job corps program, and right now we need to see these programs expanded. >> since you mentioned the deficit reduction, i find it incredulous there are actually people in washington, to your point, who don't just want to change the conversation -- well, not change, it's not been a conversation as much as it should be, but they certainly want to change the conversation to one about deficit reduction, but there are voices increasing in washington who are calling for austerity. how is it possible that anybody in his or her right mind in washington could possibly think that austerity is the answer? >> well, part of the, i think, miscalculation, you can't do both a at the same time. what you do is you ease into it. so you have to, yes, look at where there is excessive spending that won't hurt vulnerable populations, and that's what the priority for this administration is, even in this upcoming budget debate that we're having for 2013. ..

to be a part of the partnership and make sure there is a lock on it and make sure we look at jobs that are real secure jobs that pay well, not just minimum wage and also bring a professionalism in areas like in-home health care, big initiatives that will help 2 million people come in 90% of whom are women. these people now in many cases don't get minimum wage or overtime. we are pushing rules to allow

that covers setting up new applications on the internet, what we call ask so that women can look at each others' wages across the board with different corporations and start making some assessments and hopefully negotiating for higher salaries. we shouldn't have to wait for a major legislation that just got passed with the president god and come of the lilly, combined, nobody should have to be discriminated doing the same job a man is doing, but not receiving any kind of wage increase or benefit packages well. many women like her have lost out in my opinion anywhere up to $360,000 for the earning power because that money was not in her paycheck when she was working 20 years or 30 years on the job. [applause] >> as i expect it could labor secretary give me all the

reminders to run with. i'm going to run with it. i want to go first to julianne malveaux, president of bennett college for women, author of this book, surviving and thriving. black economic history. please welcome dr. julianne malveaux. [cheers and applause] i'm glad you're here and i specifically wanted year because you're one of the nation's most brilliant and earnest truth telling economists. i want to ask by putting on the spot and asking you whether or not you believe the numbers that we are being given off kinds of numbers coming out of our government. i asked that because we are told, for example their 50 million of us living in poverty that would recombined to those living in poverty as poverty. i wasn't a math major but one or two african-americans is in or near poverty. then you get into the hispanic

unemployment rate in african-american. let me start by asking you whether or not u.s. economists believe the numbers that we are told. >> with the unemployment rate certainly is worse. the secretary with the monthly something is published called the employment earnings. it details the unemployment rate. in fact the publication can do. instead the publication is alternate measures of unemployment. if the unemployment rate is a .3%, theoretically the worst measures that they might 14%. 8.3 versus 14. for african-americans as as 25%. so that is one of four. one, two, three, you could and i think that is really important. we haven't talked about the labor market. people are part-time jobs and really want full-time jobs. we haven't talked about what it costs to look for work, that looking for work is the

expensive proposition . you have to get your hair done, teacher close claim. i'm not trying to be trivial, but i think, tavis, in 1990 the average group of congress had a network of $250,000 excluding their home. by 2010, the average net worth of $750,000 excluding their home. so what happens at congress that they could triple their wealth in just a 20 year period? meanwhile for the rest of us come average person hasn't come is about $20,000. oath in 1990 and in 2010. so everybody else stayed level. the numbers of congress on the way to enrich themselves. i'm not hating on congress or wealth. but here's what i'm saying. people have that kind of love don't understand someone who needs an extra $40 in their chat to pay. [cheers and applause]

when you get a presidential candidate, mitt romney betting $10,000 here and there, how many musty authority at $10,000? the average white household has income of $49,000. the average african-american household, $31,000. so this man is walking around with the third of black people say, like the casino. and so the numbers that we see, let me just put those out there because we need to understand poverty is not a level it has not been since 1993. that is over all our poverty of a rose between 2009 and 2010 to 15.2%. again, that is almost one in six americans. for african-americans the number is 24.4%. 27.4%. less than one in four. for latinos, 25.8%. for asian americans the numbers

are lower and interestingly, the numbers of native american people are not published. theoretically the sample size is too small. how do we have people in our population and their sample size is too small? rhetorically speaking -- [inaudible] >> well, you know come under president in about 1981 -- [laughter] they actually want to start collecting racial and ethnic statistics. this is a post-racial notion. but when i have a post-racial unemployment rate, then we can be post-racial. let folks at the same unemployment rate as white folks and everyone else. [cheers and applause] the native american population is one up of our smallest population. it seems to me we have to invest in resources and i know what's

going on with the population in our society. he talked about the data saved and this coming conversation. he said what is wrong with congress? i don't want to answer that because he could only be flippant in answering that. what is with my sisters and i went over together and jabari or phrase, somebody got somebody on the head because clearly for cutting education. the president of bennett college for education with young sisters and brothers who want to go to college but the dollars are not there. the poker and is $5500 for which the room and board is $25,000. where's a sister going to get the $19,000 from? loads. now if you take out a loan for anything coming should take it out for education to invest in your education. but i don't understand why ensues might disagree with me. i need the students enrolled in my college.

[laughter] but the thing is cutting education and say that north carolina they kick at private colleges and the private north carolina, kicked us out of the state lottery fund, which means that his $1800 that students were getting. that is gone now. such a cut education with the president has said he wants us to lead the world in the number of people with aa and ba degrees. this is like a farmer who decides they're going to eat their feet quite as opposed to planning it. we should not be cutting education. we should not be cutting essential services we need especially for poor women and children. vice president biden has a middle-class task force. i want to know where is the poor people's task force? because literally, we have seen -- [applause] poverty rise and the population at concerts the most well as a group of people called extremely poor.

we've got a poverty line about $11,000 for one person in the $16,000 for a family of four. but some people make half of the poverty line. pass. can you imagine having earnings of $5500? have you even begin to survive? so while you have the task force is looking at the middle class, which we do care about, let's also look at poverty. >> were going to talk about the middle-class and education in just a second. let me ask you if there's a short answer give me a short answer, but i want to be forthright about this and knowing him as they do since we were in new york asked me this question on national television. i'll probably run down her pseudo be surprised if bill clinton walks down here in about 10 minutes. [laughter] but he was asked forthrightly and directly specifically with regard to women and children in poverty, how much of this is bill clinton's fault? you know what i mean by that. 15 years ago was our friend bill clinton who pushed to the

welfare reform bill and peter edelman, has been our dear sister, mary wright edelman who is the most courageous fighter on behalf of children. her husband quit over this issue. but mr. saskia you, how much -- are the chickens coming home to roost? how much of this mess right now is bill clinton's responsibility quite >> you called welfare reform. this is a system that may have working perfectly and he made it even worse. you have a lifetime task on how long you can see in public assistance of five years. that makes no sense. though clinton was pandering frankly to the right when he did welfare before. we all of the clinton, but he was pandering to the right and he was excoriated on the floor of congress. let's be clear right now i don't think anyone has an appetite. this particular congress is one of the worst i think we've seen in a very long time, especially land issues for women and children. they don't like cutting

anything. basically talking about at the same time we see people falling into poverty. clinton may have started it, but mr. bush instituted a tax cut for the wealthy. because we in store or restore, get rid of the bush tax cut. it would be millions and billions of dollars for social services and other things. mr. bush has facilitated a financial crisis that we experience in 2008 because he never met a regulation he liked. and so bitterly, you had these banks robbing people. i mean, the best way to put it is robbing people. and now we have -- [applause] one in three people have underwater mortgages for their mortgages worth more than their house is. almost a third of the african-americans who have

subtitle loans qualify for real loans. i mean, we can call clinton, the luscious call the roll. there has been a hostility to poverty. since the war on poverty, lyndon johnson was the best president and looks at poverty issues and spent money on it and talked about his social service program. lyndon johnson. let's follow that -- i hate to say this, the richard nixon is the father of minority business development. an insider's minority business of established small business administration and agency and use the term economic justice. richard nixon comes economic justice. >> who know? >> who knew we had to praise nixon. but then you look at reagan who every time he opened his mouth attacked about the 13 kids. there is no one in the 13 kids. we called 113 kids and see who

answered. [laughter] so the sympathetic to poverty we change from a social problem to a personal problem. [applause] [cheers and applause] >> i have known faye wattleton for years and when i put together this conversation i knew i wanted her on this panel. i've no idea the timing would be so herbaceous given this all-out war that's now being waged against women against a different friends and now the first african-american woman to be national parent of planned parenthood. please welcome faye wattleton. [applause] so dr. malveaux says this is the worst congress in recent history with regards to the rights of women. i want you to connect this one women specifically now being waged in washington.

this assault with poor women and their babies specific. >> well, there's always been a war against the poor. this is not a country that has had a chairman to determined his sympathy for poor people. so i think that the notion that somehow we have slipped into an era in which poor people don't matter is not quite the way our history was -- would define it. we really don't care much about poor people and it's true. the johnson administration sought to change that at a time when the country was going through an enormous change out of the civil rights movement, women's rights movement. there is a tremendous upwards mobility and aspiration for the country to be a different country. unfortunately, just as reconstruction was cut short, the war on poverty and taking our country to a different place that we really cared about all of the citizens was cut short by the right wing political

movement that took wing and took its orders the early 80s. so when we think about what is happening today against women in public life and political life, it really is it something that is new to our particular society into the political landscape. it has been going on for more than 30 years. and americans really -- these are not acts of god. no one came down and struck lightning and said you oppose women in the show taped at women's rights and than you shall invade women's in order to enhance your political agenda. this has been a very long time coming and we have allowed it to happen because women still do not have first-class citizens in our society. all of this year have been working for that. it is a very light journey, but let's make no mistake about it. what we see going on in town

now. it's a long legacy and the supreme court. it's a long legacy and all that has taken place in states throughout the country. chip away, chip away has occurred over the last three decades. it's very interesting, however that chipping away at always seems to focus only on decisions of women and their reproductive decision. so i think we have to really ask ourselves, why are there more children in poverty? why your families and disruption? because a lot of what has taken place is that women are primarily the heads of households now. and we are not perceived as real first-class citizens. and there is enough irby and take him to a back for real to the traditional role we have played in society, which his mother and caretaker as opposed to women in their own rights they deserve the dignity of our humanity as women, whether we

are mothers, wives, whether we are sisters or brothers, we are women and deserve the right of that dignity. the war on women's reproductive lives is really pretty stunning at the beginning of the 21st century, that we are engaged in a conversation, a really serious and political light with all that is before us, with all of the challenges of our society, with all of the desire for peace in the world and movements taking place all over the world that have used acid many ways as an example in a template for the s. orations appears that our conversation has evolved into a conversation about what her control pill you'll use and is simply unacceptable. it's undignified. it's unbecoming of a nation such as ours that we are engaged in those kinds of conversations. [applause] [cheers and applause]

>> i want to ask before for your file appear before a that do not acknowledge this conversation is being recorded for c-span because i want to ask you a question about women's specific and washington. please think c-span for carrying this conversation. [applause] i want to think c-span for carrying this. they follow us around the country for at least a half-hour to thank them for being so kind generous to let the american people be a part of these conversations about poverty in america. i listen to everything he said and there's nothing i disagree with. like in church i just say amen. i didn't get to church this i didn't get to church this morning at sorry, my mom is in the front room. 1992 was labeled, you recall, the year he won because they were so many women running for national office, rind for high office come in many of them even winning.

so in 1992, just 20 years ago we are celebrating the year of the woman. 20 years later there is a water on women's. how did that happen -- the priority has always been real, but we are celebrating in 1992 that women were making a breakthrough and now we're back to women being under assault, women being under attack. how does that have been? and what role do they may now have to play in reversing that trend? >> we have been salivating and i think, tavis, the fact we were celebrating one year as the year the women as illustrative of of the status of women, that we are celebrating one year as the year of the woman. [applause] and we have to be careful about our friends because sometimes our friends mask the war that continues. and so after 92, there was a tremendous amount of

complacency. as a notion that somehow we have a president in the white house and why should women's rights at her be based and pivoted on who is in the white house. we don't talk about press censorship based on who is in the white house. we don't talk about a lot of our fundamental rights. they are not rights that any generally -- there's always the french, but they annoy mainstream america grappled with her struggled with. there is no question that women's reproduction is still a very difficult issue for a lot of people, not the least of which is the catholic church and the catholic hierarchy. but we have to be careful about falling into complacency when we think that our friends will take care of us when it fact the only thing that has ever taken care of freedom in this country is ourselves that we have to work to protect our freedom with the assurance of our own freedom.

[applause] there's really no substitute. there is no substitute for the battle and the recognition that it is a long-distance battle. i am the grandchild of a slave born grandmother and i knew her. that's how a very short our history is. this is a very long-distance journey. it is a journey that if we lose vigilant, we fall back and we let those people who want to take us back occupy the public space, the public dialogue. we say let's not have controversy. let's be quiet about this. let's not get into controversy. if we are quiet about it, we won't have all of this conflict and difficulty. but when people are engaged in rhetoric that is designed to deny any citizens are fun and rights and especially women, we have to speak out if for no other reason than there is another voice that is heard.

>> i want to get the other panelists involved. >> look at this real quick. if you remember that it came on the heels of humiliation of anita hill during the clarence thomas nomination. so both of these women come in patty murray from washington state brandenburg action -- a member of backend walking down your city or the woman was not about empowerment as much as it was about reaction. >> right, get that. let me ask you a quick follow-up. the latter part of my question we didn't get that is how the women then get compelled to exercise their agencies to run for high office? to be a part of the body politic is whether we like it or not, that is the spirit which these issues are addressed. when you say speak out, we can all speak out. why not exercise the issues to be a part of that body of politics? >> would have to support women and sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

[applause] from the difficulty -- the difficulty to have women running for higher political office is finding that early court that does not say that you are guaranteed to be a winner any more than men are guaranteed to be a winner when they go to their donors and prospects to say support me, i have to do the kind of research necessary to put together a credible campaign. and we simply don't -- women simply don't find that kind of resource available to propel eyes. and until women say that this is going to be over, we are half the population. there is no reason for women and children to be in poverty. there is no justifiable reason except complacency and another willingness of women to do what was done in the first part -- the really part of the 20th century that made it possible for all of us to be sitting on the platform. >> women are just half the population. women make up the majority of americans.

>> more than half, you're right. i'm not disagreeing. i'm just augmenting. [laughter] i was about to say that the numbers are clear. women make up the majority of americans who are in poverty. i raise that only because back to women and single mothers, i want to get everybody involved. there's people waiting to haven't spoken yet. let me make my way around the horn and then combat. i want to come back to cecilia fire thunder because i love saying that name, cecilia fire thunder. first of all, please welcome cecilia fire thunder. [applause] but i want to come to you, cecilia because susan and i have been friends for a long time as well as susie is doing these days she was born on the southside of chicago. so everybody appears a great story. we'll hear more in the second. the cecilia has a story that is

just mind-boggling for me because so often these conversations we don't clutter native american brothers and sisters. i'm so glad to have that particular reason number one. [applause] but when my friend, dr. cornell west and i took a poverty around the country last year, we started this turn native american reservation. and we asked them for this documentary about poverty in america, what about the recession, now as the recession impacted you in the reservation? you know the women said to us? what recession? it's always this way for us on the reservation. so cecilia fire thunder is a single mom back in the day. she has two kids, goes on to become a nurse so that she can take care of her kids. she later runs for office and becomes the first woman to be the president of hirsute tribe. it is a wonderful story of single mothers -- single mothers

[applause] exercising their own agency. so we don't even keep track of what happens on the reservation. cecilia fire thunder comments come in with is like for women these days, poor women and their children trying to navigate life on the reservation where the recession means nothing because it's always so much worse. >> i'm one of millions of american women who identify as native american. we represent a little over 500 tribes in america large and small. the largest being navajos. of course the second largest is 2.5 million acres of land, 40,000 citizens living in my country. over half of our population are 18 and under. he talks about what recession. during the depression i can recall my father and uncle talking, what depression?

so america unfortunately -- there is a huge piece of land between l.a. and new york city called middle america where we live. and many of the indian reservations are in middle america. we have much land, lots of poverty. one of the things i like to remind often is the american indians are the only one mentioned in article vi of the united states constitution were in fact the quote is to honor our treaties made by this government and the united states of america. so when we go to washington d.c. and were always in washington d.c. trying to get one more penny for health care, one more penny for education, the collation arises, if we are mentioned in the constitution of this country from these documents, then why are we always hustling around trying to get more money to address the poverty in our community?

the other thing i want to be very clear is that we have at this point, the majority of the women who work in tribal communities are women. most of them are college graduates in our tribal community on women. many of them for the position held in our tribal community whether they be principals, superintendents are teachers are women. so when you take a look at this huge leadership amongst women in our tribal community, you know, people say why are women, indian women taking the lead? we have a lot of entrepreneurs, small businesses. one of the greatest challenges that we face in our tribal communities is access. we are at so isolated it's really difficult to get from point a to point b. then you factor in poverty and not banks access even more difficult to get to a grocery store to make sure your food

goes further, to get to town to see a specialist. so when we began to take a look at where indian people live, we are looking at isolation and large miles between point a to point b. that makes it difficult many times. and the city you have mass transit. carrboro community we don't have that. get poverty exists and it has existed for many, many years in our tribal communities. and it will continue to exist unless changes are made to be able for young women, young women to go back to school. we changed the law. we changed the law. there are many, many programs that may look good, but it's actually when you start to implement those programs, and makes it difficult for people in rural communities to be able to use those types of services and programs. one of the other states that is really successful is getting young women back into school. we have a high dropout rate.

the dropout rate is connected to other social problems. i can sit here and talk about everything. however, in many tribal communities, women have stepped up. as the first woman president of my tribe coming away women -- i'm sorry, you've heard about the glass ceiling. in india and america we don't have a glass ceiling. we have a buckskin ceiling. [cheers and applause] buckskin is pliable, so it stretches. so for many years, we felt like we were really making progress. we get only so far and we knock us flat on her rear end. and then what it is is that terminal suppression and how under communities of color we hold each other back and not

only women, thank you for making that comment. women hold us back to the sometimes many of our men hold us back. this is where the buckskin ceiling came into play. one of the things i want to share with you as i took my oath of office to be the leader of my nation, i was given a symbolic gesture, to cut through and go places where there's barriers. so i tell the story because it's so true. the first person made it past. the next person who stats have been made another cut might as an wynonna laduke. so laduke. so as we take a look at indian country, there were women who were cutting up a buckskin ceiling. so when the day of my inoculation i took my knife and went -- [cheers and applause]

on this symbolic gesture is giving indian women permission to do what i did. >> at me ask you because i'm just curious, what is if i spent some time as an young people, but give me just if you can and sense of what life is like for a poor child in a tribal community, what is life like for those kids? the mac is very challenging when you take a look at poverty. of course it always comes. a tribal community is the three number one. number one is cheyenne river. number two is pine ridge. and we have a tribes in south dakota and they are both in the state of south dakota. so many of our children and communities, many financial challenges. that's a nice way to say report.

being poor has been multigenerational and being poor is ongoing. however, we do have and one of the things i want to be really clear about is our educational systems, which are offended not only by the united states government, but the status south dakota's our children have access to education. they get on a school bus paid for by the government. come to the school paid for by the government. go to a classroom paid for by the government. so when you have high rates of poverty, a lot of children go without. they go without other things that are their children might benefit from. but on the other side of that coin, one of the things that i noticed about communities in poverty as everybody has a piece. everybody has a television set. they can find a way to put all the resource together to get some things that those children could benefit from as watching television perhaps. because of the poverty we have many, many households that are

mixed. as many people people live in one household. he comes here again the housing situation is at its crisis and has always been a crisis with multiple families living together in one household. therein creates another problem. so the statistics are out there in terms of who we are. my sister will be here. there's very little data on indian women in poverty. however it's fair. i just wanted to celebrate the tenaciousness. indian women are so awesome. they're resilient. they really smart. it also auto mechanics. [laughter] >> i cannot encapsulate data in such a short period of time. however can equal in the website anywhere in a final that data.

>> thank you. i'll come to you. as i said earlier the conversation would not be possible if you are not such a generous part. so please welcome the leader, randi weingarten. [applause] the link between education of the last quality education and poverty is the one day we don't have and republicans agree that the link between miseducation of black arrows. the question is, what is the link between poverty and the child's ability to learn in the classroom quiet >> i'm glad you asked that question. and my colleagues who are so much better statistics than i am. let me just start by saying thank you because we don't ever talk about poverty enough and

it's always a one-off and the fact that you are making this a priority so that we shine the light on poverty so no one can say it can be the word, thank you very much. [applause] i find it in my field just morally reprehensible that the debate is a total false choice at the moment you utter the word poverty if you are a schoolteacher, you immediately get you are using it as an excuse. i don't want to use it as an excuse. i want to mitigate it. i want to make sure we address it. and there's a bunch of things they need to do in terms of the advocacy, which this town hall is the of, but also in terms of the interventions, which people don't believe we can do. and so i think that you have to have both tracks at the same time. so the question we ask is about the intervention. so right now what we see in this is pre-recession.

there's a 40% achievement gap between rich and poor kids. that is double the achievement gap between black and white kids. 40%. >> the rich and poor is that much worse than black-and-white. >> yes. >> wow. >> that is before the recession. 44% of children in the united states of america live in low income household right now. 44%. this goes back to dr. malveaux's point about priorities and i want to get back to rural education for a second as well. priorities. we now that one third of the achievement gap, which are achievement gap part of house for a child between zero and five years old because kids are so nimble, that is when their

sponges. we also know that when there is a good early childhood program, everybody, republicans, democrats, everybody loves early childhood, there's a rate of return on investment of $7 for every $1 to invest in early childhood. don't know too many investments better than not. so less than 30% of 4-year-olds aren't publicly funded 4-year-old pre-k programs in the united states. so we know what works. we know it's a great rate of return. we know particularly for kids who are poured if we can get them in, it's fantastic. and take a place like new york, my hometown. it's harder to get into a pre-k program here than it is to get into harvard.

[applause] that is -- so when you talk about the issue of austerity, this is an intervention that we know will work. and why are we not doing it? and not turn it on on a pilot program and secretary of education hines trying to get to programs that might together. secretary of labor has been fantastic and trying to find ways to put pieces of money together for intervention. but that is the measure and the caliber and the character of are we going to poverty? this is an intervention that works and can work usually well. on the issue of access and rural poverty, rural poverty is ignored more than urban poverty. add cabbage and cornell no is pretty audacious experiment now. we essentially have taken the

county of mcdowell and west virginia and what we said is 70% unemployment, middle west appalachia to rural, and what we have found is yes we have to include the education system. let me also say that we know we have done a lot of wrong things in the past and we as a labor union have to address that too including the fact that we have to focus on the unfairness, but insuring quality. and if someone can teach we have to be able to say they can and if they shouldn't teach we have to make sure we give people the tools and conditions. others have to say about and take more responsibility. [applause] and mcdowell wead said it just can't need a teacher or the parent and we are looking to a

multi-strategy intervention, focusing not only has the lead partner partners. the governor just made it a zone where three to five years. we talk about transportation and do something about transportation and commit technology and do something about technology. were going to talk about housing and do something about housing contact about jobs and do something about jobs. education do something education and social services and do something about social services. we are saying kids are born. kids are not have access to his kids have in urban settings. if kids are sick and wealthier seen in lots of places around america, two thirds of kids have their only real meal, nutritious meal in school. [applause] teachers are spending $25 a month on kids.

so what we're doing and i'd love to talk to you about this because we can probably do something like this on some of the reservations. we are trying on holistic way bring it public or the partnership together and same of each type of romance to do development, workforce development, and make schools brings goes into communities. bring them around the services we can do college education on school premises, so we can open schools at 20 hours a day, so we cannot do social services they are, so we can actually do the kind of thing to turn our community around. that is what we need to do in terms of education. give up the ghost and say education is or anything else is here. bring it all together coming to school and also focus both unfairness and quality at the same time. [applause] >> i've got a number of pilots on that. he did some great work website

at these other person that thought in the conversation. we talked particularly for college education. there is no community pushing harder and astute in our hispanic others and sisters. his dream act has got to get past. it has to get past. it's got to get past. [applause] nelly govan is a latina obviously a notch for newer, has her own company, doing a lot of work to engage and involve women in case you've been looking at are trying to figure what i of that base from? celebrity apprentice. that is where you saw the face. cinelli is here. please welcome nellie. [applause] with regard to women specifically in your community, i have never seen a community that people want to exploit more politically, socially, economically, culturally in so

many ways and yet i've never seen a community that madison avenue here in new york craves more. they are trying to get to latina moms more aggressively than any other consumer in the country right now and i wonder if you might speak to the economy between being exploited on the one hand and been craved on the other hand if that makes sense. >> the outcome is very difficult for all of us to read continual statistics about as it don't really explain who we are. that's why relate so much to which he said, that they kind of make us feel like we are framed in a way that make us feel like some being is wrong and we are taking something away from this country. the dichotomy is one then you go to consumer product companies than albert has or is, they look at us like we're the greatest thing since sliced bread.

that is because their numbers are nice numbers. their numbers show that we are living in a multicultural society. 30% of those societies multicultural and 16% of that group is latinos and by the year 2030, we will be 30% of this country. the more money you make, the more money we make. i loved what you said because i think nobody really other says, how do we think? you know that latina come from countries of latin america where we or our families come from latin america where we've seen governments come and go, where banks have defaulted, where we live in cash society, where someone like me could never grow up to be me at her. i could never be an entrepreneur in some other latin american country. and so we come here and gratitude and in hard work.

and when we hear things about poverty and our relation to poverty, it is almost like a little shocking because we don't live in a state that mines poverty. we think of a transitional thing. we have been in and out of poverty for generations. i think that it's very important. latinos do not see ourselves in poverty ever. we are working towards the american dream. that is why we came here. we will do whatever it takes. and matt and women in the recent wall street is so after latin moms is because they took the same statistics about poverty. and i'm on the coke advisory board and i sat there one day and i saw how they look at statistics and they drove down on them to find a lifeline in the statistics. where was the good number? and you know, that is very important. the number they found is that in

the middle of the worst economy of the united states, when everything was horrible, latinos for latina moms out of nowhere were stricken in the numbers. latina moms for starting businesses. and when they went further and said why, what is it? they don't want to be rich. they don't care. that would be famous. not the american values because they didn't want their kids to go under the bus. and so when i looked at those numbers, i said to myself, my god, you know, what are these women missing? they drove out on that. what is that they need? if they went from year-to-year, we, we make more money and they make more money. they support the consumer product companies that one estimate our money. they said public take for these women to go from here to here, .1% which would make them in a whole other league of financial success. with the neatest community. what they need is women to come

together. latinas with the tenets of a latina sitting out other latinos have been through. they also need outside women, african-american women than white women to bring in her nation they have. and they need to know how to access capital. they need to know how to find the government contract, how to get money from advertisers to give away 10% of their contracts to women and minority owned businesses. they don't know how to access those deals. and i decided i am going to start a movement for latinas. there's never been a movement for latinas. move forward. [applause] and it's true. and so, i engaged advertisers because they get it. i don't have to explain it to them. sometimes politicians is like talking to the wall. but you know what? was pushed for the people were to get them. advertisers know the most important thing we have in this country is our buying power.

our money and what we purchase, we have rights for that purchase power. we don't realize that if we just bought from each other we'd all be rich. [applause] so we started a tour in december and were going to go through the country and all the information all the other people get, we're going to give it to latinas. and we have to remember something else that i hear in these boardrooms all the time. if we want to ask people for something, then we had to come through, too. if we asked the government to do something for us we have to vote. if we're asking somebody -- [applause] if we as a corporation to give his money, we have to buy their product. if we are asking a networked babar african-american and latinos and native americans on tv we have to watch their shows. the chance of being a one-way street is no longer in a world where it is changed. it not about them getting to us.

we have the power to make or break their company. we are bigger than the main -- we are the main street. [cheers and applause] >> please spoke on suze orman. [cheers and applause] suze orman's latest "new york times" bestseller, thanks to you, the money class understanding your treatment create the future your deserve. how is that for a segue? suze, last june i sigh each other we saw something that just arrested me. i've been using this line around the country. i'd not wonder why haven't they given you attribution for. >> i bet i know what the line was. but there is a highway into poverty and there's not even a sidewalk out.

[cheers and applause] >> that's it. i know when i say something that's good. >> ballad that by the way. >> i know. i heard you. >> now the whole nation knows i've been stealing from suze orman. but if that's true, across the board, how much more truth than is that for women and children, that there is a highway in, but not even a sidewalk out? >> i've been sitting here and i've been listening. i'm sure i'll surprised how quiet i've been? >> i was. >> i've been listening deeply. i've been listening deeply because there are good reasons to congress, education, native americans, the whole thing. and it all in my opinion boils

down to what is every single person in this audience today, what does every single person who is watching this person today, tonight, listening to it on the radio, what are you going to do for yourself? [applause] so when men -- women are very interesting to me and it is no doubt that women have the ability to give birth in most cases. in most cases, women have the ability to speak that which they have given birth to. so on some level, it is a women's nature to nurture. and she'd come in my opinion will nurture every single person, family member, pat,

employer, employee before she will nurture herself. [cheers and applause] and so, the reason that i think it affects women and children more than it affects men is women stick by their children. women stick to what they have brought into this world and when they are alone, they do not care. they will rise to do what? take care of their children. but it is not that a woman is about 50, 55 or 60 and she is all by herself, her spouse has left her, her children are grown and still living in her house that she finally gets to say, what about me?

[cheers and applause] so we can sit here all we want and we can quote staff and blame them and say it's always been that way. but i'm here to tell you that every single one of you in this room, you are not the dems to your circumstances unless you want to be. you can pick yourself up. you can sit here like you are sitting here like every single one of us is sitting here and you can be a more than you can have more, but you have got to do it for yourself. when women come together, rather than working against one another , which girlfriends they do. i cannot even begin to believe. when i fail at something is

going to make them a bigger success. they will be better on their tv shows. when then, we've got to be standing by one another. [cheers and applause] we have got to help one another. so today i'm sitting here and i'm lucky enough to see two things. in south dakota and these women and kids don't get to eat because they are trying to cut the expenses from feeding these children at school and they tell everybody to staff when somebody does me, what happens to them? tell them. >> poverty and not having enough food to eat can affect the brain development of children. it can affect development and can hinder their growth. >> so what do i do?

i am not going to go to washington and tell them about it. i'm not going to say to someone i'll fix that problem. i'm going to a reservation. [cheers and applause] sell all of her reservation members who bring them all together and i'm going to do it on my dime to see, what can we do to teach them what they need to know about money, that they need to know so they can stay away from the payday loans that people want them to keep taking out and they're literally financially racing the majority of the house there. so the solutions have it and a strange way it's everything everybody is doing right here on stage, but just what you're going to do for yourselves as well when you go home. are you going to stop in the stairway for family members who are not working for you support them?

are you going to stop doing things that squander all of this money that you are making? you're going to teach all these women how to open up a business and what are they going to do with the money? they're going to give it to their kids. fiercely because they don't matter. ladies, the day that you matter to who you are, to your south and you're willing to that point you are a matter is the day that you change to the united states of america. [cheers and applause] >> i love having these conversations because this is different than our area where you get 30 minutes to tell them to the topics. we get a couple hours could we have another or to go and i'm

excited to go through so much stuff to follow up on. there's one other person who has not spoken out. i want to hear from cheryl. before i do that i wrote this down so i would get this right. cheryl has sent expletive work on global poverty. this is not just a domestic game. about women to know they are connected to women around the globe impoverished as well. listen to these stats. the gap in poverty between men and women is wider in this country than anywhere else in the western world. that tripped me up. someplace else, maybe out of the question. the gap between men and women is wider in this country than anywhere else in the western world. ..

financing loans when. if you would speak to why you think that is a solution, anything else you want to add? the person as we did the

longest, the most range of where they want to go as i wonder if you might address that. stegano panel with all these women have a feeling there is nothing left to say. but actually as i have been listening there are many teams that echoed by a seemed as well and in my view i actually am not in this field helping i'm the messenger said that's a very important, but it has given me a very broad view. i think in the first case i think overall in this country we tend to look at poverty on the economy we tend to look at people in poverty as a drag on the economy. people think all my goodness we have to poor above our government budget and to this effort but in fact what we have to do and we're pushing the soft wheat to move from the discussion of the problem,

people in poverty as part of the potential solution. if we are trying to grow the economy where are you going to get the people that can grow the economy? it is the people that are in poverty. so you do need the foundation and education. that's very important. but what is also interesting is that i have seen solutions and education are of a world that really cut work well here. some places in kenya in cambodia have done a better job with education in china than they have here in the u.s., and that is kind of embarrassing considering we have such experts here. [applause] >> i would like to draw on the experience of china to raid china is run by dictators and they've done terrible things in the dissidents and they have. they also have done something remarkable petraeus adjust 20 years ago we were talking about the year of the woman, 20 years ago there were most of the people in china were in poverty.

and they were under a communist society so not only did they have to come back and economic challenge but they also had a political challenge and a social challenge. but certainly the government at the top can set certain goals but what happened it's gonna the local level and there is a lot of bureaucracy in the communist world. china is still a bureaucracy it still is. and the u.s. is still full of bureaucracy and i can see how an education there's so much progress the and if you try to change things to keep bumping up against. 20 years ago you'd see education is critical because if we can educate our girls even if they can get just at the level they can start working in factories a lot of middle school and high school graduates had and they work their butt off the factory is located to the communities so they could take it maybe it's not factories may be it's

something else but it's something that gives a goal for the people in the impoverished communities to live for potential jobs as they know they can just a graduate from middle school even if it is a vocational school they can get that job at that local shop or that local factory. roles are educated than they are more able to has the become women they are able to work in the factory they start bringing home a paycheck and that elevated the status in their household and in their local village and the local region and that's what is so critical is giving people a way out of poverty and there are ways out. because you are saying the highway into poverty you go on the highway but there are signs out and i think that we need to make sure that the compensation focuses on solutions, not the drag on the poverty prevents. >> i want to -- [applause] >> we are going to shorten the answers we have a lot more ground coming in this and thank

you all for your understanding in that regard. madam secretary, cheryl said something i want to come back to you on first for those of you watching the program now who will invariably say that this is absolutely wrong approach for government to be making poverty a parody. and we've already spent more money than we should have spent trying to lift women and poverty out. >> they are absolutely wrong. we need to continue a safety net. you can't make choices about cutting back during the time when we are not fully in recovery mode. we still have high rates of unemployment. you heard it here come 8.3%. we know it's even higher in some communities and women have suffered the most. we are represented in the work force, we are not making the same wages comparable to where we should become and with men. i keep saying that. so the answer here is about more investments in training and certification. that's why the president is putting a proposal forward to put in $8 billion to put into

the cave 12 and also the community colleges. we want to million people to come out of community colleges after year with certifications and licensing. employers keep telling me and when i travel around the country i want better trained people. i wanted to be flexible. i don't want the phd. i want the person in the middle, the technician. and there's a lot of folks out there that can be trained for these kind of jobs. so i think what sleekit happen. we can send earlier about empowering women to run for office emily's list is a good example of starting to help to give a funding to support women. i was someone that ran for office and got early support come early money for women, all women but also learning that you have to build coalitions with other people come and women look at issues and problems do differently for males. i know that. we look at all so much who gets credit for the solution but how do we work together to that solution bum well and that is what i see continually with many of the women that i serve with

an congress. we had a bad recession and more women had to work and stay at home and it's still not easy for an elective individual or woman to be the will to balance everything. so let's have fairness in the workplace and treat women easier and better if they decide to go into a professional career as an elected official. i don't want to see competition as much as the elected officials because i think that's very personal. there are a lot of women that ran for office that are not rich, and i know many of them gave up a lot of lucrative sings even the security of their families to serve the public. we consider ourselves in many ways public servants. so we want people to remember that. it isn't a bad thing to do and there are a lot of good women that i know that serve in congress and care about domestic violence and care about women getting an upper hand, getting a good job, making sure that they have retirement security and that everyone has a fair shot at education. stackup madam secretary raised

this issue. i keep asking you these questions but here's another 1i ask you about clinton, let me ask another one. the numbers are clear, black and latino women are twice as likely to be in poverty in this country as white women. the numbers are clear about that. black women the numbers right now or so abysmal for black women in particular, for black people more broadly the numbers are worse for us. black women in particular. there is a deafening silence in black america with regard to the obama white house in this administration and what they ought to be doing about poverty across-the-board to my mind the president hasn't used the word poverty enough or talked about it enough. that's my own assessment and we can debate that another time but we cannot debate that there has been a differential silence on the part of black people more

broadly and black women specifically. i love barack obama and michelle obama, i love all of that. but there is a deafening silence in the community about poverty. why, how can black women be so silent about their own poverty right now. >> melanie campbell people have a thing and she talked about the voting patterns of african-american women. we are the most loyal democrats that there are. we voted overwhelmingly. 97%, someone set for president obama. now, having done that, what have you done for me lately. that's really a question that we have asked everybody loves him. i love to love him. the brother is fine and smart, you know. [laughter] he's got it going on.

[inaudible] [laughter] [inaudible] [applause] it makes a lot of people silent, and this president has had enough challenges. people think he's had so much challenges. when you speak to your self-interest you or not piling it on you talk about what needs to happen. we talked about this before. tactically given the recession, i think that the president should have done jobs first and then health care. by doing health care first to use a lot of political capital, took a long time, then he gets these republicans and tea party people who do not understand the degette social service.

their kids go to publicly supported schools but they are saying cut, cut and as they said they diverted the conversation by talking about reproductive rights as opposed to economic rights. if you don't fight abortion -- like abortion, don't have one. that's all. it's that simple. [applause] 2010 made a very difficult for president obama to get lucky said he wanted around shops. i mean, if you get the end of 2011, it was a disgraceful time to watch republicans whose districts had high unemployment and oppose the jobs bill. it was disgraceful. and you saw mr. boehner with his posse. we are not going to pass a jobs bill. about four years later, december 23rd, you saw them standing there by themself saying we will do it for two

months. some african-americans fighting are extremely understanding of president obama, but that shouldn't present us from speaking in our own self-interest are present african-american women, we are talking out poverty and our children. president obama has some wonderful things for women as the secretary mentioned dillinger ledbetter act. it was tremendous and basically talks about equal pay and the fact that you can sue. she couldn't sue because she didn't figure out she had unequal pay until years later and they said the statute of limitations had expired. so now we can sue for an equal pay for a very long time. but, there was a pay equity act was passed in the 70's. the pay equity act has never been enforced. under president carter, there were attempts to expand child care and every one has talked about what happens with one in where we don't have anyplace to put our children. 3% of the fortune 500 companies

offer child-care on site. the offer child-care, they offer a hot line. you cannot call the hot line where can i take my child? kawlija baliles the hot line isn't going to help you at that point. things women can say but i think everyone here has talked about the way that women have been disorganized. working against each of the we don't the coalition that we need to have. you look at emily's list and it's a great organization but i would remind you that when she ran for the senate in 1992, emily's list didn't support her and i can give you a litany of other african american women and other women of color who didn't get the support the first time around. so we do have to be louder and here is the other piece. can you imagine the president or president from the we might as

well check our wound up a source [applause] for anything we see in president obama i think in this season he is better than any other person that to look at. [applause] we have to speak out. i was disappointed and i was so glad that we have the supreme court i'm glad we have an african-american woman on the supreme court. if you vote for somebody [applause] this whole -- what interesting here is three things i want to say quickly the notion of individual responsibility and collective responsibility. both have to have been carried in terms of elections and

running let's see about citizens united and how much money it costs to run owsley and that is also a self-fulfilling prophecy that we need to deal with it's not the people's house anymore. the one thing i would actually just brought in in terms of what they said before is that i'm part of the labor movement. i will give you one statistic that is totally and completely sobering to me. between 1973 to 2000, the number of people that were in the union went from about the private sector, 44% to 8%, and the same period of time income inequality rose 40% that is a way of creating a collective work creating a community and labor together having the coalition we are talking about let's be real and i'm trying not to be

political. it's not simply a war on women it is a war on voting. i walked through that march to montgomery and little was going on in terms of the alabama but worse than the war on voting on the voter why the law we have the most vital anti-immigration war so anyone that is perceived to be an immigrant, anybody that is perceived to be undocumented can no longer leave their house for fear of being arrested what we have right now, and this is part of how we need to fight this is the we have two very different philosophies. one that says we've had a really tough time, how do we create the individual responsibility, plus the safety net and the opportunities for a fair shot. you need to do both. versus a philosophy that basically just says we are going

to take away rights from people coming and that is what we have to fight about right now in the next few months. [applause] stomach to go back to the question of you posted because i think that there are a number of areas in which by the markers of the society's well-being of black women fare the least well with your the markers of healthcare, whether there are any number of studies that have demonstrated that when we are in the health care system we get the least desirable care what they are economics statistics, whether they are educational statistics but we haven't discussed seems to be just a political forum, but we haven't discussed the enormity of the power of popular culture and the media to define black women in

terms that are not dignified that are not worthy of things perceived that we are not worthy of being perceived as being equal. the characterization and the stereotypes that are reinforced of black women in our society really deserved an uprising among black women at this point. [applause] the lack of our prevalence hoffa and all of the imagery that sends strong messages, very strong visual messages for people to say that this is equal this individual deserves the same respect to treatment are just fading in a way that for those of us that came of age in the 60's and 70's is shocking. so i think but while this is a political discourse today, the larger societal value system is

something that we need to challenge him and popular culture and the media and the public conversation really all need to be challenged. with respect to black women. [applause] >> i'm glad you say that. you are and on every black woman. [laughter] >> i'm a black woman trapped in a white woman's body. laughter could face one of the media, but we offer a quick confession here and i will put out there and we will talk about it. i've done these symposiums all around the country now and this is the first time in my 20 year career i've had the opportunity to be blessed to moderate a panel of all women, and i will tell you without going into detail this is the most difficult symposium that my people have ever helped me

produce, trying to get focus on this country i need to get the media attention about this. that's why i'm thankful for the radio right now, thank wbi. if you're watching on c-span right now thank c-span. if you're watching on pbs, on thank pps but because i've done so many of these things, you know, when you put together a guest panel of experts i have a few friends in the industry. it's also difficult for me to get the exposure and platform i need to talk about the pending conversation. this has been like pulling teeth try and get the kind of focus and attention on this particular issue. what say you about this point beyond black women that poverty is just a question and issue on particularly women. >> what's interesting about me talking about money every week is that it's the number one

rated show on cnbc. you wouldn't see the support that somebody truthfully of my stature should have and i'm here to tell you ladies and gentlemen, i do not have it. as much as you think i do, i do not. i have to fight and crawl into bed and scratch for every single thing that i still to this day create. so women do not have a place in my opinion in the media but especially in business economic media. they don't have it the way they should and i think that what you said was so true and because it is so true it's so sad.

there's only on collection that i would like to make on this panel and that's what you women held up half of the sky. [laughter] [inaudible] [applause] to >> and i am just mincemeat. and also a brother in but i take your point. i want to answer your question because i think the reason it's difficult to talk about poverty is in a country where god is money to the [applause] and that's true. when you classify yourself as poor you might as will be a leper. nobody wants to call themselves poor. even when you are read it is uncomfortable. >> but most of us are. >> i'm telling you why it's

painful to talk about it. i'm answering your question. it's part of our collective but it's part of the collective we did not come and i think that as someone living in this country that comes from traditional values and good values, what we have and said is that what is going on in the collective in the country is the values in the country have gone to hell. [applause] what we see in the media with what is going on with the republican debate is embarrassing. [applause] and what we see in the media and what we have seen over the last few years in the media, what we put out in the world is that the money is gone and if you don't have it by any means necessary get it you are nothing. [applause] and i think the important thing is that what we know is that women are the holders of the

values and in our family to the [applause] we have to go back to upholding what is really good. when we say that immigrant children shouldn't cut education, what happens to the country that unemployment was funded what happens in those values? we have to look at what we believe in the collective whose collective or listening to its shameful in this country is not shameful to be poor in other countries. people don't ask you right away what are you doing how much money do you make? diaz kallur yo [applause]

i will take the point and agree with you i'm conflicted and confused now because if we think that poverty as a political question is difficult trick is situated as a moral question i see your point. >> we take care of our own people. it is a moral question. shouldn't that be the value of the priority? [applause] if it comes from the value system and we act as though it doesn't matter if it does matter. our value systems do matter and human forms every other institution within our society, and when our value system becomes corrupt, everything else becomes corrupt. >> i agree. my question is whether or not you think the majority of americans are -- or certainly elected officials do you think they see poverty as a moral

question as opposed to a choice? >> the problem is that we elect them. >> the point of view from the media because i do think that is why we say that the challenge of our time is equity. that poor women, poor girls lead to gender inequity. even in the u.s. as well. so it applies. but i think that one of the major problems why it doesn't get so much coverage and why people are not interested, poverty is the way that we tell it. it is so much of what is covered in the news media, in the television. it's how you tell stories. i think much more investment and what needs to go into how we tell stories and what we do with individual stories of women who have faced challenges but also come out of post-religious. i think that's really important. even when we talk about how to engage elected officials. we need to not only tell the

story of the challenge but also the way out because they want solutions. there are many ways of helping to focus on that. >> i might say to that to my mind there is a bipartisan consensus in washington and you know how difficult that is to get. if i said to you there's a bipartisan consensus in washington that poverty doesn't matter, political or moral there is a consensus in that town that it doesn't matter it isn't a party in this country. >> absolutely. one of the things to talk about the discussion of poverty there's another were we don't talk about very much and that's capitalism, we don't talk about false of capitalism are. let's just be clear what capitalism does is it creates poverty. the people that have to pay loans, they are making money off of poor people. the people who have, the people

that are using these credit cards i hope you talk about but they have these credit cards making money out of people. back in 1963 or '64 they wrote a book called the poor pay more. they talked about this in many ways people are exported. dr. martin luther king when he accepted, 1968 where we go from here. he talks about economic structure to the pieces there are 40 million poor people in america. and you have asked what kind of country creates 40 million poor people, and when you ask that question you have to ask about the very structure of our economy. who owns the oil, who owns the ibm or? if the world is two-thirds water, why do we pay water bills? >> let's be clear we have seen in the past 20 years the income

distribution become more unequal. we are only second to sweden in the inequality of our income distribution. and nobody wants to talk about if you talk to the other people, they would say this is class warfare. you begin to talk about the difference is and who earns what to read or they need to work hard. there's nobody that is harder working than an undocumented person at somebody's house getting paid under the table. [applause] ..

there is a good side to it and there's a horrific sight to it, and that is true. so many of you today, in order to transact business, you need plastic. you cannot carry around cash although try to tell that to the latino community where they spend all of their money, seriously they will not walk into a bank. these people are called unbanked. no, it's true. that is their terms end you are either banks are in bank. when you are poor -- when you have bounced checks you cannot get a checking account or a credit union account. if you can't get a checking account or an account at a credit union, how do you get a card to transact business? you need a piece of plastic to

order something over the internet, to go into the grocery store so you are not -- in a big business for many people brought at what was known as we pay cards, cards that you didn't have to qualify for, but they were issued and he deposited money on them and you use them. many of them are highway robbery. they charge you 35 to $60 a month to use them. how many of you out there have one of those? quite a few of you. so i decided i was going to do something about it and i created a part of it myself, something called the approved card. the approved card, if you use it the way that i ask you to use it, will not cost you more than $3 per month and the $3 per month is for four cards of 75 cents a month. you can pay your bills on line for free. here is the point.

when i brought up this card, i have never in the 30 years that i have been doing this, seen such opposition of outright lies from the television community, from the newspaper reporters, from everybody. if i succeed in this card, the banks fail. [applause] if i succeed with this card -- the people who have these prepaid cards and they can afford -- everybody wants me to fail because they can continue to make money off of you. if you want to change things around, i am asking you to look into it because, and i will stop here at this, in order to be and more and have more every single one of you needs a credit score. your credit score determines the car insurance premiums you pay, if the landlord will rent to you and your credit report

determines if you employer will handle -- hire you. you cannot get out of poverty if you do not have a good credit report. do you understand that? you cannot get a credit score if you use cash or a debit card. so i try and i've succeeded that everybody tries to make a sale that one of the major credit bureaus, transunion, for the next 24 months they are going to look at the transactions that you make on the approved card. it will not go on your credit report currently. it will not increase your credit score currently, but if this experiment works, 24 months from now when you use a debit card, it will go on to your credit report and you will get a credit score because you are a viable human being. but you have got to work with me are people because everybody else wants this project to fail. is called approved card.com and if it starts to succeed comes the $3 a month they you are

having to pay it will go away because i want a card that is better than cash. [applause] >> i just wanted to, when we talk about individuals or public servants that look at compassion and who is doing what, i want to be somewhat clear when this administration took office, we lost about the first few months after the not iteration, there were 8 million jobs that were lost, so let's put that in context. as soon as we got of a recovery act and we were able to put more funding and to help put in a safety net under the ui program and unemployment insurance benefits. 50 million americans benefited from that 12 million children. now we come back to another debate that we had over a year ago because we had to struggle with this new congress that didn't want to extend payroll

tax credits for poor people, working class people and also ui benefits. people are and that ui benefit and every time 1 dollar that ui benefit is used, it is spent back in the community and generates two more dollars. that keeps keeps mom-and-pop stores -- stores open and she's the gas tank filled. it's kind of a stimulus if you well but there are still a lot of people in washington and other places that believe the ui program itself is just something that keeps people at home. if folks really are looking for work and they are just using that as an excuse. i tend to say that's not true and we need to make our programs work better and not give erroneous arguments to opposition is says these people are slackers because i know they are not. there is a lot of good working people to get up every single day looking for a job but when you still have more people applying for one job, we are not creating jobs enough. government can't do everything but we will try to stimulate. we also have to have that

partnership with businesses and corporations in right now some of them are sitting on a lot of money. they have made a lot of profits right now and we need to incentivize and we need to have the public collectively tell those new members of the house and otherwise to get on the ball and to make sure that we are passing laws that are fair. all we are looking for a thing think thing here in this of is a fair balance. >> let me push back on this notion of incentivizing them now and i appreciate what you have dealt with that word incentivize tripped me out for a second. you now want to incentivize the banks who are sitting on a trillion dollars. we gave this money to bail them out in the first place. we gave them the money to bail them out and we didn't have strings attached to the money that we gave them. now it's up to us to come up with another government plan or some other process to incentivize them, to pour the money back into the economy that they are sitting on that we get to them in the first place? >> let's be clear, we also launched over the course of

three decades a lot of jobs there were outsourced, okay? this president is talking about insourcing jobs, giving tax credits to bring those jobs back home and we should do that right away. that is something i think the public agrees with. it isn't just the banks that there but there is also this whole slew of chemical and oil companies and other corporations that are paying taxes that shove their money and tax payments. we want to bring that back in tax people appropriately. and give you a break if you are creating jobs here in america. >> badham secretary respectfully where's the evidence number one but those jobs are ever going to come back? he asked steve jobs -- jobs said to him come to his face mr. present those jobs are never coming back. this is steve jobs so where's the evidence of those jobs are going to come back number one and number two where's the incentive, where's the incentive, seriously, where's the incentive for any american corporation right now to hire

anybody if they can do more with less, and daily reason why you hire anybody these days in corporate america is you have to. [inaudible] what incentive do they have have to hire americans? >> let's look at the automobile industry. who said they wanted to make an investment into said they didn't? now there has been over 1 million jobs overall and the industry in sectors. 100, 200,000 come a two-year automobile industry good-paying jobs that put people back in the middle class. i'm not talking about men, women or people of color. large proportion of afghan americans of folks in the industry now. now they have profit-sharing. you see assembly lines that are coming up. i'm not saying it's all going to come back right away but because of policies the president put in place to create and incentivize, create new vehicles that will be competitive against korea and japan so now you have a hybrid vehicle and now you have lithium

batteries being created here, not abroad. that is the kind of incentives i'm talking about and that the president is talking about. each do more whether manufacturing overall. let's bring back those products. let's keep our rum materials here and incentivize her business is. >> all i'm saying is incentivize is a strategy. they should have been made to do it on the front and. [applause] >> i would not be accused of class warfare here but i was just in china, singapore and japan, and what is remarkable, and you know we talk about the factories and our terms they are sweatshops. in their terms it is upward mobility. but they have in china and industrial policy. this lady over here in the president, it and i have issues and i think dr. malveaux really put it the right way in terms of what the stakes are right now in

terms of the president and others. we don't have an industrial policy and the united states of america. the auto work out -- i call it a workout. there are a lot of people in labor who lost a lot of money because of dual pay scale now and things like that but people, the auto companies couldn't access capital anywhere so the government was used as a last resort. every lost the auto industry, the choice would need debt and what happened was they took a risk. secretary took a risk, your companies took a risk, union took a risk and right now you see this remarkable change. that was the closest we ever had to an industrial policy. i think we need more of that kind of industrial policy. i think what we are saying we are saying on this panel is, it's important to shine a light for people don't feel shame but then it is equally important to have a set of strategies that we

go further with, both capital strategies, industrial strategies, educational strategies all underlined by values because it is there value in the united states of america which is give up your tired and your -- we are a country that builds ourselves up, has the american dream that we need those strategies. i think what comes out of this as i'm listening to the amazing ladies on this panel is that if we could actually collectively strange bedfellows as we might be, end up having a set of strategies that we all pursue, that would be a change in terms of power. [applause] >> i've got to get back to -- but would you say to those women and children watching or listening right now who have

nothing against bailing out industry, but are waiting on some help from the individual. americans want fundamental fairness and they see all this help from wall street and all this help for the auto industry. i'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea. [inaudible] >> it is unfair and part of what many of us have said earlier to your first question is that when you are coming out of the deepest recession we have had since the great depression, the worst thing you can do is austerity. we have to stimulate the economy. the fact that we lost the -- what has happened is there are thousands of schools that need to be repaired. teachers every single day see poverty first-hand. they are on the frontlines of seeing it every day and we fight like hell to try to keep the

doors open, to not -- stabilize neighborhoods. my members take money out of their pockets every single day to buy supplies and do all of this stuff. you are totally right, we see it first-hand that we have to have long term as well as short term strategies. we have to have a job strategy but we also have to have a lifeline strategy. >> that brings me back to the discussion, on my resume. we have tribal schools and colleges. one of the things we are doing about communities is taking a hard look at the existing way of educating our people. unfortunately, the western model created by somebody in washington d.c. trickle down to our communities. education when it began in my community was only to do two things. speak english and be christian. [applause]

>> when the united states government started education it was not -- that was to say my father's -- speak english. today we are taking a hard look. we have -- the boundaries of my reservation and everything that goes on inside there is a responsibility and it's up to us to -- is tribal citizens of the community to look at where we have been, where we are and where do we need to go. one of the areas we are looking very hard at is the educational system. we say education is the key to get out of poverty however not everybody can go to college. not everybody is going to be a doctor. when you take a look at our community what kind of jobs do we need to train our people for? our community and our lands, we growth hate and we eat sorghum.

we grow ribeye. we have a lot of towns. in our committee we have to take a look at what is it that we want our children to learn how did do so they can also make a living and live off the land and to provide it for the committee. part of the challenge is to take a look at what we can do to change how we do business in our community and then go back to changing the philosophy of the country so -- every community in america. [applause] >> i have got this rich conversation but there are few issues i want to get to that i haven't gotten to that i wanted to. there is a link clearly made between poor health and property.

talk to me about that. [applause] >> there is an enormous, enormously strong link between poor health and party particularly among women especially among women and especially tragic is not only do we fare less well in the health care system in our own experiences but we are also mothers of children and when we are not healthy our children can possibly be healthy. yet most health care policy programs are aimed at children as a way of legitimizing somehow taking care of women and speaking of policy adjustments, we need to change that. we are also the caregivers of our parents and other disabled. the affordable health care act, however, for the first time will provide preventive services without a cost-sharing, meaning that the individual consumer doesn't have to put up a certain amount of money in order to get the care and who would have ever imagined that we would engage in

a major national debate over whether contraceptive care would be included as a requirement as a personal requirement under preventive health care. so in 2010, in the course of the year 2010, 20% of women did not have coverage for their health care. so what does that result in? that results in prescriptions not being filled, that resulted in postponing recommended treatment. that resulted and not going to specialists when we needed to go to specialist. that resulted in just a general state of a lack of optimal health care. when i speak about health care, i think we have to also put into that category a freedom from violence against women. [applause] the organization that i

cofounded a few years ago published a survey among 3300 women in which we thought we were going to find the usual conversations that we had here today for over two hours, economics, economics, economics and what came back when we asked what you believe ought to be the number one issue addressed in this country, it was to stop violence against women. [applause] it is a marker of how we value women in this country and our health. i am speaking -- and our health and the only time we are concerned about a woman's safety is when she has been physically injured or has been killed. and we really don't much care about the circumstances of her well-being with prospective or safety and security. her health security, unless there are just enormous threats to her well-being. >> there is also data that links

that cycle to violence to poverty. >> to poverty and that cycle of violence is the state of motherhood. homicide against women is among the highest among pregnant women. i think it's really important to link the status of health care in this country and the uninsured are co who are the uninsured? they are young women. they are women who did not have high school educations. they are women in the hispanic community. much more likely than in the african-american community. so the subcategories of womanhood are still those of which we really must address and again i say over and over again, these are not acts of god. they are acts of complacency. we have the power to change the circumstances and help the number one agenda. >> thank you very much. [applause]

just watching my time. we have five minutes left. one issue i want to get to to david we did not get to in our conversation dr. malveaux you quoted dr. king and king once said that war is the enemy of the poor. and war is the enemy of the poor. that is true for all people but especially true for women and children because those resources that are being squandered abroad and up not being available here at home for women and children and services. tell me more. i agree with you. >> absolutely, dr. king really looked at war as an act of violence. a combination between war and capitalism because who makes money from more? what we know is among women who are enlisted, 40% of them are african-american women. there is an economic draft. we don't really have a draft but there is an economic draft are co people go to war because they don't have jobs.

we have women who have left their children with their moms of a can go to war. you have people who have enrolled in the army reserve because they could get an extra $250 a month in the next thing you know they are over there in afghanistan somewhere. and we talk about violence against women. it's a breeding ground for violence among women. the number of women who are raped in the military and if the of the things that happen to them. one thing is to say we talk about violence against women -- in other words the power of myth. patriarchy allows economic islands against women. that is the 77 cents on a dollar weaker compared to men but the situations we are putting, sexual harassment that so many women experience. some people cannot afford to quit are co we women have to be

more united. we have accepted the structure that discriminates against us systematically with the music video. as the president of the college, i tell my students is not against the law for you to cover your body. [laughter] [applause] the war has sucked resources out of our economy and women and children to pay for. >> poverty is the worst form of violence. i have a minute and a half ago and i want to close as i begin with our secretary here. and a minute and a half tell me if you can why in this particular moment with all the numbers not giving us reason to be optimistic whether or not you are hopeful and that women and children in america should be hopeful. >> i am hopeful. even starting tomorrow we are going to be celebrating the passage of the affordable care

act. uninsured children, latino, african-american and poor children are being covered in phenomenal numbers. this is a 70 year span of time when finally the president got something done. no one thought it was going to be this hard. it was hard but where people are reaping the benefits. i've hope because when i look at the past 3.9 million private sector jobs created in the span of three years, two and half years, and you look back over the previous administration did, that president only had 11,000 jobs created per month. we have been able to really kick out the numbers and do a lot more. part of it is because people have confidence, optimism and hope. yes i do believe the numbers can improve if people believe we can help work with each other, build coalitions and empower each other and make sure we are sharing" blessing and we are standing up and we hear the voices of the public. the bottom line is folks our destiny is wrapped up together.

it's not what the white house in washington d.c. over here. it's all of us working together as a community. >> thank you for being here today. [applause] cecelia fire thunder. [applause] faye wattleton. [applause] suze orman. [applause] secretary hilda solis. [applause] randi weingarten. sheryl wudunn and dr. julianne malveaux. [applause] let me ask you to thanked wpi for chairing this life in new york. is thanked wpi please. and c-span.

[applause] and pbs. and me. a with a senate out of session this week its booktv in

prime-time here on c-span2 with a look at u.s. senators. tonight starting at 8:30 p.m. eastern former pennsylvania senator arlen specter on his autobiography, life among the cannibals. >> the aclu has believed for some time that police departments around the country are tracking people cell phones on a routine basis, often without getting a warrant based on probable cause. >> four years ago i was a washington outsider. four years later, i am at this

dinner. [laughter] four years ago i looked like this. today i look like this. [laughter] and four years from now, i will look like this. [laughter] [applause] that is not even funny. >> mr. president do you remember when the country rallied around you in hopes of a better tomorrow? that was hilarious. [laughter] that was your best one yet. honestly, it's a thrill for me to be here with the president. he has done his best to guide us through very difficult times and had paid a heavy price for. you know there is a term guys like president obama.

probably not to too terms, but -- [laughter] >> this week on "q&a," author cary nelson discusses his latest book, no universities in ireland, defense of academic freedom. he is also the resident of the american association of university professors. c-span: professor cary nelson what is the american association of guinness -- university professors? >> guest: a very distinguished organization that was

established in 1915 that we are coming up on a 100th anniversary which is the big thing for us, and it was established as an organization to articulate its a pulse for the professorial and to monitor conduct of universities around the country. we are the organization that defined tenure in the united states. we are the organization decades later that wrote the best statement on student rights in the united states and we represent all academic disciplines. it's a very serious enterprise that is only possible by bringing people together from all fields across the country. c-span: how long have you been its president and how did you get there? >> guest: since the beginning of my six year. i'm term limited so i won't be president anymore though i might be pestering folks one way or another. i came here as an english professor i training, modern poetry actually but heart out of

experience. beginning in 1970, higher education began to be under a lot of financial stress and i realized that many of my students were not getting jobs, not getting good jobs at least. there was a lot of stress in the profession and i began to feel that just being a poetry specialist was not enough. i had to begin to address issues that affected higher education generally so i began to write about higher education and i began to publish books on the. still publishing about poetry but not just poetry. some people i've been active in the adp for a long time said maybe ought to come around and see what this organization can do. i have been very impressed by the quality of the work that we produce. we are relentlessly devoted to perfection and that's been a place where i could be active in a much broader scene. just to give you an example, last year when bp, british

petroleum began to issue contracts to faculty students around the country after the gulf oil spill, we were very concerned that they were issuing contracts that said that the results of research could be kept secret by the company for three years. the federal standards for a company keeping research secret is two months, so two months versus three years, we felt that was a serious abridgment of academic freedom. ice sheets and statements about it and the statements were picked up by 30,000 different media outlets around the world. they were translated into russian, finnish, chinese. i would see the chinese in parentheses and cary nelson as university professors so this is really been an opportunity to reach out to people across the country and around the world about issues they think are important. c-span: how long have you been at the university of illinois?

>> guest: i say sometimes just after the civil war but actually since the fall of 1970. c-span: where did you go to undergrad? >> guest: antioch college in ohio. a wonderful school and not only was it a very progressive school but it had really unique programs where you went to school half a year and you worked half the year so even though i was in ohio i spent six months as an assistant teacher in a fifth-grade school in harlem. i worked in an office in new york. i worked in the hospital for three months here in washington d.c. in bethesda actually so it's a school where you got great academic training but also were sent out into the world to discover what work is. one of the things i discovered is i couldn't take orders from anybody and i couldn't show up from 9 to 5. i had to be underground control and basically that left me with being a professor. c-span: where did you get your ph.d.? >> guest: university of rochester, english and immaculate. c-span: your name came up in our

last "q&a." it was a book which we have here, naomi showed for -- schaefer riley wrote. the name of it is "the faculty lounges" and other reasons why you won't get the college education paid for. i'm going to run a clip and get you to respond to it. >> ahead of the american association of university professors was asked to comment on my blog by inside higher ed a few weeks ago and i think he said it left him speechless, so i was happy to take credit for that but i think he was very very angry and particularly i think what most professors disagree with and not look is my argument about tenure connection to academic freedom. c-span: talking about you professor. >> guest: perhaps a slight misidentification of my standard. i was an angry. i must admit that i was somewhat for domick and response to the book. for one thing, tenure has to be

understood as part of a system. in my own most recent book, i call it part of you know, a three-legged stool, tenure, academic freedom and shared governance and you can't understand tenure which is partial job security, and as you see how it relates to these other things. naomi makes the argument that in many things that faculty members teach, they don't need academic freedom. you can teach calculus without saying anything controversial. i won judge that but i do know that tenure creates an atmosphere on campus where people can speak freely. not just in their teachings but also in terms of university governance. if you don't like a proposal by the board of trustees or the president, you have to be able to speak freely about it. administrator should be able to do that as well so that shared governance speech was part of what academic freedom protects. without that you really don't

have the expertise and the faculty available to you. you don't have people speaking courageously and forthrightly about their convictions and you don't have what makes american higher education great. tenure of course is in many institutions disappearing. the most significant fact about tenure is one thing they a aup revealed in 2005, we pointed out in 1975, two-thirds of american faculty members and colleges and universities were either tenure or eligible for tenure. 30 years later, 2005 those figures had exactly flipped. two-thirds were no longer eligible for tenure and only one third were. now at our best schools -- harvard is not about to give up tenure and university of illinois is not about to give up tenure but many schools across the country are hiring part-time faculty who don't have tenure.

so tenure is not disappearing across the country but the percentage of faculty members who have tenure is vastly reduced and that is beginning to change higher education. c-span: i want to run another clip from naomi shrader riley where she talks about your position, meaning the aaup and get you to respond to it. >> they're basically professors of cooking who now have, professors of nutritional studies who have tenure now. and when pressed, someone at the aaup or a professor who is toeing the party line will say, oh well we need someone who has tenure and security studies so they can talk about immigration. and someone in nutritional studies manes something controversial about obesity. this could go on indefinitely. there is no limit to the number of controversial things that need protection but in my opinion, i think you know the balance of academic freedom has

just been pushed too far. >> guest: that actually does lead me close to speechless because nutritional studies seems to me a perfect example of why tenure is necessary. how many programs in nutritional studies are supported by grants from food producing companies, and how many faculty members if they speak out against the practice of those companies, going to have their jobs threatened if their departments and their universities are getting a lot of money from that company? nutritional studies is an area that involves a whole corporate enterprise in the united states. large companies make food products. some of those food products are not terribly healthy for people. we have looked at food products sold to children that cause obesity and end up causing diabetes later in life. these are political factors and they require forthright speech from faculty members.

there are many many corporations that invest in higher education and not all of them are ideal corporations obviously. i suppose the most striking example is the tobacco companies that have paid for faculty research and supported research at universities for many many decades and you know i think i am pretty much convinced that tobacco is injurious to your health. university faculty members cannot have their job security threatened if they're honest about the danger that some products represent. c-span: how often do you see a member of the academic professoriat play to the money? in other words the research money is there if you like the right things and draw the right conclusions. jaczko well, most human beings rationalize what they do and when i look back at the 50s and 60's when faculty members were testifying in congress that

tobacco was harmful to your health, i suppose it's possible they believed it. it's difficult for me to imagine it but perhaps they did. there is a deeper way though that faculty members are now pressed to speak for the money and vote for the money and that is because many administrators want to see faculty members bring in as much funding to the university as they can. so faculty members are encouraged to do this kind of researcher research where that kind of research which is more profitable. my own feeling is that academic freedom means the faculty member should be able to pursue the research that he or she believes is most important, that we do the most good for the country whether it is research that a corporation wants to fund are not. so money has become more and more powerful in higher education and certainly in public higher education and state allocations to public higher education of over 30

years, gradually being eaten away. c-span: how does the tenure process work for you? >> guest: well, it was perhaps a little more elaborate for me. i came up for tenure three times before i got it. the second time my department head said that i should be fired and his reasoning was subordination. and i said, the claim was correct but the -- was incorrect. so i got tenure the following year, and what it is meant for me is that i could speak freely. that has been my tendency anyway. i have often taken issue with things that my own institution has done. some administrators don't like me very much as a result. others think you know when i disagree with my own institution it's probably because i care about it. i care what its future is.

i care what it's doing but tenure has given me the freedom to speak freely. it's given me the freedom to challenge my students, which is really essential. i teach some courses that students find authentic but i have to work carefully with them to enable them to deal with the material. i teach a course on the holocaust and it places a lot of strain on students and the tenure has let me work hard to bring out the best in those students and the to challenge them. that gives me the job protection in the to do that. c-span: do you think he was still have a job at at the university of illinois if you didn't have tenure? >> guest: i gave it up a few years ago. c-span: gave up what? >> guest: tenure. c-span: you did? how does that work? >> guest: well partly what i decided was i wanted to teach

less and i could do more national work like the aaup. it has enabled me to do a lot of traveling here and abroad. this is a lot of campuses and speak to a lot of people. this semester for example i was scheduled to teach but my travel schedule has now passed the point. i often get home one day be the next so i decided to give it up so i would have to teach less. it has introduced me, unhappily, to the world in which you ask for your job at the end of every year and then you find out whether you are going to get it. i can't say that i enjoyed that part of it. i think i would have done the same thing all over again, but it has not been without its unpleasantness. you become more vulnerable. i have experienced some of that older ability, there is no question about it. c-span: in your book, which was

2010, no universities and i let you take on the aaup, american association of university professors. you take on the university of illinois. where you make your living. you take on corporatist. you take on academic, the administrators. why? where does it that come from nu that you have this approach to take on folks like this? >> guest: well, i mean, taking on the aaup cuts out a tremendous love for the organization. i have been in its leadership for 16 years actually. on its national council for 16 years and i stress throughout the book that i think they aaup is central to the future of higher education but i want to see everything that it can be and sometimes it fails. it failed most dramatically during world war i just after its historic statement when it supported the notion that

criticizing the draft during world war world world world war i was unacceptable to faculty member should have that kind of freedom. and i think some of us are still haunted by that failure. we failed again during the mccarthy period. we didn't do investigations of unjust firings of faculty members. i think the leadership of the organization was afraid to fight senator mccarthy but then eventually, we decided to go back and do those investigations so your organization has a misstep over time and part of what i think is important is to admit that and then figure out how you can do better. at the same time as i have tried to identify the organization's fault, i have tried to see how it is better in terms of my own campus. the world of higher education has changed. there is more pressure on

faculty members as i said, to bring money in, and like so many campuses across the united states, for many years, i think key administrators had the approach that every discipline should be as good as it could be, that if we wanted excellence across the board, and i deeply believe did that and in fact worked closely with many administrative sewer absolutely terrific but we are not seeing across the united states that same commitment to all academic disciplines. the humanities are threatened. they bring in money, mainly one form, student tuition but they don't bring in grants. they don't bring in corporate contracts so we are seeing some humanities programs closing around the country. aaup gets basically a complaint about the humanities or social sciences department of being close once a week. that is about the raid in which they are coming in. so we are very worried about that trend and i have seen in my

own institution less support for some humanities disciplines and i guess i am nostalgic for for the good days when we wanted to do everything terrifically well. c-span: what you think the billions of dollars that goes from the taxpayer to the federal government to all these research universities in the united states? >> guest: first of all there are certainly a lot of -- who decries the amount of research universities do. the cold reality is that the overwhelming majority of faculty members in the united states are devoted almost exclusively to teaching. perhaps 10% of the universities in the united states have major research commitments. some of those are large institutions but in terms of numbers of institutions, it's only about 10%. many faculty members teach full-time and that is really all that they do but the system as a

whole depends upon their research that a limited number of people do that keep disciplines current, the correct historical errors. i have seen so many historical errors corrected to my own discipline, literary studies, that you know i now know that i will never really know the field completely because the field gets reborn and rediscovered and documents are discovered in archives that no one knew about. i have found you know texts in people's attics, and people studies and in file cabinets of writers who died. history gets rewritten all the time, even in the humanities and you need that research to keep field current and everyone benefits from it. a small number number of people who do research help the work that everyone does. i think the federal investment in it is part of what makes this country a force in so many areas of life.

rakove were in the united states did you grow up? >> guest: actually in philadelphia, in the center of philadelphia at first and then we moved out to lux county to a suburb. where i grew up there were sheep and horses in the field behind my house. the last time i returned to the area, there was a parking lot for a supermarket but it was a great place to grow up. i had a terrific high school education. a huge high school, 5000 students, but the college prep classes had very high standards. i had to 23250 page typed papers and you are allowed three spelling errors and after that you fail. i might have difficulty enforcing that rule now. c-span: but you passed it. >> guest: my father was a salesman but also was an activist. it was very active in the antinuclear movement in the 1960's and a little bit in the

civil rights movement so my last year in high school i actually was on the mall in washington to hear martin luther king's i have a dream speech. so i heard as part of the antinuclear movement i heard speeches at people like norman thomas, linus pauling, the famous socialist huge gangly man in his 80s and it seemed as though his body was hung together with bailing wire. he kind of staggered up to the podium and had this incredibly powerful voice that came out. i think i was inspired by the antinuclear speakers that i heard and the civil rights leaders that i heard early on in my life. and i think that is really a strong part of my upbringing. c-span: you know that knock on professors is that they all come from the left side of the political spectrum. what is your reaction to that? >> guest: well, go to the university of illinois and you

visit the college of engineering a fair percentage of them do vote democratic, but to call them on the left eye think would be a stretch. even in my own department of english, there are certainly colleagues that voted for ronald reagan and voted for george bush and made no secret of it. even what is probably touted as the most progressive discipline around, not universally in the west and in any case what people need to understand is that people's political identification, faculty members identification with democratic or republican party doesn't necessarily same at about what they do in the classroom. if an engineer votes democratic or republican, does it matter to the classroom's behavior? c-span: let me ask you this. if you're a tenured professor,

like you were, tenured professor and you go in the classroom, should that professor have a right to say anything they want to say and proselytize for any cause they want to proselytize for? >> guest: if a faculty member keeps interrupting a class with political statements that are not appropriate to the subject, he or she shouldn't do it. the key is, are they appropriate? aad -- aup did a wonderful piece that i worked on called freedom in the classroom. what we try to argue there was when someone is in the classroom they should be able to make any connections with any comparisons, and a contrast that are related to the subject matter. not just faculty members but students are go you need to be able to think creatively, make connections, draw comparisons and those connections and comparisons could be in different historical periods. they can be of different subject at her and they can also be

political. if they are relevant to what you're talking about. i would also make one exception. there are times in american life when things happen that faculty members and students have to talk about. the morning after september 11, by late in the morning, classes were canceled all across the united states, but if you were teaching at 8:00 a.m. class after september 11, it might well still be meeting and a lot of those classes, a lot of students and faculty members were willing to talk about chemistry, biology or english or anything else. something that happened of a political nature and disasters nature that they just had to talk about. the same thing happened when martin luther king died. the next day, i'm not going to talk about chemistry today. i can't talk about anything else except the assassination of martin luther king. so i think really when

catastrophic events happen in the world, a faculty member or students need to be able to set aside the official core subject matter and confront something that has affected them so deeply. i did actually made a faculty member, very overly faculty member, who said the day after pearl harbor my philosophy class talked about philosophy and we didn't mention pearl harbor and i'm proud of it. i said well, that is academic for you. you chose not to mention pearl harbor the day after the japanese attacked. i suspect that there were a lot of classes that day after -- before my time, i suspect there were a lot of classes that set aside their subject and talk about an event that was overwhelming. so i think those are the two things. interruptions by historical events basically that force all of us to think and classroom

thinking that makes connections and comparisons, sometimes with very different subjects, sometimes with very different periods. c-span: naomi riley also -- i asked her about this whole business of academics and publishing. let's watch a short clip and get your reaction to this. >> i mean i don't know when was the last time you picked up kind of an academic publication, but even harvard university press i think recently said that the average circulation of one of their you know, one of their academic publications was 250 books. so when you consider that a lot of those books are actually purchased automatically by libraries and you know that his harvard university press. when you think about all of the smaller university presses out there that are having a circulation even smaller than that and by the way the expense of those books, an academic library and complained about

this to me but students complain too. so to me, somebody wrote a paper recently where they said that the academic publication industry was driven by the producers and not the consumers. you know i think that says it all. >> guest: academic book publishing is in a crisis. when i joined -- published my first book in 1973, i was an unknown faculty member. i could count on is selling 2000 copies to libraries in the united states. i can now only count, while i sell a few more, but i can only just guarantee that it would sell 250. one of things that is happening as a result is that more marginalized publishing is moving on line. i almost never looked at an academic journal or library. access them on line. i do that right from my own house. it's kind of convenient so i think the industry is responding to those reduced sales but mind

you those reduced sales reflect lower budgets for libraries. some of it by technology. my library has astonishing resources on line. i can search hundreds of thousands of 19th century newspapers on line. it would have taken me a lifetime to work through them but i just dial them up and they are part of searchable databases. i can access books from all over the world on line, so you know libraries have had to put a lot of money into those on line resources because they are extraordinary. they make it possible to do research that was inconceivable even 10 years ago. that is meant less money to put into buying books. the libraries are sharing books more. our library sends outlooks to a lot of libraries around the

country so 250 copies doesn't mean only 250 people or 250 library see them. many small library simply survive that way. but you know, the economics of publishing is threatened by those reduced sales. but the fact that the sales are reduced doesn't mean that none of the books are being read. c-span: not on academia or higher education from her book, "the faculty lounges," you are paying entirely too much from what you're getting, that publish -- professors published to a very narrow audience and the tenure means to better how bad you are gatekeeper job and most professors are liberals. i guess i would ask you, why do you think the conservatives almost universally think this way? you hear it all the time. is there nothing there in that

argument? >> guest: i see a lot of tenured faculty members lose their jobs for a variety of reasons. i've seen quite a few tenured faculty members be taken out of the classroom and assigned to administrative duty. if your students complain about your teaching and you are tenured, you are endangered. if your students are satisfied with your teaching, tenure does protect you. but the most dangerous thing that can happen to a tenured faculty member is to have a series of student complaints. even in my own institution i have seen a number of faculty members. they have to receive due process for tenure. a faculty committee has to review the case. it takes some time but in the end of up they received due process and they are judged not to be performing, they end up doing something else. c-span: who determines whether or not a professor is pulled out of the university?

percentagewise it's not very high is it that people lose their jobs? >> guest: know the percentages are high but i could come up with a years that i've been in illinois a dozen people in my own department, i can see the faces, their percentages might not be high but the human reality is real. some of them for offenses. the standard model is that a committee of their peers judges the evidence. they have to have a chance to respond. they have to be a will to confront their accusers but in a process like that, it may take six or nine months. it may take some period of months like that to be thoroughly fair but tenured faculty members to lose their jobs. the other thing i think, this is not widely acknowledged that. in the 1960's, there were no candidates for faculty jobs. there were more jobs than there were faculty members so hiring

could hardly be very selective. as we got in 1969 and 1970, there began to be vastly more candidates for a job than there were jobs. i have seen searches where we had a thousand or more candidates for one job, so for 40 years, hiring has been able to be very selective. ..

they don't teach for 50 years. the argon. so i think the quality of the professoriate and the tenured professoriate has actually increased over my time in the profession, and though i hate to say it but it's increased because the competition for fewer jobs it could hardly be more intense. c-span: how many professors, are there? >> guest: about 300,000. c-span: have anyone to the -- >> guest: just over a million. c-span: how many are university professors? >> guest: fewer than we want about 48,000. c-span: you're right years ago it was 100,000. >> guest: 1970 was 100,000. c-span: what happened?

>> guest: we will never be certain that there are a couple things that happened. one is that the nature of the faculty identity and commitment changed. those people who used to drain joined out of a broad commitment of the profession. people beginning in the 1970's became much more strongly committed to their activated disciplined and to the profession as a whole so they paid their due to the academic discipline, and that seemed like enough. it wasn't. they should have joined us as well. but we have remained an organization with a great deal of influence despite the smaller numbers, and i think that we are doing to push for more members of development now. c-span: what year to belong? >> guest: we have a progressive do system based on salary. starts out out i think 45, $48,000 a year. if you are earning 60,000 or

less you're not going to pay more than 50 or $60 a year to be a member. if you are earning close to wonder thousand dollars a year, then you're going to pay $200 a year in dues. it's a graduated progressive system. c-span: would you say is the average salary for a college professor that's a full professor and has been in it for 25 years? >> guest: well, it's an almost meaningless figure. we do those calculations, but first of all you have to distinguish between mother is a research institution, and you have to look at the field. a starting salary for an english professor are around the country is probably under $60,000 just under 60,000. or in some places on fortunately 50,000 or 40,000. starting salary for beginning business professor may be 125,000, maybe twice as much to read the average salary doesn't tell us much.

first of all, you need to differentiate between institutions, and then you need to look at different disciplines to see how the salaries play themselves out what. mind you, two-thirds of american faculty members are now contingent, and i've been interviewing those faculty members for 25 years. c-span: what does that mean, contingent? >> guest: it means they are hired semester by semester or a year by year that they have no way of knowing whether they will have a job next year, and many are earning less than minimum wage. so, really, two-thirds of the professoriate is earning less than $60,000 a year. many of them less than $30,000 a year on the was part time or non-renewed guaranteed appointments. a lot of the professor professoriate is not exactly comfortable. i meet faculty members who teach

who have no health care, who have no investment in the retirement system. they live pretty rauf lives and that is more the story of higher education these days than the height paid faculty member with corporate grants and corporate consultants. that is a small percentage of the professoriate that's doing that well. c-span: why has tuition gone up so much ahead of inflation? >> guest: first of all, more than half of the undergraduates in the united states are at community colleges and paying about $30 a credit. there are some families, first generation families for whom that is a stretch and need some help, but you have to edmonton under half the graduates in the united states are paying pretty low tuition, and many state institutions although tuition has suddenly risen, many state

institution tuitions have $5,000 a year or less, so that is another group of institutions where tuition is and high. tuition is obscenely high at the elite schools. if harvard were to charge no tuition and simply take the money out of its endowment, its endowment would still grow. free tuition would still have more money in the bank at the end of the year than they did before. why is tuition at the school so high for? in part because they can do. because there's an identification of excellence with paying for, this is a country people believe that the payoff for something. it's valuable. most students do not overpay for tuition and. but certainly a significant subset pay far more than they should. part of is i think that a lot of

schools spend money on things they shouldn't spend money on. they build buildings they don't need. they hire more administrators than they need. the growth in the number of administrators, the percentage growth is vastly exceeded the growth in the number of teachers. i think institutions, colleges and universities should put their money into teaching and some money into research, not into the administration and not into the unnecessary building. unnecessary growth and administrators and unnecessary capital projects have affected the growth of tuition of those institutions and that succumb to that. now there are wonderful liberal arts colleges where administrators don't earn half a million dollars or a million dollars or more and where the football coach doesn't earn four or $5 million or a lot of liberal arts colleges where the president turns $200,000 or

$250,000, so there are places that are committed to launch over paying people to hire and i admire that rather than letting salaries rise to amend unacceptable point. but it's by and large that - salaries play and on a fair role in the tuition prices of many institutions. c-span: when you are elected president or you are president, do you have the university professor do they pay you? >> nope. i mean they pay me to release from the courses that i would ordinarily teach. c-span: beyond get a salary for being present? >> guest: it is an elected but volunteer position. c-span: what have you learned; you have been president since 2006. what have you learned that you didn't know before. what surprised you in this experience? >> guest: i think more than anything else, the huge

diversity of colleges and universities in the united states -- i visited quite a few of them before i became president but, you know, when you are visiting for 30 or more a year, and you are going all across the country, i mean, i've been to small religious schools where the character of the campus life is just wildly different. i've been to historically black colleges and universities where the campus life and campus concerns are very different. i visited a community colleges across the country, public institutions. the diversity of institutions are of greater strength but also means that when some faculty members work under conditions that they really shouldn't suffer. so it seemed campuses where

shared governance is not a good or academic freedom is in jeopardy and i teach at a school where academic freedom is really not jeopardized except to work in certain narrow ways but i've been to many institutions where free speech doesn't obtain. c-span: can you give an example? >> guest: i usually don't name them. c-span: if you get into the middle of controversy sometimes -- >> guest: yes, some of that is coming up. c-span: uzi in your what you got arrested why does that happen? >> guest: a great day. that is because the graduate students at new york university had filed for union representation and they were represented by the united autoworkers. they negotiated a contract, and then the national labor

relations board which covers private institutions, but not public institutions, its political character changed under the republican administration and they changed their positions and said the graduate students could not be guaranteed the right to vote for the union said nyu president withdrew the union recognition and that is pretty unusual when you recognize the union and negotiate a contract with them and then you withdraw so there was a protest on washington square in new york and i was taken to a patty wagon by a couple of new york policemen who then stepped into the wagon and set to everyone keep up the good work. of course the policemen are also organized. so they applauded what we've done which was i thought was a part of the experience that really mattered to me to read a

graduate students and a place like nyu they cannot negotiate working conditions individually. faculty members can go in and bargain with the department head and the dena. gist the graduate students feel that they are not earning a living wage or they feel like they are dangerous working conditions and the lab all they can really do is have a union negotiate better working conditions for them so it is particularly important for them to be able to organize if they want to come and ipad -- i've been involved in the graduate student union movement for 25 years believe it is a cause and they should turn and office thir teaching to be able to get by to graduate students who in my department at the same teaching as the faculty members to. we don't permit a faculty member does but what devotee living wage is they ought to earn for their work and in some places they just don't.

i think a graduate students that work in the lab need to have a third-party to be about to negotiate the grievance of about hours and be able to negotiate so that the lab conditions are safe in the union can do that for graduate students. c-span: let's go back to the perception on the part of some parents. they spend lots and lots of money and send their kids to college and their kid gets there and the students gets there and they are taught and in some cases by a teaching assistant and in some cases they don't speak very good english. and because their international student the parent gets rather exercised about that fact. how often does that happen and is it a fair criticism of the university's, the price has gone up and the education isn't being taught by ph.d. professor.

>> guest: am i program has a lot for christians. the first year they teach the class is to your visit it aloft, they get a lot of feedback coming and i have seen some really terrific teaching. one of my graduate students just in wisconsin for this fall every time i leave town on the trip i asked to take over the class i know she's going to teach better than i do. she's awfully good. there are a lot of very committed and very passionate teaching by graduate students. so you're teaching introductory math or composition. for a lot of the faculty members they can't do that within the enthusiasm. a graduate student is only taught for a year too often teach those beginning courses with great passion and commitment. they struggle with their

teaching philosophy is to read and think hard about their assignments. so i think that there's some good teaching that's on the graduate students. i have more problems with the kind of teaching that it's almost impossible to do well and that's teaching by part-time faculty who teach three or four or five or six courses in different universities all across the city. they meet their students next to their car and their office or their trunk. there's plenty of that right here in washington, d.c.. people who go from campus to campus and don't have enough time to meet with their students. they may not be teaching so much. they don't have enough time to keep up with their field. what happens there is a the circumstances of the work prevent them from doing a first-rate job, too early enough to live and the part-time

faculty members in the united states like that with ph.d. is earning $1,500 a course. when i interviewed people in new york who were earning $1,500 a course i asked a reporter for "the new york times" i said how much does it take to live in manhattan? ki city you really can't get by on less than 40 or $50,000 a year. i said at $1,500 a course on how many courses you have to teach to earn that, and if you are going to go from campus to campus all day long, what are the odds that you can do that job well? so i think the reduction in the number of full-time faculty members is something that american parents should be angry about. if the teachers are exploited the may not be getting their money's worth. c-span: a quick question about the tender and talking about these contingent teachers

continue the tenure without a ph.d.? >> guest: you can't get it without a terminal degree. if you are an artist it might be an m.a.. in the fields where the ph.d. is the standard terminal degree it would typically be nobody creative writer could get tenure without a ph.d. because that's not expected. c-span: we talked about the transparent share in the process it's not among the self reflected bodies in my opinion in this country, and i think there's not a lot of examination of what goes on when they wanted the good of the bioethics and government but there's not a lot of talk about what goes on in the academy. i think the lack of transparency in the process is one of the biggest. estimate the academy needs more

transparency. the first thing is it needs more transparency but financing. faculty members and students and staff members should know how every dollar on campus is spent. budgets shouldn't be secret. financial secrets. c-span: at every school? >> guest: at every school. c-span: why? >> guest: higher education is a community. every campus is a community, and everyone should be a part of the process of decision making. i have seen schools facing budget cuts that let students, cafeteria workers, faculty members and administrators all have input into how to deal with financial problems and they become unified communities as a result where everyone has an investment in what goes on on campus, so that is the first point transparency. i think that -- i don't know that the faculty members are any less to reflect on their lives and on their work than any of americans.

faculty members pretty obsessively reflect on what their students are doing and evaluate their students' success to date on evaluate my students for years and i consider the best evaluations' i do with my phd students to be ten years after our feet could graduate. i look back on the work they've done and the careers they had. i ask myself what influence have i had committed how can i see that my interests have helped shaped there's and bring up the best that they can do. faculty members teach freshman courses, then when they see the freshman's graduated they look at the senior projects and say how much did the course they got at the start of their time enable them to do well for years later? and i think faculty members reflect on their own success and failure a great deal. but they don't do is reflect on their institutions and goals as much as they should. the need to also think more

about the overall purpose of the institution. are they on board with the institutions? that's the kind of reflection that i think we need a lot more rough. c-span: so you all of a sudden found yourself in the presence. how would you feel about tenure? let me add a few more things. you become president just like you did you want to make a difference. you have a whole chapter in here where you want to clean of all of the dead wood. the president's office in the universities is i want to do the same thing with these professors here that are worthless. >> guest: why don't find a lot of dead wood anymore. i really did in the 1970's. whether it was did what your people that were just not excellent.

they've just pretty much disappeared. i just don't think that it's a serious problem anymore. but i do know, what i would know as a president is that one of the things tenure does is give people the possibility of devoting themselves to an institution to the whole life, and people just so surly dedicated to the life of an institution that it's almost recalling and because beyond an occupation. without tenure you just wouldn't see that kind of commitment, so i think if i were a university president firewood want people who could give 110% or 120% or 150% to get i feel a lot of that and without job security, and without some guarantee lifetime appointment after a probationary period and regular reviews i don't think people would commit

themselves as wholeheartedly as they do. i think tenure is what makes american campuses places where passionate controversy and debate goes on. c-span: should the same apply to other facets of the society like a corporation? >> guest: well, i think there are some other kinds of work the desert greater job security. if i had to pick one example of another kind of job that i think deserves greater job security that would be investigative reporting american newspapers are losing large numbers of investigative reporters, they have to do work that can be very critical of powerful interest in the country, and i would like to feel more comfortable they couldn't be fired because somebody was off. that would be one example some form of increased job security,

not necessarily the tenure but something close to the tenure that would benefit the country. c-span: had many of those investigative reporters ticking off the losses boss is the reason for the future investigative reporters? >> guest: i think if large-scale advertisers are angry at the kind of stories that reporters are doing i think it puts them at risk. c-span: but if that became a problem they just put the investigative reporter over here in the corner and change the venue and tell them they have to report on something else. >> guest: there are other factors, what priorities the papers set. obviously if rupert murdoch has had an influence on the character of american news coverage and reporting and that's not the interest of investigative reporting and interest in putting the stories of hollywood stars and other of

things friend and center rather than what is happening in the world. so multiple influences of course, you know, a movement on the online publication but i still think that -- i don't count myself an expert in reporting if i had to come up with an occupation beyond teaching where some kind of job security might be helpful. that is 1i would pick where the free press is central to the democracy. but i can say is that when i -- we are not in california are we? when i meet faculty members who have no job security for, i often meet faculty members who are afraid of being frank. faculty members that say to me i was going to teach this book, but i thought it might -- i thought my students might get

angry about it, if their parents might get angry about it. i want a semester by semester appointment. i don't know if i will have a job next semester. i'm not going to teach that. c-span: we are going to have to shut it jam. pervez nelson, it's necessary at this stage to explain to the audience that there's, you know, the last couple minutes with a little unusual. on the date this was recorded in august 23rd, we had an earthquake and that's why you heard the rumors moving around and then we vacated the studio and free would be vacated all of the buildings in washington and now we are back and we only have three minutes to go in this interview. have you ever been through an earthquake before? >> guest: there are seismic changes affecting the american landscape but i've never been one when they actually physically took place. c-span: so your team was anything use it in the interview to cause that? >> guest: i have to listen to the tape again. [laughter] it could be something someone said in washington, d.c.. that is entirely possible. c-span: we have been talking

about your book and also kneal me's book on the tenure and academic freedom me in your book is no university is an island. at this stage in your career and after you have been the head of the american association for some reason i'm having trouble saying university but professor since 2006 where do you think is all going to go based on watching your career until now, what is ahead? >> guest: i am worried that the trend that we can see and their unmistakable in the education are not good. given that i said in 2005 two-thirds of the faculty members were contingent cannot secure with their jobs now under 70%. that trend seems to be continuing. the trend of state legislatures, the funding of higher education

gradually shifting the cost from taxpayers to students, that is now a 25 year trend. trends like that don't always come to an end quickly. so i think the future for the state funding of higher education is not great. both of those things do not bode well for maintaining the high quality of american education. to recommend anything from i would recommend that the federal government pay for public higher education and make it free for all children and all americans to be a $60 billion a year, a couple of battleships you could actually make public higher education a genuine public good, and i think that without some fundamental change, the quality is going to erode. it's not a good thing. scientists all over the country having to choose the basic

research the will bring in the most dollars. i would rather they choose the research would do the most good for the people in the united states and across the world. this is a system, the american high rejection system that has thrived on freedom, and it's thrive on people being able to follow their imaginations and do what they think is most vital and most interesting and that has made it for half a century a great system of higher education. i think we need to preserve it. c-span: last quick question. knowing what's on the past and future would you become a professor dan? >> guest: i can't imagine doing anything else. there are moments in my class is that sometimes the best moment of the week when my students and i struggle with questions that we really can't answer but are vitally important and we spend a

couple hours doing that until those are the best hours of my week and the freedom pursue the intellectual questions that matter to me the most, that has been just thrilling c-span: when does your term in this president? >> guest: jim, tuitele. c-span: the title of the bill is no university is an island. >> guest: thinks for having me on. c-span: in spite of the earthquake. >> guest: that's what made it memorable. [laughter] ♪