>> to see what i'm saying that the problem is alive and well? it's funny because if you go and look at the statistics and numbers look great. there are tens of women entering science. ..

>> after my friend lots of examples we can find like i was in brussels once for summer school and there was a girl from austria and i said the restrooms are looking sold like maybe 150 years -- in brussels it was a huge complex. i was surprised and the lady next to me said well, you're glad at least the have a women's restroom. i said what do you mean? she said i'm the only woman in whole institute so they don't have a restroom for women.

heidi hughes the men's restroom. i was like okay. >> thank you for sharing that. >> i feel very who thrilled. i was always thinking behind my mind there should be such a book. i was thinking of writing one myself. [laughter] >> thank you. >> you were painting a picture of a historical trend and the influence of a feminist move into the science but then i have difficulty in understanding of the computer sciences for example so very new and they blossomed in the 90's especially but there are probably more masculine than the six. how do you explain that? >> i don't know if you know computer science is the exception to the rules going on

and people felt women should be getting traction and computer science and the thing that is funny is in the newer fields women generally do better because they did later but this is not the case of computer science. and i am not an expert on this. i know this is a very big issue. i am a historian and so i need a good 20, 25 years of perspective before i can say anything, but i do think a lot of it has to do -- if you look at those areas that we men congregate in it is usually those areas of science that are not particularly hiring, don't pay that well. i don't know what came first, the chicken or the egg, was it a good paying and that he and some nice work but in computer science its racy, it pays well, there's lots of resources being pumped into it. i do think that women will have time in computer science but i think right now lots of men have flocked and they are getting the

first serving and i do think the women will come but it will take some time. >> thanks. >> i think that will conclude the questions. thank you. i want to remind you you are invited to the perception of the feminist press in room -- >> 5406. >> 5406 where julie will sign copies of her book. >> [inaudible] >> thank you jury much. [applause] ook in the

conversation with michele norris. [applause] >> this is such a treat for me because david and i are old friends. when we worked at "the washington post," you always knew when you wrote a particularly delicious piece of copy because david would send a little notes and i still remember that years later.

this book was so wonderful to dive into. most people in this room have read much about barack obama, and in every chapter you learn new things about him but you also learned much about this country. when i first talked to you about this it wasn't clear that your writing a biography so i want you to tell me as we began about the process, how you came to write this particular book. was it the but you actually planned to fight? >> i think it was probably a less ambitious book and maybe even more focused on the question of race and less biographical be it became clear the more it became a biography full-blown, and i fully expect 20 years from now or however many years from now some new robert carroll will come along and write a six volume biography with all of the requisite

archives of the presidency and all the rest. that goes without saying. but in fact i saw you at the inauguration. there was a party for gwen ifill who had written the breakthrough about this generation of young or younger african-american politicians, not just obama but cory booker and arthur davis and all the rest. and it was just germinating in my mind. i'd written the piece called the joshua generation for the new yorker, trying to get a handle on what had happened, which was an astonishing event just after the election. and started going to chicago as often as i could, which meant weekends and little bits of time here and there, and i had never attended writing a full-blown book while editing at the magazine. and it just became more and more and more interesting. the more i spoke to diesel acquaintances whether it was at harvard law school, chicago, hawaii, all of the obvious spots. >> you do much to fill and i

don't want to save the blanks, but to fill in spaces in his own book because he has told us his own story, but you learn much more in researching this book. did you find it was difficult to get people to open up and talk to you about this because it is one thing many of his friends and acquaintances have been regarded with his story. >> i didn't find it fantastically -- once you get into the political class, once you get into the area of people who are running campaigns and have resentments or vendettas or reason to stay quiet it becomes a tricky transaction and the word on background and okay on the quotes and all that kind of washington new york stuff comes into play. but going to chicago and talking to the former mates and community organizer or particularly women who worked with him in community -- there was no hesitation at all. it was fun. that's the kind of reporting i

like best. and the whole transaction over off the record, on the record, and all the gradations in between. as tedious and also it becomes very tricky in terms of whether you are being told the truth or are being spun like a top. >> there are a few people we meet along the way who really helped us develop a much firmer picture and i want to begin in hawaii if we can, because there was a friend stanley who you talk to extensively. >> stanley is the mother, not a common name for the woman and she won the name because of her father's grave disappointment that his daughter hadn't been otherwise. [laughter] eventually she went by anne peery i will call her anne so we will get confused because his name was, wait for it, stanley and she decided to be an anthropologist at aertain point. and particularly in the area of

indonesian studies and java knees craftsman and the rest and she founded academic mentors at the university of hawaii who happened to be the granddaughter of john dewey, her name is allison dewey. u.s. about the difference between his memoir and autobiography and this book. they are radically different. i think that a memoir and an autobiography is a story. it's the story we tell ourselves. they can be deeply researched. i know that you've been working on one. i think obama did research for his but it is highly shaped thing, literally shaped. he doesn't do the work of a reporter work history or archival work. he's doing personal work, literary work of self understanding. and his book has no politics in it whatsoever. his book ends when politics begins. it's the book of diprete political man although he may have had ambitions. but to go back to hawaii, the other big missing piece or one of the larger missing pieces in the autobiography is the mother.

it's called quote code dreams from my father stopped quote and it's about in many ways somebody trying to do battle with, learn about, reconciled with a ghost, and utterly missing father who leaves the household after infancy, at infancy, free appears for ten days when obama is a kid, disappears again. and obama cheers all kind of stories about him the way kids do but can't get his hands are bound him. and it is the big trauma of the book and there are three big sections to the book. it's a highly structured young man's literary attempt and it's a very good, but it's highly structured and the end of each of these three big sections, and this is not somebody we know to be in tears a lot, he ends weeping and one of them in this with him weeping at his father's

grave whereas his mother came off and you may disagree with me in the campaign and from the journalism as kind of flighty, a certain kind of 60s character with a skirt and interested in kind of left-leaning politics of international development sort, kind of pathetically trying to help her african-american son and understand being african-american by giving him records or certain kind of books. i mean, what could she do? in my view of it and my research of it and talking to mya, obama's half sister even more time with the mother, she is an immensely interesting figure. >> and a very complex. >> extremely complex. obama adores her and it is confused by her absence during high school and probably suffers from them. i mean he is being raised by his grandparents, not something everybody loves.

and i found her to be an immensely rich character in the life than he -- she was in his autobiography. >> and hal -- she was trying to help with him dealing with being an outsider yet when she brings him to indonesia they have to basically move out of the house and -- >> that is exactly right. when she started doing research and java they lived on the old grand, the old palace grounds, and because there was a relation there that the second husband had royal relations, so they were allowed to live on the palace grounds in jakarta. when obama, jr. would make occasional trips to jot to join his mother on vacations, they had to move off the palace grounds because it was one thing to have an american but quite another thing to have an african-american. thisnot a guy who suffered the slings and arrows of john

lewis, but as vivian, one of the heroes of the civil rights movement say is, you are born into this country at any generation as an african-american and you don't seascape suffering at all. and so barack obama, what is the night he becomes a national and international figure? it comes in the summer of 2004, boston. he gives a speech -- he is a state senator. now if you are in d.c. you don't have a state senator -- [laughter] going in front of an audience i asked raise your hand if you know who your state senator is sick sands will go up and five of them are lobbying. [laughter] he was the state senator and running for a senate seat. he makes this speech that mocks everybody out. everybody knows who de@k@ rbrbsb

prides itself on multiculturalism except for one thing all the black people are on military bases except a couple kids here and there. so it was a really difficult struggle for him. >> and how does that and for his personality, his outlook, his world view? i mean, chris had ali was a good friend of his, and pfizer of his

often describes the experience of living in america as a black man you experience something that he attends to deep muscle tissue bruising. not the kind of thing that you might be able to see that the kind of thing that you sort of fuel and the eight that makes itself present in the will you might feel arthritis in the reign. it's there and is surfaces and let you know that it's there from time to time. from the extent he has that how has that informed? >> chris headley, the dean of law school at berkeley and has known obama for quite a while i think it is also chris headley who said race and rocket science, it's harder than rocket science. [laughter] one of his friends at harvard law school from the first day of harvard law school is a woman named cassandra butts and she was a friend to this day and has worked with obama and describes obama essey translator because of his unique interpreter. somebody the when you have an interpreter when you go to a

foreign country and that person becomes your lanes, and because obama grew up in a multiplicity of wiltz in a way that most of us do not she's able to do that in a political sense. he can go into an african-american church and claim a credibility there because he's spent -- and he had to achieve that. he didn't just walk through the door as a child. but he can go also to all kind of other communities and translate that community to them, that there for the metaphor of the bridges maybe not till found. it's not just a historical one that obama himself acts as a bridge. again i don't want to die too deep into the goo of psycho history. it is a dangerous, muddy and inconsequential please. but there is no doubt that people's backgrounds and their associations and the way they grow up and the way they were educated and the historical moment they are in effect who

they are and their presidency. i'm not suggesting for a second that he's thinking about race when he said the situation room and talking about iran or afghanistan. but it has its effect both politically, personally, intellectually and the rest. >> there was a meeting, several meetings actually in the lead to his decision to run for president where he was surrounded by friends and advisers. and and one particular meeting he talks about what it would mean to run for black america. and he talks about how he would -- ki envisioned what that land would you like for young people to wake up the morning after the election and realize wheat, i wasn't dreaming the night before. the united states just elected a black man to the presidency. he thought about that and articulated that he talked about that. do you get this sense that he was also thinking about what that moment would mean for white america and particularly for the various segments of white

america that might be resistant to that milestone? >> i don't want to be glib but in a sense what is the difference? african american history is american history. there is no american history free of african-americans. african-americans were zero lot earlier than my relatives who had been around for generations. and there is no american culture without african-american culture whether it is music or literature or etc. this is -- this is just who we are. so it affects all of us and you are seeing the difficult side of it now. q. are seeing -- >> that's what i'm asking about, was he thinking about some of that element -- >> this wasn't going to happen smoothly whether he got elected or not. and you see in the tiberi mifsud -- i'm not suggesting that for a second anybody in the cheaper the movement is racist or even the remote majority. there are economic concerns that the bubble up and have caused this throughout american history these kind of movements happen. but at the far end of it, you

have seen and heard some pretty ugly things, and it can't be bought eckert incidents that the nature of these ugly things are this combustion of economic uncertainty and anxiety and an african-american president, and it creates a kind of surgeon vocabulary and a certain kind of outrage. we saw a phone message left on the -- john lewis of all people, a phone message left on his machine. again, i don't want to suggest for a second that one phone message paints an entire movement as racist. it would be outrageous and wrong. but there is clearly, clearly some small part of the country that uses terms like "we want our country back." now what does that mean? that there's a kind of nostalgia for an imagined lost valhalla of

a time when the president, like barack obama, is inconceivable in part. >> david, i want to reach back to the was early years again because upon reading the book -- some of you just purchased the book for the first times we don't want to give too much away -- >> you can purchase it for a second time if so inclined. [laughter] >> and by one for your friends and family members. upon reading the book, barack obama comes across as somebody who is deeply ambitious man and was a deeply and vicious young man and actually was a deeply ambitious child, and actually talked about the presidency much earlier than many years before. >> i think that was cade talk -- kid talk and there probably isn't a parent in the room has who hasn't told his or her kid you could be anything. >> but when he was running for congress. >> he ran for congress and got

beat so that he almost never went into tics again. i think that he gets serious, really serious about himself in terms of ambition when he not only gets into the harvard law school, but he becomes president of the harvard law review. that's when you begin to tell yourself if you are possessed of a healthy or enlarged or even engorged ego -- laughter, not only am i in this birthplace of supreme court justices and senators and so on, but i am now the best of the best and in his case because he's the first african-american president of the harvard law review the next morning fox is writing about it in the times and it's on the wire it's all over the media. so even when he's running for small potatoes offices there is an enlarged sense of where this could go. the problem is he shows up in chicago and even though that has given him many things chicago

doesn't always throw open its arms to him politically and say any office you like. you want to be the mayor? is yours. he had to contend with the fact there was no way he was going to be mayor because the dog he would have run against and waited to leave is still in the office now. [laughter] and he ran -- and his act of running were act of and piety. he ran for the state senate and 96, thanks to a sex scandal that allowed alice palmer to try to run for congress. she lost and ran back and tried to get back in that race and wanted obama to step aside. obama wouldn't do it and when she tried to get the signatures to get on about how quickly he got her thrown off the ballot. he was appalled. >> he cleared the field. >> he ran unopposed. as you know in chicago politics, the republican side may as well be spared can delete the -- sprick is. it's not going anywhere. unbeatable .88 he ran the lead a former black panther and very

popular congressman, maybe not the greatest congressman but certainly a popular one, bobby rush. and he was defeated soundly, not only because of bodies son had been killed in an act of violence on the street a couple of weeks after the race began and then his father died and the community was really sympathetic. but also because he had no -- ki didn't have the routes that bobby rush had come and bobby ramesh's campaign and another opponent put it all on the street that who is barack obama, they asked. those questions didn't begin with sarah palin and john mccain. who is barack obama? they began much earlier. who is barack obama? he's not one of us. he has a white mother. she's from hawaii. she is backed by the university of chicago, highly controversy institution on the south side especially for black folks. and also, his money is coming

from white people, from shoes. it got really ugly and he got beat so bad that certainly michelle obama was not eager to repeat the experience and really almost left politics for the life of a little of this, a little of that. writing, teaching, may be running a foundation. was that close. >> people who are successful are often successful because they fail. if they learn the proper lessons from their setbacks. >> absolutely. >> what did he learn from that and how was he able to move forward? >> he learned he's not bobby rush. he learned he's not a guy that is going to succeed by trying to out-bobby rush bobby rush. he started going on trips of the state, the counties, the suburbs around chicago. he starts going south in the state with a kind of old political hand from the state legislature named dan showmen and he's been visiting -- and he

starts to see that white people at vfw in the southern counties who are culturally may be closer to the southern states that they are a lot closer to the chicago aren't, you know, dismissing me. i'm getting a friendly reception here. i translate. and so when he decides to run for the senate, it's not as if he wins the southern part of the state, but he does all right and he does very well clearly on little suburbs like evin stand. he sweeps the black vote and he gets a little bit lucky. he gets a little lucky, wait for it, to more sex scandals. as you remember blair hall, certainly the richest candidate if not the most skilled, goes down in flames when his divorce records or opened up and they are not an edify and spectacle. [laughter] then he is when to run against the very strong republican, who

a former goldman sachs partner who has gone off to fund a really good school on the south side, he has now done well and now he's going to do good and very handsome. and his divorce records are open to and they involved a french sex club and, you know, we are on c-span so we don't want to go too far but they are not an edifying spectacle. and barack -- barack obama and sap running against alan keyes, the most sacrificial of sacrificial. [laughter] so i think the first time barack obama is an a really competitive race in his whole life besides the harvard law school presidency is the iowa caucuses against hillary clinton. >> but he has -- we are going to get to the iowa caucus in a moment but i want to reach back before we get there because there's something very interesting in his biography. you are lucky in that life if you get one really good mentor who will put their hands on your

shoulders and to give you advice and tell you the kind of things you may not even want to hear. when the fairy godmother started passing out mentorship or good mentors, he was abundantly blessed. judson meijer, emil jones, i could go on and on. >> larry tribe, martha, knute minow, is a large list. >> how did this happen? did they choose him or in some ways did he find his own mentors? >> well, i do know there are certain young people >> i remember kent boo wrote a piece about al gore a long time ago and she wrote that al gore is an older person's idea of a younger person. [laughter] and barack obama was more mature than the other students at harvard law. she was more pleased. he wasn't sort of a feverish and his ambition. he was the most overused word in

the world about obama, he was cooler about it and he's also smart and laurence tribe was attracted to him and made him a research assistant. before that, when he was a -- and i think this may be the most important mentor of all and some of that spent unbelievable amounts of time with him when he was a community organizer he was hired by a guy named jerry tallman who is working with all of these catholic parishes and other churches throughout the

and a sense of home. jakarta and indonesia, that wasn't home. that was a sojourn to even hawaii to some extent, he wasn't going back there. there was nothing for him there. was he going to be the, the congressman from honolulu? not just chicago with the south side of chicago, that was home. he also found a church there that was important, and jeremiah wright is an essential figure in the early time frame. >> and he found michelle. >> and he finds michelle obama when he came back -- he did an

internship at a law firm and there was michelle obama who had preceded him at harvard law. she was about the same age, but because he had been an organizer they were not together at harvard law. and he was knocked out by her. sheik kamal so fast. [laughter] >> and she's an interesting character here because she keeps him grounded when the world is going crazy and the world seems -- seems to rise up and greet him wherever he goes, she is always saying things like i hope at some point he does something tour all of these. which sounds -- but it is as you describe it part of the chemistry in the relationship. >> the stick is she is the observer and the one punching his lot in considerable self regard it certain times. but in the end, he seems to win

most of the major battles. in other words, all along the way she is very reluctant about the electoral politics. i mean, she came from a family and from a city where the view of electoral politics is, you know, the daily. greg triumph of harold washington, they were excited about that is everybody was in the community, but very weary of electoral politics. the whole idea of running for state senate -- by the way, she was right. he gets to the state senate, the black caucus can't stand him, the work is boring, she is bored, he finds it trivial. he has a very low boredom threshold which also speaks to a certain ego as well as intellect but also ego and then he runs for congress and its craved. she says enough is enough. we can do well at the same time. we've got all of these loans. enough is enough and he gives it one more shot and wins the senate seat.

>> she is as committed to community service as he is. >> but in a different way. she played that out as a professional woman at the university chicago and the hospital and all the rest. but electoral politics i think was something that she came to far, far less willing and obama himself pursued it really hard. >> what explains his restlessness? >> will again, i want to be careful of this. i think there is a lot of his character that is created and he said so himself said there is no reason not to indulge that is deliberately and counter distinction to the father. once he actually learns about his father's courier, he reacts to it. his father thought that he was going to be at the very pinnacle of postcolonial kenyan politics. he was going to go on an airlift as a young man to the university

of hawaii, get the education that he could get in the united states. he then went to harvard and got a higher degree in economics and he thought he was going to be back in nairobi in the circle of kenya and all the rest and he was going to have an extremely powerful voice, somebody on the left spectrum of the kenyan politics and it just all went south. politics didn't work out and it's a long story, politics didn't work out as he thought. he was extremely erratic in his personal life, he was a terrible husband and not a very good father at all. at one point its eve and -- one of his children who now lives in china has said that obama senior beat one of his wives and he becomes a terrible drinker and his life ends with him drinking and driving. this is the erratic life that

obama simply would not stand for in his own life, barack, jr.. sweating this kind of meticulousness, the reserves, the careful less he describes -- this is not the psychoanalyzing -- he describes at least in some parts a reaction to this erratic father. >> how did people misinterpreted or underestimate him when he first began the presidential run? and let's consider the first primary in iowa. >> and iowa. remember there were very few black people in iowa last time i was there. and why did he win iowa? well, i think two big factors. a lot of complexity goes into this. you run for this tiny caucus for ever. two things were important and let's leave aside hillary clinton's own campaign problems

and divisiveness in that campaign and all of the miscalculations. barack an organization. barack an organization. real discipline and a kind of innovative organization and barack is something to separate himself and capture a left-leaning democratic party faithful in iowa. very different from the victory in south carolina, which to me is an incredibly interesting drama. but once he wins iowa people wake up. who is this guy? he beat hillary and then suddenly they are all on almost equal playing field and everything is gangbusters after that. >> i wondered if one of the things people didn't fully realize the importance of community organizing and what he learned from the brief period of time he spent as a community organizer and how he applied that to his candidacy and i

guess how he might even apply that to now how he operates in the white house. >> fighting keys constantly using the metaphor of organizing certainly in the campaign less so now in the campaign as the metaphor for how he imagined he would be a politician. when he ran for the state senate and started getting the first introduced to the chicago reader and the tribune he would talk about all i imagine a politician as a community organizer and office and so on and so forth with the truth is we've learned a lot about the life of so wilensky the last few years and not everybody knew it, obama was not a soul berlinski organizer. it was about confrontation and the kind of rough figure, self styled figure as you could imagine, very much of his time. obama was on that, although community organizing has struck such especially in secondo is -- chicago ase. i think the community organizing

gave more to barack obama than barack obama could give community organizing especially in the short period of time. he had a modest accomplishments and this victory that came to pass. he said at a job recruiting center that collapsed under its own weight after a while. it's just not much. and i think part of what he learned is the frustration and limitation of community organizing, that he looked around and he looked at harold washington's on fulfill promise. here's somebody that spends his entire first time, harold washington, completely embroiled in a battle with the city council. he gets to the second term, it's great to get debt better and he dies at his desk and leaves behind not the kind of political legacy organization that he could have or should have. obama was as he is leaving in organizing heading to law school he realizes and thinks to himself and says in these little round-table discussions he has and you can dig up if you're so inclined or you can find them in

this book, he says you know, i've discovered in order to make change at any level despite the corruption's and hypocrisies and involvement of money you have to get elected to things and so off he goes to harvard law school to get the tools to get elected to things. ..

could you please show him around, because he is getting, you know he is a little lost here. he is not coming off well. some of his colleagues think of him, you have heard this before, professorial and distant and all those things that he had a hard time with when he would first enter springfield. and so shulman helps him out. he gives them his kind of illinois education. >> we are going to bring all of you into the conversation and just a minute but just a few more questions. what are the things that is very interesting exercises to look at the early writings for the early speeches of a presidency and in this case barack obama left a particular gift with the columns that he wrote in a small newspaper on the southside and i want to ask you about one in particular which is the column he wrote after 9/11.

which is so revealing and his worldview and his view of america also but just sort of a confidence expressed at that time when many people sort of almost had an instinctive reach toward patriotism. >> michelle is referring to a column, a more or less daily column that obama would write for the hyde park paper, the local paper in hyde park, the herald. and, most of the columns were here is why i am for a health care program or i am working on racial profiling bill or whatever, and they are fairly, they are fine, they are unspectacular. it is not exactly in or anything at that level. after 9/11, a lot of local politicians were asked to weigh in on their feelings about it and what we suggest for the country. most of them are utterly, in the

mode of the words of consolation, they are unremarkable and obama writes much longer than anybody else, prides himself on his writing, and he is taking a kind of you know, this is a horrible tragedy, and we must punish the guilty and so on, but, and these are words in other peoples mouths after 9/11 got in trouble, susan sontag and others and certainly as although the expression is not like some others. we must be very careful in our grief and in our anger not to go too far, and we should be careful to adhere to the norms of american law in our pursuit of the guilty. i think i am remembering this right. so, in a way he was more state

senator than was absolutely called for by the strictures and customs of being a state senator but after a while he came up against the limits of that office and there was no way he was going to stay in there much longer. >> before we open us up to questions from from the audience, i want to ask you about a decision that you make. early on in the administration when the white house had welcomed a group of young children to the building, michelle obama had said something almost an offhand manner while talking to the kids. she said you know this building was largely built by slaves. and this was something the kids in the audience nodded their heads, but much was made that remark because it is a historic fact but it is not something that is talked about much. you actually go back and spend a lot of time looking at the history of slaves in the white house and i want to know why do you decided to at that time and muscle into a.

>> you referred to pretty close to the end of the book, he has been elected and the narrative is going to take us to the inauguration and i stop the narrative, and began a section about precisely this. that slaves built the white house in go into some granular detail about their names, how much they were paid. service.

elizabeth paglia's one figure. elizabeth carefully was mrs. lincoln's seamstress and she wrote the memoir, and she was closer to the lincolns in some ways than almost anybody in the white house. she had an absolute birds eye view. she became a free black and she wrote her memoir, and mrs. lincoln felt betrayed and she ended her life and a home for the indigent, indigent, i forget the name of the institution in the washington area. and also i recount the at the same time between frederick douglass and lincoln. it is interesting, henry louis gates who became famous in the obama story a little later for reasons that we all know in the presidency described for me, has

a long description in the book about his impressions of obama and he said look, the most radical thing about barack obama is that he is african-american. and then in a way he is a postmodern frederick douglass, and what did skip gates mean like-- by this? he meant he is somebody who is able to tell a story. frederick douglass had a unique capacity to tell his story back and forth across racial lines, that he grew into, in anthropological terms he is a trickster figure. in other words he is able to translate. this is a remarkable figure in our history, barack obama, however you feel about his mistakes, his faults or his politics. wherever you come down on that, this book isn't by no means a hagiography but this happening, somebody, african-american and

by this name, becoming president is to paraphrase joe biden, a big deal. lascaux. [applause] >> lets invite the audience in. [applause] we can make their way to you with a microphone and we can start down here with this gentleman in the gray. hold on just a second. >> we have about 20 minutes for questions. >> my name is angelo. i am looking forward to your book because of a personal nature. i've been fascinated by obama as a person since i read his book. i grew up in kenya. i met his father and 67. >> where were you when i needed you? [laughter]

and so, what you said about the father and a mother is very valid. in the sense that the father was never present so when you look at obama, it is interesting, not obama the politician. what you see is what i called genetic quality from the father, the height, and his father's deep baritone. and above all the supreme self-confidence which in his father's case was an in-your-face confidence and in his case it is much more contained because he doesn't have to prove himself. his mother, the environmental side, the capacity to listen to somebody and get into somebody else's head. you see in the first book the discussion with his half rather in china, who was at that time a senior at stanford coming back to kenya. so what i am trying to get at is you get these two sides of this person, one genetic, the acute

intelligence, that they seek, this self-confidence which has always struck me about obama. which enables him to dominate people more senior than him. he is able to do what he does, so i just would be interested in your reaction. >> i can't argue with that. my only caution, my only caution to that is to be careful as with any of us we are not absolute products of just the ingredients provided us by either genetic or parental qualities. but i can't argue with what you say, completely accords with the other people i've interviewed you describe obama as extraordinarily deep voice, his self-confidence that became later as he became less successful and more frustrated, far beyond cockiness into a kind of unattractive, frustrated defeated rugged toshio.

it is not a happy site, but your description is completely in accord certainly with what i think a lot of us here know and certainly my own research. >> there is a question right here. i think your shirt is purple. maybe if you stood up. yes, thank you. >> my name is carol heilman and i am retired from the u.s. foreign service. and, i just wanted to ask you briefly what do you mean by the joshua generation? >> in 2007, shortly after announcing for the presidency, barack obama accepted the invitation of john lewis and others to go to selma alabama for the annual reenactment of the beginning of the march from selma to montgomery. this seminal moment that loosens

the floodgates for johnson to put forward a voting rights act. salama alabama being a scenic, also bloody sunday and constant turmoil by design of the civil rights movement. obama accepted this invitation and quickly thereafter hillary clinton accepted an invitation to calm and they both gave speeches, both very resonant churches and selma. obama in in his case at brown chapel where king spoke all the time. and the speech he gave, unlike the announcement speech where the metaphor was lincoln and the association for all about lincoln and kind of general americanness, this was a speech directed toward almost exclusively to the african-american voters and population, because if he is going to get anywhere in this endeavor, he has got to win some huge proportion of the black

vote. and the terms he used were, and these-- this has been in black churches since forever, this metaphor of moses in leading people out of the promised land and people used to call martin luther king when they weren't calling him to live they were also calling him a moses figure. he was saying that the previous generation exemplified by joe lowery was the moses generation. they suffered for us and they have wrought us this far, but the journey is far from complete. we are the joshua generation. you can easily follow this biblical metaphor where it is going, and by implicitly in the speech, i am the head of this joshua generation. it is an act of great rhetorical golf to say this, and he did. again obama, not lacking for self-confidence but he is after all running for president, and

to get the democratic nomination it would be nice if he got a huge proportion of the black vote in the clintons remember at that time had an enormously deep relationship with many african-american leaders and the population in general. i mean, some people not but certainly this is a diverse population as in he is. a whole range of political opinion, but obama could not assume the black vote so that is where that vocabulary comes from and the joshua generation of politicians as gwen ifill talks about and others, includes the present mayor of philadelphia or arthur davis or cory booker and newark. there are a lot of them. these are all people in their 30s, 40s and maybe in their early 50s who were too young to have experienced the civil rights movement except on television as children. >> thank you.

>> it was suggested to racism and discrimination because of his skin color. he was not subjected to the legacy of slavery, and the transgenerational transmission of trauma drama which often involve some self destructive aspect in one's life. the first issue, how important do you think this is? some people say he is not african-american. he is african and american because of this distinction. a second quick.. apart from the tea partiers, do you think that there, that the opposition to him, which is typical but maybe more so during his administration, to rise from unconscious and conscious racial

aspects? no black man should have this much privilege. he is uppity and we have got to get him. >> to the last question, to say that everybody who opposes barack obama has conscious or unconscious racism i think is immensely unfair. if barack obama were white, if you were john kerry pursuing more or less the same politics or hillary clinton pursuing the same politics whether it is in foreign-policy or domestic policy and face this kind of opposition in congress are on the street, would i immediately ascribe it to racism or sexism in case of hillary clinton? i think people have real political disagreements and concerns and anxieties. there is a such thing as a panoply of opinion but do i think some of the opposition and some of the uglier voices directed at obama has something to do with racism? i think it is undeniable. i don't think you can deny that

at all and as for his racial identity, you know in large measure this is something given to you but you also have something to say about it and when he filled out his senses report who might argue with that? especially me. i don't know what michelle would say but these are distinctions if they are distinctions at all, with a very slight difference. yes he has an african legacy although it played a role mainly in memory, that in his life he experienced life as an african-american. when he goes to get his car, he has had keys thrown to him as if it were assumed he was going to pick up a car as the guy who gets valet parking. when skip gates gets arrested in his home and handcuffed, i will guess this would not have happened to me, so these things happen. there is racism in this country. there are reasons for racial

profiling laws. it is not the same as 1964 and 1964 isn't the same as 1865. there has been progress but think that we live in some post-racial utopia, i don't know where this idea ever came from, it's just unbelievable folly. how about right here, because they think i know her. >> in reading his autobiography i was very interested in the part about his movement from occidental to the colombia and particularly the period in colombia where he is withdrawn and seems to have been very reflective. i wondered in your research if you uncovered anything particular about that period and people who influenced him and what you made of that time because it seems important to me. >> is a great question. he spends his first few years at occidental which is a small fine

collagen los angeles but not downtown. is closer to pasadena. he wants a more urban school. he wants a bigger school. he wants to be closer to an african-american population center and as you know colombia is right near home. when he gets to colombia by his own admission, his own description to me in an interview, but also some classmates although i found this the hardest period to report out fully and there is a reason for it. he becomes not just serious but self serious. righteous, almost monastic. he reads a lot. he takes long runs in the part e-echo at first he is a roommate named phil berner with whom he kept up correspondence for years thereafter but he is really, he is not a monk. he has a social life and certainly an academic life although not expect tech are one.

he lives fairly quiet but he decides to get serious. the parting part of his life starts to recede when i first interviewed him in front of an audience like this in phoenix in the book tour i asked him about the passage about drugs and asked him if he inhaled. he said that with was the idea.b >> about chicago, about hawaii, a number of things. columbia, he was just a little bit more. >> hello, i teach medieval history. i teach at george mason where obama recently came and spoke about health care. at one point he was saying he didn't know how health care would play out and his reputation as president, and i believe him.

and i was just wondering is that his modus operandi, where he just does what he thinks is going to be the best thing? or is he more calculate? >> we live in a democracy. he made no secret about the fact that he was for health care. in fact, probably health care plan more for reaching the we ended up with, and he was elected. so this notion that he is imposing something on the nation by fiat as it is for a kind of, you know, dynastic situation is really wrong. i think he is being a little faux modesty or. it's a self-deprecating. i think what he would like to happen is this is seen as a domestic policy initiative and success on the scale of social security, or any of the big domestic policy initiatives that have taken place in this country. by the nature of the politics

right now, and because of the nature of the program itself because it's going to have to be worked on and improved as time goes by, some of this is up in air. also going to be very interesting to see what effect it has on the november elections. the republican party has completely committed to the idea that the passage of health care will be an apple draws around the neck of congressional democratic candidates. obama is betting otherwise. >> one right here. >> i have a question that's more based on the public will not symbols of his ability to win. was he the genius behind the idea of using the internet which no one else had done in the rest of them all kind of were

absolutely up in air about what in the world was going on? or did he just buy into these ideas and absorb them, and then become reflective and go with them? in other words, did he delegate or did this sort of idea come to him and then have him work with them to do it. because it really was a. >> my former colleague at the "washington post," i think we set two seats away from each other a couple of years. thank you. no, i don't think he was an internet whiz himself. in fact, in the 2004 senate race in illinois he was frustrated with the lack of an internet presence. they put up a chat room or whatever. it was a pretty primitive use of the net in illinois. it was much more traditional television advertising. once they got a lot more money they were able to reach markets that they didn't think they were going to have a. i mean, how did he win that race? his biggest opponent fell apart and obama himself capped proving himself to be a better and

better candidate. that's the story of the democratic party race, and the republican party race was a joke. he was giving money to other campaigns. in the presidential race in 2008 i think a lot of credit for that internet initiative has to go to other people like david plouffe, without a doubt. i don't think barack obama -- i don't think there's any threat that when obama leaves office he's going to take steve jobs is, you know, chair. [laughter] >> i mean he likes a blackberry and that's fine. he has other things to do. >> you started with, you said who is barack obama. and much of, much of his power for both is chris and fans is they can project whatever they want onto him. and then he can be on every

magazine cover and he can be president of the united states, yet he still remained elusive. so i was curious for stop is he still is as if to deal? and second off, what is it about him and what isn't about us that makes that so? >> well, to some extent and i do want to be too fancy about all, we are allusive to each other. that's why we have novel to go deep and deeper than biography can ever go into a human character and motivation. if you start going too deeply and guessing too deeply, you're totally in the weeds that betrays their viable factor or archives or whatever it is. i think, and historical figures that are long gone and much more examine and, i don't know how many books the years come out a year about abraham lincoln. so the fact that there is elusive aspects to barack obama is only natural.

it's the other aspect of his so-called elusiveness that is troubling to me, the notion that he wasn't born, we are still hearing this stuff from -- i had to say in my own book, i just say he was born on this date in this hospital because it's verifiable fact. there is a birth certificate. and to be obsessive beyond that after a while is to until to the fantasies and craziness of this fevered pursuit. it's obviously not just limited to that moment. that said, obama clearly, because remember, he was a senator for five minutes before the questions started coming are you going to run for president. and the experts question, i thought, was completely legitimate. how could it not be? i mean, when your biggest political battle with dealing with ricky in the state senate and you're in the senate for a year and you're making her first trip to russia, you know, this

is not a deep experience. so his sword, his rejection of his own story, his projection of his own family as a kind of metaphor for the country and the direction it was going and ethnically and its diversity, you could see where that was driving the clinton campaign crazy. because they had been deep into politics and policy for so many years. they thought it was their turn. >> i have one last question, and will be brief. i thank all of you for coming out tonight. david, i thank you for the time and a muscle that you put into this book. >> thank you. >> we are going to learn a lot about barack obama in reading this book, but i think we also learned something about the country. this is my last question to you. in working in this project what did you learn, not just about president obama, what did you learn about american? >> well, it's either a very short answer or very long when. you know, the essayist, novelist

as well, the essayist on race that means the most, not just to me that many people is ralph ellison. and use always hear these passages from him about american as an african-american as being indivisible. and i think there is no sag on american life that makes that plainer than the story of obama's ascent, whether you're a fan of his politics or not. that the fact of his election and the fact of hillary's election, if it had happened and god willing, we do elected very soon, and i hope a deeply unqualified one, i didn't mean that as a shot against hillary at law. i mean that. this is an important moment in american history that it is not everything. it doesn't solve our problems in

iraq and afghanistan and iran. it doesn't fix everything. it doesn't even fix everything about race. but it is enormously important e.g. care about americanness and what that means. >> david, thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> our special primetime booktv programming continues today.

>> coming up next booktv presents "after words," an hour-long program where we invite guest hosts to interview authors. this week former education secretary william bennett discusses his new book, "a century turns: new hopes, new fears." the book provides a historical look at u.s. politics and culture at the end of the 20th century and the start of a new

millennium. the talk show host begins with a 1988 presidential election and takes the reader through 20 years of memorable events and cultural changes. concluding with the election of barack obama. he discusses this turn-of-the-century with walter isaacson. >> host: hello, it's my pleasure to be here with bill bennett, an old friend. some of who is written out a third in the trilogy of history books. there were two great volumes you did on american history that ended in 1989, and now you are doing a slightly slimmer volume to continue it. is that how you see it, part ever told you? >> guest: the book is a sentry turned but it is the third of a series. i was, you know, you've written

history books, this history is pretty close. i was worried about perspective objectivity, but because america last best hope are now in the schools, available to public schools, teachers like to believe they're going to get up to the present, i say that because usually they don't make it but they like to believe they're going to get their students up to the present. >> host: america, last best hope in some ways try to in your mind to write the way we teach history a little bit from i think you felt what you might call a left is or a bias or a bias that it would glorify the triumphs of america exceptional is that is that about right. >> guest: i would say the biggest problem that i have most with the history books out there is a they're called social study books is they are boring. and they put kids to sleep. this is very odd because as you know books about history, american history, historical figures sell very well.

you have written a couple of them. biographies of hamilton so why do we kill students with the stuff. this is our worst subject by the way so my major argument was that they were born. but yes sometimes allegedly usually to the left. >> host: give me some examples that you felt was wrong in the way we do in american history. >> guest: the most famous example was when i was secretary of education. i remember we came across a sense in the book that they were using that talk about the puritans as anguish what it took long trips in search of new places to live. they wouldn't want to put the religion part in. violate the first amendment. and other books, howard didn't do was a colleague of mine, enormously successful book. it's got some great scholarship and. but it is a politically pretentious book. it leans left that he is pretty explicit about it.

and says this is his perspective and point of view. you would be pretty depressed about america if that was the only book you read. >> host: you got your doctor from the university of texas in philosophy actually. nowadays texas is engaged in a bit of a struggle over new textbooks for history and how to teach civics and history better. what do you think of the school board, i guess it is a state school board trying to dictate new types of standards for our civic tax? >> guest: i think debate is fun. the text thing is larger than texas because texas sells only textbooks. what happens their echoes around the country. many of the debates are worthwhile and some other stuff is silly. what you should do is teach the truth, teach what happened. talk about the people who matter to american history. you should leave out the liberty bell and you shouldn't leave out

the alamo. when there are two important sides of the story to tell, you did tell the two important sides to the story. there is a kind of reduction i find and a lot of the journalistic accounts that make them seem very simpleminded. i always before him into the debates, particularly this one, try to find out from the people what they actually said. it's usually different from what's reported. this may come as a shock to people, but you would notice. but i think these debates are fine. look, the education of our children, plato said the two most important questions, who gets to teach the children and what do we teach them? for at. >> host: to me it's not only fine, it's glorious when people are arguing how come woodrow wilson gets more than ronald reagan for example? who was the better president? and arguing over woodrow wilson versus ronald reagan, who shaped the republic more, is great, whichever side you come down on. >> guest: these are great debates. now it's interesting everyone in

folks the founders of course, the left and folks the founder. the right invokes the founder. i just want them to read the founders that read "the federalist" papers that they are really worth reading. >> host: speaking of invoking the founders, they are invoked on those on the religious side of the argument how do you see that debate? people are invoking the founders are saying we are a christian nation. >> guest: i don't think there's any question that the people who wrote these documents were running out of the judeo-christian tradition. again, if you read "the federalist" papers this is what all the references are. it's pretty hard to understand a phrase like we hold these truths to be self-evident and all men are created equal, endowed by their creator. certainly enable rights. the key i think is to understand that although most of these men came from a certain perspective of religious background and orientation, we established the first really sensible way of

dealing with these issues and a large and open society like washington's letter. in this country would show all set and none shall be afraid to. >> host: even that since in the declaration of independence that you cited is a wonderful scene of the three great drafters of the declaration, franklin, adams and jefferson, doing it. and jettisons first draft of that sentence had their endowed with certain a nail will rights, and it was adams who said and down by their creator. and then jefferson had we hold these truths to be sacred and franklin wrote in we hold these truths to be self-evident. so they're doing a careful balance there, almost a ds to balance where they make reference to a creator but not necessarily to a christian god or any particular god. >> guest: fair enough, but i think when i was reviewing a lot of textbooks in preparation right in mind, i noticed that they tried, several of them

seemed to try to expunge any reference to god, to christianity. i like edwin corwin's essay, remember the great professor of princeton, higher law background of american constitutional law. he said religious liberties are the residual legatee of the ecclesiastical animosities. these things were fought out in churches. >> host: why the puritans became such good travelers. >> guest: this is a great topic. for a debate. in a school board. it's a great topic for discussion in the classroom as well as before the supreme court. but i would say, and, you know, i am partial to america and the idea of american exemptions is that we have pretty much, we have had our struggles but we have pretty much work this out about as well as any country has. >> host: the way we worked it out it seems is that the founders gave to america one of

the greatest gifts, it was very unusual than, especially for our well-traveled puritan founders, which was a good nature of religious tolerance, that even you would get to preach in philadelphia. and in some ways these debates seem to downplay this notion of tolerance, instead try to push a more religious view of americans found it, or am i incorrect? >> guest: i don't see. i hear it. i hear the charge, but i don't see it. i spent a lot of time in a homeschool communities and a lot of time in the conservative community. i hear the claims of bigotry. i saw more bigotry myself when i was at harvard that i saw when i was in texas. i saw more in tolerance toward southern christian young people than i saw people in the south being intolerant of people who had no faith or other faith.

it is more competent now, and i don't know if you want to get into this, it's more competent now because of 9/11. and because, frankly, it is harder, it is harder to support the notion of an islam at faith and an islamic religion which will condemn these acts of violence when we see so few professions by islamic leaders and spokesmen on this issue. i still think it's a case that americans are enormously tolerant but they are worried about this business. and i think they are right to be worried about at. >> host: the struggle we're engaged in in the world today after 9/11 in particular open our eyes, was against the fanaticism in jihadism of in tolerance in islam and in favor of the notion that all people should be tolerant, and of different views. that sort of the basic divide in this world today, between those

who believe in pluralistic society and those who believe in imposing their own moralities. >> guest: sure. but i don't know all the christians, for example, they are usually the object of criticism from the left who want to impose their religion in america. in the schools and elsewhere. i do know, because we can go to the looming tower and read great books, see this part and parcel of wahhabi islam. and a problem with it, it may not be a my joy to of muslims, but by gosh it seems to be the one with all the energy and the passion. now when someone in my church, i'm catholic, shoot someone in an abortion clinic, we condemn it. and the church condemns it, and the pope condemns it. and that is absolutely right. would we have the same thing in a consistent way. >> host: the struggle that we're fighting against terrorism and jihadism, let's call it, you in

this new book starting really with 9/11, and how bush gets involved in the struggle. do you think that it became partisan after 9/11, or was there a period in which it was sort of a unity on that issue? >> guest: there was unity on the issue. i don't think there's any question about it. the question was together. there was by the way, back to this earlier point, there was a worry that americans would turn against muslims and it would be terrible acts of retribution. nothing like this happen, or if they did they were very isolated. there is a restaurant not far from here run by, out in virginia, run by a muslim. and apparently there was two weeks after 9/11 this guy couldn't get anybody in. it was just packed that people want to come out and show their support. it's typical of americans. president bush went to the national cathedral and then went

to the mosque. some criticize that. but again, a very american response to embrace rather than condemn. know, there was unity but then it broke apart. largely because of iraq. that was the catalyst of that crisis and disagreement. but i think i think there's closure on that that we are getting now that is encouraging. some people are forgetting what they said earlier but there seems to be a consensus that we have worked through this and things may be working out all right. still keep fingers crossed. but that's where what the fight was about. >> host: you have to do with iraq. how do you think history going to look back on the decision to react to the 9/11 attacks by invading iraq? >> guest: great question. 64,000-dollar question. ryan crocker to was our ambassador said the other day a

lot of criticisms about going in there, whether we should have gone into, how we got into. he said we can discuss that, but he said what matters most of all is how we left it and what we left there. i think that will probably be the determining of how we see what we did. and if indeed a democracy is established there, or can sustain itself i think it will be a double plus, double thumbs up. that will be the result. joe biden the other day, not my team, not my party, but joe biden said look, it looks very good, it looks very promising. and we can take some pride in his. as long as that we is inclusive of a larger group, i think i could agree with that. remember, too, and i tried to point this out in the book that there was a lot of unity in that decision. there was an awful lot of support, as candidate obama kept reminding hillary clinton she

was for this. kerry was for this. so people operating off the same assumptions and what they thought were the facts on the ground, all very much took the same issue. >> host: one, i have looking back at american history and what we're doing now is not with our struggle against jihadism, and even the struggles we have in iraq and afghanistan, it's that getting too close to nation building and occupying other territories can be problematic. and i say that with reference to american history because it's in our dna, one of our forgotten amendments which is we don't like quartering troops in our homes by foreign governments. that notion that we're not going to help ourselves in the world by getting too much involved in occupations overseas. do you worry about that? >> guest: i do worry about that, and i think, fair-minded in the book, i hope i'm even handed.

i was more would've bought the second inaugural of george w. bush when he talked about this nation building, and that our task is democracy everywhere. when i thought in fact the priority should stay where it was, which is the global war against islamic terror, let's take care of that first, our task is not necessary to establish democracies in these countries but to make sure they can't launch attacks on us. so that is about where. at the same time, i think it is in our dna and it is in our national interest, because democracies tend not to declare war against other democracies, free countries tend not to do that against other free countries. but again i think of this thing comes out in the end will determine. we shall see. gasbag. >> host: your book is sort of book ended i shall say with the to george bush administration. george bush the elder and george bush the younger. and in my mind they had the most

divergent philosophy of foreign policy. george bush the elder being very much the realist who, after iraq sees no reason to try to nation build in iraq. sees no reason to go to baghdad. and very, very carefully choreographed the end of the cold war. i think you quote him as saying to his press secretary look, there will be no dancing on the berlin wall. in other words, we're not going to be trying to go and celebrate. we'll be careful, cautious and realistic. the younger george bush seems to be much more than idealistic, a crusader, somebody who wants to promote democracy. and that tension between realism and idealism, both of which are audible strand in american foreign policy, seems, i noticed that this book, this contrast between the two george bushes. >> guest: certainly different styles, different approaches. i had the opportunity to say in the book to the home office for

both of them. i work for the first president bush as his first drugs are. but this did as a journalist, radio talk show host with the other president bush. yeah, i mean, i think there are stylistic differences. of course, there was the very different reaction to what happened in iraq and what happened in the first gulf war. he had more difficult issue to deal with than h.e.w. there was a nationbuilding. again, something of a skeptic of that but i will be the to salute american democracy in the middle east. if this thing called i think it is great. remember during the purple thumb campaign it was very hard not to get excited about that. the other thing is, apart from our dna, you know, the "washington post" and "new york times" the other day, indeed some guy living under parkland and 80. they said what's the solution? he said there is no solution,

just if the united states takes us over. well, thank you. we will pass. but in a way a lot of people know that, that if you're in desperate circumstances, what's the one country you would like to deliver you that you know likely doesn't have any ulterior purpose but to help you? is most likely the united states post-mac speaking of the elder george bush, h. w. bush, he was in my mind one of the best and perhaps most underrated foreign policy president we had, where there was how he handled cautiously and successfully the demise of the soviet union, the end of the cold war, the fall of the berlin wall, or likewise how he handled the middle east them the persian gulf and the kuwait situation. tell me a little bit about george h. w. bush the person and his philosophy of foreign policy. >> guest: the person first. a guy who i believe as if people saw him in private as i did

often would have thought much better of him. this guy got dana carvey like, you know the guy on "saturday night live" to imitate him, and public. but in private he was naturally eloquent. i tell the story being in portland, oregon. we were out there for dedicating a police memorial and i was drug czar. we were going to jog. used to jog. very general as he would slow down and. >> host: i have to say i read the part, i figure in a hotel room and he wants to go jogging with you, and with all due respect i didn't think of you as a type of jogger. >> guest: no, no. he slowed down and actually this is what happened. we ran in houston and when we finished, the press corps there said how is the drug will work going? and he saw i was out of breath that he took the first question until i got my breath. now that is a good boss. but back to portland, we're going to do this run, and there was a demonstration outside. somebody was burning the flag.

and he said you know that's the one thing that makes my blood boil. i just cannot bear that. he says i guess there's a constitutional protection for this. but he said i just can't bear it. and i thought boy, if people could hear that, they would see that this is not a tough tie dye. the nicest most generous boss i think i ever had. he didn't have the distance with him that you had with ronald reagan. with a lot of reagan, whom i revered and i served in both model reagan, there was nancy's inner circle and there was the world. >> host: maybe because i covered both the and i did know them as well as you but with reagan he always felt there was a slight shield lord pisa plexiglas where he would lapse into a jack warner movie studio story for you but you wouldn't really engage. whereas george h. w. bush was always eager to engage in.

>> guest: there was always a distance. ronald reagan i talked to all the time because i asked him about things. he had a tremendous interest in education. and he did use the story, he loved to use the store, that's the way he communicated. but president bush had this, what is robert louis stevenson say, a national genie out of the world great man and an easy familiarity. president reagan was very friendly and accessible. but there was always a distance. bush always broke down the distance. i was sitting in the room, refer to it as the oval office, got another name during the clinton administration. we won't go into that, but we were watching the today show and ross perot was on. ross perot was writing about president bush. president bush disrupting his daughter's wedding and the secret service. these kind of crazy things. and president bush turned to me and said, where does he get this

stuff? you know, it was just kind of nice matter-of-fact off-the-cuff. i agree with you about foreign policy. very experienced. his experience showed that i do say in the book, get i try to be fair, i tried to business. i think it was not good. i know people make a lot out of the toast, that there was more going on to the chinese leadership. but tiananmen square was a horrible horrible thing. >> host: that was the downside as you say which is if you are an idealist and tiananmen square happens you are pushback on china but if you are a realist you say that in turn affairs. >> guest: i have tended to be critical of democrat and republican presidents both on china. i don't think the case can be made that when we cooperate with china things get better. i think if you tally up the sheet, i don't think that case can be made that i was one of the only people in my

organization, rumsfeld, all signed on for global relations. i did that i think they should be tougher now. we are way too easy now. >> host: why? >> guest: because what they're doing is bad to their policies are bad. they kill bill. i really think that is a terrible, terrible thing. and they do all sorts of other oppressive things. >> host: i also think that in a oppressive society represses free will end up losing to an india which is a messy economy right now but at least allows free expression. and that's going to be one of the struggles coming up in this world. >> guest: i agree with you. i agree with you. interesting posts lately, a lot of americans aren't sure, they worry tiny will be dominant. indians, they think they will be dominant that they may be right. >> host: if i had to bet on

china versus india in 25 years from now who would have the but economy i would bet on india because of the free flow of information. just as we have been ever since pamphleteers on colonial streets. >> guest: i agree. and interesting to point out, what we are saying earlier, the third largest country of muslims in the world is anti-right now. but this is a country that believes in democracy, freedom, business develop and. so it isn't necessarily an obstacle but the point needs to be made. >> host: when i was in india a few years ago, i was there for an election, just watching, and a hindu prime minister got defeated by basically a roman catholic woman, sonia gandhi, who stepped aside in order to have a seat become a president who was sworn in, i mean become prime minister was sworn in by a muslim president. antony that's the type of thing you have to be able to pull off in the 21st century if you're going to be a great country. >> guest: i can't imagine that in china, can you?

>> host: you can imagine in the u.s. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: different religion. so, george bush on domestic policy, the read my lips taxes pledge and he goes against that. that's in your book and you try to -- >> guest: it ended my tenure as the republican chairman. in two weeks, i was in two weeks and was a meeting and he said defendant on this and i said i can't defend it. he just wasn't focused about it but it was such a big surprise. i tell a story in the book about the panel. liberals, to conservatives, george bush will be reelected? all of us unanimous yes, of course. his approval rating was 87, 88%. and then the surprise campaign by this surprise governor from

arkansas. and bush just kind of flat on domestic issues, and people changing their minds. that was a big surprise. >> host: let me make a counter argument, which was that compromise he does, one of the last great bipartisan compromises, something would've lost the art for in this town, in which he does help bring deficits down. both with spending and attack situation. was one of the great triumphs of the bush administration and laid the ground for the prosperity of the '90s. >> guest: it very well may have. it very well may have, but it wasn't, i think wasn't so much that as his inability to address the domestic challenges in a way that was persuasive to the people. eyesight in the debate, one of the debates with clinton. and clinton was the perfect, you know, counterpart for george walker bush. where president bush says i will ask jim baker to take a domestic policy and to for domestic

policy. and president clinton says this is what we're worried about. i would to domestic policy in my administration. and for that and other reasons. look, most of the policies of george bush pursued i think are good policies, constructive policies. underrated president, underappreciated president and i wish he had one, but he didn't run as good a campaign. and the country was ready for a change. that's another thing people don't realize about american politics, american history, and that is people like to change. >> host: let me go back to pushing back on you for a second, which is the great triumph of george h. w. bush on that taxes and spending cuts and the deficit issue showed a thing that american used to be good at, which is bipartisan cover must. ronald reagan with tip o'neill to the social security. that is what has made our country strong, not ideological fervor, but the ability to say

let's find a common ground. now we can work on. that is what we lack today in washington in the past 10 years i would say. and you don't celebrate that enough in the book. the ability to compromise that you make it seem like compromisers are less committed about the passion, they give up their principles that as opposed to the fact that compromisers sometimes make great democracies. >> guest: i like cooper's distinction, the willingness on principle to compromise as opposed to compromise on principle. i can live with the first. sure, reagan could do this and didn't. >> host: reagan did it with tip o'neill and gorbachev. >> guest: even with dan. >> host: three people who are not his soulmate. and nowadays -- >> guest: and bush did and clinton certainly did it. and i think unfair to clinton here, but it's not going on now.

>> host: and that's why i wrote about in front. i think it was a great person who brought us together, all the passion, and that's something that needs to be a little more celebrate in american history. >> guest: this is what the new hope was in the subtitle of this book. and indeed this is what, i said election night, again not my candidate, not my team, but this powerful candidacy of barack obama in which he said we will surround all hope, be unifying president. you will be the unifying president. i said we will find a. maybe he will be. at that without criticizing, that india was the hope that was the appeal. that this would be a guy, his speech for use before about not red states and blue states, people go to church and blue states and people believe in civil liberties in red states. that was a great speech and it was very promising. that's why he was such a

successful candidate. >> host: we have to go to a break but we will be right back. >> you were just talking about the breakdown and bipartisanship, and the failure of the hope of obama that we would become a red state blue state type nation. and i concern a great with you. i think the last campaign, the fact that john mccain and barack obama got the nominations of their respective party was a yearning for people to work across the aisle the way john mccain had proven he could do and the way that barack obama talked about so eloquently in his speech four years earlier.

what happened to make all of that fall apart? >> guest: well, i think it's a temporary. i think we will be back. i think what happened in this administration is it turns out that this administration is not a centrist administration. health care, which is but a 14 month issue now, for president obama has been largely designed, i make the contrast, i would make the contrast in 1994 when the clintons did their health care plan, which was pretty much a white house operation. it was an inside plan, suffered from being an inside plan. this one was delegated out and i think suffers from that. if you look at the papers today, tomorrow, next week, the major problems here are democrats and democrats. the president has the white house all to himself. he has got this in india's the

house of representatives. the house of representatives and they can't get past. so the problem is the proposal and the proposal is not a centrist proposal. i think that's what his problem is. the people look for common ground. i am happy for common ground i was on cnn the other day with the secretary of education, arne duncan. we have to secretaries of education from one from reagan and one from obama. and we have common ground. you that we have common ground. why do we have common ground? because we have common ground. >> host: you talk about the clinton health care proposal from 92-94, why they fail. but that seems to be the beginning of a breakdown of bipartisanship. because for a while it looked like there could be a bipartisan approach. the clinton years in which they were not great ideological struggles, we still had great bipartisanship in the and.

>> guest: yeah, but we had bipartisanship. look at -- each of these is interesting in its own way. you think of the clinton legislation, bipartisan stuff. you had a reduction in capital gains by bill clinton. okay, that went your way, that's what you like it. welfare reform, nafta. these are all things that brought people from both sides of the aisle, jack kemp and i both being sitting there and want to salute build it. jack kemp and bill bennett. we thought oh, boy, this is going to cause us trouble with our ranks. but look, one of the reason he was successful was that he did take an approach down the middle. one of the reasons that he took the approach down the middle was the elephant stampede in 1994. i don't know, with newt gingrich. i don't know if that happens to barack obama in 2010. we will see but some people are

predicting that's what will happen. if you get 35 seats for the republicans in 2010, we'll policy be more down the middle, more bipartisan? i don't know and. >> host: but where it breaks down for clinton, and to some extent is with the monica lewinsky and impeachment things. which i think it stories are going to have some real trouble wrestling trying to figure out was that a great moral issue that the republicans took on the streets a, or was that some amazing piece of insanity would all became polarized over something that should not have been our focus? >> guest: you probably know my view. i wrote a book about this cause of death of outrage. very serious morally and ethically, and legally. because there was testimony, there were depositions. i remind people, my brother represented bill clinton in the

paula jones business. and so we had some interesting family discussions and debates about discussions about this. but it was a very serious. when you appear before a grand jury and to take an oath, you take an oath for the american people and to step out and say it i do not have -- >> host: this for the generate into partisanship, not serious moral discussion? >> guest: sure if you. you can't take politics out of politics, and he did. in the book i wrote i tried to remain high-minded about it, and right at the level of principle. i remember going out to a cpac meeting, you know, the conservative, just days after the story broke. and there was revelry in the air about we got clinton. he has got to resign. and i scolded the audience. i said we take no pleasure in this. we take no pleasure. and a president being on the ropes like this. know, it's not our party, not

our team, but it is our president and this is our country. stop enjoying this. the country is suffering. i think as did a lot of people, a number of people in the white house thought he would resign and should resign. he didn't. and that dragged the thing on. where people than partisan? sure, absolutely. again, particularly something like that, that kind of incident was going to drive some people to the lowest denominator. i was endlessly on tv debating this thing with larry king and other shows. and it was not a happy time. things were lost then come and this i think it's constructive and this kind of thing we talk about in the book, then you had total. and some people, because of all that it gone on for clinton the immediate iraqi to kosovo by saying it is wag the dog. he is doing this as a diversion. and it's always been my view that the president acts in

foreign policy with american troops you are with him until the evidence comes in an overwhelming that you should me. you are with him. divisions stop. so some people had to be pulled back from the brink on that. but sure, politics, you can take politics out of politics. >> host: in "a century turns" the center of the book really is the clinton administration because it is so -- this transition between the two bushes and everything else. it is a period of peace, prosperity, huge economic growth. it is a period, as you say, of welfare reform and centrist policies, yet is also this period of the scandal and great partisan outrage. how, in the end, do you think historians are going to assess the clinton administration? a great presidency, a great presidency? >> guest: i don't think a great presidency.

maybe a mid-level present a. on the good side it will be regarded, as you said, as a presidency where people worked together, common names on a number of things. i think also, and i say this in the book, this is one of the really a very good ex-presidency's in the american history. whether this guy is a psychologist, he is showing what a good guy. he has done very good work. whether it is been overseas, the geese or far east, haiti. and he is really working. we can see he is really working. and so was it hamiltons worry that ex-president would be a pain? >> host: hamilton wanted to stay president for life. >> guest: that's another problem, but i think the judgment probably if you take the moral divide, people will say it was lost, a missed opportunity. i have a friend who were in the

clinton administration, colleagues at cnn, you know who they are, and i think they think if we just hadn't had that, if that hadn't happened we might have been able to college certainly great things. so lost opportunities. >> host: during that period you engaged partly in the notion of social morality, rock lyrics. and i was at "time" magazine and we did a couple of cover stories and stories about our movies, music and others degrading our social fabric. tell us about that. >> guest: that was interesting. you were there. your tenure, and we went after time live, timelines and corporate, whatever a. >> host: time warner. >> guest: time warner, sorry. this was an odd coalition of myself, joe lieberman, dolores tucker, national congress of black women. we called herself kind of mod squad. they reached a point where we just did this test is crazy, some of the lyrics, some music, top killers, others do.

i am a fan of rock 'n roll. i was in a band and we said i want you, i need you, i love you. always is one thing, but i'm going to slice you up, i'm going to take you, you're going to bleed. that's crazy. we were not for federal regulation or legislation, but for self-regulation. so we went to time warner. >> host: are you still worried about our culture? >> guest: sure i do. one has to. but the amazing thing about america is it is self corrective capacity. and the capacity for self renewal. i'm also convinced after the two jobs, walter come of secretary of education and drug czar, that the key is to make the institutions that are supposed to be positive are positive. make better families, their churches, better schools. anyway, that whole thing is very interesting, became very bipartisan. i was a good thing. and conrad joined is that a bunch of people joined us, and we had some success. but it was a very interesting

point. you know, i told the audience of the radio show, you know, i have a lot of people in despair about six months ago. they say country is going to socialism. they were sending stuff with hammers and sickle. i said it's not that bad. just wait. and it is already shifting. it is correcting. it is coming back the other way, and if you don't like the way things are going in america, stick around. >> host: einstein wrote about him at one point, that was the thing that amazed me the most about america. because he would get all worked up whether it be before the war, world war ii or whether against the nazis or mccarthyism. and, finally, he writes there is some strange gyroscope in this country, because i'll or another when it is about to blow up, it magically writes itself. >> guest: and yet, they can

produce the greatest works of art and at the same time i found astounding leap reading your book we can slice, take slices of his brain and go around the country and this is what happened. >> host: einstein's brain. >> guest: it looks very much like other brains. >> host: i don't think it was in the brain cells that did it. >> guest: that's right. >> host: in writing this book it was different from your first do volume of your trilogy about american history, because we talk about dolores tucker and joe lieberman and you doing the cultural things that you are in the book that how do you deal with the fact of being a play, if i may say so, a small player but a player? >> guest: mostly small player, that's right. i didn't want to be waldo, you know, where is waldo. but i felt i had to, we're talking about drug policy. i was the first drug czar. i asked the president to go to colombia and he went. i tell some of stories about

those trips. i got nervous as the writer that i would be fair and objective. so i passed out draft of this to a lot of people and got a lot to perspective to see if i was being fair. but i thought there would be some advantage of this that i could give some sense of what was going on in that meeting at the time, what the reaction was. so i tried to be careful. i mostly tried to do footnotes unless there was some part in which, some part of the dropout which played more than a small part. but most i'm a bit player of. >> host: your jogging was in the footnotes that that was dramatic. >> guest: but it certainly wasn't self-serving either. >> host: no, no, no. it is well done. as a talk radio host you have watched the change in american media from being the days of walter cronkite to think much more fragmented and more ideological. is this generally a good thing or a bad thing? >> guest: i think generally it

is a good thing. there are some nuts out there and people who want to just stir people up, and i can't stand it. i'm not a screamer. our shows, we don't yell at people. we talk about issues. you have been on my show for our talking about einstein. one of the reasons i tried to do that is to show some, the word thoughtful conservative is not an oxymoron. there is a phrase oxymoronic. at what you have got is a spectacle a whole spectrum of opinion and style and approach. information and journalistic is now radically decentralized and it makes it harder. it makes it hard to sort out what the truth is because you have all these different things going on. we deal with an rumor or urban legend every day. hey, so-and-so did this during this. this was during the campaign.

usually not true. and you have to track it down. and you have to, you have to do more homework that i have a show at six and one. i get up at three and go online, papers and stuff, and you just, we don't talk about it unless we think we can confirm it. but what confirmation becomes is very complicated, as we tell the story in the book about dan rather and cbs, the bush national guard service. that this is very much the world in which we live. and now, you know, the internet can take scalps. and stories that may not have made news will go all all over the internet and change a persons life. i think trent lott is probably the first victim of the. >> host: and you mentioned the trent lott story in the book, where it's pretty much not mainstream media but the blogosphere that takes on his statements about his race in the south and et cetera.

yet it also even starts before that with the drug report breaking the clinton scandal, when newsweek didn't. and after the obama citi bombing, if i were member correctly, bill clinton says part of the problem is that we are stoking up paranoia these days, that people, i think he name in the right wing radio talk show host, have stoked people up so much that it ends up in violence. and you say well he, his overreaching, that is overstating things. and yet some had henry kissinger would call it the truth. >> guest: there is stoking up and there are paranoid people who are paranoid. i don't go for. i score it. i usually call it. there's a pretty famous talk show host, tv host who was spoken at cpac recently, and i said i just thought it was a bad

set of remarks. i tried to be an honest broker here. but i want to distinguish between people who may increase the temperature at people who commit acts of violence. and they are not the same people. so responsibility is responsibility. but this happens on both sides. we need to remember that. there is a lot of stoking up on the left as well as the right. i don't think it helps much. it is a free country and it will go on. it makes the business of filtering the beginning of the truth harder. but again, i think over all the decentralization of this journalistic authority is a good thing. . .

>> hit mongering is something that is -- hate mongering is old in the american tradition and can sway some and rarely sways the great mass of the american people. which is a very, very important thing. and, you know, one of the tests for us, again, it is interesting, you said, center of the book is clinton and i guess chronologically it is but to me the center of the book is the -- the stair is 9/11 because this event was so unbelievable and that was not just one of the worst days of american history, and a test of our resolve and what we do and obviously a transformation of the bush

presidency from what he thought he was going to be doing to what he ended up doing but, also a test of us and how we'd react and i think we have really passed, brilliantly, as a people. we kept our measure and our calm and kept our tolerance and kept our laws and have gotten furious about some things but, as we should be, but, i think it is a tribute to the country. how we have reacted. >> the debate over detention policies, things like that, do you think that is healthy. >> yeah, sure. >> how do you come down on those. >> i'm not for closing guantanamo, it is the perfect place for folks to be. i prefer military tribunals as the venue for these cases. but, by all means, have the debate. there is this business going on now about the al qaeda 7 or al qaeda 9. and, the al qaeda defendants, who are now working for the

justice department. well, maybe so. but this is what elections are about. again i think people should be candid about it and shouldn't hide from it. but, it's not -- shunts be surprising, i think it was john yu, the lawyer -- >> bush administration... >> what is this big surprise here? if you like the administration, which is left of center, and will have lawyers left of center and like this centers, and, elections to decide these things and again for the most part we have steered our way very well and one interesting thing that has happened, of your view, on this, because you talk to an awful lot of people, is in 20 years, i think one institution has really continued to impress the american people. and continued to win their respect. and even more respect, and that is the u.s. military. it is held in high regard, in public opinion polls and when you call on it, it gets its job done, even people who may not

like the military. will say they do and it's not like the late 19 0s or early 1970s, saying they support the troops but maybe not the mission. but i think the extraordinary things we saw in the gulf war, petraeus and the surge, what our folks were able to do, what is going on in afghanistan. and i noted the other day, it is very hard to get into these officer training programs for young men at yale and harvard and princeton. because they are oversubscribed. that is a very interesting fact. >> i think you are right. the '60s and the '70s had a strange period in which the military was polarizing. and, attacking the military was done. and then, later, we got into a problem which was that -- what i would call the patriotism police and people questioned each other's patriotism on both sides and when we talk about how bad things are going, more and more partisan and more and more

ideological, this is actually a good swing is that we have gotten away from that and there is not quite as much questioning of the military. or of patriotism. or whether joe biden's less patriotic than dick cheney, even though they disagree fundamentally. >> yeah, i'm with you on that. i mean, the notion -- and i parted from some of my colleagues on the right on this, that, you know, when people say you shouldn't ask questions about the iraq war and why we're there, you know, if you are in the u.s. senate and not there to talk about the wisdom of going to war or not, what the heck are you there for? let's go back to the founders. if you are not supposed to ask questions about those issues, what are you reduced to? absolutely. and if the white house can't defend itself, on why its in iraq or anywhere else, it will take its lumps, absolutely. broad latitude for people to raise these kinds of questions without any issue of patriotism being raised. >> dick, let's get to the subject of education.

because, you mentioned that you and arne duncan have spoken together a few times and both education -- you were education secretary for reagan. >> president reagan. >> and, there has been a major reform movement going on in america that involves common standards we all know how well our kids are doing, that involves a little bit more choice, in charter schools and holding teachers accountable. and this seems to be the one area, we've done this in new orleans a lot where we transcend partisanship. >> the world thing is fascinating and talk about katrina -- i talk about in the book, arne duncan was attacked a couple weeks ago and i defended him, when he said -- one silver lining in the cloud, of katrina, is it gave the city a chance to reinvent its education system. >> and by the way, i'm from new orleans and let me say that michael kinsly used to have a definition of a gaffe in washington, when you

accidentally tell the truth. and, let me say that arne duncan is 100% right, we've been able in new orleans to rebuild a school system so much better than the one before the storm and, it is because we got the chance to say, let's see how you would do it now with competing charter schools and public schools, and, various new reform ways of doing i so i think that criticism of arne duncan was outrage, he was totally correct. >> and from what i am observing and hearing i had a guest on the show today, fred hess from american enterprise institute, in new orleans, and looking the at what is going on and paul value lis, the superintendent of the schools, came to chicago, philadelphia, and was in new orleans and the guy, paul pastorack. >> he's the hidden value, the state superintendent of education, and appointed by c h kathleen blanco and retained by

bobby jindal and he's driving things forward in the state of lou lou. >> talking about bipartisanship and this is what can happen and there is a ton of accountability and they are not standing for schools operating a long time and they are not getting educational results, and, they are experimenting with a lot but, always with measurement, evaluation and accountability and sounds like a dream, what should be happen everywhere and this is part of what duncan's plan is. nationally, you were more politically adept than i was and you said common standards, not national standards and you have a -- >> a famous line which i'll allow you to repeat for those of us who believe there should be standards across the nation as to what kids should learn you once said... >> about national test, i'll we'll never have it, conservatives will be opposed to anything with the word national in it and liberals with the word testing in it, is the problem and we ought to come to agreement on common standards, common, the math is the same and

you can read or you can't read and the problem without having national standards, or common standards, and, this was a problem, with no child left behind, without getting too much into the weeds, when you let each state set its own goals and standards... >> a race to the bottom, to find -- >> and since the enactment of the legislation and expend tour of a lot of money, 18 states lowered their standard and this is not what it was about. >> and that is whew you need the common standards and you also need common testing. >> you do need common testing and that is perfectly fine. i beefed up, when i was secretary of education i beefed up the so-called national assessment of educational progress and some people reacted with horror to it and people a appointed, as chair and cochair, hillary clinton, wife of the governor of arkansas at the time, and, lamar alexander, governor of tennessee at the time. they turned out to be two very good people for that job and this is one of the best national

assessments we have for measuring whether or kids are good in math and now, this issue is, i think, crunch time and is sputnik again. because, we now know what it costs us, just if we're focused on our fiscal house, and, economic recovery, we know what it costs us, not to have good, sound educational practice and costs us a ton of money. >> what do you think of president obama's reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education act no child left behind law. >> they need to see more and again there are things i like, they are spending way too much money on the one hand, i think, they -- the strangling of the d.c. scholarship program, the opportunity scholarship programs are terrible thing to do, and it was working for the kids who need it the most but again if they are talking about real evaluation, and, this is what made their normal loyalist constituents angry at them, the teachers unions, where they are

saying when you evaluate teacher performance, you have to look at student performance. are there kids -- their kids learning and that puts the burden on accountability where it should be and i'm prepared, at my risk, to agree with president obama, on things from time-to-time. >> we started this show by talking about competitiveness, and -- in china and america and the world an education, understanding of history and we're ending with education. let me let you sum it up in a way, by saying, what worries you and what encourages you about the notion of america being competitive in the 21st century, the way it was in the 20th century? how do we educate or kids and not fall behind the way we seem to be falling behind in our k-12 education? >> all right, what encourages me and what discourages me, what discourages me, you know, you have seen a million assessments and heard all of the panels at aspen and you convened them all and many very, very good and i have sat in on a few and here's what discourages me when we test our kids in 4th grade in math

and science we're in the top third and the 8th grade we're in the middle and test or kids the 11th grade we're at the bottom and that is really discouraging and the longer you stay in our system the dumber you get relative to kids in other countries and that will not work, not in this economy. i talked to kids at harvard graduating with good gpas losing jobs to kids from other countries, and tom freeden eni talks about "the world is flat" and in some ways it is in terms of competitiveness and the sheer dollar value of intellectual capital has never been more important. what encourages me, is that there is some common ground on education, and what also encourages me is we know what works, and what makes for good teaching now, there is a lot of research in that and apart from the family, home, the teacher, is the single most important person in the educational process. doesn't matter about class size or resource, quality of that teacher. so, we know something about

that. now that we have a good state of the art, in or knowledge, maybe we can do the right thing, that is the part that encourages me. if we keep pushing and -- i have been pushing 30 years and i'll keep pushing. >> i'm involved with teach for america and bringing new teachers into the process and holding them accountable, is probably the most important thing we can do, to make sure 21st century is the way the other two centuries you write about are. >> and look at the interest of the talented kids in wanting to teach. >> the book is "a century turns" bill bennett, thanks for being here. >> thank you very much. thank you all. includes madam marie

currie, jane goodall and

>> next, julie des jardins, author of "the hidden history of women in science." this is an hour. >> so hello, everyone. i want to thank you all for coming, this is a great turnout for julie, but nothing less than we would have expected. i'm gloria jacobs, i'm the executive director of the feminist press at cuny, the publisher of the madame curie complex, and the book is part of our women writing science series which is funded by the national science foundation. and you might ask, or you might not, you might know the answer, why do we need a women writing science series and the answer is, of course, that women still are not encouraged by their teachers to enter the scientific field and to stay there, which is really important, retention,

and they are not promoted as much, they don't get the best jobs, they don't get the best grants, and, this is still, despite many years of activism on women's part is consistent throughout the scientific field. so, the feminist press, we put together a project, and the two project directors are here, florence howe, also the founder of the press, give a little wave... and shirley maugh, the program director of the whole science project which also has a web site, called "under the microscope.com" and, a board member who has done a lot of work on the science project, but this was put together because it seemed to us that it was really important to look at women in

science in a different way, instead of sort of, you know, theoretical and looking, you know, at things through a microscope microscope, we said let's do something lively and engaging and tells a star about women in science, because, we know that everyone likes a good story. not just, you know, those of us who are publishers, for instance. so, julie's book came along and it is within we are just delighted to have, because it is all those things. it is lively, and it is accessible but it tells incredibly important story about the role of women in science and the heart of it is something that we rarely think about or acknowledge, but, it is that women's way of doing things is often different than men's. it is not necessarily biological. i don't think it is at all. but, our experience of the world and the way we inhabit the

world, and the things we see and do, as women, are -- make a very big difference for how women do science. and that means that when women are excluded their way of doing things and their experiences and their understanding of how to conduct an experiment is lost. and what is so fabulous about julie's work is that she really explores what women have contributed to the scientific field, by bringing that very unique perspective to it. so, before we start, i do also just want to make a few announcements. first of all, i want to thank, very much, adrian klein and brian schwartz, who is also on the board of the feminist press, for the science and the arts program, which is sponsoring this tonight and, want to thank the graduate center. i want to thank the martin siegel auditorium for being open tonight. it's not easy to find that here at the graduate center, and i

also wanted to invite all of you upstairs afterwards, to the feminist press offices, we're going to have a little reception in honor of julie. and she will be signing books there, as well. so, that is room 5406. you go to the 5th floor and then, just follow the signs. and you will find your way there. and now, let me do a brief introduction further of julie, she's a professor of history, and i think the fact that she is a historian is very important to the book, because, as i say, she knows how to tell a good story. and, this is her second book, she's also the author of "women and the historical enterprise in america." julie. >> thank you, gloria. thank you. [applause]. >> thank you. thank you. that was a lot of people, i'm thrilled, a lot of people i know, i have a couple of students here, who are raising signs, which is great.

and, my students have 2 and 3 jobs at one time and the fact you guys are here, i'm thrilled. wonderful. a lot of people from the feminist press and i have to thank the people from science and the arts and the graduate center, the feminist press, and, of course i want to thank c-span and everybody else, who put this all together today, so thank you so much. it is a very rare opportunity that we get to actually talk about the stuff we write about. you know, i teach all these classes and talk about american history but i never get to talk about the stuff that i'm actually write and this is great. i mean, it is a very sol story business and writing a book and hunker down and sitting there and writing and i never get to talk about it. this is the perfect opportunity and i was hoping, if it is okay with you guys to talk a little bit about my personal experiences that brought me to writing the book, yes, we'll talk about the book, and get into the skinny of the book, you know, but it makes a lot of sense i think if i talk to you

about my personal experiences and my professional experiences, that brought me to write this book. because, to be totally honest when i look at this i never would have written it 6 years ago, even, all of the stuff happened to me, about five years ago, 2005. and when i think of these things coming together, it made the book a no-brainer. but before that, i wasn't interested in looking at women in science. i looked at other women in professional cultures and professional historians and thought this is stuff people who do the history of science do. and i don't think that, there are departments of history and science and i don't do that and i thought, this wasn't something i could ever actually do. but let me tell you a little bit about what happened. 2005. very, very interesting year for me personally. because this was the year my dad died. knee he's not a scientist and don't think it is a weird homage to my dad, it is nothing like that. but my dad was absolutely

enamored with scientists, absolutely enom mored. and he worshipped the men of the manhattan project and literally i think i must have been i don't know, maybe 7 or 8 years old when he started telling me stories about enrico fermi and the nuclear chain reaction underneath stag field at the university of chicago in 1942, the sorts of stories i grew up with. and, he just thought these figures were larger than life. and a very, very strange story, but a true story. when i was in high school, we had to do these projects, in nonwestern humanities class, and we had to do skits in roman history, and i have an identical twin sister and she was in the class, and we had to do these skits. and, my sister's group went back to the house and work on the skits and i wasn't there. i was at somebody else's house doing a different skit and my dad came into the room and this is -- getting this from my sister, and she's introducing my dad to all of the friends of

ours in the room, and, she says to dad, dad, this is alex teller. now i didn't know that my friend alex teller was actually the grand son of edward teller. my dad knew for sure this was the grandson of edward teller. and my sister says my dad was giddy when he met this kid. and like, like girls at jonas brothers concert. he was beside himself and my sister said, how did you know he was the grandson? what was it that made you know this? and he said, the strangest thing, he said, it was so obvious, it was all in the eyebrows! [laughter] and it was the funniest thing, it was strange and i used to wear makeup at prom and my dad didn't notice, but noticed the eyebrows on alex tell your and i went back and my dad had world book encyclopedias in the office from 1958, and these were ones that he had read

when he was a child and sure enough, if you were to go to the tease and go and find teller, you would find this picture of edward teller, and other than the fact the eyebrows are a little bit more wiry and a little bit more dis shelved they are alex teller's eyebrows! they really are aand it was an odd observation for him to make and now i look back and now being a historian i get context and it occurs, my dad came of age in the 1940s, 1950s, and that is the period i call in this book, the age of heroic science. really the cult of the atomic physicist. this is right about the time my dad was of course seizing on all of these ideas and he studied the encyclopedic entry for years and years and i realized, you know, that is when he was starting to imagine the scientist as being a hyper masculine figure and i'll talk

about how it happened and what also happens is literally women who are doing science at the exact same time get rendered literally culturally invisible. and, this is a dynamic that i explore in this book, it was very hard to write about the women of the manhattan project. they don't write about themselves and see themselves as big players in this, anyway, these figures were larger than life, you know, growing up, to my dad at least. and my dad was larger than life to me and he passed away in 2005. and this was a very, very strange moment for me. i was in a lot of transition. i was actually teaching at cuny and living in boston. so i was doing a back and forth and my cousin, he knows because i was sleeping on his couch the whole time, i was coming back and forth, i was between book projects, i didn't know what hives doing and i was telling the dean of the college i was writing about women intellectuals so she thought i wasn't sitting on my butt and i

can say that now because i have something to say for myself, right? but the other thing, too, was, the day my dad died, i was about five months pregnant. which is totally an integral part of the whole thing. because i was already a little bit uncomfortable traveling around a lot with my roler board going to and from boston and new york and i was pregnant, and that and haves going to pale compared to the discomfort of being a pregnant woman who was actually teaching at the city university of new york in 2005. sadly. i would like to say that unpaid maternity leave was the least of my problems. as a pregnant woman, at the city university of new york. lots of things happened. because i had the baby, not me june, july, august. you know, as an extracurricular activity when i'm notteaching. i had the baby in april. and, this threw everything off. and you know, wreaked havoc on

my psyche, my certainly finances and i will not go into the somebody story, my friends know it, i will not do that. but, needless to say, i do have to say this, i have a wonderful colleague in the history department who, as we speak is on a paid maternity leave, at the city university of new york, okay, and things have changed, i'd like to think my misery had something to do with it because i wasn't quiet about it. but, as you guys can tell i'm not really over what happened to me as a pregnant person. at the city university of new york. and i'm not sure i'm really ever going to totally get over it but i think that you get to a point when you are tired of feeling pissed off and feeling like a victim, and you want to do something productive for other people and it was right about at that stage that i decided whatever i was going to do, whatever the next book project was going to be, it was going to be something that looked at women in a professional culture,

not to tell a victimology, after a while you are done with that and wanted to do something that would be prescriptive about how to change the culturing, the gendering of the professional culture, whatever the field would be. the problem with this, for three reasons in particular is we are good at talking about, you know, why things are -- were the way they were but we're not confident about why things are the way they are and what they should be. and i do think it is dangerous to be overly prescriptive in the history book but i was really held back at this point to do something -- hell bent to do something that would matter for women in professional cultures in the 21st century. that said i had no idea what professional culture i was going to talk about. but, remember, this was 2005. and who gives me the answer to this? larry summers. [laughter]. >> right. it sounds like a few of you know what happened with him in 2005.

okay. i have to tell the back story, i'll do it quickly, because it has everything to do with where i'm inserting myself into the conversation on women in science. okay? so larry summers was the president of harvard university in 2005. he was at this just an academic conference, and there were economists in the room and scientists in the room and he's basically talking about repositiving reasons for the dearth of women in institutional science and suggests women's biological proclivities may have something to do with it. now, people seized on this, which is amazing, if you have been to the academic conferences, people talk and it goes in one ear and out the other and no one pays attention but everybody pays attention to what he says when he drops the "b" bomb, the biology. i at least had -- waited for the transcripts to come out and look

at the transcripts to see what he said and i have to say, he doesn't just say biology. he talks about insufficient child care as being an issue and talks about general discrimination being issues, but to be totally honest with you, no one seized on that part or talked about it or cared, everybody talked about the biology part. and this was the part i thought was kind of strange, because, i have to tell you when i heard the biology part my first inclination was to be totally dismissive. of course it is not women's biology, it has nothing to do with it, but clearly that wasn't the reaction of other people: this. that is when i decided i wanted to know what was going on. as a cultural historian what frequently happens, we are interested in what these people was much more interested in

don't know that i have it all figured out, but let me tell you what i think might be going on here. i think to some extent, if you were to go to somebody on the street and you were to say give them do you think women are capable of science? i think the vast majority of people would say absolutely. women are capable in science but i think that is the only part they tell you. i think the part two, the next part of the reaction is women are competent in science and so science insofar as they are and new leading man when they are doing the science. and i think even the people that are the most stalwart defenders of women in science ultimately think of of the concept of scientist city is masculine to the core. no matter how defending you are of women scientists, ultimately i think that is something we haven't gotten rid of. so at that point i thought, what i want to do is i want to write a book that talks about this

gendering of scientific culture. this was a novel idea to me that this is not a new idea. lots of people have written really good empowering stuff about science as this gendered culture and they have been doing it since the late 1970s, the early 1980s. with any of you have read anything by sandra harding, evelyn fox keller, there is so much out there, really smart stuff. in terms of the feminist process there is a little bit of a problem because it has such a limited audience. it is so highly theoretical that often what happens is it feels disembodied and you forget literally they are talking about real women doing science and every day. >> but absolutely smart important stuff, it was totally foundation for the wedding of this book, so much of it. so you have that on the one end of the spectrum, and then you have on the other end of the spectrum this stuff that is much more accessible, very readable.

it's human interest stories, very compelling, often written in the biographical note. these are the things particularly now we're in a much of march, you see these things, women's history month, library displays. if there's something about women scientists, nine times out of 10 it is madame curie. nice by august, very compelling to read, fascinating women. and in terms of a feminist practice, a lot this is more promising because it is more accessible. people read it. if you are younger or young woman you are very motivated by and inspired by it. this is fantastic. but the problem with a lot of the stuff, not all that but a lot of it is it does nothing to problematize signs as this gendered culture. all of the presumptions of masculinity stay in the culture and you sort of insert women into the mix. so it reads in the compensatory tone. it's almost over celebratory sometimes. not very helpful if you're

trying to prophet isaiah science as culture. i think in the book i call it something like these books that are women who performed outside their female skins to do nobel prize-winning science anyway, sort of thing. great as far as they go. so what i decide i want to do is i wanted to borrow from both john or. i wanted to take a look at those things that problematize signs as culture and is the gender culture. but then i want to write in the biographical mode because this is compelling and i wanted to find women who were identifiable, fascinating women. so this is as far as i am at this point. and i decided onto a very good friend of mine who is not your sadly because she is off doing her own talk, but her name is carol. she is a fantastic historic. and i started talking to her about this. and the great thing about carol is she is this amazing mentor of women. and she hooked me up. she talked to her book agent. herb book agent is a very bright guy, i told him what i wanted to

do. he thought this is fantastic so he starts pitching this. and he comes back with his very interesting feedback. what it basically was, was a great idea, particularly in the wake of the whole summers thing, great timing to talk about women in science. who is the one person that you're going to write about? because of course that singular biography is what sells. and funny i've got to say this was a total dealbreaker. that's exactly what i do not want to do. and the reason why i necessarily had to write out lots of different women is because the subject of the book is not actually the women. not one woman, not lots of women. the subject of the book is this gendered of science. and the women are the lenses. and what they do is they sort of refried delight on this problem in all these different ways. if i had one woman she would reflect like this way on the genocide but i wanted this way and this way, and all these

different perspectives because there are so many different ways that scientific culture is agenda. i wanted to look at married women and single women and women in the lab and women in the field and women who were doing science at the turn-of-the-century, and women after second wave of feminism. this discipline and that discipline. i did all sorts of different lenses on this problem. and the other thing is of course i have a history. so i wanted show change over time in this gendered of science. so what i wanted to do what i wanted to talk about women at the turn-of-the-century, women at the end of the center. there might be some women who are out there who are 108. i want someone who is going to be able to tell my story all the way through the 20th century. that can be done with one person. so i explained this to dan. he completely understood the. he talks to the people of the feminist press, and they completely understood what i was talking about. that's what this is a feminist press book but because they always knew what it had to be about lots of different women so

we could shed light on this problem. so to show the story of the children of sites over time i had this notion of science and about engendering. so what i did was i divide this book into seven different chapters. each chapter looks at a woman or a community of women. it's loosely chronological so start at the beginning of the 20 century and goes to the 20th century. and what i also did was i have this larger metanarrative about science. so i have these historical overviews. and i talk about the science in three different distinct historical moments. and the first moment is what i guess you could describe late stage scientific professionalization, i guess. because professional session of science has been going on since the 18 '60s, '70s or so by the time we get to the turn-of-the-century it's been going on for a while. the three women and communities of women that i talked about,

those first three chapters, these are women who are trying to do sides during this moment of professionalization. which is a very interesting thing to try to do. because the thing about professionalization is that is always necessarily a masculine icing process. that may sound very, very strange. but what i mean about this, you get a group of people who decide they want to professionalization oh. what that means they want to and use it with legitimacy and they want to infuse it with prestige. and the ways you go about infusing something with prestige is to give it a lot masculine connotation. and this is what they do of course with professional science. so you've got this group of insiders and they want to be seen as this exclusive group. and you define everybody else, the outsiders, as amateur. everything associate with scientific amateurism is feminine. and that's the way you create

the high r&d. professional signs up here, amateur science down here. and everything associated with domesticity, i.e. women, our amateur by default. this is this personally how things happen. at the turn-of-the-century. so what i do is actually three groups of women are trying to do anience anyway. because what happens is if you're one of these women who wants to do science them you want to enter one of these masculine bastions of science, whether it is the lab or the university, or whatever it is. you can read. but to do that and still appear to be this appropriate woman you have to do answers look like the domestic helpmate. you have to play that role. but if you ask we pulled it off, you look like an incompetent scientist because of course, domesticity, scientist of the are apparently antithetical. and so this is the paradox that the women in a first three

chapters of the book have to deal with. and the very first chapter of this book is about madame curie. now madame curie most of you probably know, was not american. so you probably know this is a american science, why are we talking about madame curie? madame curie comes to deny states in the 1920. the reason why she comes is she discovered radium, radio activity. but the problem was she didn't patent. so there's all these american chemical producers making all this money on radium and she can't even afford this much of it much of it so she could do her own research. so she talks to this publicist in the united states can this woman named nancy malone. and she looks rough because what she does as she starts this campaign. all of these american women are going to raise money so that madame curie can have a radium. so i tell the story about this campaign. what is so funny about this is, this little campaign, everything about not just how american womanhood is getting defined in this period, but also how

american science is getting define. because she comes to the united states and, of course, all for american handlers have to count to deal with the contradiction that is madame curie. hears of this woman who's really good at science. the only person who has got to nobel prizes in science, mind you, at the time. but the problem is she's a woman and women are not supposed to be naturally good at science. so how do you talk about her in the american public? the way that her american handlers deal with this in his they suggest to a americans, you know, you see in newspapers, in all of this discourse, that the reason why she's so good at science is not because she doesn't science for science sake like men do, it's her maternity that makes are so good at science. the reason why she discovered radium was because she wanted to cure cancer for humanity. she's basically like, you become mother teresa with a beaker basically. and this is the way she gets

described. the real tension in the chapter is this is not madame curie in the least. she is no mother of the year, okay? she has two daughters and she is pretty neglectful of them during certain junctures of her career and she wanted nothing to do with medical radium. she wanted to do science for science's sake that this is exactly the way she would talk about. this is the way she had to get marketed to the american public. so that's chapter one. chapter two is about a woman who i do think actually pulls off the domestic persona of a bit better and her name is billy and gilbert. love the gilbert was quite literally that proverbial woman who lives in a shoe. literally. she had 12 children. she also happened to be in the most feral scientific and you could be. and that was and daschle engineering. and even today, and the 21st century that there are still pockets of engineering and physics that are not just their e-mail, but they are masculine

and the culture. and this is exactly the case of industrial engineering at the turn of the century. and the reason why i write about her, she is fascinated. fascinating woman. but the thing about her is she as one of the most subversive women in this book. he does those really strange dichotomies between scientists the, domesticity, she simply turns them on their head. i do know she does is knowingly or would he lay. but she does. what she does is she defines science as something that can be done and domestic space, and she defines domesticity as something that can be scientific. she turns all of these things on their head so i had to write about her. she doesn't like 55 different ways. so that's chapter two. chapter three is looking at a group of women who we call computers at the harvard astronomical observatory at the turn of the 20 century. these women have to do with this

paradox that comes with professional session in a slightly different way. they are going to feel like the choice to the, you know, married with children and the choice to do science, are completely mutually exclusive. to do one or you do the other. this was the case for a lot of professions as they are professionalizing. but you really sit with these women because all of these women choose to basically be married to that object would they don't have children. they don't get married. but the problem is that if they've made that choice and there in that observation in the way they get talked about in the observatory is as the sort domestic housekeepers. and the way their size gets described is always in the sort of domestic metaphors. these women are doing busy work. you know, a liken it to sort of needlepoint are doing the dishes or something like this. now i have to say this is a very important point to make. -talking in the sort of abstractions, talking about domesticity and discursively doing this and that, and you

might never understand how meaning and metaphor and language actually gets mapped out onto the real life expenses of these women. but i'm telling you the meaning that comes out of these metaphors has everything to do with the way that we come to value women's scientific work. and these women are spoken about as domestic. it's funny because i valued domestic work, and you guys might die domestic work. but culturally, it always brings women down a peg to talk about them and in domestic terms. always, always, always. just to give you a sense of this, let me ask you guys, does anybody know who maria gebert mayor is? anybody. who issued? [inaudible] >> she is a physicist. do you guys know why she won the nobel prize? [inaudible] >> yes, the shell are but three of the nuclear. my husband was a physicist, he knows nobody did know then, did you? she went in 1963 she wins this

nobel prize in physics. now the way that we metaphorically speak of science, there's hard sciences like theoretical physics inches with masculinity and don't have the soft sciences. this is the stuff that is squishy that women do with. those are always sort of lower on the hierarchy. she is in one of those fields that is high on hierarchy because she is in theoretical physics. the interesting thing about is that's not the way the american press talks about it. and it is, when i was going back is looking at old clippings when she won the nobel prize in 1963. jackson won the nobel prize in physics with two other men. one that is this guy who is at princeton and then there's another guy named jensen the past also one of the same time for the show arbiter but the thing was he so dig it out independently. frankly, he figured it out after she did. but she immured to him. so the two of them get the nobel prize for this at the same time.

and it's amazing because when the president talked about the show arbiter he in jensen's hand, it looks appropriate mask and. this is something with atomic science and science that kills. and then you see it in her hands. totally different. so if you guys to my, let me just read something. i have to read -- when i'm reading about people inside you go to like the one chapter on kerry but this whole thing is about women's i have to sort of look around and find or. okay. this is what i write about her when she wins the nobel prize. upon man's discoveries we hear pats on the back or shots of eureka. the end result of mashed in context and exploration. the terms with which the press is conveyed the e-mail discovery have been no less stereotypical. marie curie we told -- in 1963 3

journalist sees a light which they claimed to describe her shelf there is to her teenage daughter. i have yet to prove that this anecdote is true. but the press seized on it, okay? think of couples waltzing around the room, she allegedly told her. they spent as individual couples as they work with a ballroom. summit spent in one direction and so many other. just like the electrons that orbit a nuclear. and everybody who's ever danced a fast waltz knows it's easier to dance in one direction than in another. that is the way that describe the theory in her hands. i tell you, it's funny because the other what it looks very masculine. this what it looks dainty pink and effect i would argue it doesn't even look like science. and i think that is the cultural in tenon. because what's going on here is for her to look like an appropriate woman and to still be this competent scientists she always has to be paid in the sort of glowing domestic shades. you cannot talk about her as

competent and not as domestic at the same time because then she doesn't look appropriate. it's funny because i was looking at all the press coverage of maria goeppert-mayer was doing the research. and when she wins that price in 1963, every single clipping said doctor wegner, dr. jensen. mrs. joseph mayor. she of course had a ph.d, please know, but this is how she gets talked about. when she won the nobel prize and it's funny because the journalist felt compelled to tell everybody that went all the other physicist were in the room talking about size, she took herself off to downtown stockholm to do a little christmas shopping. because of course that's what an appropriate woman would do. let me just read, this is what this journal says about her big night. as she won the nobel prize. and professor meyer, a tiny, shy touchingly devoted wife and mother who speaks so softly she can barely be heard, size and

femininity have achieved an astonishingly graceful union. last winter at 57 she received the highest honor that the man's world of atomic age science can bestow. i would argue that getting paid for the first time but that's not what they're talking about. but under spectacular night of professional night, when the metal became hers, she saw everything through the starry eyes of a romantic woman. it was a fairy tale, she says. the king of sweden gave me his arm after the ceremony and my husband look and chanted in his white tie and tails that he had borrowed the trousers from our son, peter. now months later the magic of it still brings a special light to her bright blue eyes. it's funny because a year before this james watson winces nobel prize in biology. no one talked about the plate in his beautiful blue eyes. it is amazing how you can't talk about them in the same way. you just can't industry. this is not the turn-of-the-century. this is 1963. the reason why i am sort of

making a point of this is because this association with domesticity still stigmatizes women and science in the 21st century. still does. this is what i had to make the point throughout the entire book. this doesn't make a lot of sense to people because we know women who were domestic. people to assume they keep house, they do this and that. it doesn't matter. in the woman, single, married, dead, a slob, it doesn't matter. everywoman falls under this rubric of domesticity as the discourse is getting produced it so i just wanted to make that clear why this is such a big deal. every time women size, nobel caliber winning science gets talked to in these domestic terms, it denotes these women. and yet this is how it gets talked about in american culture. so anyway, sort of getting back to this historical scheme i had in mind. that was the first section of the book. the second section of the book is what i have always described. it's what i discovered as the

age of the heroic scientist. this is the a cult of the atomic physicist. this is when science gets infused with the greatest prestige in american culture. this is of course because of world war ii. you get the rights of atomic science and you get the atom bomb. all of a sudden all the men that were working on atom bomb or on the front cover of newsweek and time and on every newspaper, they had tons of cultural authority industry. chapter four of this book is women of the manhattan project. i cannot tell you what this problem of cultural invisibility did when i came to write this chapter. you cannot find these women. i was looking for all looking for all this great juicy evidence of these women. they are there, and i don't think they are not just bit players pick there are women who were setting off the triggers at the trinity test site in new mexico but they are there. they are next to tell her, all of these guys that my dad venerated, they knew women and operate with women on a daily basis. and i couldn't find good, juicy

argue evidence about these women. the weird thing is these women themselves have started to internalize this invisibility. they wouldn't talk about themselves. and so this is the problem. i had a very hard time finding them. so i spent a lot of this chapter, chapter four, sort of trying to diagnose this dearth of evidence and try to diagnose this invisibility. the very last moment, historical moment in this book, is really looking at women scientist with the rise of second wave feminism. i don't think it is a coincidence that at the very same time women are starting to question normative gender roles we also start to see some pretty interesting epistemological ruptures going on in science itself. now at the very same time you people like betty who's running the feminist the, literally within that same year that people like thomas q. and who are trying to talk about signs in terms of revolutions. he destroyed to question the

admissions at that very masculine scientist. and all of these things are happening at the very same time. this is when rachel carson's writing silent spring. this is not science as usual, right, because first of all it's not an ethical posture and she doesn't apologize for it. the nature that she's writing about, this is a no-no. in the period of masculine side, right, but she is starting to do the. and all of a sudden people are starting to question not just the missions of the size who were always presumably male but now they're saying this has a subjectivity that he's bringing to his signs that he is probably asking certain questions because he's got that subjectivity. so people are starting to question this. it's funny, i have to say, back in the 1950s, there was this fascinates do that was done by margaret mead. and she and his other woman went around to all these high school students and asked them, draw a scientist. and in 1957 the vast majority of

people when they do the scientists, some with that lap welcome spectacle, bearded. right? this is how the scientist was getting imagine. in american culture. not so much so in the '60s. we start to see people, particularly with the rise of the sociology of science as a field, the sociologists are saying all those things that were and magic in the '40s and '50s, this idea that loves male maverick who sits by himself without anybody bothered him, he is hunkered down and becomes there with his nobel to risk and all of a sudden people are poking holes through the. sciences collaborative. all of those nobel prizes were done in a collaborative way. and, you know, those culturally feminine traits? play well with others, made a good thing and big science, right? so all of us on what we start to see is that science itself, a pathological is getting feminist that i do want to overstate that but it is starting to happen a bit. so what we see in chapter six is

that the women can, i shall a generational perspective, i look at women who come to professional age, right on the eve of second wave feminism. and the talk about women who start to get a feminist consciousness with the rise of radical feminism. i talk about rosalyn yalow for example. she comes to sorting writer for the feminist. and i talk about people like evelyn fox keller, who gets completely politicized. she is really radicalize and she starts to have a whole different idea about what her identity is as a scientist. and then i talk about women of the but after the feminist turn. and that we find is these women are not only starting to see themselves differently, but they are starting to accept that maybe they're bringing different methodologies and they're bringing different perspective. they're bringing different questions to science. and this is all happening, you know, late 1960s going into the early 1970s. and you see this with these women that i talk about,

particularly with arbor mcclintock. i talk a lot about her because the one thing that barbara mcclintock sides was that was the big no-no was intuitive. and what we start to see is that maybe some people are looking at this and saying, you know, maybe that's not a bad thing to bring to science. so that's chapter six. chapter seven, this is the last chapter. my husband tells me this is the most interesting chapter. i don't know. these are women, there are three women in this chapter pick in this is the chapter, basically there's this paleontologist, louis leaky. i'm sure you know who he is that he has these protéges who he calls his lady primates that they are women primatologist. and when they start in the 1960s it was largely male. but then 1960s, 1970s, '80s and '90s it becomes completely feminized by 2000 there is about 78% of all ph.d's and primatology going

to women. so i talk about these women. you are fascinating, fascinating people in their own right, right? but what's so interesting about this chapter is the last chapter in the book and i write it first. completely the first thing that came to my mind and the reason why is because the one question that was in my mind first, like my first is that i was going to write this book, these women are very, very thoughtful about responses to this question. i don't know that they know they are thoughtful about but you can't look at their sides and the way they live their lives and not think that they were not. this is the question, okay, is there such a thing as a feminine or feminist science? and if there is, do we want to package it this way for women in the 21st century? this was the question that was always in my mind when i was writing this book. and i got today that you cannot look at these women and not start to think about some responses to these questions. so i write about them last.

and so this would make the whole things as adequate but i have to take the whole process was, it's funny i was having a glass of wine with carol, and she was also writing this whole awesome book about women in civil war. there's three different biographies of women in this book. and we would sit there over our wind and talk about our process, you know. and she was telling me that she came across these women because she found this little nugget of something in each of these women that was absolutely fascinate. didn't know what she wanted to do with it yet but she knew these were the women she was going to write about. she started explaining and as you got to know these women better and more intimately, suddenly she started to see this larger metanarrative. she wasn't sure at first i want to tell a story of tragedy, do i want to make this, she didn't know yet but as you got to know these women, the packaging of life stories started to come into view. and she was telling me this, a