interviews for applicants for new jobs come and this is my favorite part, interviews behind screens. we know this is serious because the author of that harvard law review piece went on to write the law editorials for the near times in later years. he's now left that and his teaching law at yale, so help me. said original title for my book was 10 bad ideas from the law schools and how they changed the world. at least that's how i started out, what became the "schools for misrule." as you can tell i abandoned that title and i abandoned the framework for it because i couldn't answer the question really, mr. olson, only 10? how long is this book going to be anyway? and so i realize that i needed

to turn in part to why we get so many of these bad ideas, why law schools keep turning out certain kinds of bad ideas. and it's not just that the randomly generated bad ideas. and some of that but only some of it is ideological. todd mentioned that the law schools, let me understate again, are not exactly hot beds of libertarian and conservative thinking these days, despite the best efforts of richard epstein, randy barnett, john maginnis, richard epstein, richard epstein. [laughter] they are outnumbered and it depends on which study you look at. and some studies it's only six to one or eight to one ratio. another one found 28 to one at stanford, that must be exaggerated. 23 to one at columbia. those figures may be

exaggerated, and yet harvard according to people who did should know to go for 30 years without hiring a single republican. elena kagan ended i believe. over much of that time harvard maintained a committee for diversity. while it wasn't hiring and republicans, john mcguinness of northwestern put it this way. even as the tory party, or rather, i'm sorry, the anglican church in great britain has been described as the tory party at the pulpit, so the legal in most good law schools can be described as a democratic party at the lectern. now, that has been changed and i mentioned it's been changed at harvard. and, indeed, most schools that have in respect these days whether libertarian or a conservative professor that they

may hesitate to more than one for fear that they will breed -- [laughter] but they do tend to have one. and so things aren't changing. this ideological slant goes back a good long ways. and if you wanted to come you could trace it back to roscoe pont about a century ago who said that law should be conceived as a five social engineering, isn't that a wonderful phrase, which means that the law schools might think of themselves as schools of engineering. but it really began picking up momentum during and after the new deal. various law professors joined fdr's administration. even more notably, people in fdr's administration went over to law schools after they left and became professors. and it was such a 1943, for the

publication of the most widely cited and i believe most influential article ever published about legal education, that being harold boswell's legal education and public policy in the yale law journal. let me set the stage for just a moment. laws will was a very influential new deal official, sometimes described as the founder of -- and a clinical scientist. at the time they wrote this, the law itself had just changed in a tectonic nine-point i'll richter scale way. because the supreme court had given him in the switch in time can save nine had decided that after all the u.s. constitution did not prevent the government from running the economy, it would agree not to strike down most regulatory programs.

and so we were clearly launched on a very new era, at least he thought in which the government would be doing much more than it ever did. and yet here we have the law schools still teaching the same old curriculum. this was the beginning of the article's argument. in particular, the law schools were still teaching mostly about so-called private law, contracts and property and various other topics, that were indeed typically thought of as necessary training, main street private lawyers who are going to go out and begin arranging business deals, resulting dispute the main street, advising affluent clients how to get their money out of government hands. but this was not he said what lawyers of tomorrow should be learning how to do. he said that instead of drilling

students in such have outdated matters of bills and notes, the new curriculum should be determined quote in reference to social objectives, and toward achievement of democratic values. he went on with some specifics. he said that he, i mean they, but he is identified as a key author here. he emphasized such passions of private law, nuclear, as contracting property which are quote much favored instruments fully for society. if you had to have a course in law, they asked why not take construction public housing projects or land-use planning as a proper jumping off point for your proper course? worse yet, they argued, was the public, even though the supreme court had made clear that it was now going to change to accommodate the new government, they complained that the

so-called public law questions are so organized with too much deference to separation of power, jurisdiction, due process, equal protection, interstate commerce, et cetera. trust in the states, schools should recognize that private inheritance was going to be kept to a new minimum in the new society. they should realize lawyers need to be trained in new forms of regional government like the tennessee valley authority and how it had been sent out. and on and on. law schools they said should adopt the mission of conscious efficient and systematic training for policymaking. now, this was in genius. part of the engineering was that schools that stopping had to be a private letter, that whole segment of the site would stop being so important. and yet, it was so terrible come it was terrible on any number of levels, let's face it, but let

me stress a terrible it was as prediction. because had you been trying to drink on even a polished look, let alone a practicing main street live, the last thing you would have wanted to do was to substitute tennessee valley authority work as a for government law to nt if you turn to tort law era, every single one of those concepts they wanted to deemphasize turned out to be vitally important. and has remained vitally important to the state and how lawyers practice law et al. the supreme court applies it. so prediction of what lawyers need to know, and i could add parenthetically set every time you hit someone from law school predicting that one area of law will bloom in the future, so we should train more lawyers they are and others will shrink, so we should train fewest, ignore them because they are approximately always wrong. back in the '70s they thought energy law was going to boom, which it didn't. no one predicted that trade

market licensing was going to them what you did. they predicted that groups -- and divorce which ring, which it didn't. and on and on. always ignore them. but it wasn't just of course a matter of prediction. law school and mcdougal were being kind of ideological about it. and even though as i will mention the moment no one will adopted their program hole. a couple of influential atmospheric influences. one of them was that it got professors used to the idea that the students were going to be out there running the world in a policy sense rather than just doing business deals and tax planning. and the principles they themselves thought might once be shaping the world. law as it is was down and prestige. from then on law as it should be was up in prestige from on. and although some might say that

it was a possible problem of indoctrination here, law school and mcdougal to answer to that which is when you teach students the old curriculum, you're indoctrinated into different plants we can't escape if you choose which kind. we were a lot about in later years since. well, as i say no and adopted a program called because it was just too impractical, to drop the old curriculum entirely. and yet about 10 years later, something very noteworthy happened which got a lot of people's attention, which is the yale law school dropped property as required course. this was almost unheard of. because property in the first place is terribly important on the bar exam. it is terribly important in all sorts of areas of real-life legal practice, but yale students been were so smart, they were so agile in their minds that they could cram it up

when it came to actually prepare for the bar exam. in the meantime think at the time he would free up for philosophical discussions, you know, truly stimulating and interesting things. year was the most prestigious law schools. this was intimately related to the fact that here was the most impractical and philosophical of all law schools. yale professors, he came to be either famous that they would be adorably clueless if you have a legal problem you need someone to solve, you need someone to bail out of jail or something. it was as if the professors of the most admired medical schools were the ones who are most at a loss would consider for the natural patient. law schools to the competitiveness that so characterizes law school world. there is an irony here. as i painted they talk this

great egalitarian game about everyone being on the same footing in society come and yet there are no debutantes who are half as jealous of each other as law schools are. there are none who are as obsessed with greatness and taking orders as law schools are with the u.s. news taking orders. between that and accreditation there as an enormous pressure for them to become more yale like. there was an interesting article by malcolm gladwell in last month's new yorkers in which he talked about the many failings of university ranking systems. and he points out with respect to the undergraduates that all schools are under pressure to pretend to be more yale alike, more research oriented, interdisciplinary this and, you

know, famous philosophically grounded professors in every area. and yet this is not what actually works for most schools. i compare it to someone who looks out at the entertainment world and noticed that the most successful single act was lady gaga and, therefore, recommend that all other entertainment acts become more lady gaga like. she's the only one who can as we get away with that. and so it is with yale and highly philosophical, highly policy oriented of legal instruction. but it did work for yale because without as much time spent on boring old things like the old property law they were able to generate all sorts of very influential new ideas. i will briefly summarize here because at law schools like business schools and like education schools, every five or 10 years, completely new ideas. so you had charles roche with a

new property, the idea that the right to welfare payments and the right to a government job for right to teach again you are right to some favor from current was really a new property that you should be entitled to keep, but much preferable to the old property. this is credited with touching off much of the rights revolution of the '70s in which courts begin creating various new due process sometimes substantive rights. with consequences we see today in the difficulty of getting rid of badly functioning public employees and many other consequences. on to the public interest law of the 1970s, very much a project marshaled at the leading law schools, through the new conceptions of the constitutional law in which it was believed that the u.s. constitution properly read would require the institution of more or less the entire agenda of the

-- "the new york times" op-ed page. and with its notion that pretty much everything of law, in secure transactions and bankruptcy law should be thought of as charged with race and gender and every other personal category. some of these were much more successful than others. i trace in the book both some of the successes as with the rights revolution and some of the failures as with areas where the ideas were so impractical that they felt like on their face. but the story culminates or at least the latest episode of it is the rise of international human rights, and i believe that in law schools and interest in international human rights. there are dozens of new centers in projects at clinics and

entities. and if you are so thinking of international human rights is something that is primarily meant for dissidents brought in a way in dungeons and against the sort of newspapers, or the sort of regimes with a close down the opposition newspapers, i fear you're much behind the times. that is still part of the agenda, and yet there is much, much, much more as you can see if you go to many of the universities, or human rights watch. where you're just as likely to see articles about the need for changes in domestic violence or sexual harassment law, the need for quotas. the right to health care, the right to minimum income, the right to collective bargaining, the right to be freedom, the free of hate speech, depending on which group you go to. and this has been creeping into

american discourse in a variety of ways, primarily i think the influence of legal academia. and some of you remember earlier this year when a united nations panel criticized the united states as being violating human rights, the laundry list went on and on, dozens of things the u.s. was doing wrong often by not having a big enough government. and the obama administrations response i thought was fascinating because prominent in the response was it's so unfair for the u.n. to say that the u.s. is systematically violate human rights and the right for health care for example, because last year we passed obamnicare took a giant stride in the health care area. this falls into the category of reassuring, but less reassured. i find it bothersome and i think they'll would've been an additional reason to vote against obamacare if people it argued publicly that it was

required for our international human rights obligations. similarly and the controversy in recent weeks in wisconsin, i wish i had a dollar for every time someone from the academia argue that what governor walker did their in repealing some of the old public union rights actually was a violation of international human rights. very widely argued. so there's a pattern here. much as it was breached in the 1970s that the u.s. constitution required a properly read court enforcement of the agenda of "the new york times" editorial page, so now it is increasing argued that international human rights are properly applied this to someone they can't this will happen, required the same "new york times" editorial page agenda. it gives the commit more to do. and in that, it is very much like most of the other ideas i talk about in legal academia.

after that .. it just sounds kind of lefty ideas give the government more to do. but it gives lawyers and judges more to do which is not always, was not always fdr's abuse that litigation should have a bigger role in society. it in particular gives them a lot more to do because they're the ones who often, when we decide to resolve them, rather than legislatures or, you know, other ways of doing things. so friedrich hayek i think would've understood the old power of yet another genre of intellectual school arranged in such a way as to make their own preach much more influential. and important, certainly good news for the graduates of law schools is perhaps even better news for the in demand faculty. i'm not so sure that it's good news for all the rest of us. thanks.

[applause] >> thank you. i'm going to ask the first question, and then we will let walter choose his own in clusters. but i will remind you all to wait for the mic a phone, especially since we have, we are recording this both for heritage and for our c-span guests. and playstation and identify any affiliation before you ask your question. and keep it to a question. i said i would mention my one criticism and walter has touched upon it. although i don't, i think that his original idea for the title may be wasn't the best either, and bad ideas from the law schools. i'm not thrilled with the title that he chose dixon going to ask a very pragmatic question. it's not? greek so doesn't deserve that topic one tile that might so but be misleading is how law schools

are destroying america. though i don't think that would've worked either. but do you mind telling us what the process is to focus group a book titled, how you settled on this one? did what i have any doubt or maybe i am all wet with your title? >> well first, first time during your applet right, i did not want to write a screed. it's not easy to come up with titles, but alas i would try to because it would wear off all the edges. i was thinking i'm afraid of in part the school for scandal as a phrase from, was it restoration comedy, in part to make fun of the high and mighty. and i wanted to make fun of the high and mighty. and partly i was listening for

words that had not been overused, and how america has lost all shock value. misrule is still a word that has been used in a title. so that's as unfocused group of way as i can think of. >> fred smith from the cbi. >> walter, haven't read your book yet. but you make a very good case. it's a generic case that the intellectual self interest will be pursued quite well because of their ability to be morally -- they gain more prestige and also they need power both in government an and in the power sector. why, given the threat this poses to entrepreneurial businesses, businesses more generally, why

have businesses been so passive about the legal resources, general counsels and so forth, and yet business in this area and so many other areas seems to be passively waiting? >> it's a good question. why has business and those were interested in the thriving of an entrepreneurial system, why have they paid little attention to law schools? you could ask it even more pointedly after reading the book because i tell at considerable length how a very different group, namely the ford foundation starting in 1940s and '50s and later joined by other liberal philanthropies, they were not -- they were plowing and vast amounts of money, and great deal of clever organizational skill into making the law schools as they thought more socially conscious, introducing various activist

themes, sometimes highly successfully, sometimes not so. but they were working more or less on their own. and i suppose that is more conservative libertarian donors had been making a similar effort you would have seen whether the university administrations would have let it end. it should be said parenthetically the law and economics movement did spring up in a very considerable influence out of a counterweight to some of the bad thinking in some areas. that having been said it's only a partial counterweight and law and economics itself is ideologically mixed which is appropriate. i think it would make sense for people who disagree with the directions to spend a lot more time thinking about it because currently their voices are scarcely heard at all. i mentioned richard epstein. he happens to be used in about six or eight different areas.

that's the only recognizable person right of center because there isn't anyone else. he is great at doing it but give him a break. yes. >> my name is paul and my question is, i assume that this is going to fall of its own way. i think in the commentary article which i have read from your remarks today it sounds like the forces that perpetuate so, it's not going to fall of its own way. can it be influenced, can lawyers, graduates of law school drive use the economic weight, try to collaborate with other like-minded alums to pressure their law school? if not, what is to be done in? >> well, there's several different questions to disentangle here. first as far as the influence of the outside, we are at a moment

of crisis for the economics of law schools that is causing a great deal of rethinking of what they should do. not necessary and ideological rethinking. it is in part we thinking of why is there such a gap pursued by law friends and others who hired long grudges from what they have been trying to end with you wind up needing to know and practice. and that serves as a very significant break against the pursuit of completely froze three. and, indeed, one of by themes in the book is that we hit bottom years and years ago, law schools have been tending to improve not only in ideological diversity in recent years but also to the extent to which they are connected with real-life legal problems. the age of the french deconstructionism was felt there, too, but you can keep your provider graduate you are courses. so for better or worse, and you see one jump ahead, you see this is often forced.

now there are more successfully policy oriented. they're beginning to have more successful influence on how government operates than they did 15 years ago. and, of course, a lot of that is, many of us disagree with budget increasingly through blogging, through real-world oriented scholarship, you have much more effective liberal forums of styles of being a law professor and you did back in the days of critical legal studies and theory. there's the second and not a closely related question of where should a student want to go for a less than lopsided type of faculty. and many people i know who are confident on the i decided to go to the place where there's relatively little support for them. there is now the george mason

law school in the d.c. suburbs here, which has a brilliant market strategy went out and scooped up a lot of conservatives and libertarians faculty were being undivided and types of offers they were getting elsewhere. it has risen rapidly in the rankings again, and yet by almost any standard they have done brilliantly in acquiring, adding beyond their weight. so, even though it is easy to get discouraged about some of the trends, some of them are also self-correcting to some extent in that there is club isn't. alan dershowitz to my disagree on many other points but put it this way. everyone's diversity is getting more results come and hiring is like a club in which you get tired of people who are already in the club. that hasn't been said that there's almost no comparison in the federal society has been

important between the number of young faculty would agree with many of in this room, and same sort of survey had you done it 15 years ago, no comparison. there are so many more of them now. yes. >> my name is ian drake. following up on that response, you know the federalist society. do you think then that one avenue for a counter to the dominance of the left is only going to come from the elites themselves into elite schools? in other words, anne northup to get hired in any law school -- in order to get hired you have to push for a federal judge and you have to come with a brahman degree, therefore the only opponents within the category to be of people from elite schools. do you agree that is essentially the only front that is open to counter this trend? >> i think that's very well put. and the problem of bad ideas at

harvard or yale, there being harvard or yale scholars. it isn't a matter of a few range 10 more ordinary law schools together you of some of balance out one harvard or other top 10 school. and ideas have consequences. we always find -- getting back to that same point which is one must have id is better qualified to best the other side ideas and debate. spreading money or, had a greater organization fair, you know, networking and third place are all helpful and all may help people who deserve to succeed from falling by the wayside, but nothing would substitute. >> christine from cei in the front row.

>> hello. so, i'm wondering what you think, what your thoughts might be on whether some of these sort of wrongheaded ideas in academia actually translate to lawmakers? for example, states attorney general are members of congress or state legislators. do these ideas in fact have influences that have become bad law? >> yes, i think they do, and i gave various examples in the book or i could've easily filled several books with other examples. in areas that i know cia's interest in -- cti is interested in, whether proper role of states attorney general, the proper role of statute of limitation which became relatively on private any academic literature and without the overthrow of statute of limitations we would never have had most of the tobacco litigation or things like that.

when it ceases to be respectable to defend notions like certain applications, statute of limitations, various other old limits on liability, and it sucks being respectful in the law schools there'll still be some judges who resist because there are a lot of very strong minded judges, especially these days on the supreme court. but most judges are somewhere in the middle. and if they've got plausible ground, they don't want to be attacked in 30 florida articles. and it works its way up in citizens united. at the moment we have this really strong minded supreme court justices, replace them with one's -- have to be opposite point of views the ones who are a little more susceptible to academic and editorial opinion, and you lose this submission.

>> yes. >> david bernstein, george mason law school. one thing, you pointed out that law schools have become at least somewhat ideologically prefers which i agree with for the last 15 years or so. when that happens, history, clinical science, sociology, anthropology, and so forth, and my theory is this is in part because we have a supreme court and judges who were appointed by republicans and they're taking this use is the faculties can't just write you off in an that but if you have some other, i'd be interested why lott has had a bit of a shift what other disciplines seem immune to any kind of ideological diversity. >> that's an interesting question, and on the tendency of law schools do not be as ideologically extreme as anthropology or sociology, that's pretty well borne out in the surveys that have been done.

those two disciplines and some others are even more lopsided than law which takes some doing. the law has been the most influential of them, and i think you posted very interesting first cut at why professors who particularly if they intend to specialize as so many do in big and national issues of constitutional law, if they can't predict what the u.s. supreme court will do because they can't make themselves and even hypothetical ways, then they're not going to be terribly good at entertaining the court's doings. all they can do israel against it. so indeed it is intended to reward professors whom may indeed be of liberal premises, but at least take the time to treat seriously the ideas that differ from their own, and, indeed, you have seen quite a substantial body of liberals

have made an effort to understand conservative schism, elena kagan on too many other institutions as well. and i'm not sure it's only thought, there may be some from the fact that lots of the right people who go into law for many reasons other than changing the world politics and the need to be catered to, the views of lawyers generally in elite practice after they get at glasgow are more democratic than the american outreach but are not to, so the our number of influences on them because law is inevitably going to be more real world constrained than sociology or anthropology. no offense to those, but it is. oh, yeah, in the back row. >> hi. i was wondering what kind of reaction you were getting from

people in these law schools to the book? >> i just began touring on it a few weeks ago, and so i have been to i believe indiana, illinois and minnesota so far. and the response has been wonderful. now, maybe the ones who hate my guess would be seen dead in the same room, but faculties are often agree with much more than might expect of both the critique and the possible way to improve things. students, maybe they're mistaking my talks would talk about the general law school crisis, why it's so hard for them to find jobs. but for whatever reason, it is going up in larger numbers than when i, than what i expected. i mentioned that we're

economically we are at a moment where it is right for rethinking things. there's a lot of doubt as to help you reach out. the ranking system may be shaken up because law firms that hire, you sometimes the better hiring, from a higher up on. possibly it will be law schools are so darned expensive and somewhat schools adhere to be able to charge much less and offer just as good an education. one way or another there are a lot of people who gain an intangible way by coming up with a better method. an issue that has become up for debate is would it help to both the accreditation system? and i complain in the book that a lot of the trends that i dislike are reinforced by accreditation agencies which require a commitment of clinical education whether or not you think that it would work in your

school that it requires certain types of research orientation and on and on down the line. it has been argued by people i respect that blowing up a accreditation won't just present us with a complete set of problems, at least it will be different. but one way or another they are not working well. even from their own. more questions. there was another one in the back row. >> this week the weekly standard had an article about the declaration of the principles of the -- what i'm wondering is what the declaration does and it's been touted by a wiffleball from innovative standards and principles were academic principles are like that and it gives back, for example, i guidance on how they should be making decisions about tenure, articles that they should be

promoted, those types of things world is being opened to. what you think about some type of standards with the academic community actually, now that it is imposed on the outside but it does though standards voluntary and it is used by faculty and other members, the point you think i'm not being afforded the academic freedom, do you think that would be helpful to combat this problem? >> i have considerable skepticism about efforts to promulgate general principles of that sort, and one of the earlier questioned whether it was what about what can outsiders do to change the ideological. it could become at odds with the freedom of academics expect and one ends up being -- we note that happen in some instances law school clinics. any general set of rules is going to be used both as a sort an issue to go be used by some

people to say the principles allow not to be interviewed with it will also be used aggressively by people who want to defend boundary, string from the rules and so forth. i guess my general sense of the principles of academic freedom is we're better off if they don't change very rapidly, and if they remain decentralized, provide, some of which are almost impossible, others of which are more open to some signals from public opinions, that they are often going off in the wrong direction. not a very useful into, -- useful answer. let me mention, if you're interested in my feelings about international human rights law

as a flavor of the decade in glasgow, heritage has a tremendous program calling attention to the latest developments. yes, in the back row. >> my name is bill post a comment abject professor of law at georgetown law center just down the street. right wing freak show. [laughter] my question is related to some that you've been asked out and it comes in three parts but how do you know this among the teams at any of the top law schools, a recognition on their part that there is an imbalance or the extent of the imbalance? i, to the regard that as a problem, do they recognize it? and thirdly, is there anything like a series plan among any of them to redress the imbalance? >> i wish i could read their minds better than i could.

a few years ago when adam and the new times did it well reported, good article on this general issue, he was not finding dean's a fossil or highly placed figures of a source who are actually defending the imbalance and sang, you know, darned if you're going to change will be required to do, we'll keep those with people who think like me. there was some recognition, and certainly there are individual deems that we all know -- deans that we all know who have come often at the price it is a price bring in people that they disagree with. but the way i think of deans is that they don't agonize about anything anymore then have to because their time is too spoken for by meetings and fundraising. and so unless there is

discontent on the outside of have to pay attention to, it's easy to move on to the 10 things that do not have to worry about instead of adding an 11th one that no one has pestered them for months about. and i think that's probably how a plurality of the dean's actually treat the intellectual diversity issue. fred again. fred smith. >> a follow-up. anthropologists and sociologists, they are less connected so less reality check. allowing very much embedded in the world economic will come and get it doesn't see dramatic a century between the way the private part of the economic sphere and the federalists, the cato, cei's, others respond to issues in whidbey in the public law center, human rights lawyers and so on, and their intellectual allies and what you

talk about, one seems the strategic, the other seems to be winning cases. is there some way of raising the strategic awareness of our side to recognize where it will end and we're fighting it defensively? >> well, fred, it is a metaphor. i prefer culture peace. but the question is why the asymmetry? and let me pursue thought for a moment because i spend a fair bit of time in the book talking about how, if you move from groups like the american civil liberties union to law school clinics and programs in adjacent areas, you find a whole lot of overlap. you find cooperation. even sometimes our revolving door of highly qualified personnel. you find that the publications

and the roundtables and so forth are constantly informing many of they were thinking this weekend vice versa. your tremendous cooperation. would we actually want that cooperation between groups that are the ideological opposite numbers of the aclu? or would that just make law schools get more polarized and yet more ideological? i have my doubt that they should jump headlong into equally cozy relationship with conservative or libertarian think tanks, or much less with groups that may have lobbying agenda is which would be disastrous. so the question is, therefore, should we tell them stop seeing the aclu, stop digging the aclu four times a month. and at least date around for effective groups. i don't want to feel marriage to any of them, see what i mean?

just stick let me ask the concluding -- why don't you stand up here or stay for the concluding questions. i didn't know why john who introduced me was, need to mention my service on the u.s. commission on civil rights. but then you explained answer but i see a few of my colleagues here, there have been several have been agitating to abolish the u.s. commission on civil rights. apparently because american civil rights is passé and they want to replace it with a human rights commission. so if you wouldn't mind explaining what is it that is so attractive to so called progressives about human rights? i will suggest one or ask one, you know, civil rights law actually has some limits, but there are no limits to what you can dream up in the human rights realm. >> and i'm also highly alarmed

by the effort to rename and think some civil rights to human rights, as you hint. civil rights, we conceive of as a bunch of categories having to do with minorities or others in potentially oppressed groups. not a member of the group, it's poppy not a civil rights issue. human rights is meant to encompass that those rights of health, labor, and many others. once been is eager to bring in the literature and the pronouncement of the various international groups that follow this. one thing that would change is to trim his influence of legal academia because in both the civil rights in the human rights area, basically every new idea that comes along is embedded with a long literature. civil rights classic area where the body opinion represented so widely in the country and in

this room, which is that genuine equality of opportunity means not discriminating by race or gender. this is not got its large body of academics behind. are almost unanimously as a starting point to write have indicated it's one reason why civil rights law is so incredibly hard to reform. it becomes even worse if you read back to the human rights law spent i would like to avoid to join the in thanking walter. [applause] >> for more information visit walter olson's website, overlawyered.com. >> doctor, the title of your book is in the middle and on edge, and the press as you mentioned has always been on the middle and on the edge of different parts of idaho's civilization. what do you mean by that?

>> it is okay between what is present-day pocatello and boise. and those areas had a larger any population at the beginning. and so we're almost exactly in the middle there. and what i really argue in my book is that twin falls is in the middle, is between two canyons which is the snake river canyon and i every candidate but is also in the middle between boise and pocatello. if one looks to the south, it's in the middle between northern nevada, a lot of northern nevada people come to twin falls for shopping and so forth. and the sun valley early. and, of course, everybody loves to be in the middle but it's not always fun to be on the edge. and argue that the fact that twin falls has been on the edge a number of different instances, has made people in twin falls more defensive than they might be. and i think really it's crucial in understanding our history.

for example, the freeway was built in the '60s. the freeway was built north of twin falls. it missed the city and it was this tremendous disappointment that somehow twin falls had been missed, that we were on the edge again. >> and how have made americans and pioneers influence the development of twin falls? >> native americans moved around a great deal. in fact, in my book i suggest they moved much like a lot of senior citizens do today. when the weather was warmer, they moved up into the campus prairie area, into what's present-day the south hills. so they migrated a great deal. now, of course, new contacts in this area, for trappers, working trail travelers, these are some of the first people who really came through this area and wrote about it. in fact, in 1811 wilson party

came through here and we're celebrating this year the 200th anniversary. and they made people in the east of where of the area for the first time. >> and your book also looks at the rise of unions and the rise of bootlegging in twin falls. why did you decide to add that to the book and how did you research the topic? >> i did extensive research on twin falls history, over 13 years, and what i was really dealing with what was key at time with local newspapers. and because twin falls adopted a dry area, adopted prohibition long before national probation, that was in the area constantly here. and often individuals would obtain alcohol in nevada just as today that that has legalized gambling, people in twin falls go to jackpot less than 50 miles away. and so there's that i think

rather interesting desire to not have alcohol on the one hand, or gambling if you today, but also access to it in northern nevada. so i was really following the newspapers in terms of what was the important in the city. >> what do you see as the biggest change in twin falls over 100 years of existence? >> oh, my goodness. in 2004 at the 100th anniversary of the city. and, of course, just a little over 100 years ago there was no irrigation here. the snake river had not been damned at milner, so there was basically no agriculture. so there's been a tremendous growth of agriculture in the last 100 years. and, of course, within the city itself that has been a growth associate with travel, art here in -- closest interstate, also the development tourism and

other factors that could not have been in vision 100 you to go. >> so those are not the money with twin falls, does your book help them understand the region? >> the title, "in the middle and on the edge" what i was trying to make it so i could do with those things influencing twin falls but not deal with the county history, for example. and so what right does is it focus on it on twin falls but also allows me to deal with a lot of issues, tangential to twin falls such as the opening up of the sun valley area in 1936, the development of jackpot in 1864 and that sort of thing. >> your book as anecdotes. can you give us an example that sums up twin falls for someone who really enjoys researching? >> twin falls was really fascinating to me. i think one of the things that i really enjoyed was the focus on

community, that twin falls is still small enough area that community is important. and i guess because of, maybe my own southern roots in small town, community is very important. of the constant focus on community and how to develop community to me is very, very interesting. >> you're not from idaho from twin falls, so what got you so interested in writing this book? >> i completed high school in ohio, and my family moved to california in 1962 right after i graduated from high school. i came to college of southern idaho in 1969, and do my doctoral dissertation i dealt with choreographers to describe regions in england. and that itself made me aware of the rich possibilities of understanding local history in terms of geography and all the

different components of the local history. >> is there anything you're working on coming up next? >> i am presently doing research on the history of the college of southern idaho. the college was created in 1965. i came here in 1969, so the college and i kind of grew up together. >> great. thank you so much, dr. gentry. >> and you for your time. >> what are you reading this summer, booktv wants to know. >> well, a book by john called the good society. it's a small book, tremendous wisdom for today. i am reading an encyclopedia of conservatism edited by jeffrey nelson. reading a book called viral spiral on the digital comments by david. and a recent bestseller which i haven't gotten around to fully reading, the black swan. >> visit booktv.org to see

this and other summer reading lists. >> now, julia became fast friends with a number of young women that were actually training to be spies and she was green with in the. one of them was a young woman named jane foster, james like chili was from a wealthy conservative west coast family. she was an adventurous california girl, but there the similarity ended. james was widely traveled. chat briefly been married to a dutch diplomat and stationed in java car and she spoke several languages including fluent malay. jane was everything that julie felt she was not. wildly sophisticated and alluring, witty and outrageous, bold and daring enough to be true by the hard material. while jane -- while julia was stuck collating files, jane was taking a crash course in espionage and learning everything from forgery, cartography, cryptography, to the fundamentals of what the os

called morale operation. how to create subversive propaganda and rumor campaigns to demoralize the enemy and create dissent. another os as colic that became a great friend of julius was named betty macdonald. that he had grown up in honolulu and she'd been a young reporter and was very first on the scene after the pearl harbor attack. she was recruited by the os as because of a working knowledge of japanese and their wartime experience. she and julie would disappear. she and jane would disappear for weeks at a time on orientation courses and small arms courses where they learn how to master a thompson submachine gun and a colt 45. julia was desperate to go to france or but after 17 years of high school and college french she discovered she couldn't speak a word. she had no special skills to recommend her for overseas service. so when the word went out that donovan was looking for warm bodies, any bodies, to help set up and run network of new intelligence bases in india,

burma and china, she immediately volunteered. she didn't care where she went as long as she got to go. there was a man shortage and the newly formed oss was woefully understaffed. it's important i think to remember that when you think of the oss, you generally think about the paramilitary and guerrilla operations. they get all the glory. you think of grainy images of agents parachuting behind enemy lines, but the fact of the matter is of the 13,000 employees, about 4500 of which were women, the vast majority spent their time writing reports, collecting and analyzing information, and planning missions. so the fact that many of the oss is very unorthodox activities could be conducted from behind a desk meant that women could be equally as effective. and so while the majority of women did remain in washington, helping to support the oss's far-flung missions, a very small

percentage went overseas. and an even tiny percentage ever went into active operations. but the small percentage that did go overseas, like jane, like julie and betty, they carried out their assignments with the same audacity, self-reliance and seat-of-the-pants ingenuity that donovan inspired and everyone that worked for him. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. >> what are you. >> a book by john kenneth called the good society, a small book, tremendous wisdom for today. i am reading an encyclopedia of conservatism, edited by jeffrey nelson. reading a book called viral spiral on the digital comments. and a recent best seller which i haven't gotten around to fully reading, the black swan.