think there's some underlying social problems and quick issue that is really need to be locked at by the columbian government and addressed by them and that way i don't think that there's -- personally, i don't believe there can be sort of an overarching band-aid fix that can go over the population and sort of make everything all right. i think it has to be approached from a number of different areas. and not only columbia by itself, but the united states looking at itself inward and why are we having all of these -- such a demand for the drug. what's going on here? how is that influencing it? >> one quick question. :

with canadians who were involved, and ingrid's parents were very vocal, unlike the parents of the americans. ingrates parents she was already a public figure and they went everywhere to try to get someone to agree to a negotiation. they also did not want to see ingrid rescued because they thought it was too dangerous than many of the families did not want a rescue. at the time uribe, the president was saying the only thing we are going to do is a rescue. we are not talking to the farc on this case, and so because

ingrid's family had a lot of political poll in france and in colombia they were able to get a lot of meetings. however in the end uribe put a stop to any kind of sort of one-on-one negotiations. he would say okay will negotiate but, and i'm not blaming uribe. the other side was just as bad. the farc would say we want basically half the country to be to mobilize before we vote even talk to you. and so it was really ridiculous posturing going on back and forth it never got anyone anywhere. so angry at being of a higher class that in some cases may have meant some people thought she would be the very last one that they would release him because she was the only one giving them any press. the american public didn't care there were three americans and the colombians are sorted you know so used to this kind of kidnapping they live with it daily, that there is not count as an outreach. the families do march and they do a lot of the fans, but i

don't think that really helped her in the end. it probably hurt her more than anything. >> thank you very much to victoria prison karin hayes. the book is "hostage nation". let's give them a round of applause. [applause] >> this event was hosted by the new america foundation here in washington. to find out more visit new america.net. >> former secretary of state condoleezza rice recalls her childhood in birmingham alabama in the 1960s and profiles her parents, john and angelina. ms. rice discusses her memoir with her cousin constance rice, codirector of the advancement project at the millennium will bar hotel in los angeles. the program runs close to one hour. >> we are going to first deconflate a little bit for

people. we are not sisters. we are cousins. we are related because our fathers are first cousins, and we are absolutely very close both as children and as adults and indeed connie and i did not meet until i was provost at stanford and she would speak at stanford law school. i had never thought many times as a little girl but when we went to visit them connie was already in college so we didn't need. but i knew of connie because the time would always come when someone would say, you know i saw you on a program in los angeles and you were expressing views that i would not have associated with your republican party. [laughter] and i would think, there goes my cousin again. [laughter] and i would just stop outside of post offices and the one time i got confused which was most interesting condi was when this lady came out and she said you know, you are a dead ringer from

that grow related to that sister in the white house and i don't either of your names but she is important. [applause] [laughter] so it has been a pleasure though to get to know each other better over the last several years and we have spent more time together in the last 10 years or so and what is really wonderful about getting to share this particular stage with connie is to talk about extraordinary ordinary people because the books first or second chapter is the rice's and the ray's. it is a book really about our families and how they were educationally matchless and people who believe in social justice so that is something we share. >> absolutely condi and the family is so proud of them. this is a wonderful tribute not just to your parents who are beyond extraordinary but to the whole family and they think the whole family is extremely proud of this book so thank us for doing it.

and the thing that is so moving about it is that, in going through your early life, you are showing that you lived in sort of a last chapter of that jim crow era and it was important for you to share that with the world, and it has a petition for today. why was it important to start there? >> you might imagine i would say what am i going to say after eight years and i was going to write and still writing the secretary of state's memoirs for the last eight years and here is what we did in foreign-policy. but i am often asked the question that i decided i wanted to answer. how did you get to be who you are? and i said in order to know that, you had to know john and angelina rice and the ordinary in the title is because my parents were in many ways ordinary people. my mom was a high schoolteacher,

first in english teacher. whenever first students was willie mays, who she taught at fairfield industrial high school and even though she knew nothing about sports he says that she told him son, you are going to be a ballplayer so if you need to leave class a little bit early you go right ahead and do that. [laughter] so she knew talent when she saw it. but she taught school. she was an eloquent lady, who was a musician and loves to bring the arts to her students particularly her students in this very poor high school in high school in which she taught him, birmingham. they had operettas send they had had -- said she was an eloquent lady but an ordinary person, a schoolteacher. my dad was also an ordinary person. he was a presbyterian minister, high school guidance counselor and later on it university administrator. he was an athlete and a big sports fan.

in fact, my parents had a deal, connie which may relate to you because i know your name and mine were almost the same. my parents had a deal. had i been born a boy, i was going to be named john. and my father had already bought the football for john who was going to be an all-american linebacker. when he got a girl, my mother got to name her condoleezza, which comes from a musical. but my parents were in that way ordinary. i doubt they made more than $60,000 between them in their entire life but there was no opportunity to come educational opportunity that i didn't have and the extraordinary part comes from the circumstances that you mentioned. i grew up in birmingham, alabama. i was born in 1954. i am 55 so you don't have to start counting. at the six next month. [laughter] and my parents there in

birmingham, alabama, thoroughly segregated. i did not have a white classmate until he moved to denver when i was 12. you couldn't stay in a hotel. to a movie theater. and yet, my parents and the people in our community, and this was also true of this little enclave in birmingham called titusville, community i grew up in, this middle-class community had the kids convinced that we might not be able to have a hamburger at the wall worst lunch counter but we could be president of the united states if we wanted to be. so that is the extraordinary part because they believed very strongly that, if you couldn't control your circumstances, which you certainly couldn't in segregated birmingham, you can certainly control your responses >> that is the extraordinary part of this, because being ordinary if you are african-american and you had to have an extraordinary capacity

to rise above the jim crow suppression, and the lessons for that today i feel like they still apply. that there is a way to rise above but without getting better and that is what our families taught us, was how to transcend it, how to face in dignity with grace. john and angelina, my parents, our great grandparents were born slaves, we share great grandparents and they were 12 and 13 when they were freed. so we are just, we are for generations out of slavery, condi which is an extraordinary advancement and yet who has gotten left behind because i know you and i share a passion for those kids who are still at the bottom of the well and i am so glad that now you were at the white house you can help us get back and get that heavy lifting done. >> i do think it has lessons today. first of all, if you don't consider these victims and if

you are not given into bitterness and if you really do believe as my parents and your parents taught us, you may have to be twice as good and they said that by the way as just a statement. it was a given. then you can overcome whatever is in front of you. but we were very fortunate. we had parents who were there for us. we had teachers who were there for us. we grew up in communities where our parents were educated and knew how to deliver on that message. and what i worry about today is the kids who are trapped in that witches' brew that is poverty and race. and for them, there is no way out if they cannot he educated, and when i give a teacher zip code and i can tell whether or not you are going to get a good education and i can tell -- look at your zip code and tell, then we are doing something very very

wrong. we were fortunate that our grandparents were able to give to our parents the possibility of education. in fact, my grandfather who would have been your grand uncle, is a particularly interesting case. his name was john wesley rice, senior and he was a sharecroppers on. they worked others land in utah. that is in alabama. when john wesley rice, senior was about 19 years old he decided he wanted to get book learning in a college, so he asked people coming through how a man could get educated and they told him about little stillman college which was in tuscaloosa, presbyterian school, so be saved up his cotton and he went off to college in his first year they said so, how are you going to pay for your second

year? he said i am out of cotton. they said you are out of luck. and he said how are those boys going to college coax they said you see they want to be presbytery ministered -- minister so they have what is called a scholarship. my grandfather said you know, that is exactly what i wanted to be too. [laughter] my family has been presbyterian and college-educated ever since. [laughter] they were very industrious people but also a little bit ingenious and finding a way to education. >> and that is the republican party as well. a lyrical politics, the party of lincoln. i can't say that it is stated that way but it was pretty much republicans. >> we are pretty much republicans. >> except for me. [laughter] >> in fact my father was

republicans were totally instrumental reasons. in the beginning, connie mentioned the horrors of the south and birmingham was the most segregated big city in america. and it was 1952. my parents were actually not married yet. they were courting so they went to get registered to vote and this is the kind of thing you would have sued for if you were old enough, but the parents, you had what was called a poll tester. and this person would ask questions and if you pass the question then you could register. and so, my mother who was very fair skin, blond hair. the man said to her, so, what job do you have? he said i'm a schoolteacher. and he said, then you probably know who the first president of the united states was. she said oh yes, george washington. he said fine, you go register. then he looked at my father, a big imposing man, dark-skinned,

6-foot 2 inches football player. he said to my father, how many beans are in that jar? and there were hundreds of beans in the jar. so my father could not answer. my father was very unhappy and went back and was talking to mr. frank hunter was an old man and his church and mr. hunter said reverend, don't worry. i will show you how to get registered. there is a clerk down there and she is a republican and she is trying to build a republican party. he said she will register anybody who will say they are every republican. [laughter] now you didn't register by party but i suspect this woman was telling him go register republican. my father kept his word. he registered republican and he was republican for the rest of his life. a very proud republican but he came to it because it was a way to get the vote. >> it stuck in the family because my grandfather when he

put the goldwater president signed, my grandmother made him sleep in the other bedroom. but it is a tradition. condé, one of the most moving parts of the book that really came through so loud and clear was you felt the fear. i mean you weren't watching it on television, and so it was the first comment was the first terrorism. africans american experienced terrorism before we knew it international terrorism was and it was the klan, the state sponsored terrorism of the klan. you had direct contact with that. i think about the kids who now live in fear of a different kind of terrorism. it is not from the klan. it is from the gangs and i wanted you to kind of harken back to that and tied up to today. >> terrace have something in common. whether it is the klan or the way that gangs terrorize the

community or the terrorism that we see, that we experienced on september 11 and continue to fight. they want to not just to frighten. they want to terrorize to the point that they can humiliate and control. and, in fact, they wants to send a message, don't cross us. and indeed, that was what was going on and birmingham in 1962 and 1963. now, before then, birmingham had been segregated and there were incidents from time to time but one thing that i wanted to do in the book was to show that come as a family in birmingham, you still get up everyday and you go to school and you go to church and you have your panel lessons and you have your ballet lessons so it is not segregation every waking moment of every day. people lead normal lives. but in 1962 and 1963 that was

all shattered and birmingham became called bombing camp, because bombs were going off in communities all the time. i remember one night, driving back to my grandparents house, and a loud explosion as we were driving up to the house. in those days, 1962, you knew that a bomb had gone off in birmingham. my father turned the car around and started driving and my mother said, where are you going? he said i'm going to the police. she said they probably set it off, what do you mean you are going to the police? because there was no such thing as protection for black families from the authorities and birmingham. eugene bull connor was the -- of jim crow in the segregation and he was going to enforce it by whatever means necessary. now, this reached its culmination in september of 1963 after a very violent summer of

water hoses and marxists and so forth. dr. king had realized that they weren't getting the response that they wanted so there had been something called the children's march and may of 1953 where these children had really bent sand right into the teeth of paul connor's enhancement. on september 1963, september 151963 we had just gotten to church at my father's church and there was again a loud thud. everybody assumed it was in our community but it had been 2 miles away and pretty soon the phonecalls started, the phone tree started and they said there had been made on at 16th street baptist church. a little while later they said for little girls have been killed in the basement getting ready for sunday school. and a few -- a little while later they said the names. suddenly we realized that little

denise mcnair, with whom i had known from kindergarten, there is a picture in the book of my father giving denise mcnair her kindergarten graduation certificate. these four little girls have been killed by these terrorists. and i remember at the time thinking that people must have a lot of hatred to kill four little girls and being quite frightened. and my dad, then sat on the porch of whole evening in the september heat with a shotgun on his lap. and that next day, they organized a neighborhood watch, he and his friends, and they would patrol with their guns and they would go to the head of the community and once in a while they would fire into the air to scare off knight riders. they never actually shot anybody but they would have that somebody had come in the community. >> when i was happening cleaver in london and i remember my dad coming in.

that bombing made headlines in london comment he said what kind of country kills little girls? so that really was a turning point, and the way you tie it with the determination to keep the community together and to bridge with our allies and the white community because you talk about the kindnesses of so many whites. we had to have a lot of allies in the abolition and the civil rights revolutions. and so, one of the things that struck me about the book was how you tie together those alliances. day they were alliances. they were across racial, they were cross class and we marched together to get birmingham into the 20th century. and so, today we seem to be fraying along some fault line. i wanted to just get your thoughts. we have got to knit this country together.

>> i think particularly when it comes to issues of race, we have to be very careful in the united states and how we throw around titles like you are a racist or lines like you are a racist. the united states is a very deep set of worlds around race. we have a birth defect called slavery. and, it is a wound that is so deep that i think the worst thing you can say about somebody really is, you are a racist. now, the volume had gotten awfully high about race these days and we would do well to turn down the volume, step back, give each other the benefit of the doubt, and try to work again on the kind of common problems that are affecting us all. i don't care what color you are. they are affecting us all. the interesting thing about segregation and birmingham is of

course that affected most dramatically, most directly but people but it also affected white people in birmingham in a negative way. it took birmingham a long time time -- still trying to overcome overcome -- a lot of those scars having been known as the most racist city in the united states. it's still, it finally has overcome some of the impetus of things to atlanta rather than to birmingham because part of birmingham's reputation -- the fact is that racism had a very make it did affect. jim crow had a very negative effect on the white community too and there were few whites who were trying to break out of it. i tell the story of a doctor. my mother had a very bad bronchial infection. i father had a mentor who is the white director of guidance counseling for the schools in alabama in birmingham, and my father went to mr. sheffield and

he said, mr. sheffield my wife has this terrible infection. canyon recommended dr.. he recommended dr. carmichael, a white doctor. the first time we showed up, we went in and the waiting room for blacks was this horrible kind of paint peeling above the pharmacy step straight up hard benches to sit on. and so after dr. carmichael so my mother at about 5:00 that afternoon on that saturday he said, and now, reverend rice, he said the next time you bring angelina, you bring her after 5:00. so we came after 5:00 and his wife's patient population was gone. and so we were able to sit up in the front waiting room, where there were magazines and leather chairs and the whole thing. and, pretty soon the overtime, dr. carmichael kind of integrated his own waiting ground because i think for him, it was humiliating to have to

treat someone like my father that wave a cousin of race. so, racism and segregation hurt not just the black community. it hurt also the white community. and today, when we know that joblessness and homelessness and gang violence on which you are working, and the violence that comes with that, when we know that poor schools that are not preparing kids so that the united states of america is both becoming more inward looking, more fearful, less likely to lead, there are scorches that hurt not just black kids caught in poverty or hispanic kids caught in poverty but they heard us all, so maybe one thing we can learn from that period is bridging those divides, is not really a matter of charity. it is not a matter of reaching out and trying to help somebody. it is essential to who we are as

a people and to our national security. >> and to get some prosperity back for issues coming behind us. you talk about having to be twice as good. and you and i both know that we are constantly compensating, color cast. you have to compensate for color, it raised, language barriers. that is the human enterprise. and we just take it for granted. is their part of the problem here that we just haven't done our homework, that we haven't done that really hard work? we just want to gloss over it and pretend like we don't have to kind of unpack that suitcase to get rid of the baggage and unpack the suitcase, that there is a lot of work to be done. in to stop slinging the labels and doing drive-by labeling and drive-by debate but really take a look at our joint history in our different role senate and

then to get back. one of the questions i had was, your dad and my dad used to ride around and for the families that could not get it together and couldn't get their crops they didn't couldn't get the woodchuck they would go around and deliver wood together to the families that weren't quite holding it together. and when we disintegrated, when we left, when we moved up and out, moving on up, that kind of fell apart. how do we make up her or that? >> that is one of the -- every bad system has some things that are not so bad about it and the black community was very much -- had integrity and segregated birmingham so the middle class in birmingham who lived not too far from the working classes and the underclass is. my dad had a church group called youth fellowship group, and he was a presbyterian so he could have dances, mike the baptist. [laughter]

his church youth fellowship was really, really popular. but behind the church there was a government project called loveless village. and the kids in that project were part of his fellowship. he would bring them in and any of them say that he would go door to door and like my grandfather did, he would go door to door and say your child is smart and she ought to go to college and i've got a scholarship for her at tuskegee or i have got a scholarship for her at spelman. not even asking the parents, do you want your child to go to college? just insisting. my father is very middle-class church. this was not always popular and one of the things they tell the story, my father had a picnic for his kids, and unfortunately some of the kids in the village row teaching the church children how to shoot. so a number of his elders came and said reverently told you they weren't ready to be with them but for our fathers there

were no class barriers when it came to making sure that kids were educated in families were taking care of but when the middle class moved out, as we all did, the people who were left in that richest group of poverty and grace are the most damage in our community and how we get that back now i think is one child at a time. now, i had parents. i had teachers. but i don't care if it is a teacher or a parent, a community leader, if it is a minister, every child has got to somehow have some adult advocating for them. >> and institutions like we are supposed to do. i can't lay you off the stage without talking about stokely carmichael. >> you would bring up stokely carmichael. that was actually connie. i am just kidding. i'm just getting.

>> the one time she would want to be confused. >> stokely carmichael, a name out of the late 60s and early 70s, stokely carmichael was the firebrand leader of the student non-violent coordinating committee sncc. he was one of the original black power people and my dad, who was a conservative republican presbyterian minister at and divided stokely carmichael to speak at stillman college in 1966 and 1967 much to the dismay of the power elite in tuscaloosa which thought stokely was going to start a riot. but i dad really was attracted in a funny way to the radical end of black politics. i try to understand why that is, because he was a conservative man. he loved the united states of america but i always felt a little bit of it was that he admired the pride. he admired the dignity with which these radicals confronted racism rather than taking it

with the kind of sublimation and quietness. he was not her instance willing to march in 1962 and 1963. i remember hearing my parents talking in the living room and my father said you know they want us to go out there and be non-violent but if somebody comes after me with a billy club, meaning the police, i'm going to try to kill him and that my daughter is going to be an orphan. and so i think he was somehow attracted to people like stokely but i did say in the book when they talked about the radicals around than senator obama i thought they sure don't know from the people from our dinner table because there were quite a few of them. >> condy, congratulations. is a wonderful, wonderful book. >> thank you. thank you. [applause]

if you will all remember just to wait for the microphone when you are chosen to ask a question, we would appreciate it. thank you. please raise your hands if you have a question. >> my name is pastor charles patrick, and i was born in birmingham, alabama. before, little before you. and what you said, sharing the experience of what happened is absolutely true. my dad experienced the same thing and one of the reasons we come out to california is because he was almost run out of town. the naacp said he possibly would have been killed but it is all in the book i gave you earlier.

god bless you. thank you fraudy said. encourage me because for long period of time i harbored a lot of the anger that my dad went through when he was beaten and all of that deck that can birmingham, alabama. you talk about the areas by mom went to, which was tuskegee so i'm familiar with the places you talked about. congratulations. i'm excited about your book. might wife and i bought a book and we are going to read a. >> thank you very much. >> the question is. my question is, who was sure he row when you grew up? who was your hero? >> that is a good question. you know, i think for all of us there were several. my family loved -- my dad may have been republican but we loved the kennedys. we loved president john f. kennedy and we adored bobby kennedy. and i remember very well going to hear after the university university of alabama

integrated, going to hear bobby kennedy and one of their life features than just being completely taken with him and being totally devastated when he was assassinated here in los angeles. so, the kennedys were huge, and another person that i talk talked about in the book, reverend fred gensler, who was the local leader in birmingham, who really brought about race consciousness in birmingham, founded the early groups, had to leave and go to cincinnati because he was so much under threat and they think is never really gotten his due compared to the great national leaders, for all that he did. he was a family friend and also a great, great hero. the lady right over here. >> hello, my name is linear edwards.

i like you grew up in florida which a lot of my friends from alabama say, not the real self. but i grew up, i pretty much grew up in an all white community most of my life but i never really experienced a lot of racism until i moved to northern florida and went to school at florida and him and once i moved out here, you talked about letting go and not harboring the resentment. what would be some of the things that you can in courage the younger kids of today to hold onto and remember, to help them to transcend that anger and the resentment, because myself, i had to learn to let it go. and to move past it and not use it as a crutch and as an excuse. >> it is a really good question because fortunately, my parents and in some ways growing up in segregated birmingham in this regard was a bit of an advantage because if you were in a totally

segregated school, segregated principal are black, students are black, teachers are black, then when the teacher said to you that is just not good enough, there wasn't any racial overtones. and so people could actually be fairly tough in terms of insisting on achievement and insisting on excellence without racial overtones of somehow they are being racist. one of the most interesting things that happened when i was at stanford was i suddenly realized that there is a subtle, the soft bigotry of low expectations, that creeps in when people see black students. and all of a sudden, well, you know, they have had a tough time and so, or maybe i shouldn't say anything about that and i will tell you i related in the book so i will relate it to you.

i knew since i went to my first phi beta kappa ceremony in 1984 and at stanford in this group of 300 phi beta kappa's there was one black student. i thought, well this is really odd. and so i started kind of looking at him and thinking about it and reformed a little group called partners in academic excellence and we asked black regiment students to meet with black freshmen and to read their papers in our introduction to humanities courses. and these black graduate students would say to the black freshmen, how to get in a on this paper. this is not an a paper. soft bigotry, low expectations and so by the time the students are getting to really tough classes in their junior or senior year they weren't prepared for tough -- so sometimes racism shows itself in very unexpected ways, and it

shows itself and just not holding that person as quite equal to yourself but wanting the best for them and wanting to help them and basically patronizing them. i think one of the deepest problems we have in the schools right now is that we aren't expecting enough of every child and kids read it. they know when you don't expect much of them and they underperform. and so, one of my answers to kids who are feeling bitterness or anger or whatever is put it aside. it is their problem, not your problem and if you let it become your problem then you are going to think of yourself as a victim in the next thing you are going do is be aggrieved and by the way the twin brother brother of the greek meant is entitlement, so now you owe me. i don't have to work for it and now you are in a really bad road

to nowhere. and there are plenty of people, plenty of people, who will play to that sense of the greek meant and that sense of victimhood and that sense of entitlement and you still won't have a job. and so, i really think our kids have got to find a way to be tougher with people who underestimate them. those are the most racist people in the world. >> hi, my name is blaine and your book talks about you were given every kind of educational opportunity by your parents and you had a very busy childhood where you would wake up at 4:30:00 a.m. so was there ever a time where you just didn't want to get up in the morning that early? and if so, what was the motivation, that extraordinary motivation to get out of bed and do all of that?

was that your parents or was it yourself or what it become your internal motivation? >> connie said we had no choice. we are pretty good at you were the one that wanted to take skating lessons. i think i was pretty self-motivated when he came to skating. unfortunately it was really bad at it. i am 5 feet 8 inches and i had five for tenants lakes. when i picked up a tennis racquet several years later i said why did you not put a tennis racket in my hand and said his skates on your feet. he said you were the one who wanted to skate. i didn't want to get up at 4:30 in the morning to take you. i was motivated because of something i did learn from that. it is hard for me and i think they learned more from overcoming something that was hard for me than something that was easy. i was a natural pms. it wasn't that hard for me but i will tell you a story of parental intervention on the piano side. when i was about 10 years old i've been playing since i was three. i could read music before he could read and when i was 10

years old i wanted to quit. i said to my mother i want to quit p.m. now. and she said you are not old enough or good enough to make that decision. [laughter] and years later when i was playing with yo-yo ma, i was really glad that she did not let me quit. part of it was self motivation. part of it was parents pushing a little bit and saying well you know you are the one who wanted to do this. and and and some of was and i think connie was this way to match her go we did not want to disappoint our parents. we knew how much they were putting into us, and so i just did not want to disappoint them either. >> thank you for joining us today, both of you. actually grew up in the washington d.c. area, born and raised there and a graduate of notre dame. an undergrad, actually. congratulations, go irish. >> we have a little too -- my

work to do want to go irish. [laughter] >> my question actually is getting at the political, but i am actually interested, very interested in what you think obama is doing really well. there is a long list but what you think he is doing really well but even more importantly what you think you should be doing a lot better? >> well you know, i said when i left government and i feel pretty strongly about it that when you are in office it is a whole lot harder than when you are sitting out here. and, it is really hard when people are chirping at you from the outside and you think well why didn't you do that when you were in here because it is obviously a lot easier out there. so president bush said i felt frankly i owed the president and others my silence if i disagree with something they are doing. i will tell them, and in fact i know them all well enough that if there is something i would

like to say i will simply call up and say you know, particularly bob gates and secretary clinton and others. i think that we are very, very tough on our presidents. i am going to make two separate statements here. won just about the president and general and one of our politics. i think we are tough on our presidents. the day they are inaugurated they are the most amazing human beings we have ever seen and a year later how did we ever elect him? and i watched it happen over and over and over again. it is the loneliest job in the world. it doesn't get comfort -- tougher than being president of the united states. i do think that the people that we elected elect in that office are elected -- they have stood for office for the right reasons and they are trying to do the right thing and sometimes i disagreed and sometimes i agree. but i will tell you something that i think is going on in our politics quite apart from the

administration, and that is that what you are seeing in these grassroots movements and look, i'm not one who agrees with everything that is being said frances and the tea party. i am more pro-immigration and more pro-free trade that i will sell you this. what people are saying in those grassroots movements is the conversation in washington and the conversation out here in the country is not the same commerce haitian and they are saying it across the board to washington d.c.. and i frankly think that is a healthy development because what concerns me about the united states at this point is that we have lost our confidence and we have lost our optimism to the people. americans are the most optimistic people on the face of the earth. trust me, i had been across the face of the earth. we are the most optimistic people on it but only when we are confident, and when we have deficits worrying and when we

can't get joblessness down and when they can't get comprehensive immigration reform so that we are battling each other and our educational system is not delivering, we are not very confident and i think that is really what people are saying, whoever is the president. >> i am while you. i live over here in the south-central area and i was just wondering if when you were a kid, did you knew that you are going to be this big when you grow up and have a lot of people people. >> thank you for asking that question. >> have a lot of people said you i said that state of mind is a kid and that you were going to do better and make something out of your life and that you knew you were really going to be like me, wanting to do more.

see what is your name again? >> betty marie. >> okay. i have no idea -- had no idea that i would wind up national secretary of state. in fact, how old are you? >> 16. >> when i was 16 i was going to be a great concert pianist, and i had studied piano from the age of three and i could read music and i could be a great concert pianist. and then i would do something called the basic festival school. bear were prodigies there who could play from site would have taken me all year to learn and i thought of all, i'm about to end up teaching 13-year-olds to murder beethoven for a living or maybe i'm going to play it nor chums but i'm not playing carnegie hall, that is very obvious. [laughter] so i went home and i have the following conversation with my parents. if you find yourself in this

position, remember this. mom and dad i'm changing my major. what are you changing your major to, dear? i don't know. you don't know what you want to do with your life? well, it is my life. >> well it is our money, find a major. [laughter] i tried english literature. i hated it. i tried state and local government. my project in state and local government class was to interview the city water manager of denver, the single most boring man i have met. i thought, that is not it. then i wondered into a course initial national politics. was taught by a soviet -- he was matalin albright's father. he told me about diplomacy and things international and soviet. the soviet union and all of a sudden i knew what i wanted to do and i went home and told my parents. i want to be a soviet specialist. or charlie they didn't say what is a nice black girl from birmingham talking about being a soviet specialist?

they just say, go for it. there are a couple of important lessons in there for young folks like you. first of all, nobody is so confident that your age or even older that they are cheshire that they are going to be great and turn out to be terrific at what they do. when people are that confident, there is something wrong with them. secondly, you need to find what you are passionate about. not just what you like, but what you are passionate about. what is really interesting to you? and you have a long time to do that. you have got a couple more years of high school and then you affect college so you have a little time to find out. what is that? >> i graduate next year. >> you are way ahead of the game already but you still have time. i was a junior in college before i felt this so go to college, go to school, take some classes, try things that are hard for

you, not easy for you. if you are good at math, learn to write. if you are good at writing take some math. and you will find what it is that really interest you. >> i meant when you were a kid did you have a mindset? >> i am not sure you do know what you want to do. at your age i knew what i wanted to do. it is not what i'm doing. so my point is, take your time, don't plan every step, try to get good at what you do and then when you have done that and when you are doing something great, you will realize that they came because she gave yourself a little time to find what it was you are passionate in doing an by the way, it may not be something that people would look at you and say that is what she ought to do. there is no earthly reason that i would have been a soviet specialist from birmingham, alabama, okay? you are welcome.

>> anymore questions? over here. >> hi, my name is hannah and i'm from matting gill mukoko school and my question is are you going to plan to run her office again? [laughter] >> no. i actually never was even in my high school student council. she won the presidency twice. i knew that. no, i was never, did never run for anything and probably won't. i love public service are going very involved in education, very involved with the boys and girls club's, probably will get more involved with my cousin and a work that she is doing because i care a lot about those issues and about the state of california and where we are going, but that is public

service. i was secretary of state and there is no other job in government. that is in a. >> ladies and gentlemen will you please help me thank the absolutely wonderful condoleezza rice. [applause] >> condoleezza rice served as the united states secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 and is the national security adviser from 2001 to 2005. she is currently a senior fellow at the hoover institution. for more discrimination visit hoover.org. >> now back to robin who is out and about here. >> i'm holding the the sense and ssential e why science alone will not solve our global problems. its author joins the henryki, petrweoski. welcomes are and tell us, what is the reasoning behind the subtitle here? why science alone will not solvl the global problems? we hear a e

global problems climate change and we also hear a lot about the importance of what science will do to help alleviate these problems or out rights all them. the history of science and technology teaches us that science and scientists generally do not solve problems, they help but engineers of the problem solvers. engineers and problem solving are really hand and glove. >> in your book you define the difference between scientists and engineers and how they were together, tell us about that. >> scientists generally want to understand the world given to us, the universe, classic sign to study the planets and stars and the origin of the universe. assembling knowledge really, getting to the bottom of things but engineers, on the other hand, want to change of world and introduce new things coming new machines and devices, things that contribute to our

civilization and comfort. scientists and engineers it to gather in research and development which we hear a lot about but the scientists are on the research and and engineers are on the development and and there has to be passing of the baton from understanding the situation to change in the situation through engineering. >> what's the difference between how engineering and science god as to where we are and engineering and science will take us into the future? >> as you know a lot of people think that those are the people that got us into trouble in the first place. we always have incomplete knowledge, science is always accumulating for their knowledge so we are working as engineers with incomplete knowledge of the world's and the laws of nature. so we make mistakes in that sense. innocent mistakes in the sense that they were done generally speaking without full knowledge

of their implications. that's not to excuse them because we should look down the lines to what the implications of what ever we do will be, however, if we try to study the problems in depth we never get to studying the problem and that is a fine engine to really separate the issues. i think it is a good metaphor. it is not original with me but speed bumps are sometimes helpful. and i try to point that out in the book also, that they make us think and they make us recalibrate and make us think about whether maybe we are not

on the right road with the right street. we are being reminded of that. we are going to fast but it is actually what we were just talking about. we are going to pass to a solution and we might miss some of the implications they might regret later on. >> you are going to be presented later on at the national booko festival. to tell the going folks at come to see you? >> i've only got about 20you? minutes to allow time for mutes questions and answers on going to focus on the difference between scientists andi'm gointc engineering ce between science a engineering. i think there's a general misunderstanding about that. a lot of times engineers are just grouped with scientists. not that they present that but it is inaccurate because of the distinction that i try to draw. especially in these days when we're trying to deal with so many global problems. important issues. we hear a lot out of washington where we are, that if we want to

innovate, of want to change the way we do things to affect the economy and improve it we need to throw more money at science. that leaves engineering out of the equation entirely. maybe there's a confusion. maybe engineers are intended to be included in science but more often than not it is clear that they're not included. and by not understanding that connection we miss opportunities. all the great innovations of the world and all history our engineering innovations can they are usually done if not always done with incomplete scientific knowledge and i will talk about some of those examples this afternoon such as the steam engine. there were no signs on which to base the steam engine. it was only after the steam engine was operating for a couple centuries that scientists began to look at it as an object for study. the right brothers are another excellent example of trying to develop an airplane and give us

powered flight. the right brothers looked for scientific basis on which to design their wing and propellers and even wrote to the smithsonian institution and asked what do you have in your files that will help us and they got there is nothing directly related to what you want to do. so what the right brothers had to do was go and do their own science. they had to do tests to figure out what shape of propeller should have. something as simple and basic as that. the airplane was developed with a very little science to back up and i want to emphasize things like that this afternoon so that we understand that if we just wait for science to bring us the raw materials for innovation we're going to have to either way very long time or they're wasting time because we don't need complete information to move ahead.

>> they you consider yourself a scientist or an engineer? >> i consider myself both. but i am in engineer in that i am very interested in -- books i see as creations but i am a scientist cause i do have to get to the heart of the matter and in most of my studying, includes a lot of science. so you really learn to think like a scientist as well as an engineer. one of the things i will talk about is albert einstein to show you can be both. he is a classic example but it is not widely known. is widely known he worked on patents when he was young because he couldn't get a job as a scientist. but in the 1920s he began to be an inventor in his own right. after he won the nobel prize he could have sat back and do science but there is a special challenge to invention and engineering. what he did was a very mundane

thing. among others but refrigerators in the 1920s were very new. they were subject to weeks and the refrigerant they leak was poisonous. so whole families were being killed when they were sleeping because of a leaking refrigerator. einstein said there must be a better way and that is exactly what an inventor says. he went on to inventor refrigeration system that would not leak. he tried to market it. but the timing was not right. refrigerator companies came up with free on which is not poisonous. so they just replaced refrigerant. as we know decades later we discover that freon doesn't poison people but it poisons the atmosphere. that is another one of those examples of unforeseen consequences of. >> we are talking with