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>> throughout the month of april we will feature the top honors at this year c-span studentcam competition. nearly 1500 middle and high school students submitted documentaries on the theme, washington d.c. through my lens. watch the winning videos every morning on c-span at six 50:00 a.m. eastern before "washington journal" and during the program, meet the students who created them. stream of the winning videos anytime on line at studentcam.org. >> now discussion of education issues affecting minorities including how to measure student achievement. this is part of the conference on race in america hosted by the aspen institute. from the new gm in washington d.c. this is a little less than

an hour and a half. [inaudible conversations] >> well this morning we have looked at the issues of personal responsibility versus institutional racism and other aspects of their racial issues in the context of home and family, and in politics. now this afternoon we are going to look at institutional places such as schools, homes and prisons, and for this panel, and this afternoon we have a new moderator, someone who is the afternoon moderator -- excuse me, that dayside moderator from 10:00 a.m. to noon on the msnbc.

before msnbc he was anchor at cnn headline news and cnn worldwide. he has covered the presidential election of 2008 at cnn. he has a degree from michigan university and pursuing graduate studies in international security at stanford for 25 years. he has been involved in community service and africa, asia and the united states particularly working with homeless and affordable housing, nonprofit. please welcome richard lui. [applause] >> thanks for having me. i was watching the entire first half for my hotel room and i just couldn't leave because it was so engaging so what it rate discussion, to discussions we have this morning. i hope that after we get past our food, as i may have you all stand up and do a couple of jumping jacks and we can keep on moving but it sounds and looks like everybody still has a lot of energy. what an esteemed panel we have

today to talk about some fantastic issues, things that are very important to our country. this is the third panel you have seen in your documents there. we will be looking at some of the institutional factors. charlie started by talking about that this morning. he was talking about the institutional issues that we need to deal with as well as personal responsibility. so during this segment we are going to talk about specifically some of the institutional factors and i would like to introduce of course our esteemed panel. we have russlyn ali tribe at the assistant secretary for civil rights at the u.s. department of education. thank you for being here. we have reverend al sharpton, president of the national action network. thank you for being here. we also have janet marguia. thank you for being here. first mistake. i'm really good at this, guys. president and ceo of la raza. i apologize. dr. julianne malveaux. you have that aura. everybody thinks you are from

bennett college. >> that is a good thing. we want everybody to be from bennett college feel which is where women. you too can be bennett ties to feel like. lactose be all right. she is ready with us. okay, what we are going to try to do is focus on solutions during this discussion and please feel free as we are going through this to pipe in as you feel as is best for you and what i have done very briefly as i have laid out some potential solutions to the problem that has been outlined earlier today. these are some solutions that have been out in space, some that you are familiar with and i want to get your ideas as to what you think of it. first thing i want to talk about is education. that was our first topic. we will do education and then we will do business and then we will talk about schools to prison pipeline, that issue that we are so very familiar with. so the first solution i would like to discuss is the one that i put up there and i'm hoping you can see it, is the issue of

unions and districts working together. we talk about how education at this moment is certainly in the middle of the debate. at nbc we have spent a good amount of time trying to understand some of those realities and some of the issues related to that. what i may start to my left first first and if you talk about the issue about how collaboration can work the twain unions as well as districts and how to refocus some of the discussion. >> there has to be a collaboration between all of the adults responsible for transforming the way our schools work. if we don't, we will not meet our goals is an nation. the achievement gap is -- low-income students across the country. the kinds of collaborations we are seeing already in place. for example secretary arne duncan and 150 districts where there superintendents, school board presidents and their union president came together to talk

about how to replicate those principals from very progressive contracts that drive student achievement across the country. it is about taking the positive success we have seen clear unions and administrators and parents and community and policymakers are coming together to do what is right for kids and helping to replicate those and support leaders everywhere trying to do the same thing. >> reverend al are unions a problem? >> i i don't think unions are a problem. we wanted to see accountability and of late i have seen some very serious moves in terms of unions on how to deal with that. the president of the american federation of teachers did a tour, and she has even made some very progressive recommendations on how you deal with tenure and where there must be accountability you can't have a situation set up where teachers are not judged on their performance. there is no accountability.

the nea spoke about it last week. so i think unions are beginning to adjust to a climate that some of us have tried to advocate, say when you do with policy. i have worked with la raza on this around the country. we have been able to see it shift i think to some of the unions that were inflexible three years ago to now saying themselves there must be accountability but it must not be where we have an anti-teacher or a demonizing the teacher. i think sometimes people have used accountability as a goal to demonization of teachers and union busting. i don't think that is the solution neither. >> so we see the examples, have only janet? >> i think so and i would agree that those common elements that we all aspire to and i think that is true for the teachers as well as many of us who are advocates for the highest

quality in education is accountability and i think as long as we are all committed to effective teachers in the classroom and making sure that we have ways to hold them accountable, and to engage, all the stakeholders and making sure we are making that happen, i don't believe that it has to be about unions per se. i think we can really tap into everybody's aspirations to have high standards. i do believe that we do need to have common standards in which we can have more uniformity. >> national standards? >> yes, because i think if you have different measures and different states for different topics, it creates a very very confusing matrix for folks who want to be engaged to know-how and so for us, i think it is having a set of common standards where i know secretary duncan has been committed and a lot of other folks so we can have a quality. and the last thing i would add is within the standards of

accountability for us in the latino community and i know for children of color, students of color, it has to be having teachers who have high expectations for those students oftentimes we find that the biggest terrier isn't so much that teachers aren't qualified, because within the margins they are qualified. but when they are in classrooms with students who have the highest needs, a lot of times stereotypes and other types of perspectives seem to cloud the ability for some of these teachers to understand that all students can achieve high standards and have very high aspirations for themselves. when he teachers to really reinforce that and then also make sure that the accountability measures are in place. >> dr. malveaux what you think about the issue of tenure which is also part of this discussion and let's also build a off what jena was thing. >> i think which ended saying is phenomenal and really important for teachers to have high-tech cetaceans and challenging

people. we go back to segregated schools and we can look at examples of teachers who push students to learn, push them to do, push them to achieve and so we have those examples. tenure is not a bad thing but tenure can be reformed. and i think that there are many in the teachers unions who are looking at reform of tenure. here is my problem with the so-called education reform. we are sitting in a city, washington d.c. come up where we have this crazy woman come in here with a broom to say she was going to sweep out all of everything and now we find that perhaps there was some fraud in the so-called metrics that said that this harsh method of dealing with teachers -- i am going to fire you if you can't get your kids grades up. but now we find the racers and all kinds of things. most teachers are good teachers. one of the things that i think we must do, and i say this as a college president who deals with students from the inner city k-12 system.

what we must do is look at all of the other factors that shape a young person's life. everybody can learn and that is why i think janet said that. everybody can learn if we encourage that learning. but at the same time if somebody comes to school hungry, if somebody comes to school out of a chaotic home and if somebody comes to school where they just had a drive-by i'm not sure how much funding is going to happen. i don't want teachers to have to be social workers but i want us to look at the whole picture and i think that michelle rhee and let's not call names -- michelle rhee when she came to washington did not want to deal with some of those other issues. i think we have to deal with all of those issues at one time. we don't have an education crisis in america. we have an inner-city education crisis. if you go to alexandria virginia their children are going to harvard. everything is fine. but if you come to inner-city washington d.c., if you go toward age which is the poorest ward here in the district of

columbia, you will find challenges that are partially a function of a social economic dynamic that we don't want to deal with. so i want us to look at tenure. i want effective teachers. if you are an effective we can show some folks are ineffective. if you are an effective, go away and do something else. but if you are in a district where gorey school where there are so many things working against it, let's try to work with some of that. you know what? i think we can. >> this tenure assist in this goal to bring more diversity and professorships and teachers? >> you know if tenure is a mixed blessing. on one hand tenure provides people with security of employment anyone who wants employment once the security of an employment. underhand we need to make sure we have effective teachers. in the things i think we need to do that we ever looked at him k-12 are sabbaticals. there are people who get so burned out. you have people who have to deal with crazy nonsense daily and

forgive me, an academic way of saying crazy nonsense. deleterious effects. [laughter] but you know, the point is this. we need to nurture our teachers so the best of them can continue to be the best in the worst can go someplace else and do something else. tenure perhaps as not allowing us to do that but we want to protect the best of them. so there is an organization and the national educational association. i think it is called turn and i don't know what it stands for but they really are talking about reform. we want to have the best of both worlds. we are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. we are not going to say someone who is 57 years old okay we are going to throw your weight because you had a bad year but we are going to say our kids come first. our kids come first. >> you know i think the proposal that aft and weingarten raised deals directly with that. my understanding is that the teachers would be just on their

performance-based on how the students in the classroom that they are in charge of are doing or not doing and should not be test driven, which is in itself a problem. and then, if the teacher in another year does not make improvements they are given 30 days for removal. i think that tenure is an absolute is not the answer but i think the whole thing of putting them out or first come first serve is not the answer. and i think when you have unions raising progressive alternatives they need to be entertained and i think that is what will get us closer. the other thing is i absolutely agree that you have got to take into consideration the environment that students are coming from and teachers that i can teach in that environment. that is part of being an effective teacher. if you can't deal with the student coming from may be a home that is not the same as a home with two parents and a

peaceful community, you have got to have people that can deal and relate and educate that child. i don't think that you can have an education system set up where the child has to be derived of the environment he or she comes out of. i think the teacher is to be equipped adequate to deal with it. that is what ms. rhee della. >> that reminds me. my mother was a teacher for 25 years and worked in several districts in san francisco. one of her last schools was in a very challenging area of san francisco. that these teachers to your point knew how to teach these kids who came from very difficult backgrounds. but the testing, we go back to testing janet, that did not necessarily reflect how successful they were because they did have standardized test across the state of california. so there is opportunity there, isn't there? >> i'm going to ask you because i'm a native of san francisco.

>> ii am low high school. >> is right there in the area of. >> i wanted to get more specific. >> starting school is on the top of the hill in the area of -- gosh i don't know the street. >> it is over in bay view. >> it is over and bay view, yeah. >> which is one of the poorer areas and indeed you know the challenges have always been the teachers have to love their students and they have to believe that students can learn. and this is the problem. as i think you know diane ravage road a great review yesterday in the "washington post" of a book about michelle rhee. they called her they v. swallower. >> tell us how you feel. >> tell me how i really feel? >> i don't think you are being bashful. >> is not in my dna.

one of the things she talked about is an affinity. they have people who love to teach and they love kids and they are people who think teaching is the job. you have got to see every little child who is in front of you whether they are dirty or clean or whatever and say to them, you can learn because then they can. >> go ahead. >> matters hugely that i want to push want something. their scores didn't reflect how successful they were. >> that was the argument being made against the school. >> right, so our assessment has certainly gotten better and needs to get a lot better. with with the standards movement we now have is janet mentioned, we have a growing turn in the country so that's it code does not get to determine what you've learned. that said, we have a long way to go before our standards are implemented in the classroom, the four children and one community in a class called algebra are actually learning the same that their peers are in

a wealthy community. our assessments guide who is learning what. they tell us that the achievement gap and allow us to focus resources on where students need them the most. assessments need to get better and dr. malveaux is undoubtedly right that the willingness to teach, the expectations that all children can learn at the highest levels when todd at them, the love for children, huge components and whether a teacher will be successful and whether we will see progress on those assessments. >> assistant secretary how do we to behold lisa because they were successful by a lot of other measures. how do we hold that up? how do we show that to the district? >> give me an example of what a successful measure that kids are running? >> no that they are learning. >> how do we know that at the assessments were reflecting a? >> the test themselves we are saying they are not successful. the teachers are saying we are

quite successful. we are getting these kids to school. they're coming to school every day. they are doing their homework. there are certain parameters that they defined for themselves based on their understanding of the marketplace to say it was successful. >> the question might be what these tests are measuring. the tests are measuring multiple-choice think. your ability to say it abc, all of the above, none of the above. that is not necessarily success so this whole race to the top run to the bottom using the standardized tests with all do respect because i think you guys are on the right track but in the wrong direction. i think that we really need to think about what these tests are measuring. with s.a.t.'s we know that s.a.t.'s are projector of your first year college success. in other words if everything stays the same. everything is never going to stay the same for a freshman. nothing is going to say the same for a freshman so you are measuring something that is almost abstract.

you know, if you can look at that test as an evaluation as opposed to an admissions metric you can say richard has a map rob lum so we want to intervene right now and make sure that we help him with his math problem so he can do the next thing as opposed to saying richard has a math problem so we are not going to let him in the school. so i really raise questions about the content of these tests, what they measure and widely used these tests exclusively to measure success of our young people's. >> sure and i think that is where the broader set of common standards comes into play. doesn't just become about teaching to the test of the more the test is one factor but it is not the only factor. one of the things that continues to remain a challenge for many children of color and students of color is that by and large you can see the data on this and it has proven time and time again that the kids with the highest needs have the least

effective teachers in those classrooms. we have got to do something to switch that paradigm because the more that we allow for only the highest quality teachers to be in the most affluent school districts we are never going to tackle this problem so we need to really be thoughtful about how do we see more of that shift occurring so that kids can have, our kids can have the most effective teachers in place. >> how do you do that? >> it is a combination of factors and i think people are looking at that, but one of the things that we have in the latino community that is a particular challenge that i think needs to be addressed as we look at the different factors that school districts are being judged on and that is 20% of kids are in public schools. about half of them are what we call english language learners. they are still sort of transitioning into using this language in mainstream classrooms to be able to learn like everyone else. it is important for us to be able to get that right because

when you look at the demographics as we just saw at least by the final statistics in the latest census we know that now the best growing part of the population of poor students and for children under 18 has been latino kids and one out of every four kids now is hispanic. so we need to make sure sure that we are tackling that issue so that those kids can have access to the kind of learning that they are going to need to be successful throughout the rest of their years and that school system because if we miss those kids, they are going to be lost in many ways forever. tackling those issues at the front end and i would even argue one other piece is really looking very thoughtfully and early childhood education because the other statistics that they know is that when kids get into access to headstart in preschool, their chances for being successful crow exponentially throughout the

rest of their years in the school system. so there are ways that we can move the levers that will allow our kids, all of their kids to have the most success possible. it is not just about the test. there are social factors and their educational factors out there that we ought to be looking at and it is looking at the whole set of them. does not just one driver out there. >> assistant secretary anything else? >> two things. this notion of needing assessments to get better is precisely why when the bipartisan congress and the president were able to get the recovery dollars, $100 billion flooded into american schools in part to save jobs. $350 million was carved out to build coalitions around developing much better assessments. today there are 44 states engaged in this process of precisely that, moving away from multiple-choice into assessments that actually measure critical

thought. our proposal, janet is absolutely right, this is a pipeline that goes from babies through college and beyond. and our early childcare focus especially as you would have seen in the president budget proposal to begin to really move that agenda. this idea of equity, the opportunity. achievement gaps are not caused by someone's skin color. they are caused because the janet said we give them less of what we know makes the biggest difference including and especially access to the courses in those high rigor standards and access to effective teachers. but as you said, measuring schools by what their marketplace, right? that is how low expectations play out. and marketplace in a poor community will not be any different in terms of what we expect from those children than a marketplace in a wealthy community. the last president -- bigotry of

low expectations and i have heard folks across the country say things like it is not when they are in schools wrestling with how to pull students that come to school and credibly challenged up so that they can compete in this new global economy. >> gacy i think if we go back and as i said in the beginning, the whole test up session and just trying to run a test driven kind of educational system which doesn't really take into account all of the students. the other part of that is the clear bias, if you will, and we dealt with this with secretary duncan, has been lower expectations. and would you have teachers that don't expect anything of the students, they communicate that to the students even nonverbally. so, if you are being told that it is expected of you and that you are not going to achieve not only academically but in life

that communicates a devastating blow to you. i grew up in a single-parent home in brooklyn that i had an expectation from my church, from my mother that i was going to do and be something. one of the things i think when we did the education tour with secretary duncan we went to a school in philadelphia which was the first city. we went to a school that has been at the bottom of academic achievement and three years later was number one in the city. and when we talk to the students and were asking the state -- students, not the teachers, not the administrator, not the principal while some of you who were here threes ago what he think the school is doing much better including you? they said, well we were treated differently. there was discipline. we felt people cared and they expected us to do something. so a lot of it is the students themselves understanding what is pink and indicated to them. speier now the long-run implication of this, which is

what i think we need to focus on them a look at where we are economically and internationally is that we have countries competing with us who are investing in ways that we refuse to invest. we have cut countries competing with us to believe that they're young people can learn. there is no notion that the young people in china, and india, in eastern europe where there producing new engineers than the united states they believe that they're young people can learn. one of the things that we have to look at, and they know that the morning panel dealt with that is what is the impact of demographic shifts on the level of expectations that teachers have for the young people who come into their classroom? in other words, i believe that we seem to do is invest in education when those in the classroom became blacker and browner. i really believe that we look at at -- when i graduated from college in 1974 i had $2000

worth of student loans. the average student today has $26,000 worth of student loans graduating. the average hbcu grad $28,000 worth of student loans. someone was telling me something like, you know we are going to make sure that you get out of school and that you do well. someone telling these young people you are shackled her go so we really have to look at the messages that have shifted richard because of different demographics. >> i would like to move onto another discussion about teaching, diverse teachers which i think you are touching on earlier. how do we attract more diverse teachers? >> i think you have to make being a teacher more appealing to a diverse set of americans. i think first of all, i think the level of pay. i think the level of how they are regarded. i remember president obama i think in the in the state of the union address started talking about teaching should be

something that we make as something as appealing as being an entertainer or whatever. i don't remember his exact example but i think part of it is the appeal. when we talk to a lot of people around the country, you did not hear like you used to years ago teachers being considered at the level of someone's ambition that we should so in order to diversify, think you have got to appeal more to the diversity of the population of what teaching can mean to them. that is one. second, think the impediments of getting there. you talk about student loans. the president talked about how he was paying student loans, he and his wife almost until they became a best-selling book. so i mean how do you tell people even if you think that teaching is a noble profession and something to look up to that you

will be paying for getting education to be a teacher until you are 45 or 50 or so. >> a tough economic argument. >> correct her go. >> the reverend is absolutely right and since the president has been in office, the money for probe -- pell grants for low-income students has almost doubled. the recovery money alone allows $36 billion to go to ask us. this has been the biggest investment since the g.i. bill. now it is true the profession today is not as diverse. it does not reflect the student body. in fact only about one in every 50 teachers are african-american or latino male. the president secretary duncan have launched a teach campaign to do just that, help inspire and provide the kind of campaign that is necessary to change the way we think about teachers. on teach.gov, young people can go and find out the requirements to be a teacher in every state

of the nation. >> will we have to wait another generations or will we be able -- is there something we can do right now? >> you know we have an education department at the college for women and our young women are doing great work in the state of north carolina and in other states as they finish and graduate. some of the work that gave administration is done has been very helpful in terms of providing additional dollars and we are very grateful for that but i think at the same time, there are rigidities. if we are not aggressive richard, i think always the notion of social change to move slowly and must be aggressively intervene. i would like to see more aggressive intervention, especially in hiring african-american males, in the k. through sixth grades which i think would make a phenomenal difference. and those k. through sixth grade which i think make a phenomenal difference for young man to see people who look like them your educators. i think also with women it is

very important to ensure that these young women have opportunities. we have a think what the administration has done what it can do at the bottom but i think in terms of some of the accrediting organizations and teaching that we have to do it at the top. one of the things that teaching district should be judged on his diversity. they should be judged on diversity just like they're just on every other metric. people don't want to be judged on diversity. people say they have diversity fatigue. that is like having sunrise petite. the sun don't rise and the sun falls. diversity fatigue, our country is diversifying and our young people by 2040 there will be no majority population in our nation so we need to make sure that i am people who are learning me to have teachers who can hit them within the. >> janet what about charter schools? is at a place to look at as well? >> well i certainly believe that

we have to have an avenue where charter schools can be an option. too many of our systems have failed, many of our communities and when the community comes together so that they want to have a chance to do something for their kids i think we have to give them that opportunity. at anne c. heller we sponsor and work with about 110 charter schools across the country that are run by many of our affiliates, community-based organizations that are serving hispanic families everyday. >> do they break the mold? do they break the situation where we often see minorities are starting a year behind and never catch up? >> that is what is so exciting i think on the good side when it comes to charter schools is that they have a little bit more flexibility to do things that are really speaking to the children directly to do what they think would be helpful and the incentives whether it is targeting some of those areas of learning that other teachers and perhaps public schools have not been supporting to do.

we believe that having the training for those teachers in the charter schools that directly allows them to support those kids really is a positive advantage and in essence many of our charter schools become those laboratories where we are able to identify what is working uniquely to help latino students succeed and then maybe see those taken to scale as we work with the department of education and others with a reauthorizing of these bills when they. we see what is working when did we see the gaps. >> we have got two more sections. >> let me say one more thing very quickly. the data does not suggest charter schools are more effective than public schools. while charter schools are innovative, not against them, let's look at some of the data. the data do not suggest that they are more effective. >> finally that i want to talk about this, the issue of lawmakers and some are asking for more and some are asking for less. we are talking about cash and money and interest in energy. what is right talent and what should we ask for in terms of

our lawmakers to do going forward? >> well i mean i think clearly you need equal funding. i think that we need to deal with the question of whether we spend, have the same investment in our in the cities as we do with the property tax setup but i think we also have to do with the fact that we cannot use privatization schemes to take money away from public education, and i think the danger that we run into is, and it happened right here in washington d.c., is that there was so much energy put into trying to give some young students a way out, voucher systems and others, rather than a commitment that lawmakers had to all. we should be really trying to see how we make the funds that are available and more work for everybody rather than having some scheme set up on how we are going to have some escape.

by definition is we are writing off the majority of our young people and i think the jobs of lawmakers are not to select who they think can succeed. to me the mandate of those that are going to fund education is to give equal funding for an equal opportunity for everyone because you never know when a child will develop. who are you and i to select the way the sun can escape and we write the others off. i think those kinds of schemes have polluted the education revival in the past several years. >> it is more money spent more wisely. the country is facing a budget crisis the likes of which most educators in and the system had never seen. very very tough decision to have to be made. and we likely won't have the kind of investment that we had with the recovery dollars anytime soon. that said, it is about equality

as a reference pension and it is also about equity for students that are coming in behind. they may need more and we need a civic and political will that acknowledges that. tied to what dr. malveaux said earlier have we close the achievement gap as we said we wanted to as the country a country over 20 years ago? we would have estimates predict anywhere from 315 to 525 higher gdp. so if we are serious about closing the achievement gap we will see progress across the country. that is, in some ways about closing the equity loophole that exist now where poor students and students of color get less dollars and at least bringing it up to equal but we also might need to go further to help children that are further behind. >> i would just and on onto that he said as much as people want to listen to washington and to

lawmakers they're what we fundamentally understand about education is that it is a local issue and it is one fell by communities directly and i think we need to do a better job of really helping empower our parents and our community stakeholders to hold those local elected officials accountable because i think that voice can be much more powerful than it has been. we can be a stronger voice of advocacy and we are talking about holding teachers accountable. we need to hold our elected officials accountable for how they are making investments and we have community leaders, parents, can really come together and we have seen it happen where communities when the parents are involved and there were her parents as partner programs, when they are part of an efficacy movement in that community, they can have the kind of changes for their children that i think we would all like to see across the different communities. >> a great discussion on education. i want to move into the other

institutional factor and that is moving to business and one of the statistic that was brought up earlier this morning that you'll remember that i remember specifically was the earning power disparity that racial blood sweat and income was 52% for blacks, 25% mean net worth. those were fairly striking statistic that were released this morning. so we take a look at business. what can business due to kind of bring in inclusion? one of the ideas that might be discussed is what was brought up at the start of our discussion this morning and that is how diversity is good business. it is good business so i want to understand from your perspective help businesses might ring that matches jack ross and is in an an important message to communicate not only to employees but also to the consumer base? >> it is one of the most important things the business can do if they believed they are part of the society in our community. as i said earlier by 2040 there will be no more georgia community. weitz will certainly be the largest group that they will not

be the majority. african-american and latino people and asian people will really be more of a majority in this country. how do you bring these folks into the workforce? how do you not only bring them into the work or were spared how do you bring the spending power of their constituents into the workforce because we are looking at trillions of dollars that these communities are spending. so i think that often in the business community, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it but that seems to be the attitude. at the same time, something has to be fixed. russlyn said something in the previous segment, more money more wisely. this is not only the case for education but i think it is the case for business as well. one of the things i think that business must do is to create partnerships with colleges and universities around things like internships and other ways to bring people into the labor force. they can start as early as a

seventh or eighth grade with awareness programs about employment that certainly by the time i have students duart bennett college for women or other historically black colleges and universities and you know i have got to do my plug. the blacker the college the sweeter the knowledge. [laughter] >> keep ongoing dr. malveaux. >> in any case we need business to come to us and say if you are trying to diversify if you are looking for black women to promote your products come to bennett or spelman or amt or someplace else. we need business to embrace our young people and say there are opportunities. it is a hard thing richard to say in a recession because in a recession everyone is paranoid. we have 14 million americans who are unemployed. have of them have been unemployed for half a year. so to talk about what can you do for young people is almost inherently threatening. at the same time we know that the labor market is the turn

that even as people are coming in for new jobs, we can learn from young people. there are so many things they have but one of the things that they do that we don't is they really value diversity. let me say one last thing. one of the things our country has as a comparative advantage among other countries is our diversity. we look at those countries that are kicking us, china india eastern europe, more widely traded than a dollar. the united states is the only country that has the diversity whether we value it or not we have it. >> diversity and united states is different from the countries we are talking about whetherb china or india on a different level. >> so let's look lifted up and celebrated. >> janet, when we hear this from businesses where they are saying you know having a diverse work group as well as understanding our consumers and their customers are very diverse has to do with action internally for businesses to break the issue we are talking about because if you are able to break that then you can bring in those workers who are talking about.

i am always interested in understanding what are they doing in terms of activity? whether business is doing terms of activity sets to show that strategy we just talked about? some of things they do is they have the business research groups. they have an affinity groups. they have all sorts of approaches, advisory councils diversity councils. are those effective? >> well i think they can be, yes and i know that for us, as you look at the statistics out there, the demographic shift and you look at the business community they do so much data planning and research when it comes to almost everything that they do yet with the current landscape such as it is reflecting these demographic shifts and growth and many of the communities of color particularly and the latino community there still seems to be a disconnect for most of the major businesses and industries out there in terms of how to engage those communities whether it is as a potential work horse

or a potential consumer. and i think there are different best practices out there. one of the ways that we have been engaged with many of the business and industries are some of the corporate lord of advisory groups that can exist. i know most recently comcast and nbc sponsored this event and it put together advisory groups that i think can really be a very good best first step in terms of engaging many of the leadership who represent a love of the communities across the country on how to really take the steps necessary and look at the different sectors in which they can take those steps. and i think for us, education and how they are involved and engaged in education takes a long-term view. i think one of the things business and in the shays, they are so interested in the return on investment, tomorrow or the next week. we need businesses to take a

longer view, and mindset of how are they engaging these communities today knowing that there've been tensions among their stakeholders and their shareholders about getting that roi for tomorrow but knowing that if they take certain steps today that there r. l. i will be there as a multiplier for them and perhaps three to five years. a lot of times industry are complex but i would argue they are able to take any up or so look at the longer longer-term view engage those communities and much more longer-term efforts that will i think be a benefit not just for the good corporate social responsible ability that will have a drug benefit to their bottom line. but they need to look and understand that first and foremost having those types of arrangements were they able to engage thought leaders and those communities of color and to represent communities across the country is a good first step but then i think it engages them in

getting those recommendations in understanding and being willing to test out issues. i think again in the business community if they don't see it on paper plate up with every i dotted and t crossed they can't do it. well here, we need some people in the business community because time is short. if we are going to take advantage of the incredible need to invest in these young people across the country and think of innovative solutions, you can't. you are not going to have all the answers every time you make that express my. obviously everybody -- a good idea about accountability that we need people to be bold and we need i think the business and the community to understand it is going to require little bit more bolder and i think they are going to have to get up there a little bit more on the advocacy front. i think again investing in programs is good but we need programs but ultimately we need changes in policy. those leaders in the business community are willing to step up

and i will give you an example because i think it is very relevant. recently been experiencing the latino community a lot of targeting and discrimination around russell -- racial profiling. we saw a lot passed their that one of the federal judges ruled in part to be unconstitutional but there've been efforts by leaders in arizona to pass even more extreme legislation like repealing the 14th amendment and others that are on that same level. most recently there was finally a pushback on those laws and those proposals in the state legislature in arizona and was mostly because the business community said enough. we do not want to be targeted as the state that is anti-hispanic and seen as a discriminatory and we are not going to support this. when the business community steps up and is a voice of advocacy that can be a very powerful force in combination with many of us who are out there also trying to do the right thing. so i would argue that it is

multiple layers that they roll that business and industry can play. is about investment. is about engagement but ultimately i think it is also being a voice of advocacy because programs and investments in those communities alone won't move the needle as fast as we needed to move in terms of the need to change policies that are going to directly impact not only those communities but this country and its ability to be competitive in this global economy. >> a lot of good points there. reverend al when we look at these national companies that have the structured written guidelines that they try to employ and deploy and if done well at it, what about on that local level that janet is alluding to in those regions around the country? how can they get the support to develop the same program that may assist in hiring diverse workers? >> let me just say also it has been the work of african-americans, latinos,

faith-based groups and i really commend reverend sharpton for helping us in arizona because he saw this not just as a latino issue that is an issue of facing all of us as committed to the colors are want to thank you were that in arizona. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. i think first of all, the way that businesses can engage is they must be intentional. because, business operates that way. i mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how they do anything else so why do they need a rocket scientist to tell them how to deal with diversity? they have to intend to do it and they have to admit that a lot of the omissions of doing business with blacks, latinos and asians and employment and all the way up to their board was intentional exclusion. when we figure the debates about affirmative action and in and people would say why do we need

a program, because we had a program to exclude people. you have to have a program to counter the program you had. so it was not just some osmosis that in -- occluded people. was intentional and you must intentionally correct what is wrong. in terms of the question of amber and we have done a lot of work. in fact we unveiled about six companies now. according to how the advisory boards are set up, are they set up to be window dressing for the company to say we talked to everybody. >> would it be found? >> i found both and are they set up where they actually hear it bison share the information and the data across the board? employment, procurement, business contracts. not just come in and say you know, here is a brochure and we

will buy a table of chicken dinner if that you have once a year. so you have got to deal with how the advisory boards are set up in and how you deal down to the locale. i think if you are going to deal with the wealth gap and the median and calm, you not only have to deal with their personnel. you've got to deal with the growth and promotion in the company and to the contract and do business with because we have seen some companies that make improvement on the employment side but do absolutely no contracts in the communities of color, none. none of them are chairman and the people in charge of those departments, which deals with billions of dollars in some of these national and international corporations. nobody is there to make sure any of that reaches our community. so i think that yes it is good business but i think that they must understand it is good business and intentionally deal with that. and they think that janet's

point about becoming advocates is absolutely right. those understand it is good business because it brings in more profit to them because you have people that know how to deal in those communities better who are a large percentage of their consumers, and large percentage of the people they are trying to appeal to for the workforce. those are the ones that can increase their profits at the end of the day. people are in business for-profit. they are not in it for community work and they are not in it for charity work. but you make the money if you know how to work better in the marketplace that you are to have a large margin of profit and. in many cases we are to difference between being operating in the black and operating in the red, pun intended. when you operate with the black you can stay in the black. [laughter] >> and i would argue that a lot of times we focus legitimately so on the political power as we are trying to grow for our communities, but one of the things we often take for granted

is that we have already much economic power. for the latino community it is a trillion dollars that. weakened by that for the african-american community. when we come together and we can say in issues like what is happening in arizona are wrong and we stand up against that and as a result of that we are not going to bring our conventions and conferences and other major events and we are going to discourage artists and other people to quit doing business in a certain state, we can be economic drivers of that kind of reform because we can hold those corporations accountable for their actions if we are willing to use our economic power in addition to our political power. >> you know we have seen --. >> do you have a comment on this? >> i will yield my time. >> there we go, ray. >> i do think we have seen examples of the notion that the communities of color have really made a difference. we have seen saturation in certain march.

people might look at the foreclosure crisis, the aggressive attack on communities of color, aggressive promoting of life, get you all to get more of this was a function of saturation in the majority of communities. 75% of whites own their homes. 75% compared to 50% of african-americans and latinos. so there was a margin of a sickly and ability to to try to increase that. is seen at many in many other places so we can go industry by industry and look at bottom-line and when we look at those bottom-line to see the difference in the economic impact. several studies have been done to talk about the economic impact of diversity and the importance of using diversity metrics to talk about production and to talk about productivity. i think it is really important, those companies that get it not only from a domestic perspective richard but also from an international perspective are companies that are posting profits. i don't want to pick anyone out

that mcdonald's is a great example and i have gotten a -- from mcdonald's. >> no bias, right? >> no bias whatsoever but their other companies that have basically learned how to go into communities, to learn their culture, to sell their product to improve their bottom line. we see that time and again and we see the companies who aren't able to do that. their inability shackles them and makes it impossible for them to grow. one of the things that i think this conversation has lacked just a little bit is the notion of a global space in terms of diversity. we are flatter than we have ever been in terms of how we sell and who we sell and again i think the leverage that we must have in this country is that we have a diversity that no one else has. as we see the growth in china, what can we do with our chinese and american nation population to leverage that?

we see a growth in the spanish-speaking countries. how do we take our latino population and begin to do with that? the african continent is so wealthy and so many things. how do we began to get african-americans evolved than that? this country and i know assistant secretary ali will support me in this, we. >> less language than anybody else in the world. we don't do language education. part of our diversity is not just race and gender but also our ability to be culturally competent. this includes language education which is something we really have got to get back to because it is so very important. if we are going to be as competent as others are in basically breaking some of this down. >> we are now going to have to move into questions and comments. we have had such a great conversation appear that so many folks of course want to get some of your wisdom. so any questions or comments? don't hold back.

>> maybe they don't want our wisdom. [laughter] if you could state your name and where you are from. >> my name is -- and i'm from california and presently were carried washington d.c. for an hbcu actually and to that and i wanted to ask what all of our panelists thought about what the emerging role or i guess the new world of minorities serving and institutions as we move into the 21st century and are continuously thinking about our global workforce because clearly we spend a lot of time talking about what needs to be done on the k-12 level and we also spent time talking about what needs to be done in the corporate world and the missing link between this too is post-secondary education. if he could. >> to that i would greatly appreciate it. >> i hope you have a scene from the presidents bush a proposal in their work over the past couple of years of of renewed

investment in minority serving institutions. nearly $800 billion over the next 10 years. they are playing an ever important role not just in that bridge or in diversity work as you both have mentioned, but also in teacher preparation, right? as dr. melville indicated, schools like bennett, schools like -- throughout the south are really an amazing positions to ensure that we get both a diverse teacher force in a highly skilled one simultaneously. hbcu's have historically been the biggest producers of doctors and engineers and lawyers in the african-american community. they play a key role in our history and must in our future. that said, we still see big

disparities. the office for civil rights has six outstanding desegregation orders between traditionally white institutions and historically black institutions in six states. there is a lot of work to do to ensure that the promises of minority serving institutions both the promises made in the past are in fact promises kept at that we provide them with the support necessary to ensure that all of their graduates can compete as well. >> i think you need to combine that with the private sector as well. as she knows i was involved in some of the conversations with the administration about hbcu's but last week at our convention we honored the president of cooper university and got corporations to make a commitment to their college. as an example, think it should be all around the country vet with these advisory boards, that they have these companies that they are sitting on on the top and work within hbcu because of

what they produce for our community. .. and able to make lemonade sometimes with no lemons. >> i will lift up or be ejected and celebrate women and developing them in the leaders

and global thinkers. we have the full of japan or should, leadership, global studies and communications i would have been thrilled to have four buildings which is unprecedented the first new construction in 28 years. entrepreneurship because all of us will be entrepreneurs at one point in our life whether we want to be or not. leadership because the borrowed as crying out for leaders, global studies because we have global morals. we will be in all passport campus in august of 2011 and i am so excited about that. and communication because how we present to the world. he would have to have black colleges if we didn't have them. president obama said he wants us to lead and lead in the production of degree holders. we can't do it without historically black colleges and universities. here's what is happening in the age of budget cuts. public universities have metrics the have to meet.

you can't admit someone without the gpa or someone without an s.a.t.. i can admit them with a 2.0 from high school. they will leave college with a 3.5 and they will go to harvard and that is my commitment to young people. we basically invest deeply, sincerely, phenomenal and intensely and that is what hd see you. they do the same thing but i must tell you anybody that's watching us. [laughter] >> you are so funny. anything to add? >> i would briefly at i think it's true that the serving institutions of historically black colleges i think for us seeing the level of investment and targeting those investments in those areas we know there are gaps that's where you have the population i think it's going to be so critical for us to move

forward. on also just make the pitch that community colleges or investments and strategies and community colleges become really important because they can be the sort of building, the steppingstone that can either be launched for our students or they can end there and we need to make sure those kids who are trying to do everything they can with tuesday in the system as they do go to the community college can find a way to get on to the next level. so i think it is about resources and obviously we want to make sure the institutions that are serving predominantly, students of color are getting that targeted strategic funding but for me community college has become important if we are going to save that generation of kids and keep them in the system. >> a great question. >> one institution -- >> your name and where you're from. >> on the civil and human rights. the question i have is about the other institution, a lot of kids are interacting which the

criminal justice system, the question i have for you is how we dismantle the war on drugs and all of its forms. in three days? [laughter] >> i think you've got to deal with none of which are easy but we leave that to do if the criminalization issue. you have to deal with the old glorification of drugs, the whole advertising issue and i think the naacp came up with a study that talks about the disparity and prosecution and incarceration because even though for example african-americans are a very small minority of a crack users overwhelmingly pledge your ready if the people in jail, so one level we've got to deal with, the even in drug use and drug criminality treated equal

discriminatory way has a better shot but that's how bad it is and you have to deal with all of these lawyers in a very complex way that it must be dealt with because the war on drugs is to me the reason it hasn't worked. there's too many that i think that we've become the fatah for those that want to privatize and create the prisoner industrial complex and i'm not sure we really want to solve the problems. >> we've seen success again when you're taking the command to holistic purchase with parents, schools, communities come together and really try to tackle those issues within it is the gangs but lead to some of those beavers but i also think when you're looking at the juvenile justice system we see so many failures particularly when it comes to our children of

color, not enough done are not prevention and certainly as reverend sharpton have said even when they get in the system they aren't given the breaks we think if you're going to to provide disincentives for that behavior is different types of and for some actions you can take and there are studies that show it's pretty obvious when you mix these young kids with the older kids you're only going to reinforce that kind of behavior once they are put into the juvenile detention centers that aren't meant for juveniles so there's a lot to look at, but i think ultimately it's about a mix of resources with the right and it meant taking a holistic approach using communities, parents and many of the education systems. >> when he talks about the inequality i think the whole

sentencing disparity is the issue that has to be dealt with. tiffin people that have been dealing with it, crack cocaine user is sentenced far more severely than powder cocaine user. sheeran washington they've been doing great work about closing of the sentencing and the disparity. but even within the similar drug use we find differences so some of this is legislative and some of it is a civil rights issue >> i will add the notion that there is a prison pipeline in this country has become part of the american lexicon and we have to flip that. it has to very much be about cradle to the career. secretary duncan and the president working in the department of education is geared towards trying to do just that, but it can't happen from washington. as michael panelists have said very much as a community, federal, state, local and neighborhood partnership that has to take place if we are to

ensure schools and other places, children can turn to to meet their needs and get their support as opposed to we are seeing today. >> thanks. >> the black leadership forum, first of all i want to thank you for all that you do to hold our community of their and let people know that we do have challenges but we also do good work we like the president's campaign team we do big things. the question i would ask is the smaller organizations, the smaller nonprofits and i assume there's a lot of people that represent them in this room do wonderful things but then when they are asked by large corporations to write these massive proposals just to get a dollar i'm wondering -- and we have to prove that we've done so much, and it would be obvious to us what we are doing but it's a

little bit difficult to put on paper sometimes. how do we get these corporate heads to come into our community and see what we are doing. and i don't mean the question to be to the reverend sharpton but anyone how to get corporations to understand we might not have all of the records on paper that others have but we are doing great things, and we need some attention in terms of looking at what we are doing and funding it and not having the same requirements that you what of a major company that has all this staff to write it all of these massive proposals. >> i would say that one of the things is these companies all operate local and therefore they ought to be involved local. if you have franchisees and local command keys, or franchises ought to know who is doing very effective work in the local community, and i think that some of the national groups ought to be pushing that.

again, these advisory boards to bring up, they're needs to be one of the problems about dollars and this is the black bundle and hispanic bundle and the asian bundle and we have to fight over that rather than really having a strategy to invest in the community through nonprofits. some should be local, some should be national because you are giving for different reasons, and i think we've got to get out of this whole thing where they have less like hamsters trying to run around to go on the treadmill and who's going to outrun the other to get the chicken this year effectively pushing it and you're right who need the work and are doing their resources and doing the work on the ground in business. this is where they are in business where the need the good

will and the community that's working in the schools and the after-school program and we have to be built to protect that. another thing we need to be but to develop and that's why the black legion was so important and gary and others that worked with at that in the oval office. it's that you've got to have this interconnection so there can be those that have the larger staffs that helped write those proposals and help flood them in because some of us may have people that do that on the staff need to make them available to them on profits because if we don't have a local nonprofits, we can't generate the kind grassroots we need and some of the national campaigns because all of us don't have every village. we may have them in a lot cities. i will give you an example the young lady, 13-years-old, this

young lady organized 1200 young people in stone mountain georgia to fight violence and literally took it down in the secondary schools in that whole city. i never heard of her but because i knew what she was doing it got to as we've been able to help her write some proposals and that's the kind of things we need to do. >> thank you. i must make a plug for comcast and say the people are in our community and they do tend to help small organizations. >> i would just say they're our best practices the emerging. we have about 300 organizations that make up our network. we work closely to engage them with our national partners and stakeholders on different approaches and different programs and one of the things we are doing even more as creating collisions. there's one example where we worked with the naacp when it

came to health care and reform. we worked with the urban league capacity organization when it can to responding to the foreclosure crisis and we basically make sure we put together proposals jointly. we've seen that on the broadband collection where we've been able to encourage the kuhl engagement deutsch joint proposals of the national level but have had the direct economic benefit for our affiliates of the local community level and i think more and more of those types of collaborative story emerging and i think being part of a coalition can be very beneficial. >> gerient i represent 51 of those organizations, so he's going to speak next. >> that timetable. i like this. gary flowers, to policy questions. one, should every individual student in the united states have a federal right to equal high-quality education.

the united states industrial nations contributes 9% funding to public education. comes from state, county, local, every state to have a fight between the state board of education, county, local mayor's office, meanwhile the children are left out. is it the position of the administration or the panelists agree to radically increase the 9% of funding to maybe 50% so that we could compete with the larger nations around the world to fully fund the public systems. >> so, to the first question whether education is the fundamental right as the president and the secretary had said this has been an important issue of the generation. transforming the way the schools work. it's the course of the two of us right embodied within the constitution, the federal constitution. there are a number of states that have in the state

constitution's for the proposition and with the right to inadequate education as part of a right in those states so that is the decision for the congress. >> does the administration supports that? >> it's not a proposal i know of that is pending anywhere for which to make a decision of support or not. on the question of the dollars spent you are right historically anywhere from eight to 10 cents on the dollar is the contribution of the federal money does janet diluted to earlier the vast majority of funding comes from states and from several state supreme court decisions that have said things like the funding is unconstitutional and turn to the state legislatures to do something about.

the issue of the role of the federal government in terms of impacting systems of finance so they are more equitable was one we are exploring now. the secretary called for an announced equity excellent -- excellent condition so it has many of the main names that have been mentioned here today on it to provide recommendation to the federal government on just that, the appropriate role. what we like to see an increase such that we could provide so much more to the states? undoubtedly and as all of us are feeling in real time our conversations happening in the congress today. >> i'm sorry. if i could just say a word about the way that we are funding, the fact that education is funded from the property tax is a huge problem in terms of how we end up with educational disparity. if you find the inner-city

education with the press and the property value and suburban education with suburban property value you end up with something where the gdp, the spending per child varies by thousands of dollars. and the federal government could be the equalizer. this is a conversation that predates this administration. >> how could be the cluster? >> of the federal government decided to fund more the states would be funding less. this is the floor and we will pay for it. the income tax as opposed to the property tax pay for some level of educational spending. the state governments could also be the equalizer as you said the states have said the way that we fund education is unconstitutional. but we cannot afford to have a certain educational standards and mississippi and another one in new hampshire. we are trying to be a nation. what happened to the notion of

the nation? the federal government should be doing more for the k-12 education and code except for the political reality. political reality are with the party and we are not going those because they are what they are and people denigrated my favorite beverage and they've done many other things. we just to live with it for the moment, but the fact of that is we've seen these inequities functioning how we fund education. i would think left from that the department of education among others would be leaders, you have so many things on your plate so it's not a criticism looking at the way we fund other countries and looking at the way -- you know, we were once first in the production of the degree holders and now we are 12th. countries that you wouldn't even think of like spain. i'm not descanting spain, i love it there, you know, south korea, japan, not surprising, canada

all out rank us in these things because they spend and fund education differently than we do so it is a conversation about how we fund education and what priority education takes in the work that we do. >> we've got maybe 30 seconds each if we can before charlie steps over here. >> in terms of the constitution question i think that is important. i think that for whatever reason we didn't follow the movement on that i certainly say you know there was on the record supporting it and was thought of as i ran for president. >> for the it's important to understand that there's a tremendous shift in the growth in the demographics of this country and i think it is more important now than ever for us to find ways in which we are investing in these children so we can not only see these children advance but knowing the future of this country relies on

the investments we are making today in those very young people ten, 20 years from now is going to be very important i think in terms of guiding us as a country forward. >> i hope we can leave a sign of hope. the idea of the funding inequities in our proposals for the reauthorization of the elementary secondary education to view the sins of the fundamental fairness and ensure that the dollar's get to the kids they were intended to. we've seen great progress over the last couple of years in terms of states with taking the lead to ensure this is the code doesn't decide who learns what and to close the teacher eqecat and change the laws that were otherwise barring innovation. as we have a lot of work to do. but the strong america requires strong schools. it's been a good discussion of the solutions to that think you

so much assistant secretary. reverend sharpton, thank you so much. janet, thank you so much as well as dr. malveaux. a really fantastic time that we had. [applause] >> thank you richard for the great job of moderating. we are going to take a break and we will resume at 3:25 p.m.. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> how the minorities are affected by education and economic policy. our guests on washington journal was been jealous the head of the naacp. tos is a half an hour. >> we want to welcome back to the journal president and ceo o,

the naacp. and let's begin with the let' unemployment rate for the blackk community. we've seen the number dropped over all in the recent months below 9%. b but itut hasn't dropped that muh for the african community. why? what's happening? we aretuck >> respect in this country right now. we have a whole bunch of folksos who frankly need the great depression to get out of that great recession. we need to be focused on creating jobs. right now the debate in congress has been how to spend less money. you can look over to the u.k. to see what happens. in the midst of a recession coming you try to fix things by spending less. you end up with much lower consumer demand and much lower job generation. " we need for congress to be focused on, job creation, go back and look at what we did in the great depression to get out of the great recession. one thing that happens in times

like this, the discrimination goes up. q c people attract around the family and social network. the people that they know good jobs first. people outside that have a much harder time. and as the economy starts to get slightly better, more and more people stop -- who had stopped looking for work start for you have a push and pull their. the poll is going back, and then what pushes it up is that people they were not counted, not searching, because they had given up and now they are starting to push back in. host: you and other african- american leaders met with the president a year ago urging him to specifically address the unemployment issue for minorities, poor communities. at that point may come in the unemployment rate was 16.5%.

to a if you look at the most recent statistics, not much of a difference. hispanic or latino, 11.3%. what grade would you give president obama on tackling the issue that you urged him to do one year ago? guest: this congress, we would give a very low grade. if you look at first term, the first congress that he worked with, every major push was about jobs. health care was about jobs and job quality. dealing with the financial crisis was about jobs. dealing with the huge stimulus that he was able to push through was about jobs. dealing with issues of discrimination and exclusion, and one of the things we talked about was the need to have a need for every federally funded

job -- right now when you bought into a federally funded job center, if you will see up to 30% of the jobs they are hiring for in your area. 7% are invisible to you because they are done by contractors not required to post. in a country where it is possible for some much of our federal money to be spent in a way, it is so non transparent, it locks up communities like cars. that is something he can fix directly. host: he has not done it so far. guest: the regulation has been proposed and it will be done by this summer. but this problem has existed at least for my entire lifetime as the federal government shift more to contractors from federal workers. and it has never been solved. it is finally being solved. you see him posted a big

stimulus, you see him push through health care, you see a big push to make sure that small business people the best minority small business can do the same contras. but the congress is trying to push the same mistakes that the u.k. may. they're going back and say that we have been through this once before, how did we get out of it? instead, they are saying, let's use this economist playbook that wherever it has been used, it has become a nightmare, and that is the problem, congress. host: what about the president? what is his grade? guest: it is hard for me to separate the two. " we need is a massive investment in jobs and you do not get that without the president. his leadership with this congress is not good.

host: so a low-grade for both. guest: certainly of low grade for the country as a whole. what is going to take to get us out of this recession is for the country to spend more. congress will have to make the first move. host: when you look at those in -- unemployment numbers for the african-american community, does that translate into lower enthusiasm for the president when it comes to his reelection in 2012? guest: people and our community know that we're not dealing with a three-year depression. we're dealing with the 40 year depression. every president in my lifetime has come and gone out what that situation. finally we have a president that seems to get it and has been pushing congress. and you see a lot more from the governors, too. one of the big concerns with the whole stimulus was that we had mayor's in mississippi, rowe

used to be the managing editor of the main black newspaper, saying, do not send it to the governor. senate to us and we would get it to the people. barbour took money that was meant for katrina to rebuild his porch. of all the leaders that i've met with, the governors, the heads of congress, the president himself, he is the one that gets it the most. host: you mention a regulation that will be put into effect and then -- guest: it will be put into place this summer. it will ensure that all veterans in this country can see all federal funded jobs. it is the effect of having that all people can see all federally funded jobs. for which folks are currently

hiring in the area. right now, if you are a taxpayer in your down in your luck and you go into a taxpayer-funded jobs center annually c of the 30% of the taxpayer-funded jobs, -- and you only see 30% of the taxpayer-funded jobs, it is outrageous. that they would only say that much that their test. dollars are funding in their area. host: this is a regulation that the administration will put into effect. what else are you hearing that they plan to do over the next year for minorities and poor communities? guest: a big push right now to expand access for small business people, a real focus of small people -- small business people of color to get better contracts. that is huge.

there is a lot of frustration with congress over this budget. there is a lot of frustration with the state's right now. there is an assault on what the people have right now. unfortunately, we're being forced to play defense. the reality is that we need a different conversation in this country that comes down to groups like ours getting people to raise their voices and say, it is not enough for us in a recession to play defense. we need to play offense. we need to create jobs and go back to those values that got us out of the great depression and use them to get us out of the great recession. host: a republican in queens, new york. you're on the air with benjamin jealous. caller: a quick comment and then a question. every person hearing my voice

right now has a family member in prison. what is the naacp doing about this very great problem in our community? and also, going back a century now, over 100 years, malcolm x and martin luther king have all been condemned by the organization of the naacp. allied to take -- would you like to take the opportunity to set the record straight on the way that the naacp dealt with these great men who helped us with black pride and pride in africa? host: he is not there. guest: right now in this country, a black person is five times more likely to be in prison than in south africa at the height of apartheid. not only has our country taken

over their former glory as the r.rld's largest incarcerate h we take it to a entirely different level. it is bankrupting our country. we have a report called misplaced priorities that shows how it is choking public universities and the stabilizing families in america. it is something that we have to be concerned about because it is not making a safer. we actually got grover norquist to stand up with us with a passionate statement from newt gingrich to join us. these policies have failed us miserably. they are wasting a whole bunch of money. our country needs to do something different. we evening that the head of a large -- the largest prison unit in the country to stand up with us and say not only that, but we need to take the money we are wasting and give it to our public universities. in california when i was a kid, they spent 11% on public universities.

now it is 11% on prisons and 7.5% on public universities. that is a huge turnaround. they used to be the best universities in the world. it is no longer the case. they are squandering money trying to solve social problems with prison. there ways to do it that are more humane. with regards to the great leader, you can look back at the record of the naacp. we have always been supportive and involved. what did they argue about? they argue about whether blacks should stay in this country are laid. we are unapologetic about saying that blacks ought to be a part of this country. i have family on both sides. we have been here, and we will stay in this country.

and will stay in the country. if you look at malcolm x at the end of his life when he was assassinated and assassinated by members of the country itself, he was becoming much closer to the mainstream of civil-rights purity and i think he is a great man. it is worth studying. quite frankly, they are some of the greatest leaders this country has had, if some of the most controversial. and host: let's look at the recent numbers to came up with. 1 million of the 2.3 million incarcerated it is represented by african-americans. 500,000 black fathers currently incarcerated. one out of six african-american men have spent time in prison. what should the administration be doing about this? guest: one of the remarkable things about this country is

that we tend to use rates at the he same rate. take crack. then you look at who gets busted for using crack. 85% of people busted for using crack this by% of whites. that tells us we have two very different law enforcement strategies. if you are white or rich it basically says to go to rehab. if you are poor or black, you go to prison. we know dollar for dollar is seven times more effective. we do it anyway. it is really time for congress

-- senator jim wright has proposed that we actually look at drug sentencing, criminal justice from top to bottom all at once and proposed a whole raft of changes. the state of georgia is seeking to go there right now. one of the fascinating dynamics in this country right now is we're seeing career issues from southern republican leaders banned from northern democrats. and in texas there are 18 smart on crime bills moving. the state of georgia, the governor is proposing a look at criminal justice policy. it goes much further. it is actually classic conservative play. it says let's do what is most

affected. host: here is a tweet -- tony on the independent line. caller: i want to talk about jobs today. i basically want to say as long as we keep asking people to provide jobs for us, we will always be at the tail end of the line as it pertains to getting jobs. we need to talk about entrepreneurship. we need to take matters into our own hands and create our own jobs so we do not always have to go hand in hand looking for a job. it is really our problem to solve, not president barack obama us. -- not president obama's. guest: when i talk about contractors, that is what i am talking about. this administration is doing a lot to make it easier. we will be doing speedskating

where you have contractors a whole bunch of some ubcontractors introducing them. we are trying to help make sure that people actually know each other and connect and do business together. at the same time, you make a great point. one of the things that we really push young people to do is to actually build upon and continue the tradition of small business ownership in our communities. we spend a lot of time helping young people across the country in our 200 programs learn how to draft business models, so that they actually go into college thinking about the small business people and come out with a great head start. host: tyrone, republican from

louisiana. i want to piggyback on what tony said. we do go hand in hand with these other people from the federal government asking them to give us money. we are not self-sufficient. my point is if we localize how the money is created, at the congress people are supposed to create our buddy. our money. we will not have the deficit's going through the roof. if we get the congress to reclaim their responsibility for print and regulating the currency, then we can hold these people accountable. my point to you is does the ncaa -- n.c.a.a. go to the black conference and talk to the representatives and impress upon them to get the responsibility

back to the congress from the federal reserve banks who we do not know, who cannot see and hold accountable? i think that will help the black people. have our local representatives responsible. guest: one theme that came up is the issue of accountability pyridin that is. that is so often we focus on across the country. we told congress people accountable to their communities. with regard to that you have a good point. host: leonardo on the democratic line. good morning. caller: i am just trying to figure out the naacp's role, because they have been very quiet as far as, well, i do not see no real leadership.

all i see is follow worse. -- follwers. this guy will get all kinds of excuses about why. he did not hear the whole conversation and that, but that was the game they played on him. guest: sure. think you for calling about that. we were the last to make the mistake in the first to apologize. we pushed the white house to apologize, and it follows suit and did. we pushed the usda to apologize and they follow through and did. we worked very closely together now -- we work very closely together now. both of us are very concerned about the fight to end poverty and rural areas. she would say we cannot let moments like this distract and divide us. we saw a situation where a right-wing attacker group was

trying to destroy us by destroying her, and we were ultimately able to keep both from happening. i am one of those people but have beene she should offered her old job back, but we push for that, and it offered her a job, unfortunately i do not think they offered her the right job. host: barbara, new york, a democratic line. caller: this is a comment. you do not have to respond. you oned in to complement t not being called into the interrogation techniques by greta. most of the time is spent challenging, undermining, pinpointing the articles and challenges. black people will survive.

the same thing is happening to the mainstream of america today is that they are crying and grasping and demanding for what has been happening to black centuries. all th do not complain, go out and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and take responsibility. guest: in this country we rely on government where they play a key role in making sure people have jobs. i think the calller makes a very people try toat get the black community to encourage us to hold this

president accountable for everything, and we know. we have dealt with dozens of presidents. he was the first black president. from the point he was elected to the day of his inauguration, then he became the 44th president. we had great pride in him, but we also know he is no more powerful than any of the past presidents we have dealt with. on an issue like job creation, congress will have to decide that it is job one. at the end of the day, 535 people who really determine how we spend our money and whether we will continue this pattern of basically bankrupting the nation, and then say we have to cut social services. when push came and we had a huge surplus. we will able to predict the future of medicare. -- when bush came in, we had a

huge surplus. then they get a huge windfall to the richest 1% in this country, and look where we are now the two things are very connected. listen to the people now that say we need to tickle unions from working people and medicare from grandma. they understand the first step is to bankrupt the coffers. then you cry bankruptcy. unfortunately 536 people, if there was one that was all powerful, the president would be high on the list, but that is not what he is. host: two more phone calls. in depend on the line from philadelphia. -- independent on the line from philadelphia.

caller: i wanted to say i think the questions are appropriate in the facts are straight. other middle-class organizations have accepted the fact that in order for mr. obama to be successful he cannot be challenged, criticized. as long as you except that, we have to be placed at the back of the line. we will always be at the bottom. i think it is a very sad dynamic that people of this caliber could accept that kind of dynamic that issues cannot be addressed at the risk of losing white voters. spend all day making sure our pitissues are addressed. we focus on the issues that are most urgent work communities, and not based on class. we put up a billboard in los angeles and welcome to the u.s., 25% of the world's

prisoners. in bold indictment of words things are in this country in the state of leadership in this country. we have pushed forward and pushed hard to make sure this issue of mass incarceration is dealt with. pushing hard to make sure the fact that black children are 15% are 50% of the new hiv kids are dealt with. we are pushing hard to make sure the issue of joblessness is dealt with. again, those who would push us into confrontation with the president when it is congress who makes the decision are encouraging as to wallow and destruction. it is time for us to be clear about who has the power to make the decision on the federal budget, the decision to make the 1% pay their top fair share. we are right to focus on

congress. host: before we let you go, we will return to our conversation about the gulf coast one year later. i want to get your thoughts on it before we leave. guest: i was down there several months ago stand on the beach looking at an oil slick in my feet started to sink and they ended up an oil. that is the metaphor for the whole thing. you'd think you are on land, but you are really 1 inch above oil. we put out a white paper today. it is there on our site. it is calling on bp to take full responsibility for this disastrous situation in the gulf. there are huge physical and mental health problems that are not being addressed. we're seeing resources plummet as tax revenues have plummeted

in the area even further than one could expect during a recession, and the need to go through the roof. we have seen a big increase in domestic violence. the reality is that the company needs to take greater responsibility for the long- term effects and really push to make sure the billions that have set aside -- you said earlier, 5 billion only gets out to the community that needs them. we have to remember, unless you have lived in the region as i have, it is hard to understand. these folks are absolutely tied to this environment. it is not like when you lose a job but one doctor you ca

haitian president-elect michel martelly says the

priority for his country include building permanent housing, strengthening agriculture and improving education. he spoke of the national press club today for 20 minutes. mr. martelly a former musician won a runoff election last month with two-thirds of the vote. he will take office may 14th. >> good morning, everyone. president-elect the republic of haiti mr. michel martelly. [applause] >> good morning >> we are here today to talk a little bit about our trip here

to washington. i will start by saying i had a positive visit to washington this week. we went half a day at the state department meeting with the team as well as holding a positive bilateral meeting with secretary hillary clinton and her senior staff. we spend a lot of time talking about the important issues for the haitian people and the development to the world bank, the international monetary fund as well as the u.s. chamber of commerce. january 12, 2010, the 7.0 earthquake hit haiti where over 300,000 people died. lost homes and the toll on the economic is estimated upwards of $30 billion. my focus as i promised during my

campaign is to revive and modernize pt's economic and provide free access to education, moving people out by just starting to reconstruction and focusing on the agricultural sector. in short it is a new day for haiti. we are very thankful for the financial institution, which raised money that was unfortunately never spent in the first place and the lack of infrastructure and service is evident of this. given this daunting task, john starting the economy is a priority. by doing so, we will create jobs and stir up economic activity which leads to sustainable development. in order to accomplish these reforms and create economic stimulus necessary to offer opportunities to the haitian

people, the country needs to have access to loans. no country can build an infrastructure, on grants alone. we were very pleased by the fact that the financial institutions are open and flexible to new ideas and the interest of the people pt. we are going to pursue them. they do not want handouts or opportunities to create wealth. we also have at the state department provided me an opportunity to review with secretary hillary clinton and her senior staff the state between haiti and the united states. we called for assistance to haiti including my top priorities which are free education, moving people out by providing permanent, not temporary housing, as well as strengthening the sector by

giving access to loans so that they can work their land. we also discussed other priorities of aid in haiti everything is a priority. we spoke about the economic growth by attracting from the direct investment, the rule of law, drug trafficking, human trafficking, immigration issues and reconstruction. we discussed ways of streamlining u.s. aid to haiti and in sood effectiveness. to that end, we will continue and strengthen our partnership in the united states and its people. as president barack obama and secretary clinton stated many times we need to strengthen the capacity of the institutions so they can answer to the needs of the haitian people. the state has been weakened and

this must change. we need to build up the state institutions while making the voluble work of the ngos more effective and better coordinated the discussions were held the between the two partners willing to understand each other. once i met office my government will do an overall assessment to ensure that foreign assistance is going to the people. while in washington i visited the haitian embassy and this put me into campaign mode once again because of the enthusiasm shown by the haitians. ..

and more importantly, tahitian dias perera and the american people. let us see haydee as the beautiful country that it is. we must present a different image of haiti and focus more on our beautiful beaches, rich culture and overall our welcoming people. katie is open to the world and we invite both tourism and business is to and visit as early as possible. thank you very much.

[applause] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [applause] >> lawmaker press, okay? >> i have a question about the immigration issue. i would like to ask you what exactly did you decide yesterday about the importation to haydee?

idr mac [inaudible] >> it is easy to und >> it is easy to understand that haiti doesn't have sources in structure to read so many political parties who are coming out of our system. it is not a strong one, so we have discussed waiting a little bit before the united states keeps on sending deportees back to haiti. we need to come up a program where we can reinstitute them in life and society that we are estimated that for this it would cost about $300 million on 10 years. so we're working on the program and the secretary of state was

willing not just to listen, but to move forward. we also spoke about the tps issues can wear pretty soon haitians living there will have a temporary status expired things like the news would be good news, but i'll let it be official. the office of the secretary will talk about it. i [inaudible] >> well, while we engage in discussions, nearly as collected in new process yesterday and we're going to continue. >> do you plan to re-create the haiti military? >> well, the to maintain peace

unless someone suggests it remains forever. having said so, it gets importantly create a haitians worse culprits who caught the military is it relevant to me. it needs to be a modern army for an engineering co-op and will intervene in case of because of the catastrophe of the earth quake or hurricanes to get involved in the reforestation reserve are for us to modern army. we don't foresee haiti going with heavy equipment like warships were fighter ships. >> please identify yourself, sir. [inaudible] >> i became president-elect last night.

give me a few days to answer these ques3 night. give me a few days to answer these questions. [inaudible] >> they were in talks regarding the implementation of hiring a program for colorado. they decided not to go forward with that, but are you going to go forward with that or are you looking at alternatives for what they call it? >> we need to address the cholera issue. i would say that somehow, some work is being done that is positive because we're having less and less people dying of cholera. the spread is still there because we're not eradicating the cabinet, but because of the information, the communication

system are doing a great job at that. now if you can implement that program to eradicate cholera. [inaudible] >> -- on the ground. right now is part of the reconstruction process. mr. president, how could you hope to share a stronger voice for civil society, grassroot and implementations in the recent structure with a longer-term hope? >> the program especially for the women and now we have identified the woman as a pillar in the family. and haiti at 4:00 in the morning come easy people in the streets

but they are women carrying their goods on their head, walking miles and miles to the market. they don't want to spend the days that the market is they get back home around 5:00 to take care of their kids and husband, so we need to come with programs to accompany the civil society for the women. >> it was confirmed with a lot of support, but on the other hand of the parliament you don't have that strength. i would like to know how you are planning to organize the government? when are you going to make the first announcement? the canadian press that he may consider an amnesty, could you

explain that? >> first of all, i would say the turnout wasn't as low as the number i'm saying because there was a fraud to begin with to stop people from going to the voting booths. in that matter, i will say that some people could not get their card to go vote. some people could not identify the voting booth. some people who were there were sent miles away. some people have their cards and when they got to the voting booths they couldn't find their names. so there was a very complex situation there. and again, i will tell you that had they given in research, you would have seen everybody in the street. everyone was concerned. everyone was part of this, but

not everyone was awarded the right to vote. as for the parliament, i will say that yes, it seems fake they seem to have 46 deputies to 99. it seems like they have a majority, but again it's a relevant because i will have that approach. i will feel like this. but the differences that were elected by the people we recommended the people of haiti, with an engagement into a fight, which we receive is an operation on this collaboration must be among us.

any other part of the question was the amnesty regime. i will say that i've been pruning the rule of law. the rule of law implicates the three powers. we were just a tease. based on that i will not interfere. i will not even comment because i have a dream, because i is spoken about weak and failing to people of haiti. i have mentioned pardon for everyone, including the salomon, but i would love seeing that as president elect now.

[inaudible] >> where do you see haiti five years from now? >> first of all, i see haiti that is well seen overseas because i intend to ask the roots change the images that we felt that haiti, the images of horror, the images of good people, but earthquake and cholera. yes, haiti has its problems, but said she remains a beautiful country and a rich country, rich in its culture, which is very diverse. haitian art is extraordinary time in the music is extraordinary. [laughter] we have a musician in the room,

yes. [laughter] and we have a nice son and nice beaches. and the labor -- the people of haiti are waiting investors and to provide with their knowledge and they are hard-working. we have seen it overseas everywhere haitian land to become successful and they are hard workers. and haiti they are not is they offer opportunities and this is what we need to bring to them and i hope everyone will accompany. thank you and have a great day. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> now, a form on the effect of unrest in the arab world. washington d.c.-based think tank to james foundation had from ca analyst bruce riedel and carries a concert in the national security council under ford, carter and reagan. this is an hour and a half.

[inaudible conversations] >> and president of jamestown foundation and we're delighted to have you here today. i see many familiar faces in the room for people who have attended previous conferences. the title today of conferences the impact of arab uprisings in regional stability in the northeastern africa. this is a very interesting time for us to this conference. we started planning severalhsret months ago and it's been quite fascinating to see the great evolution of what is happening in the arab world, what began on december 17th of last year with the tunisian street vendor unleashing spark that set off tt the very contagious revolution arab world.roughout the repercussions of which we have in the revolution of 1848.

regardless of that analogy, whether it's true or not, it ofe in the region. urthert, you don't have toook certainly of foreign affairs magazine, which said the cover of the foreign affairs magazine basically says the new arab revolt which starts with -- which starts its series of articles with these questions. what just happened? why no one saw it coming. what it means? and what comes next? so this is really, you know, these type of questions are really why we're here gathered today to try to make sense of it all. it's not -- there's no decisive conclusion to what's happening. but we're delighted to have the insight who spent time studied the region for quite a long time and always at jamestown you will find a conference that will have a lot of diversity and views and issues and opinions. today we'll be examining north africa and the developments in egypt, libya and algeria. in the afternoon discussion we'll be focusing on the

developments in the gulf which included iran's reaction to the developments in the middle east and its impact on domestic and foreign policy as well as its impact on iranian ties to the gulf cooperation council. and last but not least, the last panel of the day will deal with the crisis in yemen which will address different very important questions that's a very important country that has repercussions in the arabian peninsula. as many of you there will be many different personalities and names that we mentioned. i would like to put a plug for the jamestown publication militant leadership monitor. copies of it will be found in each of your folders. we'd encourage you to take out a copy and look at it and if you can, subscribe and also i'd like to thank c-span for its live coverage for today's event. if you -- for those viewing our conference today live, you can learn more information about jamestown at www.jamestown.org

and last but not least i want one further comment that bruce riedel who is here today former general michael v. hayden former director of the cia are two new members on the board. we're delighted to have their participation and involvement with jamestown's activities as activities in the developments of the foundation continue to grow and we hope to have them involved in future conferences. so i'm going to turn the floor over to the moderator for today's discussion who is michael ryan, senior fellow of the jamestown foundation. >> thank you. and good morning, everyone. welcome again. i've learned from sitting where you are right now for years that the most important duty of a moderator is to be modest and not say very much and i'm going to try to do very much because the two gentlemen i have on my left have a lot to say and i want to give them the maximum amount of time to do that. so i'm not going to in my introductions repeat everything that you can find in your package about their background.

they both have tremendous background and tremendous authority when they speak about the topic today. i've followed them for years in my own life, and i continue to do so today. one thing i will mention that isn't in bruce riedel's little write-up here in your folder is his latest book "the deadly embrace: pakistan, american and the future of the global jihad" which i would highly recommend you can get in a kindle edition and other diagnoses. without further ado, bruce, would you like to begin? >>thank you, ron. thank you, mike, for those very kind introductions. i want to thank the jamestown

foundation for inviting me. i want to plug the militant leadership monitor publication. i highly recommend it. one of the best publications for following terrorism available anywhere in the world today. i also want to say it's a great pleasure to be here with gary sick, one of the most foremost experts on the middle east and on american policy in the middle east. and as we think about how to deal with the winter of arab discontent and the spring of arab revolutions is seminal works on the iranian revolution and americans' response to it are well worth taking another look at. we have seen remarkable events in the last 100 days in the arab world. first in tunisia, then in egypt, now libya, yemen, bahrain, syria and i could go on and on. there is a full day's worth of discussions here.

i'm going to focus, though, on the impact of egypt, on events in egypt and on what they mean for american foreign policy. i should begin by saying a word about the title. stability is, of course, is the "s" word to egyptian revolutionaries. stability has been the code word for repression, for dictatorship for the last 30 years in egypt. they are quite right in saying that. but we also have an interest in trying to see how the change will impact on stability. so with apologies to the egyptian revolutionaries, i think we should proceed forward. there are many ways to explain what is happening in the arab world today. one is, of course, demography. its enormous youth bulge, demanding jobs, demanding more

than jobs. demanding the opportunity for a lifetime. the slogans in tahir jobs, we want jobs, we want to get married. very poignant about how prospects in enjoying life in egypt have become so dim for so many. 60% of the arab world is under the age of 30. the median age is 26. but it's not just demographics and it's not just about jobs. i think the revolt in the arab world is even more about something more fundamental. it's a revolt against the police state system, which has dominated arab politics for a half century if not more. the state to use its arabic name, ruled every arab country from morocco to amman. some with a gentler hand than others but all with the state. it is a state within a state.

a state in which the inner state is accountable to only one person, to one man, the boss, whether it was a king, a prime minister, a monarch or whatever gadhafi chose to call himself at the moment. the system was beyond the rule of law, totally unaccountable. anyone could be arrested, imprisoned. missing, killed without any redress. this system had grown over the years to massive size. the minister applies 1.5 million people of employees in a country of 80 million people and that's not counting the millions of informants working for the

police state. in syria, there are at least 6 secret polices, all of them spying on each other as well as spying on the syrian people. various arab countries built elaborate guards to go with their mukhabarat states. the guard that guarded against each other in order to keep the rise in power. the development of the mukhabarat state and the military dispute was an early destroyer. and it led to the creation of the guards and to the creation of police states. the cold war was a further driver. inter-arab politics became a driver. and 9/11 became an enormous driver for the increase in the size of the mukhabarat states. and the united states, after 9/11 was an enthusiastic supporter of the rise and

development and enrichment and deepening of the mukhabarat state, ironically exactly at the same moment that we began talking about democracy in the middle east. some of the mukhabarat states are what they call hard mukhabarat states. saddam's iraq, syria, gadhafi's libya, some are soft mukhabarat states, king abdullah's jordan, the gulf states. but they all share the same feature of unaccountability. now the arabs collectively are demanding their freedom. the end of the mukhabarat state system. they want the rule of law. they want accountability. and egypt is very much in the forefront of this. egypt will be the leader as it has always been in the arab world. that is more true today than ever. if the revolution had stopped in tunis in january, we wouldn't be

here. it was the egyptian revolution that led to the spring of arab revolutions. the drama of tahir square, a televised revolution that you could watch around the world was one of the reasons giving egypt its special prominence today. but much more fundamental is egypt's role as the critical arab state. it is at the geographic center of the arab world and it has been at the cultural center of the arab world. and the university has been the religious and cultural center arab world for years. it's demographic weight in the world gives it more prominence of the world. for 30 years its prominence was ceded of the mubarak government. to take egypt off the center stage, that, i think, is coming

to an end as well. and, of course, egypt is important for another reason. it is at the very center of the global islamic jihad. egypt has produced many of the key ideological figures of the global islamic jihad. today egypt's revolution confronts numerous challenges. before we look at those challenges, though, it's worth pausing for a minute just to think about the last 100 days. with less than 1,000 people killed, egypt has been transformed from a country with a dictatorship of 30 years to a country where the dictator is now under hospital arrest and his sons are under formal arrest. if someone had stood at this platform, january 1st of 2011,

and told you that would be the case by april, 2011, you would have thought he was from mars. he would have been from mars. but that is what egypt has already accomplished. so as we look at the challenges ahead, we should not diminish the extent of what the egyptian people have already done. i think they face three or four major challenges ahead. challenge number one is to manage the transition to new political institutions and to new political process. they have to build an entirely new political culture, something which they have very little familiarity with. to help do this, though, egypt is also in a unique position because it's had a revolution this year and it's also had a military coup at the same time. one way to think about it is that one foot in egypt is on the

gas and the other foot is on the brake. and this shows in egypt's political development now -- we see a certain herky jerky movement. that -- while disparaging and discomforting to a certain extent, is also good for the long term because there's ballast in this system as well as momentum to change. it's clearly an uneasy partnership. the army is not enthusiastic about being the instrument of change. field marshall must be the most surprised person in the entire world. think of where he was in january and think where he is today and think of where he is taking his country. but to give him credit, so far, he seems to be doing a fairly decent job. so far compared to other revolutions egypt is surprisingly smooth. it's bumpy, there's no question. there's a lot of suspicion.

there's a lot of dissent. there's some disorder but on the whole i would argue this is a surprisingly smooth transition so far. egypt is on track to hold elections this fall. some think it's too soon. the egyptian people have had their voice heard. they want it. egypt is also deep into the process of dismantlingly the mukhabarat state. ripping apart police headquarters, searching through documents, arresting former members of the mukhabarat state. even omar suleiman, egypt's spymaster for the last 25 years is now being questioned by egyptian courts. it's a remarkable effort at trying to change the system. now, in the near term, this is obviously good news for bad

people. tearing down prisons, letting prisoners go, dismantling the security apparatus is a boon for al-qaeda and others. arresting field counter terrorists like omar suleiman is a boon for al-qaeda. it's no wonder al-qaeda's ideologues wrote that he has, quote, great expectations for the future. but i think one shouldn't be overwhelmed by focusing on the immediate. yes, this is a setback for counterterrorism. yes, this is an opportunity for al-qaeda to meddle but in the long run, and obviously not too far off, developing a security force that is responsible, that is accountable and which obeys the rules and laws of the country is a long-term threat to al-qaeda and i'll come back to

that in a minute. the second challenge egypt faces is managing the inclusion of islamists in the political process. egypt has the oldest and best organized islamist party in the arab world, the muslim brotherhood. many are fearful of what the muslim brotherhood intends to do in the future. some have suggested the muslim brotherhood is playing a very careful game of not really contesting the first election in order to secure the last election, the second time around. that may be the case. but i think it's far from clear that that is the case. the egyptian muslim brotherhood i would argue to you is a much smarter political party than that. it is one of the smartest political parties in the islamic order. it is careful to not overreach. it is careful to signal it does not intend to overreach.

it has been careful to work with the army behind the scenes. it is despised by al-qaeda for all these reasons. al-qaeda is terrified at the prospect the muslim brotherhood could play an effective and central role in governing egypt. the muslim brotherhood itself is not monolithic. it's clear divisions between young and old are beginning to rise. its successful conclusion in egyptian politics in a nonviolent way offers remarkable hope for the future of the arab world. the third challenge egypt face is, of course, the revival of its economy and expansion of its economy. i am not an economist. and i don't pretend to be able to understand how egypt's economy can expand dramatically. there are innumerable challenges

facing the egyptian leadership today. trying to get jobs for all those who wants them will be a herculean task. the near-term task is much simpler. trying to get torque back. 1 out of 7 jobs in egypt is in the tourism market. and tourism market today is shattered. one of the reasons it's shattered is the united states travel warning. when united states says don't travel somewhere, most people don't pay a lot of attention. insurance agents pay a lot of attention. they don't want to be caught in that situation. we need to early on revoke travel warning on egypt and encourage the return of tourism. egypt's problems couldn't come at a worst time. there's a lot of loose talk about a marshal plan for egypt and the arab world.

well, i got bad news for you. we're black -- broke. there are no marshall plan. there is one with you there isn't going to be any dollars behind it. united states and arab is in the midst of a global fiscal downturn. the tea party is not going to endorse spending billions in egypt. the challenge, therefore, is going to have to be in the realm of trade, not aid. and that challenge more than anything else will have to be done in europe not any place else. europeans need to see the trade enhancement with egypt and the rest of north africa as the area where they can really do the most to help. the fourth challenge egypt faces its difficult foreign policy environment.

first, look at egypt's arab neighbors, libya, sudan and palestine. all three are broken states right now. libya is in the midst of a civil war with foreign intervention. halfhearted foreign intervention. this civil war currently looks like it could go on for the indefinite future. sudan is a country literally breaking apart. after trying to be held together over the last 100 years, egypt, of course, was one of the most prominent supporters of the unified sudan. now it sees that dream is gone. and palestine is also divided. we wanted the two-state solution. we ended up with a three-state solution, hamas, gaza, fatah and the west bank and israel, of course. egypt now has on one border to the west a rebellion about which many of us know very little.

and on the other side, a jihadist mini state in gaza. egypt sympathies are clearly with gaza. second, egypt also confronts the problem of revolutions. egypt's old friends are changing dramatically. egypt's old enemies may be changing as well. third, of course, egypt has to deal with a very nervous east partner. a senior israeli diplomat said to me just a few weeks ago, we liked being the only democracy in the middle east. we understood where everyone else played. we could predict what mubarak's egypt would do. we can't predict what egypt is going to do today. israel is fearful of the unknown, fearful of unpredictability. it already faces tense

situations with hamas and hezbollah. the prospects of another war in the middle east this summer are always there. and now israel faces the prospect that palestine will be admitted to the united nations this september. and many israelis predict, i think, wrongly -- many israelis predict a third fa-at that tima will come from that. a challenging agenda but israel is clearly preoccupied primarily with its own domestic problems. the best case outcome is not impossible by any means. i think there is a reasonable possibility egypt will produce a new elected government this fall. my bet is egyptians will choose musa to be their new president. what passes for polling in egypt tends to support that argument.

i think the muslim brotherhood will play by the rules, will be part of the system. i think the army will with some enthusiasm give up the reins of power while it continues to hold on to many of its perks. we will begin the transition to the post-mukhabarat state. it will be enormously difficult. changing culture and ethos of a security system is very, very, very hard to do. it won't happen overnight but i think there is reason for confidence that it will happen. even in this best case scenario, of course, there will be difficulties, there will be bumps. if i'm right, and moussa wins, we may have the spectacle of his inauguration being played with

the pop single, i love moussa and i hate israel. it will make managing the ties even harder. an awful lot can go wrong. i'd be the first to admit that. revolutions tend to devour their own, bonapartism is always a danger. another war with israel between hamas and hezbollah could make the situation very difficult. there is, of course, the potential that al-qaeda and other jihadist extremists will try to play in these troubled waters. but there's also much potential for good here. a more vigorous egypt than mubarak's could assist in moving forward a real middle eastern peace process that could help stabilize libya. that could help resolve the problem of gaza. it would be an example of reform and change working in the arab and islamic world. above all, it would be a symbol

that twitter, not terror, is the way to transform the arab world. twitter, not terror transformed tahir square and that is extremely bad news for osama bin laden and al-qaeda. the challenge for the united states and egypt is to keep calm. don't overreact to change. don't overreact to the unpredictable. but do it with a low american footprint. we don't need to have hundreds of thousands of -- hundreds or thousands of american aid workers suddenly depending on egypt. we don't need to hijack this revolution. we need to support it and help it. of course, the one thing we

could do more than any other to help egypt's new government is to move forward on the middle east peace process ourselves. secretary of state clinton promised such a move at the last brookings u.s.-islamic world forum just a week ago. i hope the administration will live up to that. arab moderates have for years asked us to do more on this front as the single thing that we could do to help them more than any other. if you don't believe me, read king abdullah's new book "the last best chance for peace." let me just take two or three minutes to talk about one other revolution and that's the one that's brewing now in syria. syria may not be the hardest of the hard mukhabarat states but it's certainly pretty close. and change in syria, i think, is now beyond the tipping point.

the demonstrations in homes this week demonstrate that the sunni center of the country is now demanding fundamental change. there is talk of political compromise. i don't see how you can have political compromise with the mukhabarat state in syria. it is all-or-nothing. it is also a very, very brittle regime at the end of the day. because it's a regime that fundamentally depends on the support of about 13% of the population. and a few other supporters. it is a regime that has worked because it instills fears like any other mukhabarat instill fear. we all know that when it did that in hamma in 1982. once that fear is broken, as it seems to be breaking now, fractures in syrian society are likely to come to the top.

this will have enormous effects upon all of the levat, libya, iraq, turkey, and jordan. the biggest loser, if syria dissolves into full scale civil war is iran and hezbollah. the second biggest loser is everyone else as we try to manage what happens there. but let's not cry for the asats. they deeply deserve to be sent to the home for retired dictators. the sooner the better. if egypt is the revolution will show how reform can succeed in a peaceful way, i'm fearful that syria is the revolution that will show even more than libya how it can be done with violence. but at the end of the day, the spring of arab revolutions is not something controlled in washington, not even on

massachusetts avenue. it's going to be dealt by the arab peoples who have now decided it is time for the end of the mukhabarat state. thank you very much. [applause] >> i'd like to hold the questions until both speakers have finished and we'll have a free for all at that point. without any further ado, i would like to go to our speakers and you'll be speaking from your place so gary sick, please. >> i'm too old to stand up that long. [laughter] >> i was very interested to hear bruce's talk. and i'm glad that he's an optimist. i basically am too. but with some caveats and i think he had many caveats of his own. i've, you know, watched some

revolutions take place, even very closely watched some of them take place. and, you know, revolutions -- well, as one of my old colleagues have said, revolutions revolve 360 degrees. and that is, in fact, i think, what we're going to see in some of these cases. and certainly what happened in the iranian revolution which set out to get rid of the shah and has now created a new one. and is behaving almost exactly the same way that the shah's government did after all of this time. the events starting early this year, starting in december, really are unique. and, of course, they were way overdue in the arab world. i mean, there should have been changes going on for years but there weren't. and as a result when the dam broke, it really broke and now we're seeing a flood of activity that is really bewildering.

i think to find any kind of a parallel to the events that are going on right now, you certainly -- i would go back, for instance, to 1967 and the six-day war, which if you recall, actually the six-day war humiliated the arab leaders. israel won very quickly and very decisively. it also not humiliated but invalidated the whole idea of arab nationalism which had been the retailing cry and all of a sudden, it was seen that these arab nationalists and these leaders like nasr were incapable of defending their own people, defending their own land. and most of them got kicked out. in fact, if you go back and look, most of these dictators

who are present in the middle east or were present in the middle east until very recently actually followed along after the six-day war. they all came in at a different time after the war was over; got rid of the previous rulers and they stayed and stayed and stayed. the other thing that happened, of course, was that with arab nationalism gone, as a rallying cry, what do you look to? well, you look to islam. and the islamic, you know, movement, the islamic renaissance really began during that time, too. and that is, you know -- so it basically islamism replaced secularism. and arab nationalism which were perceived to have failed. the dictators that came and stayed for that long period of time are now sort of dropping one after the other. and i don't think we're at all clear as to what is going to

take its place. what the reaction is, but just as we might not have predicted that the six-day war would lead to the rise of the mukhabarat state in a form that it had ever been before and the rise to islamism i think we are not very good or we have no reason -- we should be very modest about our predictions about where things go from here. another place, of course, that you could look back to if you wanted to see the tectonic plates moving -- shifting in the middle east is basically back to 1916 and all the borders that were there. actually, in both of these cases if you look back in 1916 and the advent of the colonial period and then look at 1967 and the transfer -- or the shift in power that went on at that time, i guess the key thing is that neither of these worked out all

that well. and that we should be aware of the fact that just because something is changing doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to improve. but as i say, i do come down on the side that bruce took which is basically that we have a real prospects here of something that is different than it has been before. that could be very positive. and that's worth working for. in looking at this mess, basically, looking at a set of circumstances of chaotic situation in which we really can't tell what happens next or where it's going to go, it sometimes is helpful to keep your eye on sort of fundamentals. what can we look at? what kinds of things can we expect to see? what are some of the -- either the assumptions or the like likelihoods that we face, since

everybody loves list, i made a list of the things we ought to watch out for or keep our eye on along the way. i, however, am short in imagination so you're always supposed to have a 10-point list, you know, starting with no. 10 and down to number one which is the most important of the bunch. i only came up with 9. and so i apologize for that, but i figured in a crowd as smart and with this much background maybe somebody can suggest to me which one i'm overlooked and add to that and i could have a 10-point list like everybody else. so i'm going to give you my 9-point list and nothing else will tend to give you something else to think about and plenty of targets to shoot at if you want to shoot back. number 9, we have to start from the top and work down, and one that we don't talk about right

now but which i think is actually worth keeping your eye on, and that is the iraqi oil situation. that basically iraq has the prospect of actually doubling its production by the end of this decade. it's almost certainly going to pass iran as the second largest oil producer in opec. and according to what we're reading, if you can believe it from the geologists and others, iraq has unexplored resources in the oil reserves that are on the neighborhood of saudi arabia. i mean, really massive. and those haven't really been tapped. and the reason they haven't been tapped is because saddam was busy carrying out wars and there were other -- and they were -- and kept iraq under sanctions almost indefinitely. and they couldn't do the exploration. they couldn't do the drilling. they couldn't do all the things

that were necessary to develop those fields. if, in fact, the present government is able to maintain enough stability to actually carry out all of those tasks, iraq could become a bigger player than it has been in a very, very long time. this is not going to happen overnight. iraq isn't going to turn into a 10 million barrel a day producer by -- you know, in 10 years or anything like that. but it might in time. and it might turn into a, you know, 4, 4.5 million barrel a day producer by the end of this decade. and that's not bad given where things are and given the fact that it's one of the few places in the world where massive oil reserves still exist that are unexplored. that it seems to me is going to make iraq a very interesting country to watch in the near

future. there's all the political side that goes with that, too and that, i think, is important to watch. but they're going to have negotiating leverage that not every country has. and that will give them resources to do things if they can work out their -- it will give them an incentive to work out some of their internal problems so that they can proceed to develop what could be really the golden goose. okay, this is slow but it's important. item 8, i agree completely with bruce that islamism and particularly osama bin laden took a huge hit in this current set of events. no matter how hard you look on al-jazeera english which i hope one of these cable companies will pick up hopefully in new york. there's place you can watch them on computer and i would much

rather watch it on the television set if that were available, but one of the things that was true of that and i think many of us even given the fact that they didn't have a cable channel of their own spent a lot of time watching it. i think there is one -- you can watch it here in washington, can't you? which is you're privileged in a way. but the one thing that you didn't see on those videos coming out of those different places are people carrying signs saying "islam is the solution" or "hooray for osama bin laden." that was completely absent. no hint of that whatsoever. truly there are islamist parties. there's a major one in turkey and there's a major one in egypt. and they're going to try to make a comeback. clearly they're going to try to play. i would argue that in the past,

much of the success of the islamist parties was due to the fact that they owned a certain amount of political space, i.e., the mosque that wasn't available to anybody else. there was no political space for anybody else to operate in these states that were police fund. so the islamists had the place to themselves because they had a space that they more or less controlled and they could use that to actually organize and think about politics and the like. something that wasn't available. so they actually thrived on some respects on a repressive environment. the harder you made it for everybody else, the more advantage they had to some degree. and you don't want to overestimate that but it was necessarily true. if these revolutions go anything like what they appear to be doing and that is to open up a lot of political space that

other people can come in, the islamists have a bit of a head start. they've been there a little bit earlier. they've been organizing and so forth. but the other parties are going to catch up. i've joked that the -- what we need in a situation like this in states that have been repressed for a very, very long time where no politics was permitted at all is you needed freeze-dried politicians. [inaudible] >> i hit the wrong key. you need freeze-dried politicians and freeze-dried political parties that you could just sprinkle a little water on them, and boom, they pop up and could begin functioning as normal. that doesn't happen as normal. politics, parties develop over time and that has not been permitted. i do think, however, they'll make up for lost time very quickly. and the islamist parties, like

the muslim brotherhood, if they do even -- whether they like it or not, they'll probably at least at the beginning have to play by the rules. and those rules are not as helpful to them as the past was. that they could -- they could be the only game in town. in effect, if you wanted to be against the regime, that is where you had to go. so at least these parties will now have to compete on a more level playing field and i think that's something that they probably are just beginning to realize what that really means as far as their activities are concerned. item 7, syria and iran. bruce talked about this and i think he was absolutely right, again, it's really interesting to note that iran has trumpeted, you know, all of the uprisings and all of the countries of the middle east, all