[inaudible conversations] >> welcome to c-span's booktv. every weekend we bring you 48 hours of books on history, biography and public affairs by nonfiction authors. this weekend on booktv on c-span2 is everything you know about the ok corral wrong? with newly available documents jeff quinn to all the different story about wyatt earp, doc holliday and the clinton gang. and the lost war against the

international state system. for mexican foreign minister george jorge castaneta talks about mexico. find out about booktv alert on weekend schedule in your in box. .. >> not just on cnn, but also through this book. steve, i want to get right to the action. this is a provocatively-titled book. not push come to shove, it's push has come to shove: getting our kids the education they

deserve. what do you mean? >> enough is enough. there's no more room for our children to be failed by the system. we finally have an opportunity to transform education as we know it. we have an opportunity now like we've never had before because 20 years ago, 20 years ago if you had told us that poverty and race, that the participants' education and concern parents' education and where you lived determined the capacity of the child, we didn't have to believe it. now we've seen with successful schools and class rooms all over this great country in some of the worst, worst performing school systems in the nation these great opportunities for education are taking shape. so a new truth is being written every day. the problem is that we are too patient, we are too patient hoping and praying that one day this school will be better. if you just reform the school, come up with a new name, a new theme, move this principal in,

move that principal out, that's all we need. i don't think we have any more time to waste. we have given up all the children that we can. we cannot afford to lose another generation. if you do not work in education, if you have not been on the front lines, i am telling you that it's worse than you could ever imagine. the circumstances are far more dire than you could ever imagine. so the good part of it is that we have solutions. they're at our fingertips. we absolutely know how to solve these problems. push has come to shove, enough is enough. >> so you're telling me and trying to tell these people that a kid who grows up in poverty in a very challenged family with all the disadvantages, we can educate those kids to the top of the rung? the. >> you're talking about two kids, once upon a time, who did grow up in those circumstances and many more who are growing up every single day. if we are america, if we truly are the america that we say that

we are, then we have to believe even if it were not true, joel, that it's possible that every single child in america can be educated. think about it for a second. we know for a fact because we've seen example after example of successful schools. they are not anomalies. you simply can't write 'em off anymore. jeff canada, we've seen his work. ron clark, we've seen his work. so many eagle academy, you can go through the country and run your hands across great school after great school. and what they say, the opponents of it, the teachers' unions and all those people who support the status quo and failing children, they will tell you that there's something different about those kids. you got to pick those kids, and that's why it's successful. they're only successful because. i believe they're only successful because they're designed to work. i believe in every fiber of my

being that the reason why some children are successful and some children are not is, simply stated, the school they are forced to attend. if your family has the means and the wherewithal to send you to a good school, life is going to go all right for you. it doesn't mean that they're so smart just because they have more money. some of us might have met some people who seemed to be really wealthy, not necessarily the smartest people we run into, but if you have the resources to make sure a child is in a great school, you can make thing better. and because we as a school continue to grow, i don't just play a principal on television, i really am one. i was on work this morning and came down here from harvard to make sure i had a conversation with some of my new friends. what we see when we visit schools is that it is what's happening in the school. when you find the most successful schools, what you will find is children who want to be there.

we often see children, and we call them smart because we see them doing something that they love. i don't know that they're so smart, they're just inspired. and we can create inspiring educational experiences every single day for every single child who has been given breath in this country. >> like you just said, you're not just a tv even though you're a tv commentator, you're not a tv principal. tell us a little bit about capital prep magnet up in harvard. tell us about the kids you serve, what backgrounds they come from, what colors they are and what kind of results you're getting. >> it's a year-round college preparatory middle and high school. this year we're going down to pre-k. i'll be honest with you, i hate losing. i understand somebody has to lose, i just don't understand why it's got to be me. and we keep losing because we get kids in the sixth grade who are four grade levels behind. i actually believe that it's criminal.

if an attorney were to fail her client that way, if a physician were to fail their patient that way, if a hairdresser were to fail -- >> talk about something -- >> hey, man, you've got to know the crowd you're in sometime. >> give me some slack here today. >> so if anyone were to fail at that rate, they wouldn't be allowed to stay within the field. they would be asked to leave, summarily thrown out. but as educators we say, well, you know, it's poverty, race. at capital prep 70% of our children are poor. in fact, our school is so black and latino -- this is not a joke. it starts like a joke, but it's really not. that the state was going to close i down this year. said we were too segregated. 86% of our children are black and latino, 70 percent poor. they said our school was too black, so they were going to

shut it down. so i was going to get t-shirts saying, got white people. so aye been out on the hunt -- i've been out on the hunt making sure white people feel comfortable at our little school. and it seemed to happen, this year we're going to have white people at our school. >> those white people seem to know what they're doing, good outcomes at your school. >> what's funny, joel, what i've found -- if you know anything about connecticut, it really is the tale of two cities. because you find abject poverty next to extreme wealth. there's no middle, no buffer because the state's so small, you're just crunched on top of each other. but there are these imaginary lines that they call school districts that keep some kids in and won't allow some other children to escape. and what we've seen is that children are coming from the wealthiest school districts like avon to our school. because they've seen what we can do with children from historically disadvantaged populations, and be these folks

are saying, well, we know a good school, and, therefore, we're going to send our children to that school. >> the other thing i know about connecticut which is interesting, connecticut's a state that performs almost at the top in the united states, but at the same time it has the largest achievement gap between its white students and its black students. so that's an amazing fact. if connecticut could perform so high for its white students, seems to me it should be able to solve this problem. now, i'm about to ask you a few questions to make people think you're some kind of right-wing lunatic here, so before i do that, i want to establish a little bit about you. tell me a little bit about your background, your politics and so forth so we know where you're coming from. >> i was born on my mother's 16th birthday and the third generation of poverty. and here's what i think about that story. so what? it doesn't really matter from where you come, it's the

distance travel today where you end. and if i put too much stock in something i had no control over like my hue or to whom i was born or the fact that by the time i was a principle in college -- freshman in college my father was in prison, then i wouldn't be able to do my job. my job is to look into the eyes of children and see what seems not to exist, to find what only they dream of, and to do everything in our power to surround these children with people who love them so much that they're willing to do everything that they can imagine to get them to the next place. you know, it's very easy, you hear me talk about unions unabashedly. teachers' unions in particular. because they are the biggest problem in public education. it is their absolute objective to maintain the status quo because the status quo makes them get paid. be clear, this notion of labor versus management, they're teachers and teachers. i mean, a principal was a

teacher. that doesn't really -- the story that i think is most important is that when i was running the organization comcap which is an upward bound programs finish they work only with low income students, only who are going to be the first this their family to go to college. i was one of those students at one place, so i'm not just a hair club president, i was also a client. and what i saw troubled me. i saw children that i would work with over the summer in our six-week summer academy, and we'd get them going and get things going for them, and then we'd send them to these raggedy ass schools where they'd fall apart again. and it wasn't the kids because i'd just seen them. and at the end of one summer a parent said to me -- because she had moved to the suburbs.

it was a black woman, she had moved to the suburbs figuring this was going to be, to your point about the achievement gap. she figured if i move my child to the suburbs, they're going to get a better school. the child was tracked. so she asked me, why is it this program can't become it own school? i felt hike it was more of an indictment than a question. like here you are part of the problem now, you're part of the system, and i never thought myself to be part of the system. i might be dressed up like i could belong to the system, but i'm clearly not. ask my bosses. so i said to her when she asked me the question, i said, i don't know. and then she said, well, she started with the question, why is it only rich kids get good schools? i don't know you well yet, but i can't imagine any of you even if you are rich feel like that's cool, like that's okay. that you have to somehow be born

into wealth in order to get access to a quality school. i don't care how much money you make, i don't think that that sits well with anybody, and it didn't sit well with me. and so we took a program, and we turned it into a school. and we turned it into the type of school we want our own children to go to, the type of school i can look you in the face and say i can guarantee you i'll give you a world class education if you give me your child. >> this is a provocatively-titled chanter in the book. teachers' unions are the worst thing that ever happened to public education. explain that. >> the very purpose of a teachers' union is to make sure that they protect the rights of the adults, period. that is their sole charter. the charter is to insure that the employees keep their jobs come what may. they don't want anything that can stand in the way like student performance or the lack thereof to be used against them.

in fact, in most states, in most cities you simply can't use student performance to determine whether or not a teacher is effective. and the reason is because the unions have fought for it, and there have been too many cowards who have been chancellors and superintendents and assistant superintendents to fight back and push back on 'em. there are very few cowboys and swashbucklers like joel klein who are willing to stand up to 'em. as a result, these organizations have set up a system whereby children are forced to attend the schools that are closest to their home. i ask you to think about this in any ore industry. imagine if your mother needed an encologist, and there was one just at another hospital, but there's a hospital close to you. that's now your neighborhood hospital. doesn't have the best encologist. would you for a second accept that? no. in -- but we're telling chirp

and families the most important decision that any of us can make as parents, it's the most important decision, where you send your child to school, that you have to send your child to school that's closest to the house. the reason that's so is because the teachers' unions and other organizations like our good friends in naacp who fight to maintain the status quo so that these adults can keep their jobs. i don'ttive a damn if adults keep their job. that's not my point. that's not what i exist for. i'm here to make sure children get an education because i'm an educator. that's what i do. i pay people to teach people things. there are very few jobs that you get in actual the title tells you what you do. publishers publish. if they don't put books out, they're not a publisher. simple. teachers teach. talking it doesn't mean you taught it. if the children haven't learned it and you can't prove that they

have, then you're not a good teacher. it's simple. it's really simple. and so these organizations make it virtually impossible to fire bad teachers. what i want to -- i'm a public school. people often confuse me, they think i'm a charter school. i work for the superintendent, trust me. i know. i really do have a boss. they make it virtually impossible to get rid of teachers, and so, therefore, how many teachers did you guys get rid of in a year? is. >> out of 55,000 we'd get rid of eight. >> i mean, come on. you really think that all those teachers are that good? the reason why that's so is because the teachers' union has fought and lied to people about the conditions that create this. we know that children can succeed if given the opportunity to go to a good school. we know it.

there's no more questions about it. the reason why some of you live in the neighborhoods that you live in, and you get, like, you get triple options. one, you live in a good neighborhood which has a good school system. two, you have because of certain integration opportunities, you can send your child to magnet schools because they're looking for suburban kids and, three, if that isn't working, you just pay to send them to another school. you're going to exercise your options. what the unions have done is they have said point blank that if you live in this neighborhood, your child must go to this school no matter what, and if you don't, we're going to put laws in place to say that you will be arrested, arrested and charged as a felon for daring to send your child to another public school. it's disgusting, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. >> this is quite a day. i've been called a lot of things, man, but nobody ever called me a cowboy or swashbuckler, and i never heard

a school called a raggedy ass school. [laughter] what are one or two key things? what makes, what's the magic ingredient in the sauce of a great school? what do our kids need who come from challenges environments or other environments? >> two really simple ones, and i -- and we talk about them a lot when push has come to shove. the first is love. sounds bizarre really. but you have to love kids. i tibet all emotional. i get all emotional. you have to, honestly, love children. and, i mean, my two sons are coming to my school next year because we're opening an elementary school, and i was just saying to joel that the two weak teachers on my team right now are in the first grade and fourth grade, the two grades my sons are in. and he said, well, i thought you'd fire their asses. i'm gonna, but i don't feel any

more rushed, my pace isn't any more quickened for my sons than it is for any of the other children that are mine. so you have to first love children. that's the first thing you have to do. the second thing is choice. choice is essential. we often don't realize that fit is essential when choosing a school. if you have more than one child, you know nothing's the same. they could all look exactly the same, and they're all completely different. boy to girl, birth order, all that stuff. and you always have the artsy one, right? and you have the one who's the task master to everyone, and then, you know, every version of a person you find in these children. well, why then would we think for a second that you could send all children to the same exact school, and they'd all get something out of it? it's an absurd notion, really, and this is 2011, and people with means do make choices to send their children to schools that meet their interests. so if your child is artsy and

you have the money, you send her to an art school. if your child is into technology, you send him to a tech school. whatever the fit is. because children who are inspired perform well. so if you love children, you'll design a school that meets their needs, and when you have choice, there's a fit. >> so tell me, why'd you write this book? i mean, you've got a lot. you've got a day job as a principal, i see your face on cnn all the time, and you're doing inspirational speaking all around the united states. why this now? >> i didn't have a choice to write it. i didn't want. this i didn't. this is where i am. i want to use every moment that i have, every day. i think we're all on some level we take life for granted. we just do. i don't have a choice in this. i am called to do this. i don't know what else i do very well, and this might be my only shot at heaven, so i'm working the angles here. >> on that we certainly agree.

>> i know. so because that's the case i had to tell parents the truth. you have taken the brunt of the responsibility for the failed schools, and it's not your fault. there are areas that are your fault, and i talk about that, and i'm not going to get you -- don't think you're walking out of here without something to do. i give you stuff to do in the book. one of the things is how you can organize. the egypt was turned on its ear because somebody had facebook, right? but i wrote the book before that, just want you to understand that. takes a little while because publishers take a little while to get books out. you understand. but that being said, i kid my editor. that being said, there's things in the there, there's a lot in the book that you can use to your advantage right now that you'll be able to -- when you read it, you'll say, oh, okay, i

can, i can do an audit of my home. i can take a look at the way i spend my time and my space and where my children study, and how can i use it more effectively to help my children perform well. there's that. but more importantly, i want parents to understand that you have to change the school system. one of the chapters in the week is called sue 'em. i actually want you to sue the public school for damages because we can add a dollar value to a person's education. forget the civil rights stuff. y'all can march all you want. i don't look good marching. it just doesn't -- i don't -- i'm not dressed for that. but you should honestly consider suing the schools. because then you can begin to catch someone's attention. then you can take the money and send your child to an effective school now. why should you have to wait until somebody decides it's okay for a couple kids to get out?

what's the story about up with your charter schools? >> it's an amazing story just this year. we had 64,000 parents apply to charter schools in new york city where we had 13,000 people, slots to get in. so 51,000 parents wanted charter schools, and they couldn't get in. at the same time, the united federation of teachers' union and the naacp sued the city of new york to block the opening of 19 new charters next year. that's the story. >> it doesn't matter, and this is one of the things that we talk about in the book, that i talk about in the book. you don't is to believe -- you don't have to believe in charters. i want to make it clear, i don't think charters are inherently better than public schools or private schools. i don't think that any class of school is inherently better. good schools are better than bad schools no matter the classification. i believe in choice.

one of the things that the government does really well is give choice. if you look at section 8, medicaid/medicare, student financial aid, many people think that they don't believe in vouchers until you realize, wait a minute, i kind of do. if you believe in student financial aid, you're a fan of vouchers. you could go to brigham young university with a federally-backed or federally-funded grant. it's a church school, y'all, that you can spend your money at, but you can't spend your money at st. mary's. high school. doesn't make sense. you could send your child to georgetown which you do know is a jesuit team. i know they've got a good basketball team, doesn't look like a jesuit school. or boston college, not a lot of jesuits on their basketball team. however, you clearly can use

federally-funded money to seasoned your children to those schools. you can go to israel hospital with medicaid and medicare. federal money. so clearly we don't have a problem. you can take section 8 and live anywhere you want. public money used for private goods and services, and it works. those other organizations and those -- they don't have as good a lobby as the american federation of teachers and the nea. they win. until we get educated and we start to realize that the game has changed, and we don't have any more children to use. push has truly come to shove, and the opportunity's right now to save our children right now wherever you are, anywhere in this country. >> i've got one last one for you, and then we'll see if audience has any questions. you're going to publish this book this fall, i assume you'll

be out on a speaking tour, you're going to rock the world. what's next for steve perry? part of the reason i did this was to see what he's doing. a lot of people want to take this guy put him on tv full time, give him jobs in the business and so forth, but his principle thing is to run a school for kids, particularly needy kids in harvard. so what's the future for steve perry look like? >> oh, open a school in hartford, and we start back on july 5th. that's what i do, i'm a principal. i'll be out selling the book on the weekends. on the weekends. and, you know, there's a story in the book, i don't want to give it away -- >> give it away. >> no, there's a story in the

book about really the, um, the best and worst day of my life. and there's a very famous educator who called me on, um, december -- didn't call me, he texted me on december 24th. i was in sunny middle town, connecticut, and he was in -- >> new york city, born and raised. [laughter] >> a very sunny place. and that story is really why i wrote this book. i feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunities that aye been given. -- that i've been given. i don't think there's anything special about me because i really love kids, and i hate losing, and those two things together are a really great combination when it comes to being a principal. and as a result of that, i've

been offered opportunities to take other jobs to run districts. i just got a text from our friend. we have some shared friends who i've already said no to all the superintendents jobs that i've been offered even when my good friends text me on christmas eve and say, don't say no, just listen first. [laughter] >> he's laughing. i was down on vacation. i texted him on christmas eve. i didn't even have the courtesy to say merry christmas, how's your family. i just texted him, and i said don't say no. because i know he's going to say no, right? so he kept an open mind for at least 10, 15 minutes. [laughter] >> so i don't like doing anything as much as i like being a principal. i am sore today because we had a student/staff basketball game yesterday which we won. it's important that i tell the children that. that when i'm yelling at you

from the stands the reason why is because i'm better at this than you. i just dig what i do. i love being out front, greeting the children every morning. um, the tv stuff has its place, but only to spread the gospel of what we do in the real life. that'll come and go, right? people come and go off of tv. there'll come a time when publishers won't want anything to do with me, but i'll still be a principal of a high school. and my house is paid for right now, folks, so y'all got to shoot me. because i'm going to run my damn mouth from here on out. i can do whatever i want. the brother's got a place to live, my kids' college is taken care of, i've been grinding. so it is what it is right now. i am focused on making sure that everybody understands, everybody with ears understands that our children are beautiful and amazing, and they can be successful. they do not have to accept failure as a part of their life. it is not necessary.

we don't have to lose another child. and not every loss is a death. don't think -- it's not high or death all the time. sometimes it's the suburban kid who doesn't just fit into the large suburban high school and just kind of taps out. don't really feel like he belongs to anything, and he doesn't ever realize that he had a cure for cancer, and we're never going to get to experience that because he didn't go to the right schools. it's not cool and doesn't have to be that way. so i'm going to be -- unless you talk to the superintendent, i think i have a job still. >> wait until next christmas. [laughter] if anybody has a question or you can come up after. i want to make sure you grab a copy of this, steve will be here. i want to end with one little story, and i've been in this a long time. even before his house was paid and his kids' college tuition was taken care of, this fellow had the nerve to say what he

thought, and he's managed to survive when a lot of people would have liked to take him down. and trust me, nothing in this book is going to make him any more popular, so it takes somebody with this kind of courage. but i'll just give you -- in every experience in life that stays indelibly etched, and it reminds me so much what i find about steve. there was a school here in brooklyn i heard a lot about. i had teamed up with somebody in the private sector, it was a crackhouse, and we turned a crackhouse into a school building, and it's called excellence academy. it was about 100% african-american and latino males, no women. that is as challenging a group to educate in terms of the demographics. and i'd heard good things about it. so i got there one more morningd a kid was check anything, and he said to me, good morning, chancellor. i've been in, literally, a thousand schools in new york city. no one knows who i am.

if there's a media person there, the kids whisper, who's that? so i asked this kid, i said, what's your name? he said, jamal, i said, can you tell me what are you doing here at the excellence academy? well, chancellor, i'm on my way to college, so i'm getting prepare nowd. i said, wait a second, jamal, i said, you're in kindergarten. what do you mean you're on your your way to college? he said, well, you know, chancellor, it's never too young to start thinking about that kind of thing, right? now, when every kid in every classroom in every city starts telling you in kindergarten they're on their way to college, and trust me, this isn't a kid that grew up with a golden spoon in his mouth, that's when it's going to happen. guys like steve perry are going to make it happen because he's not going to put up with the status quo that's denying kids of color who look like him, that's denying them an opportunity at the american dream. there wouldn't be a better country.

thank you for doing this, my friend. [applause] >> [inaudible] i'm a reverend, an interfaith reverend, member of every religion, actually, and i'm very interested in developing a child that is fully spiritually enlightened, you know? which religions don't do and parents don't do. and i was wondering what are the -- [inaudible] what are the, is it possibly legally to teach meditation, yoga, how to become a good spouse, how to become a good person, how to love yourself in a public school? >> the question was, is it possible to teach spirituality in the school. >> yeah.

>> and i think the answer is yes. um, but i think it's even more porn that we allow -- important that we allow children access to choice. i say give the child the voucher, let him attend a religious school and keep it moving. you know, i don't think that every child should be submitted to something that they do not wish to learn. if you want to learn -- like, for instance, if someone wants to go to an all boys' school, i think they should be allowed to go to an all boys' school. i don't think there's anything wrong with that. morehouse college is an all men's college. there's nothing wrong with that. when you allow children access to the schools that make the most sense to them, then you get the most out of it. on friday we'll have graduation, and every single kid who will line up at our graduation is going to a four-year college. every single one. because we are the right school for those children. now, there's -- the conversation i had today with an eighth grade

woman, eighth grade girl's mother was about a girl who's not right for our school anymore. she's the wrong kid. she's been there for three years, she's just not doing what needs to be done. we have a thousand children on our waiting list. one of those children should have an opportunity. she should have an opportunity to go to the right school for her. so every school is not for everybody. now, off times we overstate how many children come and go from successful schools, but the truth of the matter is it's about fit, and it's about finding the right school. >> but you have -- with all due re reasons to you and respect -- reverence to you, you haven't answered my question. >> i said yes. >> but is it legally possible to do that? >> i said yes. >> definitely? >> we have another question, right? >> hi, dr. perry. my question is how do you

overcome these situations that pick place in this a student's home such as if they don't have food at home, or they have emotional problems at home and get to the point where you can inspire and then educate them? >> are question was when children have situations where emotional troubles at home or they don't have food at home, how do you overcome it? we have free lunch. as they do in every public school m -- school. we have free breakfast, but more important, we love them m -- we love them. really. i mean that. when a child knows that you love them and you're willing to go hard for them, they're going to do what they have to do. when a child feels loved, they'll do anything for you. whether it's a stranger or a coach, a parent or someone that they know, in fact, if you ever worked in the hood, for instance, and you know and the kids love you, man, nothing bad can happen in that classroom

because that, you know, shemika will light somebody on fire because they know ms. such and such is doing right by 'em. and, you know, you fought -- what are you doing, girl? she was talking bad about you. but that's not your job, let me take care of that. but when a child -- you can go to the, you can go to the worst neighborhood in the worst part of the community, and you can drive your car there, and you can kick the doors open, turn the radio on, turn the keys on and this is my car, and you are protected citizen. you are like royalty. but when children don't think that you love them, you could sit in your car with a club on it and low jack and a dog on the side of it, and they will in a couple -- take everything off your car, leave you sitting on the ground naked. children need you to love them. and by loving them you give them the education that they te serve. we overstate the impact of

poverty and parent circumstances on chirp's live. -- on children's lives. we really do. we really do. not that big an issue. that sounds crazy for me to say that, but when you put a kid in a situation where six and a half to eight hours a day they're in our building, i already fed 'em in the morning, i fed 'em in the afternoon, i got a bra knoll la in my pocket not for me, but because when we go shopping, my wife and i shop at sam's. so we've got extra food. i've got a refrigerator in my office, i have granola bars in there. i don't eat all that stuff. i have cereal in my office, and i'm not the only one. many of my staff do. if it's a food issue, that's a solvable problem. but more important than giving the child the food is feeding their soul. because they're not going to get full off the granolas that i'm giving them, but they have football practice, and i can't have them going there when the last time they ate was 3 1:30

and -- 11:30 and practice isn't over until 6, 7:00. i'm telling you, cut that out. folks, i'm telling you, kids don't care like that. if you give it to 'em, they're going to be there. and you will see at the most successful schools the attendance rates are like 95-97% a day. you can't go to suburban schools and see that level of attendance. even boarding schools don't have those levels of attendance. when a child has access to a school they feel loved and a part of, that child is going to do everything in her or his power to please the educators in their life. so i say to you, do not be fooled. poverty and wealth, they're just economic brackets. it doesn't mean anything. in the end even rich people, even rich people make sure they get their kids into good schools because if wealth was enough, then they could just send their children to horrible schools. but they don't do that.

even rich people who have all the resources at their disposal make sure they're sending their kids to a good school. so i'm saying i want to make sure that all children have the same resources that everybody has which is, simply put, access to a quality school. thank you so much for your time and attention. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> every weekend booktv offers 48 hour of programming focused on nonpic authors and books -- nonfiction authors and books. watch it here on c-span2. >> carl elliot, what is your book about? >> um, it's ant the way that -- about the way that medicine has changed as it's been transformed from a profession to a business, essentially. traditionally, medicine has been largely a self-policed,

honor-based profession, and over the past 30 years or so, um, it has been, um, taken over by a range of market-based forces; pharmaceutical industry, the medical education industry, a whole range of profit-based businesses which, um, because of the fact medicine's traditionally self-regulated now operate without a lot of oversight. >> okay. and what are the root causes of that? >> of the transformation? a lot of things. part of what i'm interested in the book is the emergence of the pharmaceutical industry as a huge force in the 1990s, and that was a period in which the sort of age of blockbuster drugs began.

so the drug companies started really hitting for the fences, looking for drugs that they could market to as many people as possible. usual hi for mild -- usually for mild, chronic illnesses. when the pharmaceutical industry started to become so enormously powerful, its influence over medicine began to grow much stronger. so you had the emergence of the clinical trials industry, the contract research industry, the medical education industry, oversight private research, oversight businesses for-profit institutions. i think a lot of people don't realize exactly how profitable the pharmaceutical industry has been in the last 20 or 30 years. and it's, t been tremendous. >> and what's your experience with that transformation and the role of the pharmaceutical industry currently as a doctor?

>> i don't practice medicine. i originally trained in medicine, went from medicine to philosophy and graduate school. so for the last 20 years or so i've been teaching medical ethics. um, the root of the book, um, begins with a phone call i got when i was at the university of minnesota from a local psychiatrist who wanted to sit this on a medical ethics course that i was teaching and explained to me that this was because he was being disciplined by the state licensing board for a problem with a research study that he was doing. his punishment was that he had to take a course in medical ethics. he wanted to sit in on my course. and not knowing any better i said, sure, and let him. finish -- and it went fine.

a few years later a contract research business opened up in the twin cities where i live, a for-profit clinical trial site. and i had an interest in these and started doing some digging and looked to see who the researchers were doing clinical trials for them. and i saw that this guy who had taken my class was one of the researchers. so i started to think, i wonder exactly what he did to be disciplined by having to take my class. and it turned out that his license had been suspended for two years because he was responsible for the deaths and injuries of 46 different patients, a number of whom had committed suicide and 17 of whom who were in research studies that he had done. largely seriously mentally ill patients, often with chronic schizophrenia, many of them suicidal who he was cycling in

and out of research studies. often research studies for which they with respect eligible and keeping -- weren't eligible and keeping them in the studies even after they started to deteriorate. um, one of them, actually, had committed suicide in our teaching hospital at the university of minnesota. and, um, what struck me about that is that his disciplinary file wasn't hard to find. i could find it, you know, in minutes. if you put his name in a google search, all his problems came up the very first hit. and yet despite the fact that he had been judged responsible for the deaths and injury of 46 patients, he was still allowed to do trials, the fda hadn't sanked him -- sanctioned him, and the pharmaceutical industry was still willing to hire him. in fact, he's still working for the pharmacy industry now. and this sort of shocked me that a researcher this dangerous and

this bad was still the allowed to do clinical trials. and it pointed to me just how weak our oversight system is. >> so in your research how often did you find that that was the case, that researchers who had violated ethics laws were allowed to continue conducting research if it was for privately-contracted institution versus on a university campus? >> well, nobody really knows. that's the difficulty. because there's no one keeping up with this information. the reason he was able to do this is simply that nobody was watching. and still nobody is watching. um, you know, you have state licensing boards, but they're not responsible for chin call research. -- clinical research. you have local institutional review boards. these are the ethics committees that are supposed to be overseeing clinical research, but now these are largely private, for-profit boards paid

by the sponsors of the research. and if they don't like the answer they get, if one ethics board tells them this is unethical research, they could simply go to another one and another one until they get the answer they want. the fda which is supposed to be nominally interested in protecting summits of research -- subjects of research only inspects about 1% of trial sites, so 99% of trial sites go uninspected. and, you know, for that reason i can't answer that question. nobody can. because nobody's watching. >> what would your recommendations be to improve the medical industry and particularly that process? >> um, well, there needs to be a different system of oversight of clinical trials. it's crazy to have the main oversight bodies being paid by the sponsors of the studies that

they're supposed to be regulating. i mean, that's just a recipe for the kind of problems that we see. i would say that we need to take drug testing out of the hands of the producers of the drug. i mean, why should the pharmaceutical industry be responsible for testing their own drugs and then publishing the research? they have a financial incentive the come up with results that are positive for their products. and, um, as long as the testing process is in their hands, that, you know, that incentive is always going to be there. so i'd be in favor of taking drug testing out of their hands and putting it into the hands of an independent drug at the timing body. >> thank you. >> university of chicago professor james t. sparrow, what did world war ii do to the says of the -- size of the federal government? >> oh, it increased it by more

than tenfold. >> how so? >> well, the economic mobilization required a drastic increase, and the presence of the government within the economy, the armed forces grew drastically as well, over 16 million people served over the course of the war. and, um, roughly half of the economy was absorbed by the mobilization. so it was an unprecedented expansion in the scope of the government. >> how did it compare to the 1930s during fdr's first terms? >> yeah. well, the '30s, of course, were a period of dramatic growth, but the government of the '30s even at it peak was just absolutely swamped by the warfare state that came out of the second world war. and years after the second world war was over and before the korean war had begun, the government was still dramatically larger than it had been at its height in the 1930s. so it created an immensely larger government and more intrusive government. >> could you give i an example

of how the federal budget went from 1940 to 1945 or so? is. >> well, yeah. federal spending, um, increased by a factor of ten from 1939 to 1945, from just under nine billion in 1939 to, um, almost 100 by 1945. so, and a drastic increase in expenditures. >> how was that paid for? >> it was paid for by a combination of income taxes and debt, and as a result of this radical, new fiscal requirement, income taxes, personal income tacks surpassed corporate income taxes as the large e source of -- largest source of rev lieu coming -- revenue coming into the federal government. >> cl and was that the first time in our history that that happened? >> yes,-. >> and it's remained that way, hasn't it? >> i believe it has.

certainly in the 20th century. >> right. did the size of the federal government decrease dramatically after 1945? >> it decreased, but not too -- as i have said -- not to the size of the '30s. so after every war you have what's known as a ratchet effect when government spending gets down, but it somehow never seems to go down back to the status quo antebellum. and the ratchet effect for world war ii was quite substantial, you know, in large part because the cold war came along. but if you look at the five years between the end of the war in the '45 and the start of the korean war in 1950, you see that by all measures state capacity was still much more elevated than it had been even at the peak of the new deal. >> what were some of the programs that stuck around? i mean, the size of the military, presumably, went back down. what stuck around? is. >> well, the office of price administration remained in

operation until late 1946. i should emphasize that be of the emergency programs that were inaugurated were, um, were eliminated as quickly as possible. so there was a dramatic demobilization. but the postwar military never fell to below one and a half million people, and so that required a fiscal state that remained extraordinarily robust. so you never had less than 60% of the labor force paying income taxes after the second world war. so the biggest change is fiscal and military, um, and then also the precedents for economic mobilization that were then drawn upon during the korean war. >> professor sparrow, were economic promises made to help sell the war to the american public? >> economic promises? um, certainly roosevelt's four

freedoms suggested that the american standard of living would be extended to all americans as a consequence of the war. so these four freedoms were freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, freedom from fear. and implicit in freedom from want is the promise of an american standard of living which roosevelt was very careful to emphasize over and over again as he spoke about the war aims. mostly during the war as something that the soldiers deserved to come home to, and they did, in fact, receive that with the g.i. bill, the servicemen's readjustment act of 1944. but it was also promised as a larger goal of the war and, in fact, was delivered in the many ways although, you know, that story's more complicated than what i've just said suggests -- >> why to you say that? >> well, was the way in which the affluent society came about did not flow directly from roosevelt's plans. much of the new deal had been

dismantled by 1943, the heart and soul of it; public works, work relief, planning. much of what survived was really transformed by war. labor arbitration, for example, became the heart of labor relations which was not the case in the heydey of wagner act militancy in the late 1930s. is the state -- so the state that underwrote that affluence and global power in the american century was a hybrid of what survived the new deal and what was forged in the second world war and then, um, the agencies that were erected to carry on the cold war. >> james sparrow, you teach here at the university of chicago. what do can you teach? >> i teach modern u.s. history, post-civil war with an emphasis on politics, but politic broadly construed so as to include cultural and social aspects of politics as well as high diplomacy and state craft. >> you're in the history department?

>> i am. >> and you're working on a new book, he thigh than. what is that about? >> it follows the story in this book, so this book is part of a trilogy, in fact, on the legitimation of big government, its rise during world war ii, it reconfiguration during the high cold war from 1941 to '61 which is what the second book is, the new leviathan, and then it's collapsed in the 1960s and 1970s. so the second book is on that second period when the united states exerted unprecedented extraterritorial sovereignty true the reconstruction of germany and japan, through the reconstruction of the european economy with the marshall plan to the occupation of hundreds of bases around the world, the occupation of south korea, um, the united states found it ruling other people for the first time on such an extraordinary scale. ask it was a role -- and it was a role to which americans were unaccustomed, certainly in the national political life it was not something that was an easy

sell particularly coming so soon after isolationism in the 1930s. but as a result of the cold war, the united states found itself abroad having in various ways to rule others abroad. and yet it sought to do so often by attacking or challenging or just otherwise dismantling colonial structures sometimes because those got in the way of american interests, oh times awz -- other times because they had to do with events unfolding at the moment. and so what the book does is it looks at how that changing role in the world altered domestic politics. >> sixteen million americans were in uniform during world war ii. >> uh-huh. >> what kind of a political power did they come home with in 1945, and did they wield that power? >> well, they came home with an extraordinary presence. remember, the veterans of the first world war had become greatly 'em bittered in the

1930s with the depression, images of veterans standing on street corners selling apples, being routed from the capital, and consequently most soldiers coming home anticipated a depression and feared that they would be stuck in a similar place. but in the interwar period the american legion and other veterans' lobbies had formed and gained considerable leverage within, um, within the corridors of the capitol starting in the mid 1930s and cresting really during the 1940s, during the war. and the servicemen readjustment act, the g.i. bill really demonstrated how that leverage had increased. now, the veteran were not unanimous. there were millions of them. they came in all different political stripes, had different interests, but the most powerful lobbies, the american legion, the vfw and some others, of course, played an essential role in shaping postwar political life.

and, i should add, with great popular support. there was nothing that most americans wanted to do more than to support the boys coming home. um, this isn't to say that that didn't come without some ambivalence and concern as well, though, because of the costs of war which were substantial. >> professor sparrow, were there any parallels that can be drawn between what happened after world war ii to the size of government, to the vietnam war, 9/11? >> in i would make a fundamental december 2006 between mobilization -- distinction between mobilization for total war and mobilization for what was called limited war which was quite substantial but had the term limited war because it implied a portion of the nation's resources would be mobilized. but that limited war was potentially unlimited and that it could be applied anywhere around the world or in more than one theater or locale during the war. and so in the age of the, of conscription, so from 1941 to

1973 with a very brief hiatus in the late 1940s, that meant that, um, that a broad swath of american men might be deployed overseas for what were called limited wars. um, and this created a very different kind of dynamic, a different sense of obligation. then the wars that have followed '73, i would argue, are different because they rely on the all-volunteer forces. >> was the debt for world war ii paid when? >> it was never fully paid off. it had been paid down by 1980 when ronald reagan entered office in '81, it had been paid down to a level almost as low as the debt of the new deal, of the levels of debt of the new deal at the end of the 1930s. and that, of course, it was another cycle of military spending that raised that. >> with here's the cover of