is that universities require vast amounts of financial support from individuals, foundations, corporations, and governments in order to be great. too often though these donors want to say, they want to select the students who receive their scholarships, to remove their professorship a faculty member

who has written something that offensive or to insist that a program in support must use their products and on and on and on. at what point does a been a provost or presidents' day nevermind, we will not take your money. this poses an especially serious dilemma i think for scientists, and in particular of medical research for both the costs and the stakes are especially high. as bill clinton said on another subject when it comes to the future of academic freedom, it's the economy, stupid. second, we live in an era of political correctness in which accusations a racist sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and terrorism, chilled discourse to the bones. it is impossible to take positions in our universities today without inviting a torrent of abuse, protest and ostracism. in this respect students are often the worst. silencing too often is preferred

to debate. but universities must stand for debate over pressure. we must teach our students as well as our colleagues and our alumni the importance of tolerance of civil discourse and of academic freedom. and this, too, we too often have failed. third, as we saw in the rise of religious fundamentalism at the first half of the 19th century during the second wakening had a devastating effect on free higher learning. we may now i fear be in the early years of a third great awakening. as we experience the new and even perhaps more aggressive form of religious fundamentalism. we see this today in the political realm on such issues as abortion, creationism, stem cell research and same-sex marriage. the same pressures that now bear on the political process may well be felt in universities and indeed are already being felt in universities as well.

this is perilous for religious and academic freedom simply do not mix. forthcoming universities must understand that the very core of academic freedom is institutional neutrality. the role of university as not to take positions on matters political, moral, legal, economic, social, religious or international. for universities to promote academic freedom, they cannot themselves participate in the debate. our responsibilities to create the conditions for free and open debate and we cannot fulfill that responsibility if we take sides. too often trustees president, provost, deans, faculty alumni and students want their university to stand up and be counted. for in the vietnam war when i was a student, i wanted my university to condemn the war as the moral. i was pretty is that it would not do so. i was wrong. deeply, profoundly and dangerously wrong.

not so dangerously because nobody cared what i thought. but universities should never stand up and be counted. they should not endorse candidates, condemn policies, embrace causes, or advocate positions and less those positions are intricately related to higher education itself. if the university take sides and undermines its own neutrality, its own credibility, and it stifles free and open discourse and makes itself a target for others, who want to take sides on other issues in the future. to paraphrase william rainey harper for more than a century ago, a universe that take sides ceases to be a university. thank you. [applause] >> jonathan, this is like the seventh inning, and usually we stand up and stretch. thought is going to stretch my back for a second. thank you for inviting me. it's a pleasure to join all of

you this morning. for those of us, for those outside average patient, jonathan's book makes an irrefutable case for why higher education has always been and continues to be so essential to the well being of our country. it's a remarkable achievement, jonathan. a master class in hardcover. jonathan also has a very coach announces of some of the threats facing higher education today. including the challenges, particularly to public universities, and that's what i'm going to speak about in the few minutes that remained for me to be with you this evening. first and foremost, the challenges are real, and they are happening across this country. let me start with some basics. 's public colleges and

universities educate almost 80 percent of our countries students. they include the well-known research powerhouses that we are also familiar with, university of texas at austin, university of california at san francisco, the university of wisconsin, university of michigan at ann arbor. but they also include smaller for your institutions, and yes, even to your institutions. the fastest-growing sector of higher education in these united states. those to your institutions and role almost half of all the undergraduates that study in this country. last year the share of young people attending college in the united states had an all time high and that increase was driven solely by two-year colleges. cuny's at six community colleges are among there.

i call kenya to colleges the sleeping giants of higher education. in new york state, the two public universities, the one that i've connected with cuny, and the state university of new york, together serve over 650,000 students. at research institutions, liberal arts colleges and community colleges. so when we talk about college students and college faculty, this is who we are talking about. and all the students and faculty are experiencing the results of a freefall of state support for public higher education. you have seen the headlines about california, this year. the university of california system so it's a state support reduced by nearly 20% last year. since 1990, state funding per student education at ucd has

dropped from 78 percent of the total cost of education in that state, to 58%. but california isn't an isolated case. without the contributions that come from the federal stimulus package, the total state support for public higher education across the country would have dropped 3.53.5% this year, and 6.8 percent over the last two years. of course, there is a variation among states. some states show increases, including small population states like montana and north dakota. but also larger states like texas. but 11 states have significant one year declined. that is more than 5%, even when we include the stimulus from the federal government. the states, like california, michigan, ohio, washington, and virginia, all home to celebrate

public research universities. at uc berkeley alone, research has led to almost 2000 inventions, and its alumni have founded over 250 companies. the university of michigan has licensed close to 50 startup companies and just of last five years. my friend jim duderstadt, the former president of the university in michigan, has said about state funding, public universities have gone from being state-supported, giving state assisted, then state related, and now state located. i would suggest we are sometimes state of salted. complicated the decline in state support are two factors. one is unprecedented enrollment growth, largely spurred by the country's recession. and the other is a growing need to prepare more students to a

higher skill level. so our institutions, so our situation is clear. public higher education is asked to do more with much less. and romans climb, state funding drops, and the pressure mounts to raise tuition and deepen cuts. examples abound. the university of washington observe the 14% tuition hike this year. the university of illinois at order to furloughs and warns students of the possibility of a high tuition hike later this year. the university of florida is looking to enroll, to reduce enrolled by unprecedented values, the university of california had to raise tuition by 32% this last november. as you see president mark yudof and i and so many others

continue to say, we cannot simply fill than the revenue gaps with tuition. keeping college accessible is critical to public higher education's core mission. in his book, jonathan talks about the importance of the morale act of 1862, which provided plan to stay for colleges and codified the importance of accessible public higher education for all americans. it enable the development of the university of california, pennsylvania state university, the ohio state university, the university of wisconsin, and so many other stellar public universities. that is a tradition we just cannot abandon. public higher education simply can't compromise on access or on academic quality.

so would much be creative and entrepreneurial. public institution must take responsibility for ever escalating and legitimately incurred costs. they cannot ask students and government to foot the bill alone. whether through reorganization, and expansion of revenue sources, or improved efficiency and productivity generated by sometimes difficult and unpopular decisions, state universities must step up to the plate. let me just offer a simple example. a few years ago, confronted with these challenges, i propose a new financing model for public higher education, one that spreads the responsibility for funding among stakeholders. it was called the cuny compact and it delineates a partnership

between state government and the university. with a state government supporting basic operations at the universiuniversity, and the institution itself through tuition, productivity measures, philanthropy, supporting investments, and supporting investments at the university. this compact recognizes that states are spread thin financially, but should support public higher education at a base operating level. and it calls for modest, predictable tuition increases based on a basket of economic indicators. students and their families shouldn't be hit hardest during economic downturns. they need to be able to plan for college, and college costs. it also emphasizes the need for increased philanthropy. something that would have been unheard of at one time in public

university systems. but in 2004, i audaciously stood up and launched our first ever cuny-wide campaign and we met our $1.2 billion gold four years earlier. people were amazed because it was antithetical to the culture of that institution. we are now in phase two working to reach $3 billion. support from friends and alumni along with innovative public-private partnerships, is vital to our ability to invest in our university. to build sophisticated research centers, to attract the best faculty, to improve our technology and infrastructure, to ensure that students have programs and services they need. cuny alone i include 12 nobel

laureates, and that is a tradition we are committed to expand. public universities must also be willing to reorganize when necessary. we need to focus on restructuring strategies, that best reflect our institutional strandings and opportunities for growth. when i became chancellor in 1999, the university was under some political pressure to establish a couple of the flagship campuses. this is the model in most states, which have one or two flagship public institutions. accept the university of california, that have a set of flagship institutions. but because of the economic imperatives of the time, instead, we took the approach of building up and reimagining several disciplinary areas and a

collaborative way. this was done in a very deliberate fashion, with the intention of raising the level of academic quality and productivity across the university in selected areas. the systems geographic density is so unique among public systems, and it allows us, in fact, almost compels us to work as a more integrated system. re- organization also entails rigorous program review and assessment, as jonathan notes in his book. all of us are tempted to be like the institution across the street. if they have a new phd program, we need to do the same thing. but public institutions have to look carefully and honestly at their offerings. we have some world-class graduate programs at cuny in the arts and humanities, and we must

retain their prominence. in the past, we give less attention to very promising areas in our science and technology graduate programs, and we are focused on building them up now. but there are still other programs that, quite frankly, give me cause for concern. we have to be willing to cut, reshaped, and grow in order to ensure academic quality and make the best use of our limited resources. public institution also need -- public institutions also need to be more aggressive about restricting research efforts and cultivating entrepreneurial spirit in order to commercialize those efforts. johnson's book offers a treasure trove of discoveries and ideas which he briefly discusses and in some cases companies as well, that have resulted from

university research. but while some public universities have developed renowned research programs, others need to develop targeted areas that reflect the institutions strengths and potential. that's part of the reason that we created the decade of science at cuny in 2005. as i've said, we are working to strengthen our science programs, but we are doing so in a way that reflects our integrated approach to rather than building we sure this was on a number of our campuses, and at cuny we are 23 those campuses, with about 270,000 students, we are constructing one cuny-wide science research center that will house researchers old from several cuny campuses that the centers will focus, the center will focus on select areas that

we have determined photonics, nanotechnology, environmental sensing, structural biology and neuroscience. we will be located in manhattan on a city college campus for greater accessibility by all. there is much that public universities can do to meet their growing funding challenges. i would also suggest that when even the modest funding goals of the compact i didn't become difficult, for states to me, the federal government may need to assume a larger role in public higher education. the next bubble, i believe, is going to be the government bubble. and states are in very very serious trouble with very, very fragile balance sheets. the sustained period of the time i can decline can be very difficult to recover from, even

for well-established universities. in fact my colleagues in california have proposed a 21st century version of the morrill act to encourage federal investment in the operation of the countries great public research and teaching universities in order to maintain their core mission of access and opportunity. our future will be defined by the public investment we make in higher education, and at the same time, our institutional ability to innovate and stay nimble. this is a critical moment for public higher education, one that requires we imagining how the relationships between states and it's providing institutions are going to succeed in the world ahead. we simply can't squander the truly remarkable power and potential of our public

universities. thank you for a much. [applause] >> it's both a pleasure and an honor to have the opportunity to participate in this discussion of both an interesting and important treatise, jonathan. now, the true measure of a great provost is reflected in his ability to get his faculty to think about things that he, the provost, thinks is important. jonathan, you have succeeded in thinking about my remarks tonight, about what academic freedom means to a biologist, i realized that i was practicing

the sociology of science, which is, indeed, what you do. and so i'd like to talk to at a very personal level. about what academic freedom means. at the close of the renaissance, western men express a dramatic transformation. his relation to the world around him changed as he tried to represent a rational universe that would be more in accord with information that was perceived by the senses. in art, paintings of lying naked on a bed workplace madonnas. representation substituted for symbol. scientists immorally sought a representation of the world that was both unified and coherent.

but the laws governing the representation in the arts and humanities, differ from those in science. in art literature, religion, philosophy. there are many possible representations of the world. each strives to provide an explanation for the origin, the state, and the future of the universe. all of the representations may be beautiful in their coherence and a new unity, despite the necessity that most will be wrong. in the sciences, there are also many possible worlds, but the only one that interests the scientists is the world that exists. it is the representation of this world that comes closest to what we call, quote, reality.

ironically, scientists have only one world, yet the representation of this biological world we have a lucid they did seems either continually under attack or disbelieved. while we as scientists exult in the glory of our knowledge, the reaction of most people seems to be more often that make our the threat of this sort of understanding this has led to a sense that the acquisition of knowledge in biology is a transgression that must be curtailed. as a consequence, academic freedom is a rescinded, and science impeded. this evening, i'd like to consider to encourage and upon academic freedom and the biological sciences that

affected me personally. the controversy over recombinant dna anti-stem cell debate. each is seriously impeded scientific research and each have implications for the integrity and independence of the research effort. recombinant dna technology was based upon what was without doubt the most significant contribution in biology and a century. the elucidation of the double helical structure of dna by francis crick and gym was and. the techniques of recombinant dna imitate and a very clumsy way the natural processes of evolution. this technology emerge early in my career, and i was apart of it. we learn how to isolate genes to cut them, to rearrange them, to insert genes from humans into bacteria and genes from bacteria

into mice. the isolation of these genes and the ability to mass produce them allowed us to analyze the molecular anatomy in intimate detail. finally, we could introduce these human genes into biological factories. into bacteria and yeast and to tissue culture, and produce their protein products, affording an entirely new approach to the concept of a drug. hence, the emergence of a new industry with a genentech's and the engines providing novel solutions to heart disease, kidney disease, and even, remarkably, blindness. now produce a gene product it is first necessary to clone a human genes, and into introduce into the genetic makeup of a bacterium. here's the trouble begins. the possibility of introducing

disease related genes into bacteria to create new forms of life eyebrows both passion and hostility. recombinant dna has been blamed for spoiling the quality of life and at the extreme for endangering human life. it has become one of the major indictments of biology. we the practitioners of recombinant dna were accused of playing god. as evidence or my role in this pantheon of scientists, journalists were quick to point to note that i named my first son adam. i'm not denying that advances in science provide knowledge without a soul. that advances may be used for good or for evil. but it is not the scientific knowledge that brings harm your harmful effects will only result if knowledge is intentionally used for destruction. indeed, there are many more evil

priests and evil politicians than there are evil scientists. recombinant dna research raised in this debate. the notion that genes can be taken out of one organism and inserted into the genetic makeup of another was perhaps so upsetting because it is linked with the mysterious. my friend and colleague argued that perhaps it conjured up old myths that have been deep structural roots in human anxieties of hybrid monsters. we all know that hybrid monsters reside in hell. consider the frightful an impressive monsters of hieronymus bosch and his pains of the last judgment, to enter details of yours is punishments condemned sinners are left naked before repugnant creatures that

combine a fish and a rat, a dog and a birdie, a human and an insect. but reshuffling of pieces of animals does not arise from reshuffling pieces of dna. i can't help but think that work on recombinant dna a lucid does such a furor, not because of scientific concerns, but because it recalled many nightmares. it had the smell of forbidden knowledge. it called the myths, prometheus and pandora, in which mortals were punished for having stolen a power exclusively reserved for the gods. after all, we were fully with the substance that is at the very basis of life. what opponents both within and outside of the biological community fail to realize was

that evolution had been tinkering with this dna and a far more effective way for the billion years that life had been on earth. it's quite presumptuous to think that we could transcend that tinkering. what really happened? with the emerging technologies permitting the isolation of virtually any gene, and the ability to introduce of these genes into any cell, a group of concerned molecular biologists convened the famous asilomar conference. they consider the risk of introducing potentially harmful genes, viral genes, tumor genes into a bacterial cells that might affect demand. the conference concluded with a letter that appeal to the scientific community to hold off on the performance of recombinant dna experiments until we have the opportunity to weigh risk. doomsday sonorous were invented

by many within this group of well-informed scientists. i sense a desire among some of the conference, my colleagues to demonstrate a self-serving sense of power of authority at the expense of a careful look at biology. what ever the motives of my colleagues, the scientific community endorsed these concerns and followed their leadership. after a asilomar, however, advanced moves out of control of the scientists who became only one voice among many. others would generate less informed assumed that there must be far more serious things to fret about if the scientific community themselves had called for a moratorium. things then got tangled up in self-serving social, political,

and ideologic chat. there were the environment is, the peace activist, the marxists, the science for the people groups, numerous objectives from what inside the scientific community. the growing volume of debate soon attracted congress' attention in the world turned sciences into the lives. i was called before the senate science and technology subcommittee and asked whether we could introduce human genes into monkeys to create a hybrid primate capable of serving men. scenarios abound at this time. there was serious scientist supposed to recombinant dna effort themselves come under again, our own professor of biochemistry irwin shaw gaff asked, and i quote, have we the right to counter as it reversibly the evolutionary wisdom of millions of years in

order to satisfy the ambitions and curiosity of a few scientists? and what began and should have remained as principally a scientific issue was captured and exploited by self-serving ideologues at the first sensationalists were many of the scientists who purchase a paid in asilomar themselves. apocalypse was predicted, and nothing happened. the recombinant dna debate delayed research by years. a second more recent incursion into science that seriously curtailed research surrounds the stem cell debate. in this instance, there was little controversy among the scientific community. the promise of stem cell research in both science and medicine remains unchallenged. the research effort, however,

was challenged and seriously impeded by the politics and ideology that suffused president bush's administration. briefly, let's consider the science of stem cells. stem cells are simply cells that have the potential for self renewal. they look neither like nor ron's, no skin cells or liver cells. they are simply not yet developed. however, under appropriate conditions they have the capability to develop into the vast repertoire of tissues that form an organism. but simply, they are postponed and in mortal. that's a nice thought. this unique property a force of stem the promise or the repair of damaged tissues as well as a cell-based approaches to

identify disease mechanism. now it should already be apparent to this audience that one obvious source of stem cell, stem cells is the early embryo. after conception, the zygote, the one cell embryo that results from the fusion of a sperm and an egg undergoes a series of divisions to produce a bowl of cells, all of which are equivalent and totipotent. they can surveys as stem cells. this ball of cells can be formed in a laboratory or in a bedroom. in the laboratory, it's formed by in vitro fertilization. and in the bedroom, by passion. at present, over half a million embryos formed by in vitro fertilization are stored in fertilization clinics, and are no longer desired by their donors.

half a million. the options open to the donors of these embryos are continue to ask that they be stored to destroy them, to offer them up for adoption, or to donate them for medical research. these are a great source of stem cells. however, this research has been prohibited by ideologic and religious interpretations of the once reasonable regulations governing research on human subjects. laws adopted in 1991 argued for the protection of quote the product of conception from implantation to delivery, and to quote. recall that stem cells derived from embryos formed prior to implantation and under these laws stem cell research would be permitted. but in 1996, representatives

dicky and wicker introduce an amendment to this ruling that prevented any research, quote, in which the human embryo is destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury, and quote. and this effectively prohibited stem cell research. please by congress and the research committee to repeal this amendment were rebuffed by president bush to argue that he could not condone the distraction of embryos at any stage to create stem cell lines. research using federal funds by major support in this nation was halted. some investigators of they'll themselves of research funds from private institutions. others left for nations with more liberal regulations, and yet, other simply ceased stem

cell research. beyond the research effort, the integrity of the scientific process, its independence from politics and freedom from a fundamentalist dogma was a service the questions. this presidential order was recently rescinded by president obama. nevertheless, regulations for the generation of new stem cell lines process, and we are working through them now with an aura of greater optimism. the ethical issue surrounding stem cell research concerns the question, when does life begin? we've heard the the arguments of emphasis, politicians, theologians, and to my knowledge, no where is there an answer to this question that is horribly written, for example, into religious law.

not any old or new testament, not in the koran. rather, it is a cultural dictating. for medieval christendom, life was thought to begin with the quickening, with the first movement of the fetus. for don to in the early renaissance, we are told in purgatory 25 that life begins that the soul is breathed into the embryo as soon as the articulation of the brain is perfect. for the moslems, life begins with the heartbeat. and for the jews, upon separation from the mother. why is it been that in this modern society we now considered a ball of cells generated in a test tube in a laboratory with no capability of developing into an organism outside of the womb and no prospect of ever being placed in a womb as life?

to me it seems just as reasonable to define life as the furtive glance between a young man and a woman in a singles bar. nonetheless, we've had bills bills introduced into the senate by senators brownback and long trip that with without law research on human embryos, not only in the public, but in the private sector. this extra ordinary legislation would criminalize scientific research making it punishable by a 1 million-dollar fine and 10 years in prison. despite the fact that these efforts are moving forward in most countries in the world with a sensitivity, a respect, and an anticipation of medical advances. i can't help but feel that with

the stem cells, as with recombinant dna, this research is somehow a list it's fears of the forbidden. with recombinant dna, we're tinkering with dna. with the substance at the very basis of life. and with stem cells, with the cellular precursors of life itself. what has been so deeply troubling during this debate is the fact that ideologic and religious opinion workload in a language and a veneer of science that arguments were based on religious conviction, and not on scientific data. the integrity of science and its of scientists was questioned, and it scientific effort was curtailed by ideologies. in this instance, we took a big hit. now, jonathan in the book

correctly argues, and i quote, the ages of the bush administration offer us a frightening example of how distressed scholarly and scientific work, because it challenges the ideologic views of the prince can begin to seriously a road the structure of knowledge production. is true, jonathan. but the fault of the prince does not assure the fall of his followers. the conflict between intellect and political and religious authority will intensify as we continue to address questions concerning the origin of man, the nature of our genes, and how they define our biological character and most elusively, the relation between genes and behavior and emotion and cognition. this knowledge too often elicits

a discord, and even fear. this fear has led to the disturbing notion that there is knowledge best left unknown. this thinking undermines the scientific process. we must choose either to have science or not to have it. and if you have it, you cannot dictate the kinds of knowledge that will emerge. and this knowledge will inevitably have the potential for both good and horror. with this knowledge, our lives and those of our descendents will be inexorably changed, and it is our shed responsibility to assure that this change is for the better. thank you. [applause]

>> at this point, the audience has been very patient and i would like to invite you to questions, ask any questions you have. the art microphones on the site of the room and one on that side of the room. and i would also invite the panel to ask each other questions at this time, if they would like you. have we worn you out? [laughter] >> here comes one. while we wait for the real questions, president goldstein, you talk about stakeholders, supporting public institutions like yours. and said that it is traditional that hasn't happened i think you said something like that pic is there any other real reason why there is a resistance to, alumni, for example, other groups i think?

why should the alumni of your university support it as does the alumni of private schools? is there any real reason why it shouldn't happen? >> the fear that makes the problem real, in some places, and i must say that has not been my experience, but the experience at other institutio institutions, is that when legislators see monies coming in to support the operating needs of public universities, there is a tendency to then have money pulled out from the state coffers. and that was very real at a number of state universities around the united states, and that serve as an impedance for presidents, deans, provost, and others who were asked to try to generate additional revenue to

pull away from that. that has not been my experience. i think what the state universities have to do, because i really believe that states across the united states are in very serious trouble, of not knowing -- only defaulting on their nose, but not being able to support the general obligations of their universities again as a result, in order for these institutions to really survive, they are going to have to emulate not only what private universities have done from their inception, but to generate additional revenue. and that's a we are doing, and that's what we are seeing across the united states. . .

research and undermining -- >> well, i think geoff was alluding to some of this and it is discussed in the book as well. but there are the possibilities,

of course, that fundamental values at the universities could be undermined by the commercialization of ideas. and allowing conflicts of interest to take place. allowing professors to focus the attention of their students on perhaps the most profitable idea that they think they have among their quiver. but rather than the most important idea. i think it's extraordinarily important that we take seriously what eric b ashgbach suggesting we don't and not sell ourselves to the devil. and that requires very clearly put conflict of interests policies and the close monitoring of activities on the campus. i mean, i think that at columbia we did do that fairly successfully and we were very much aware of the potential for undermining the values of the university.

and that could result from, you know, people becoming overly involved in the funding of their own research by commercial entities. the ways in which their own research results could be affected by their receipt of funding from external forces. but we put very strict limits on it. and we held to it regardless of the standing of the individuals. i think we've done a good job. but it's a general problem that i think one has to be very, very careful of. we've read recently about ways in which pharmaceutical companies and doctors have been closely aligned and people have been getting very large sums of money from pharmaceutical companies supposedly in ways that do result in conflict of interest of interests. so i do think we have to be very carefully of that. i think the university guess have to be vigilant in enforcing the policies of control.

>> professor cole, i think a significant deficiency of your otherwise authoritative work is the absence of any discussion of the current and historic impact of run-away athletic programs on the university's fundamental mission. only this month the perversion of the intercoalollegiate progr at bingham university and was part of the shakeup of the administration there. thank you. >> is that a statement or a question? >> you can interpret it -- >> well, by the way, the book having to do with commercialization of the university does talk about athletics. i don't really talk about athletics in the book. i do find it somewhat frightening that the ivy league schools have 20% of their incoming classes -- 20% of their incoming classes being recruited athletes.

little people know that and notre dame is about 4 marine layer -- 4%. i don't think that it undermines the research initiatives of the university. and certainly in the discovery of new ideas. i think it has much more idea of the creeping -- you know, i don't know what it is. professionalization of sports, whatever. it has affected the ivy league schools as well as others. and to my mind, unfortunately, i wish we could roll that back a bit. >> thank you very much. [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> well, i mean, first of all, i think there are an awful lot of people who produce doomsday scenarios. i mean, we have a man whom i admire greatly who was president of a college not too long ago he said the days of bricks and mortar of universities was gone. this was in the dot com bubble when everybody thought could be done including research could be done remotely. i don't know how that was possible. these kinds of sue-sayers are very often off-base and somewhat alarmists.

i think that we have to recognize that we are going to adapt in front various ways to the changing needs of the society. and i hope that we as an institution can do that and one of the ways, for example, it has become very plain is that very, very complex problems today require the extraordinary knowledge of people of many disciplines working together in various ways. and so the silo structures of disciplines are by necessity -- they're going to break down. and we have to see whether or not we can facilitate the growth of knowledge rather than create feathers on the growth of knowledge by maintaining old structures in a new -- in a new era when new structures are required. that does not mean -- i want to be very quick to assert that we don't need true depths of knowledge. but it is no longer really possible, i think, and richie could say and tell me that i'm wrong that many areas of biology are going to be linked up with

computer science. and are going to be linked to a variety of other disciplines in order to be able to achieve certain kinds of results. without foregoing the depths of knowledge that you have in current disciplines. that's the structural adaptation i think that is beginning to take place in universities, some better than others but one in which we ought to try to facilitate it without dumbing down anything. >> if i could just comment for a moment. i think one of the really important changes in the few of the university that will emerge as a consequence of what jonathan has been talking about and that is the integration of the sciences with what were previously thought to be the humanities.

i'm a neuroscientist. and neuroscience increasing involves a merger of biology with psychology, philosophy, sociology. and more importantly, what we're beginning to see is that the data that are emerging is so profoundly has the potential to affect our lives that we as an integrated academic community can no longer adopt the notion of an ivory tower as i tried to portray. we're going to have to present the significance of scientific observations to the public so as to allow science rather than ideology to dictate the response and ultimate use.

if i can just add one thing to what richard did say, he did introduce humanities. i think it's very important that we recognize that you really cannot build great universities without the participation in most universities, not only in the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities and as is important as richard was suggesting. five or six years ago i was asked to help design a great university from scratch by extraordinary reader of a chinese proverb and as i was outline some of the blueprints, you know, you can forget about the humanities. and by the way, sociology, your discipline isn't needed either. we just assumed -- nothing likely trouble will come from that discipline so we better get rid of those. why don't we concentrate on the sciences, engineering and whatever and we'll have these startup companies right next door.

that in fact there is a kind of seamlessness that one hopes to achieve in universities where the kinds of issues, the kinds of questions that are raised by humans are essential for the growth of scientific knowledge as well. and also for the resolution of questions that richard was posing. i mean, ethical questions, questions of morality as well as the interactions between the social and behavioral aspects of science. and pure knowledge and even applied knowledge that comes from scientific disciplines. >> jonathan, this is a question to address to you and to geoff because i think you both have been saying things that comments are different positions. richard just said passionately

that there are no longer ivory towers but geoff ended his talk by saying, universities should not take a stand on. and that strikes me as asking the university to be at a very significant place. so the kinds of things you and richard think opens up the university so i think -- i mean, these things have integrated with other things. and geoff nevertheless wants a real constraint on this and it's not obvious how this is to be done. >> well, let me just say because i admire the university of chicago and its ethos so much. i'll jump in here and defend

what i think was the intention of my dear friend, geoff stone, and simply say this. the idea is that if you're going to allow the expression of opinion by your faculty and your students and everybody who's part of that community and have it be free and open exchange of ideas, discourse which is truly vetted in the marketplace of ideas, you don't want to have chilling forces operating. and when you have a single individual presuming to speak for the university, that can have that chilling effect. that is very much the philosophy of the university of chicago and one that i admire. it's not that one takes positions especially as one orients the university in its educational mission towards the future and adapting to it. but on certain kinds of issues, many of them which are political issues and other kinds of issues, that there is the

principle that nobody speaks for the university. >> i would -- i would agree with that. i think these are largely reconcilable observations. and universities have to have agendas. they have to decide whether they're going to move in certain directions and have research in certain areas or not. that's intricals of their academic missions, but when they go well beyond that and postulating about world events that i think they step outside the legitimate fear. individual faculty members of an right and responsibility to do that but universities themselves should not do that. and that, i think, is fundamentally inconsistent with admissions. >> are the core values of the research-intensive university necessarily antithetical in excellence in teaching? and if so, there a way where the

professional demands on professors are so great these days? is there a way to right that balance? >> i think they are nonantithetcal at all. this is one of the myths that i talk about in the book although the book doesn't concentrate on undergraduate education and that's most folks criticism. a historian and education has written some time ago actually that if you look at the evaluation by students of faculties, the quality of faculty performance in the classroom is a slight positive correlation between the positive evaluations with the research productivity and the research output of those faculty members. so i don't think -- in fact, if there's any edge that i would give to the great research universities over the liberal arts colleges is that there is an opportunity for young people

to study with the people who are really pushing forward the boundaries and the frontiers of knowledge creating new knowledge and are less likely to be simply transmitting core knowledge or knowledge that is at the periphery of the field to their students. i think not only know inconsistency but, in fact, a necessary part of the -- of the mission is to link these two. and to -- look, it doesn't mean there aren't great researchers and lousy teachers and it doesn't mean there aren't any poor researchers who are poor teachers, and there are -- you can fill out the table and you're going to be able to find a lot of bad people around in terms of research and teaching. even at great universities. but it's not because they necessarily refuse devoted only to research. in fact, one of my feelings

about columbia colleges there's so many faculty members here who love really smart inquisitive undergraduates and they would love to be able to foster and they do. now, i think it's an entirely different problem for very large state universities when the average class size for those people managing in many, many subjects is 500, 700. you know, the average class size at columbia is about 20. and so it's a very, very -- we run a boutique educational establishment here. unfortunately, the state universities and great city university like the one that matthew runs really cannot have the luxury of all those small classes. and that does put enormous burdens off faculty members teaching thousands of students. it takes a very special type of person to be able to do that well. and i think that's where a lot

of the discontent is expressed and where there are serious issues to be addressed. >> let me just quickly comment on that. and that is there is the formal teaching largely undergraduate teaching. and then there's the -- the intimate daily teaching that a research professor has with his students and fellows. and i think we're all -- maybe the world is not aware of the extent to which research scientists teach. graduate students and fellows. and the realization on our part that without this teaching, our disciplines are dead. and so there is a good deal of informal teaching which amounts to many, many more hours a week

in the formal teaching in the classroom. that is inherent in the research endeavor. >> let me take this opportunity to thank the panel for, i think, an extremely interesting and important set of remarks. and also a very stimulating follow-up discussion. also, let me remind everybody that this book is on sale right outside this room. and so let's give them a round of thanks here. [applause] >> jonathan cole, who served as provost and dean of faculties at columbia university for 14 years is currently a professor at the university. he's a member of the american academy of arts and sciences and the american philosophical society. for more information, visit university-discoveries.com.

>> we're at frostburg state university speaking with thomas a. lewis author of "brace for impa impact: surviving the crash of the industrial living." what do you see as the major threats to our current way of living? >> well, that's the content of most of the book. it's a long list. what i did is i organized it into the threats that i see gathered against our systems that sustain us. i look into food, both the food that we grow and the animals that we raise. i look into water, a supply of water and the treatment of wastewater and energy, oil and electricity.

and each of those categories is a system that has been increasingly industrialized and is increasingly in peril of failing. there's a mortal stress on all of those systems. and usually people don't look at them all at one time. with electricity, it tapes three times as much water to get the electricity to your home than it does the water that you use, you know? so the electricity has an impact on water. so i tried to gather in one place these threats and their dimension. and here's the central premise. when we industrialize food and industrialize water, industrialize electricity, we have this relentless search of economy and scale. we get bigger and the units get cheaper well, there's a dark twin of economy of scale and it's concentration of risk. to get bigger and produce more

cheaper stuff concentrates and worsens risk. now the risk on all these enterprises has gone global. and mortal. and what i've done here that few other books do that face the inevitable conclusion, we can't save the industrial society. it's going to go down. the perverse thing is we don't need to go down with it. it's very simple. for anyone who wants to survive what's coming but it's not possible to save everybody for what's coming. >> what's the timeline for this? >> well, that's like predicting the great earthquake in los angeles. and it's a pretty good comparison. we all know -- all scientists know that there's going to be a catastrophic earthquake along the san andreas in los angeles and another along the hayward. even fox tv doesn't get someone

who thinks it's a hoax. we know it's coming. when an entirely a different matter. we tend to think in 24-hour segments. we don't have long-term vision in our discussion of these things. i have a whole chapter on apocalypse when as i title it. and i compare it to trying to forecast earthquakes. you can't. there's no date. but when you look at each of the threats and you see the degree to which they have intensified and the utter lack of response to them by any agency of our government, by any leader, then you know that it's inevitable. >> so the inevitable decline as you describe it, is that something that was -- >> not a decline. a crash. >> a crash. is that something that could possibly be scaled back by government intervention? >> it could have been. i mean, we all -- we who are

activists in the '80s we really thought we had a chance and i think we do have a chance. if the urgency had been recognized then -- it was known then and the science was there. we know -- we knew where things were headed. and if somebody, anybody, any institution, whether political or financial had accepted the threat and had started to confront it then, we would have had a chance. i don't think that it can be done now. the only shred of hope for the overall avoidance of this crash is that if people get scared enough -- and i'm not just trying to scare people. i'm just trying to follow logic to its conclusions -- but if enough of us made the choice to save ourselves through sustainable living -- and i mean not sustainable living, i don't mean green wash or any of the industrial solutions that are

being braced and called sustainable -- i mean, true sustainable living. if enough of us decided, you know, i want to save myself and my family and started to do that, then we could conceivably shift the paradigm. i don't think it's going to happen. i'm what i called the book an age optimist. my fond hope is that i die before that happens. and i've got a good chance. >> so what are the steps that people can take to survive the crash? >> well, you have to get serious about sustainable living. i call the last chapter of the book is called "sanctuary." you cannot be sustainable in any city right now. it's too late for that. and it won't happen so you got to find a piece of ground where you can grow your own food. and you can produce your own energy, where you use it. i mean, we have all this talk about a smart grid. the only smart grid is no grid at all. the technology as somebody said that's been around for 100 years and you still can't do better

than strings on sticks? i mean, it's not the electricity is the problem. it's the transmitting of the electricity over huge distances. so sustainable means you can have electricity but you have to produce it where you use it. and then you don't lose any of it. you can get terrific efficiency. it's living a totally different way. and people will say well, not everybody can do that. i know. >> so is it -- is it moving towards a society without a government or is this something that -- >> i don't go there. i'm not trying to solve the problem for everybody. i'm not trying to solve the problem for the country. i've concluded to the contrary that it can't be solved. all i'm saying is that you can do something about it. you can save your family, if you want to. what else is implied by that decision, i can't tell. i can just tell you that we have the technology. we have the knowledge. we know how we can do it. and so it becomes a personal choice. either you will or you won't.

but i can't and won't extrapolate to say what the country should look like in five years because i can't. >> do you personally make steps in your life to try to live a sustainable -- >> i do. i have a sanctuary of sorts. it is not self-sufficient. but it is -- it has the elements and i can put them in place very quickly. i grow some of my own food. i have some animals. i have 20 acres. i heat with wood. i have enough solar to get me through emergencies. i'm certainly not living in a fully sustainable fashion. but i have the systems in place to have it in very short order. >> well, thank you very much. we've been speaking with tom a. lewis, author of "brace of impact: surviving the crash of the industrial age by sustainable living."