i did a lot of events at the waldorf. for some time. it's now retained to raise or nav to lay dollars. one of the things when we first began to have somebody in our family, my girls sometimes were even more generous. giving it away and went, but i have no money. when i found the objective is of it. another one that allows share with you. and this has to do with education. a lot of how we reform education in america will depend on the public proprietorship. thick.

>> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. and smell on book tv, in discussion of william buckley book god and man in jail with a focus on the books political and cultural impact following its publication in 1951. just over an hour. >> ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the second panel in this conference on the 60th anniversary of "god & man at yale." bill buckley wrote or edited for the nonfiction books at last count. cancel your own gut-subscription was the last to be published during his lifetime. to appeared posthumously, flying high, remembering mary goldwater and finally, the reagan then i knew. as his son, christopher, said, he published more votes than he

will bestead and mini deal with their lives. but gunmen -- "god & man at yale" was the first. as of many of his later books, this one remains in print 60 years after publication. our panel this afternoon will discuss why, as a publishing matter, but as an intellectual one. this should be the case. what is living in what is dead in the thought of "god & man at yale." why and to what extent does it remain relevant to man and even to yale, trusting god and the author to settle the third matter between themselves. the peculiarity of the book, as was noted in the first panel is that bill buckley does not describe himself, certainly not consistently, as a conservative in this book. he calls himself a christian individualist. the only thing he repeatedly identifies as conservative is

zero or rather a hill's reputation as a citadel of conservatism. whenever he makes of the difference the 60 years has rocked as yale and elsewhere, no one would be moved to think of yelled out as a citadel of conservatism by the by reputation or reality. to discuss these questions and the ramifications we have three excellent panelists, and my principal duty is to introduce them. mitchell director is a meal conservative royalty. the wife and the mother of the editor of commentary magazine. [laughter] [laughter] to successive editors of commentary magazine.

which i think's make -- i think makes a dynasty. and there are right, of course, she is a distinguished critic of contemporary moralist politics, the executive director of the committee for the free world, which disbanded after is saved the free world's. she is the author of among other books and old wives' tale and serves as a board member of the heritage foundation. roger kimball wears an amazing number of fats. he is the publisher and president of encounter brokers, one of the best conservative publishers in the country. he is the author of -- i'm sorry, the editor and publisher of the new criterion, a magazine of the cause for criticism and the author of many books including tenure radicals, not politics as corrupt as higher education. his forthcoming volumes, the

fortunes of permanence, culture, and anarchy in the age of unleashing. with linda bridges who is here and will be chairing the third panel to send, mr. campbell added a history of the writings of bill buckley which appeared last year. our third speaker will be the founder and the editor-in-chief of the distinguished magazine, the american spectator. he has written many provocative books and certainly none more provocative than the new york times best selling boy clinton, the political biography. his latest volume was given just a few months ago is told after that hangover, but the conservative road to recovery. ladies and gentlemen, we will

begin with mitch dexter. >> can you hear me? i am never at peace with this technology. it is difficult for me to tell you adequately just how delighted i am to be here on this occasion, especially here in new haven where i have not been since sometime in the winter of 1970, a few days' visit. the sights and sounds i will admit have never quite left me. the occasion i am speaking of took place on what was either the first for second year, i can't remember anything. i certainly cannot robber that. the first a second year that young women have first been accepted as undergraduates in this school and as you may not, by now, begin to imagine because things have progressed so

happily, the interest in the presence of these do female students on this campus was, is no exaggeration to say, both deep and wide. i had been invited by yale to spend some time there as a visiting journalist, which meant, in my case, that i was then working as an editor on a certain national monthly magazine which had recently with no more than a mild degree of accuracy, acquired the reputation of being what in those days was called a hot book. ito's you this to explain why a fairly large group of these new female undergraduates had or believe they had a keen intellect and what they imagined i had to tell them. mostly i spent time roaming around, my first time here and

chatting both with the young women and then suddenly to the campus and gentlemen who was slick and played that the, shall we say, social opportunities believe this the state of affairs would present them with had turned out to be bitterly disappointing. [laughter] but in addition to such 1- 1-from-what conversations, the rather large meetings with those so famously high achieving young women had been arranged for region. >> guest. these occasions remains vivid. and sure i don't have to tell you, another -- neither of these was taken up with cover sears's but died or man either, at least man in this sense with which bill buckley had come years earlier to the said -- excuse

me, significant and growing part of the intellectual world on fire. but rather most specifically with their own men go fathers, brothers that they had, and any meaningful sense rightly be called that, their mothers. in the course of the first meeting together i will confess these girls after many years i finally worked up the nerve to call them that, these girls got themselves very quickly beyond the bounds of what could be called discussion. one by one they left said -- leapt to their fee to complain of this or that aspect of what turned out to be their lifelong mistreatment as females. to be sure of the women's movement that had by some years by then been supplying them with all the finer points, it had

been around an exhaustive about the time, but these did yale undergraduates could, for the sake of your cultural fashion, become so quickly and completely hostile i'll to the proof of their privilege -- privilege says, chosen by yale as they have been from and what were surely thousands upon tens of thousands of eager hard working and accomplished and female applicants from all over the country. their complaints had come i will confess to you, taken me by surprise. arrogance and snooty and sure of themselves, and i thought i might find them, yes, of course. after all, that was considered a reason. but oppressed? [laughter] i listened to their complaints for some time with a growing sense of unreality.

however, before the evening's discussion was over died, as his is sometimes mysterious "won't deserve the perry from the back of the room and saw grow rye new wealth. she had been the sum to the best friend one of my daughters. i saw her stand up and declare that she had since earliest days in the cradle -- you remember all the stuff. the way they talk. socialized to be no more than a proper lady, taught that it was wrong for to strive and brought up merely to be in every aspect no more than the wife of an accomplished and successful husband. xbox many of you did not know these 40 years later have been fully into this to every detail in this description of women oppression. the time has quieted down this considerably. but it probably would have been

impossible to become a viable candid for studying at yale without having been discussed in its main lines of argument, and i should, of course, have known that. in any case, god did not desert me on that occasion. emily, i said to my have no need for a long time. under your family well. if there is one wrote in this university was brought up with the idea that nothing would do short of for becoming at the very least the first female president of the united states, it is you. tsa that after the eruptions of shouted objections that followed the meeting did not last for much longer. indeed i further say that the next gatherings are arranged for me to me with the younger woman was considerably more sparsely

attended. the conversation on this second occasion would at least that had taken me by surprise. for this meeting was to be devoted to a discussion of publishing, feel that had, in fact, for some time by then as was the case, bin aspired to by women, and that was without a considerable amount of success. now i had been almost more alarmed by my conversations with the female underclassmen at yale than i had been reading those mater radical tracts written by women who were now leading the movement that they so perversely called a feminism. in any case i was well prepared for what was facing me, and feeling more than a little dangerous. now, from my stay at the college i had been given a rather luxurious former new featuring

what work, to become much too highly impressive the courtroom. the first was a switch with which one could warm the tile that made up the room's floor. no matter what happens to that doormats yale, cold feet would play no part in it. and the second was the night table on which were piled variety of books with and pamphlets and forming their rooms occupants of the many and various conveniences' available either on or near the campus. among and them in addition to the various institutions and locations nearby for her, the control dispensary, offering an impressive variety of means and emergency psychiatric office. need i mention, and abortions the neck.

that is done via settle down for our discussion and the question so predictably arose as to how my self, i myself had managed as the gang esperance but it to break into publishing, i succeeded in bringing both the conversation and my time yale to their collective dense by answering perfectly truthfully that i had studied tightly. now, for you facebook and torturers, by the way, that means the rapid and accurate use of a now discarded piece of technology called a typewriter . in other words, i have luckily, for me, taken a class in typing during my second year of five school. ..

>> now, that visit to this campus took place more than 40 years ago which is a long and has been a far from uneventful time for me, for yale and even, i would venture to say, for the young ones who have brought us together here today. wars have been fought s and wars that should have been fought have been at great cost ea voided, radical political movements have been created and died and been reborn in only

slightly altered form. this country and its people have grown rich, sometimes wisely and/or creatively and beneficially for others, and sometimes with squandering too much of the nation's blessed good fortune on cheap and easy intellectual activities, and if anything, even cheaper and easier national policies. please, do not misunderstand me. i don't mean the to sit here this afternoon and bedevil you about all the dreadful goings on among my neighbors like one of those classic old lady scolds of neighborhood and every day growing more at least physically to resemble. [laughter] actually, though it is important to remember that in matters political and even more so in matters ideological, no victory is ever more than temporary. one has reason to be full l of hope -- full of hope and cheer

for the lasting influence of the idea so brilliantly nurtured and intended by william buckley. along with others on this platform and in this room in washington and many places over the country. i don't have to go into that, you have heard wonderful things about it before and will again on this afternoon. and yet in new york city where i live and from there spreading to cities across the country, we are at this moment witnessing the return of the leftist demonstration. replete with occupations, marchs, garbage, filth, violence, now and then even including rape, it turns out. accompanying a variety of complaints of social injustice. on account of the country's problem of joblessness. now, the complaint of

joblessness is more justified nowadays perhaps than those once given voice in the '60s and '70s by the privileged students of elite institutions like this one. i have only one more minute and, therefore, i'm going to stop my sad story of the reradicalization. [laughter] and get to what i've really come here to say today. the irony is, of course, that if anyone is presently entitled to feel cheated, it is not those demonstrators on wall street, it is america's students. along, to be sure, with their parents. for no machinations of evil banks and mortgage lenders and wall street my naglers -- my neighlers can begin to touch what has for two generations now

been reaped upon this country's public by far too many of its best universities. not yale, of course. [laughter] and the more highly reputed the school, of course, the worst the reeking. for instance, when the government set out to offer the country's students loans with which they might pay for their higher education, the tuition demanded of them rose to the stratosphere. just ask the presidents or the boards of governors of harvard, princeton, columbia -- i'll stop there. [laughter] just ask them for the or number of the dollars now happily at risk in their endowments. and while you are at it, ask them what percentage of their undergraduate students are actually privileged to sit in a classroom with someone who has attained to the status of professor?

ask them what percentage of that which is purveyed to students even in such a condition of special privilege is derived from some any serious and time-honored intellectual or literary tradition rather than some currently and fleetingly fashionable transatlantic fad or currently-sanctioned political slogan. of course, i speak here of general education. if history is any guide, should a student aspire to be a future steve jobs, he need not attend a university at all. he'd be better off looking for an empty nearby garage. [laughter] i don't speak this way to depress you, and we have been having such a good time anyway with the preceding panel. some weeks ago i did reread "god

and man at yale." a brilliant book and nothing less than a tour de force if one considers the country when it was written and its author's age. but i kept saying to myself, this brilliant young man ain't seen nothing yet. and, of course, he hadn't. or rather, he had seen the general ground in which his future as the nurturer and day-to-day leader of a lasting intellectual political movement that would first be sprouting and then growing taller and wider down to this very day. no, i've spoken to you about the condition of the university. first, to bless you organizers and members of the william buckley society. and second, to underline for you if you needed any such underlining that where you find yourselves is at the red hot

center of a critical issue. critical both for yourselves and for the country. thus, as the denizens of yale you are not in any sense junior to any of the efforts to make fresh and vital the great tradition that despite everything continues to sustain us. you are at its very heart. just stay there and keep on keeping on, and who can say what national high spirits might not overtake us all. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, midge. roger. >> thank you very much. um, we know there's a story about the -- recounting a priest

who was hearing confession from someone. the priest was always in the habit of saying be brief, be blunt and be gone. [laughter] and, yeah. i am going to do that. it is not true, it is not true that i'm wearing this sling because of some altercation with an heir to george bundy or t.m. greene or any of the other, any of the other spoiled prof sore ya that weighed in on "god and man at yale." before i get to the book, i want to mention one aspect of bill's life and work that i don't think has come up today yet. namely, you know, he was a very accomplished man at many things. one of his greatest talents was as a kind of talent scout. and there are many people in this room just looking around i

know who benefited from that activity, and i just want to mention one in a new book that he has, my friend wally olson just published with america's premier conservative publisher whose name i will not tell you -- [laughter] a book called "school for misrule." and you won't be surprised when you conjure with the word "misrule" that one of the institutions that figures prominently in this book about america's elite law schools has its headquarters just down the street here on wall street. it's a remarkable book, and i urge you all to pick it up. well, "god and man at yale," our charge here was to ponder the question, is it still relevant. i think midge is absolutely correct when she says that 1951 bill hadn't seen anything yet. and yet when i wrote my book, "tenured radicals," which is

about the corruption by politics of one form or another, the corruption by politics of the liberal arts and the humanities, i had not yet read "god and man at yale." i subsequently did, and i had that flash of insight that the philosopher yogi berra talks about, déjà vu all over again. so, i mean, obviously there's, you know, a difference in some of the characters, but so many of the concerns in this book felt incredibly contemporary, and they still are incredibly contemporary. um, my own peel ifing is -- feeling is that that famous formulation at the beginning of the book that the fundamental struggle in the world today is between christianity and atheism or that is to say between individual and collectivism on another plane wasn't really what bill was interested in. it's curious that the second

part of that weren't even his words. his mentor at yale, wilmore kendall, actually added that in in his green ink. but i don't -- i think, you know, i spoke to bill about this book on several occasions, and it seems to me that although he was certainly an ardent and i forget the other adjectives al used this morning -- >> [inaudible] >> militant catholic, and he took his religion very seriously, indeed. to me, what this book is about is about freedom and its many entrapments. that is to say the false freedoms that are so popularly abroad and which seduce us from genuine freedom. one of the phrases that looms large in this book is academic freedom.

now, one section is called the hoax of academic freedom. and i think we've seen in recent years how this virtue can be twisted and turned and turned into almost its opposite. someone this morning mentioned tenure and said the idea of tenure was not mentioned at all or at least if it was, it was not prominently in this book. that's true. but how curious tenure is. here's an institution that was brought in not so long after, not so long before bill buckley wrote this book, and it was meant to be an institution that would safeguard academic freedom. and encourage the diversity of opinion. well, where are we now with the institution of tenure? many institutions i know, including this one, tenure is

largely an institution to enforce intellectual conformity on any contentious issue. and then when you think about it, you realize that although i'm sure that yale, like most other colleges, that you can't open o any official publication without running into the word "diversity" which, of course s is a good thing. you realize that what they mean by diversity is a curious kind of intellectual and moral conformity. if you agree, it's free speech for us, for the liberal consensus, but not, not for you. not for anyone who dissents from that liberal orthodoxy. and just a couple years later after "god and man at yale" when bill started national review, his inaugural editorial as has been mentioned a few times, but he said national review will be out of step in the same way that

"the new york times," henry field come aier and the league of women voters, and he could have gone on and on, are in ten ten -- step. in other words, here was the a magazine that was going to challenge the liberal consensus about a whole host of things whether it was foreign policy, manners and morals, what a real education meant. and i think the magazine has done a very good job of doing that. um, is "god and man" still relevant? um, how could it be more so? so many of the things that we read about here, these instances of, you know, intellectual irresponsibility and, um, for lack of a better term sort of moral latitude marijuanaism are, if anything, bigger now than they were then. and, you know, you can't go to a

campus these days without having some wild left winger acting badly in public and then wrapping himself in the mantle of quote-unquote academic freedom to justify it. so you probably some of you in this room will remember the case of ward churchill who in the aftermath of 9/11 wrote an article, um, about how the real villains, the real villains of 9/11 were the people who worked in the world trade tower because they were like adolf eichmann, just making sure the trains ran on time to their ill-she lube ri crouse destination. well -- now, this, of course, was the kind of thing that college cam campuses love, you know? here's a guy who's really anti-american. we thought, you know, we rally around the united states when it comes to, you know, people plowing jet liners into

skyscrapers, but, no, ward churchill thought in the people that d thought that the people that worked in the trade towers were the real villains. and when he went around the country to speak at campuses, and he was very popular for a while. it was always under the rubric of academic freedom and free speech, they said. well, note the, note the sort of illusion there. academic freedom is not a blanket right. it is a privilege accorded to people who are engaged in a certain activity, namely the pursuit of truth. that's what academic freedom means. academic freedom means you are free to pursue the truth. freedom of speech is something quite different, something very valuable. i'm glad that people can, you know, make fools of themselves in zucotti square and so on. i wish their -- their personal hygiene leaves something to be desired, indeed, their behavior in other ways. but, you know, it's really quite marvelous that people can do that just like, you know,

speakers' corner in london. you can get up on a soap box and say whatever silly thing you want. but that's not academic freedom. but these two things have been kind of blurred together on many college campuses today, and i think there's something -- although he didn't talk about free speech in quite the same way, there is something about that that is at the core of "god and man at yale." bill was -- there's a biblical tag i always like to, when e think of bill buckley, i think of the book of genesis and the line that says god made the world and saw it was good. and i think that that really is right at the core of what bill buckley was. here's somebody who delighted in the panoply of the world whether it was racing or wine or the music of bach or helping young people or whatever. but what does that kind of delight and relish depend upon?

one of the things it depends upon is freedom. and freedom especially to freedom against this kind of deadening homogeneity that you see in, you see in an institution devoted to diversity that is ruled by political correctness. i mean, who would have thought that institutions devoted to higher education, to the liberal arts, of the arts that are supposed to free us -- that's why they're called liberal -- would at the same time absorb this toxin of political correctness which is kind of the enforcer of this ideology of diversity? and, um, that's certainly one of the lessons i took away from this book. and just one other thing. um, toward the end of the book bill refers to a supreme court decision, so far as i know never

overturned, pierce v. the society of sisters. and the supreme court in a unanimous decision said that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition. and that certain study's plainly -- studies plainly essential to good citizenship be taught and nothing be taught that is unemmic call to -- [inaudible] i mean, quite amazing. well, i think the fact that you can't imagine any elite university doing that shows not only how far we have fallen, but also the continuing relevance for this very eloquent book. >> thank you, roger. [applause] >> bob jerrel. >> well, first of all, i'd like to address a question that was

raised earlier. i think the question of when you're young, you're liberal and conservative when you old. i think churchill was one of the first people to raise that formulation, and i put it a little differently. when i was young, i was conservative. and as i got older, i became very, very conservative. [laughter] and i look forward to a full life of becoming really and truly conservative. [laughter] because it makes the liberals crazy. [laughter] and that's kind of a lazy way of saying it because they were born crazy. [laughter] but, um, i gave a little thought

to bill and to his books, and to several of his books actually. and i thought about many times when i was with bill, um, time and time -- the lectures, the public addresses and things like that you all know about things like that. but you tonight know about -- but you don't know about the one aspect of his life that i found, i ran into with him all the time. i remember once we were crossing park avenue, and i was, looked over at bill, and bill had a mound of manuscript held up to his chest. and he had something in his hand, a pen, a red ink pen probably, and his glasses perched on his eyes, and i thought to myself, he's not going to get ten paces across park avenue with this whole thing is going to cascade down

to the ground. and sure enough, it did. papers every place, the red pen, his glasses. and people came from all over to help him scurry around and pick up his papers because bill was even in manhattan one of the most famous men in america, one of the most famous minds in america. he was as famous as henry kissinger who hasn't been replaced. and many people like bill from that era haven't been replaced. um, there is a judge from chicago, you perhaps know him, he's a kind of an idiot, positive her the. [laughter] -- positiver in. he's a moral idiot. grant me that. he's excellent at crossword puzzles or something, but he's -- [laughter] but at any rate, posener wrote

an essay some years ago about the lamenting loss of public intellectual from the square. i'd ask the learned judge where the hell that public intellectual would perform because who would listen to him? or her? um, there's not such a creature because there's, well, as berg hart said, there's a time and place for things, and things reach their fullness at a time. and, frankly, we've kind of passed the time today for public intellectuals. that was bill's time. and i would, i guess i'd also say that i got to thinking about this, and i thought what's necessary for a public intellectual? i hate the term. let's just say an intellectual. and i think maybe the first celebrated intellectual in the 20th century, and that's about

the time that was ripe for this kind of intellectual, was h.l. mencken. and he was right because, a, he was very thoughtful and very luminous and very witty. but also there was in place a mass media to broadcast his words to lesser people. heretofore, he'd have to talk out through his publication whatever it might be or through letters to people. like mountain and people like that. but now he had, he could be a part of mass media. and he could kind of cross-fertilize, so to speak, with hollywood. and it was, the time was right

for him. a famous and versatile intellectual. but how this kind of brings us back to "god and man at yale" is that mencken was a very famous atheist, and i think now we see that men can triumph. the book is not at all relevant to any university i've ever been at because the universities have gone so far toward modernity that it's hard to imagine them to come back. on the other hand, another way of putting it is the university is so irrelevant to our lives. we heard a speaker earlier speak about how you go to the --

professor, you go to the university for four years, and most of them leave and believe exactly what they came in thinking. and i think that's probably pretty true. universities never changed my mind, and i've never been on one, on a university campus in which i was ever in the ascendancy. but, so i think the universities have kind of lost. but where bill triumphed was in society, was in america, was in sophisticated rem ms -- realms of american life and of the world life. i mean, bill's views weren't original, but his views on economics are now held whether people admit it or not by people around the world. bill's views on foreign policy

are held around the world. bill's views in general are the views of adult america. liberalism today is dead. you'll find out in 2012 if you don't know now. liberalism is dead. conservativism is in the ascendancy, it was in the ascendancy in 2008 when we outnumbered the liberals 40 to 20%, 40 president to 20 president -- 40% to 20%, and now we've got the independents and the moderates on our side. so i think in this an odd and funny way men can -- won the competition for men's souls, but bill won the competition for his point of view for conservativism, and i think, i thank bill buckley for that, and i thank you all for being here. [applause]

>> thank you, bob. are there comments from panel members before we go to questions? >> just one comment. to bob, your observation that you, you know, you can't see that four years of education makes much difference. people seem to come out believing the same things that they went to college believing. i don't know, my observation, actually, has been a little different. it seems to me that, um -- and this is one of the reasons why bill would appeal to parents or alumni. you have this nice 18-year-old child who you've nurtured with care, and you send them off to an elite institution at, i mean, sarah lawrence cost in excess of $60,000. and then, you know, within a year they come back having rejected every principle of has beener dash ri, personal hygiene, moral rectitude -- [laughter] and -- >> i doubt they ever had it, but at any rate.

>> so i think that's one of the things, you know, when bill was appealing to trustees, alumni, parents, i was going to write a book called "retaking the university," and i got so far as to write an article about it. and my thought was, well, you know, let's appeal over the heads of the tenured radicals to parents, to alumni, to trustees and so on to who if they only knew what was going on would be appalled. some of them would be appalled, i think a lot of people regard or a university degree as, you know, a kind of job ticket primarily. is it worth $250,000? that's maybe another question. but i realize that this wasn't going to -- it wouldn't work. why? well, for one reason the universities and elite colleges are now so insulated by money from accountability that they don't have to pay any attention to parents or the alumni fund. i mean, a tiny college like

hamilton college in upstate new york, they have about 1500 students, i think, they have an endowment of a billion dollars. so where do they care if fundraising is off for a couple of years. >> well, they do care. and irving crystal wrote some years ago that the university alums know what's going on at universities, they don't like what's going on at universities, and they god damn well sit on boards and keep inflating those people's endowments over and be over again. but the truth is i don't think universities are taken very seriously. i understand that harvard state university has football players that are as big as the chicago bears. i know that, and they're very proud of it. but what they teach at universities don't really make much impact certainly by the time a kid's ready to get

serious about life. that's about middle age. [laughter] >> i'd like to -- >> midge? >> -- as a footnote to this discussion, i would like to read you from a story in today's new york post. jersey shore star vinnie -- [inaudible] made a surprise cameo this week as a guest lecturer at columbia university. [laughter] i would -- i don't know what the tuition to columbia is this year, but i wouldn't like to think about it for too long. [laughter] where he traded in his traditional fist pump for a hardy high-five with captivated coeds. now, there's more and more of this story, but i want to read you one significant quote from tim rich, a 33-year-old graduate student. quote, if he brings more people

into the sociology department, who cares? [laughter] >> well, i think the phrase sociology department -- [laughter] says it all. >> now, earlier lee had refer today and quoted lionel trilling who said something untrue and ghastly which is that conservativism was a nervous intellectual whatever. >> there was no conservativism, just -- in yeah, that's right. it was like -- >> mental gestures. >> an irritable mental gesture. [laughter] but lionel trilling is a 50-foot-tall giant compared with the sociology department at columbia university.

[laughter] >> you know, i've got -- i looked at that quote by trilling, and i actually use it in my book that comes out this spring called "the death of liberalism." and i went over that quote. it didn't ruffle my feathers terribly, and i think that were he alive today, he'd be completely on our side. i think he was talking about a kind of conservativism that he couldn't quite imagine. within two years, of course, it had popped up in the person of bill buckley. and then i wonder what he would have got -- i'm sure he was more generous towards conservativism in the end than he was in the beginning. >> not as i recall. [laughter] >> all right. let's invite the audience into the discussion. you must come down to one of these microphones, please. and make your question brief, blunt and then, as roger suggests, you may be gone.

[laughter] thank you. >> something ms. kimball said got me to thinking about the whole question of herd instinct. at the beginning of this century when anson phelps stokes was the secretary of this university, he was a clergyman, he chose not to go all the way to ordination. he was a deacon because he felt this was quite properly a congregational institution. religion was important then. as you pointed out, today the new god is diversity. and the great thing about god and man at yale was that it was a contrarian work. and i think what we need to do whether liberal or conservative is to make the university the academic world free for contrarian thought again. it would be difficult, i'm sure, to be a liberal at bob jones university. it's very difficult today to be a conservative here, certainly

the dartmouth review proved that at dartmouth how difficult they can be. so i'd love to hear thoughts from any of the three of you about ways to make contrarian thought more possible today. >> roger, do you want to tackle that? >> well, i mean, i think one thing is to subscribe to publications like "the american spectator." [laughter] and the new cry criterion and commentary and national review. you know, i can't remember what it costs to have a yearly subscription to "the american spectator," but it's $48 for the new cry tier yang. so from one point of view, a pretty good deal. you know, to some extent education is a recovery project, isn't it? i mean, we want to -- the past is sort of incog knee that for

when you come here and you're 17 or 18 years old. and it would be nice to learn something about it, to learn what, you know, the best minds have thought about the most important questions like how should we live our life. that's what a liberal arts education is about. that's not what happens on many college campuses these days. >> [inaudible] >> one thing that's very hopeful, i must say, at princeton is robbie george's work. and he's kind of got an institute just set up on campus where you can get, take courses and graduate and be just hike -- like a real prince tone yang. and i think you have such an institute at dartmouth, too, i believe. at any rate, and paul singer set one up at williams college. and so, i mean, somehow on to these universities are being colonized by cancers that we call conservativism,

conservative institutes of things. and i find that very, very promising. and robbie george has done an excellent job at princeton. >> i'd agree with bob's characterization of that. but remember the princeton administration noticing how popular robbie's institute was have just recently decreed that any fellow he brings here must have an academic appointment someplace. couldn't bring you, for example. >> that's great. i don't want to go there. you know? i have fun. i like to go tonight clubs. [laughter] >> i have long had a proposal for what would strengthen the american university. and because there is a notion that you cannot have a career or a really well paying job unless you have a degree. and this is a notion that parents have, and so they send themselves to the poor house to

provide this to their kids. and then the kids come home described as they've been described here. i think if ten major american industries, businesses announced that from henceforth they would not be hiring college graduates -- [laughter] i kid you not. i am dead serious. within five years you would see a revolution in this country. you really would. and what's more, they could all say if kids want to read shakespeare, we'll give 'em shakespeare at night. but we will teach them how to do the work that we need done here. the world once worked that way. and i tell you, you would get the attention of people you

wouldn't dream you would ever see serious. >> next question, please. >> dr. kessler, you've called american higher education the high ground of american politics. you've talked about just kind of getting around that high ground and, dr. kimball -- or mr. kimball l l? is it doctor? >> no, that's the other guy. that's the other kimball. >> anyway, you've talked about bill's strategy of trying to go through the alumni. how do we get back the high ground of american politics? is it possible? should we send smart people to get their ph.d.s and become professors, or what should we do? >> well, i don't know is the brief answer. but i think that, um, both what midge said and what bob said, i mean, we need, i think, to encourage alternatives. the real irony of our moment here is somebody's mentioning the herd of independent minds,

that famous phrase by harold rosenberg. you know, diversity is on everyone's lips, but conformity's in everyone's hearts. and so what we need to do is sponsor some genuine alternatives. unfortunate, it's ghettoized there, and now that they're refusing to have people from outside the brotherhood of the academic guild, you know, it becomes suddenly less of a tonic force. but i think, you know, one of the lessons of "god and man at yale" is that freedom is a good thing and what we need is to figure out strategies to promote them. and it's not complicated. and it doesn't require a program. bill talking about something else said what i'm ouring you -- offering you here is not a

program, call it a no-prom, if you will. it requires that most uncommon of virtues, common sense. >> right. next question. >> i, listening to all of your comments, i am struck first of all by how enormously much american society has changed in 60 years. and one of the questions that goes through my mind is if somebody wanted to set about to write "god and man at yale" today as opposed to the early '60s, what would the book look like? what would the argument be? one of the huge differences that's happened in those 60 years is the enormous increase in religious, i would say, in quote religious practice in informal forms versus formal forms. this takes place in meditation, it takes place in a whole variety of ways. and people who are in the more, on the formal side tend to ignore this. but in ignoring it, they're ignoring the enormous

commonalities that exist. and the commonalities that exist against the rationalist utilitarian scientific materialist's essence of what's taught in the universities. probably no one in this room knows that the san francisco unified school district today has become a major institution committed to transcendental meditation as a means of reforming it schools. this, the san francisco unified school district bureaucracy has not only committed to this, but a majority of the bureaucrats in the downtown bureaucracy are, have become regular meditators. and the motto of the san francisco unified school district which might be regarded as the most, quote, liberal bureaucracy in america is "change begins within." four of the schools in the district are now practicing

meditation, and the extraordinary increases in learning and reduction in behavioral -- ten other schools are lining up to do it. yet there is no reporting of this in the press, and there's no reporting it in the press, i think, for the same reason that there's no expanded version of what the struggle here really is. and it has to do with a rigidly-objectified scientific materialist essence in the intellectual idiom which still dominates the universities. anyway, i'd love to have a comment -- >> and there's a teachers' union. [laughter] >> right. >> well, um, i agree with you about the problems of a programmatic materialist secular society and so on. but when i -- i did not know that about san francisco. of course, it's california. [laughter] but i do remember chesterton once said talking about -- he

didn't use the phrase, but some of these new age things. the most horrible of all religions is the religion within. and what he meant, i think, was that there's something, there's something important about religious institutions and the sort of social glue they provide. i mean, one of the ways in which this book would be written differently today, i think, is that the author, punitive author of "god and man at yale" in 2011 wouldn't say that the struggle is between atheism and christianity. which tells us something. and the, you know, the ostensible focus wouldn't have been on religion. maybe -- but still,1950 and '51 was a time when the religious institutions in this country were still fairly strong. we've all seen the statistics that 92 people in the united

states say they believe in god and go to church contrasting it with the sort of atheist gulag that's europe. but beyond that is, actually, a curious thing. it may be a very religious society, but it's also an incredibly secular society. and that's partly what accounts for the dynamism of our country, but it's, you know, the question is can you, can you count on religion once it's been stripped of its institutional, you know, force? and authority? and legitimacy? the churches, in that sense, don't really matter so much anymore as they once did. >> but that does explain why when you fly to san francisco, you hear this ummm -- [laughter] in the background. which i never, i never quite understood. this will have to be the last question. and then we will stay seated. the people who are standing may

come down and find a seat, and we'll move directly to the next panel. last question. >> this is a question for the whole panel. um, how many people have you seen convert from liberalism to conservativism, and if you have seen this miracle occur, what was the trigger? did the person come to the faith first and then gain conservativism? did they become pro-life? did they read a great book? did they hear a speaker at their university or elsewhere? i would be very curious, because i'd like to replicate this cathartic moment. [laughter] >> you're asking how many people have i seen come from liberalism to conservativism? is that right? >> um, approximately, yes. >> yes. well, this one right here. [laughter] midge and her husband and jean kirkpatrick. >> oh, yes. >> and for a while, pat moynihan. >> a brief while. >> all right, but he -- [laughter] so we've seen a lot of it. but it did stop, however.

and that's kind of interesting. it stopped. the, what i call in this new book of mine the good, the good liberals, they had a civil war in liberalism in '48. you probably know about this war in '48. and be arthur schlesinger and people like that rid liberalism of its radicalism and, boy, they sounded pretty good to me for a while there. even arthur. but -- and then again it happened again about '68, manager like that, '72 with midge and her husband and irving crystal and the whole gang of neo-cons. but the interesting thing is that at some point it stopped. and the battle lines were drawn. and that's something for some serious meditation. why did the movement of

liberalism's liberals from liberalism to conservativism stop? i don't know. >> well, it's partly that -- the one i am familiar with -- [laughter] it was, it was made up of many things. the world had gone through a cat cliz m -- cat collision m, and now everybody was very cheerful in america, so there was a big radical sense of hooray, we won, and we can do it all. we can make this country just and pure and perfect and rich and everything. easily. and then we saw our children, how they were being educated, how they were growing up. and by the time they reached adolescence -- and we were also parading ourselves because we

were, of course, far superior parents. i mean, my goodness, those benight be knighted -- beknighted old people who brought us up, whoo -- [laughter] we weren't simply just wonderful. and then we saw our children, and they were not thriving. and let me tell you something, you bring up a kid, and you can't understand why in the world he's not thriving. you've got a good life, he's got a nice home, he's got parents who love him. and then you know there's something foul in the air. and by the '60s that something foul erupted in the universities into -- this is a very sloppy and hasty history. and it needs a lot more going into than that. but the country was taken over by a disease of ingratitude and,

um, some kind of phony notion of perfection. and, and this was what our kids were suffering from. and i mean suffering. and suddenly there they were leading the best of lives, going to the best of places, going to the best of schools, drowning themselves in drugs, um, demanding crazy things and doing crazy things and insisting that somehow or other all pains be lifted from them. and they were not thriving. and, boy, that was scary. that was really scary. and that was the beginning of that, plus the fact that people who were known as neo-cons, one

thing they always were was anti-soviet, anti-socialist and anti-communist. and there was a whole new revival of this stuff going on in places where it shouldn't have been; universities, publishing houses, serious magazines. and it was a very, very, very serious lesson. you -- anybody who wants to -- you don't need to be a neo-con now. you can just go and be a plain con. [laughter] [applause] >> yes. anything, anything but an ex-con. [laughter] thank you, panelists. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. stay seated, please, the next panel is going to begin immediately. thank you. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at

booktv@cspan.org. or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> here's a short author interview from c-span's campaign 2012 bus as it travels the country. >> mr. yeo, what function does the media seven when there are disease outbreaks? >> well, when the disease outbreak media has two different functions. one, the media works as news coverage, powerful media that conveys information to the public from scientific or medical communities. and at the same time, media should work as analytic tool. they provide some different informations, diverse perspectives. but during the time of outbreak it is very important for the media to focus on their fact-based, objective news coverage role instead of providing a lot of different

interpretations. >> and what constitutes an outbreak? >> well, outbreak is defined as a certain abnormal access disease occurrence in a certain community or region or a group of people. so in case of, for example, in case of west nile virus nobody expected that west nile virus would occur in the united states, but it happened in new york. maybe not on a massive scale, but it occurred. is so it was defined as outbreak. >> and do you think the news media lives up to the their responsibility on how they handle outbreaks, or do you think that they need to work on that? >> it is kind of hard to say because there's no clear standard how much coverage news media should have or should not have. but according to my research, the news coverage was pretty much balanced. usually we say there are two

distinct frameworks when news media cover this kind of outbreak. the first one is usually called diagnostic which focuses on what is the risk and what happens, how many people die, then who is taking care of what. and then we have prognostic framework which is focused on telling us about what are the causes, how do we do -- what do we do, what should we do to prevent it and what should we do at a remedial action? so my analysis shows that the news media around new york at the outbreak of west nile virus was pretty much well balanced in its coverage. >> and tell us a little bit about how you did your research and why you used the west nile virus as your case study.

>> i was interested in two different topics when i was in doctoral program. the first one was how media works, and the second one was how this risk of communication works in this society. i didn't have any particular interest in west nile virus back then, and west nile virus was not there yet even. but at the time of planning that dissertation, i was looking for a specific topic. and there was west nile virus outbreak. so it was merely a coincidence. if it had been sars, my doctoral dissertation would have been about sars. >> so since then there's been sars, the swine flu outbreak. have you noticed that media has changed the way that they're reporting on health risks? >> well, not really. there was no substantial change in terms of covering the health

risk issues of outbreak, but i see that there was substantial change in terms of how people recognize the principles of outbreak of communication as you say. so, for example, in 2003 who and cdc came up with five interesting principles of outbreak communication. and that is very helpful for health professionals and officials to deal with outbreak situation. and also it helps the journalists too. >> now that we have the 24-hour news cycle, do you think that the influence of media and reporting on health issues has changed? >> yes, definitely. having a 24-hour cycle news media helps people to access to very invaluable information when they run into outbreak situation. yes, definitely. >> and what about social media now that we have facebook and

twitter? >> in the same line of thought, yes. it gives ample opportunity to access to this medical and scientific data about this outbreak. so it has a lot of potential benefit for the audience. but there is another side that we have to consider. usually when this outbreak happens, scholars think there is a time for what they call psychosocial epidemics. psychosocial epidemics is a term to refer to the crisis period of the time. while the scientific and head call community -- medical community could not provide any definite answer to this outbreak. so, for example, west nile virus occurred in 1999, and it took several months before the sciences and the medical communities came up with a certain brief explanation about that.

so during that time media is covering a lot of reporting as stories and theories, explanations. and people are seeking for answers to remedy, as a remedy for their fear and be anxiety. so this is the time for this socio-- psychosocial epidemics. psychosocial epidemics can appear in three different ways. the first one is epidemics of fear. the fear is spreading out. and next epidemics of explanation. because the medical and scientific community does not provide any definite answers. there are so many level of explanation appear in media, and people are consuming those. and third, action. re we've relayed -- with