in the end it happens at the most, it changes at the most inconvenient time. . . they all have a view of what can happen. we don't, everyone likes to say

we should put off the actual tough adjustments until the economy is taken. there is a presumption in that statement that the markets will allow us to do that. and i am fearful that the markets are going to say no at precisely the wrong, most inconvenient time. >> those markets as you personalize them, are they vigilantes? >> yeah. >> when you look at europe and you and i talked about this in a number of times we have spoken and you continue to go back to what i call cultural economics. not the purity of model make inc. or behavioral economics of bob shuler as he searches for a good society. cultural economics in europe is different than in america. gives the nuance not only for peripheral europe and eastern europe as they try to amend to the culture of germany.

>> well just look at east end west germany. you have basically essentially two countries starting at the end of world war ii essentially from scratch. and the same language, the same culture, the same history and they grew up obviously when the berlin wall came down. the productivity level in east germany was one third that of west germany and then when the merger occurred, there was recognition that it was going to take a significant transfer of funds from west germany to east germany. to maintain the system. that flow is still going on. it hasn't fully come together. in europe, even a broader more difficult problem. i did an op-ed piece for the financial times maybe six months

ago and i had also gotten and analysis which i have put in several distant -- different places which takes the issue of observing that when, as i recall, the meetings which formed the european central central bank, i was sort of part of the g7 and i would be sitting between all of these europeans trying to keep my mouth shut. >> were you successful? >> no, it never happened. but the problem basically is that there was a general expectation in the group before the euro began. recognition that there are cultural differences, but the conventional wisdom was that when the euro actually was implemented, the italians behaved like germans. they never dead, the but the markets believed they would do

it because, as i recall it, the lira sovereign note, 10 year note yield at 500 basis points over two or three years before the euro went into place. by the time they actually moved into the euro, it spread it back down 20 or 30 basis points so that the markets believe that culture would we coalesced and enforced by the existence of a common currency. regrettably they were mistaken. what we have found is that it was the global boom which kept the euro system together but once the boom led down, then cultural reemerged in a massive way and the same consequences. >> because of time we could talk on this for hours, but because of time i want to move on. you and your john retirement have been looking at elderly assets. what is an elderly assets?

>> oh, this is my explanation of why the american economy is stagnant. speaks of the things we talk about in the media right now are off the market? >> i think so. >> thank you. >> you are welcome. >> ask yourself, what is wrong with the american economy? and you can basically look at the gross domestic product and instead of looking at it as personal consumption expenditures and a variety of other things that it is, look at it in terms of how long the assets being spent will last. in an extreme case, a haircut last a month. the software will last three to five years. structures, industrial structures 30 years and residential musts -- much longer than that. all of the weakness in the

american economy from where you would expect it to be at this stage is then assets whose life expectancy or durability is greater than 20 years. and what that is, if you think in terms of structures, is roughly 700% of the gdp and you cut it in half. you have got three to 4%. those three to four percentage points actually translated into the unemployment rate, explains the whole difference of what jobs are in the problem here is that they assets under 20 years are behaving pretty much the way they always have in every recovery in the post-world war ii era. >> do we need government policy to clear the market for those with longer age assets or to incentivize the building of those assets? >> that is what they tried to do

too much and it's been counterproductive. what you need is -- before -- kobbe for a government to government i used to do a lot of work for a major corporation and capital investment projects. what we used to do is we would get the product managers and they would give us the forecast. the finance people would average the expected return and as a result of that, we quickly throughout all potential projects which didn't have a rate of return for the corporation. that then move to step two which is really the big determinative which is what what is the variance, the range of what our expected outlooks. for example if you're expecting an average rate of return of 20%, but it varies between minus 10 and plus 15, that project was

in in very ably shallow and what we are looking at right now and the reason why if we are getting this particular shortfall of economic activity specifically and long-term investments is if you look at the cash flow of the american corporations, and the proportion they choose to invest in long-term illiquid assets, that ratio is at the lowest level since 1935. >> is that investment going abroad? is the issue here that with all of our studies of crisis and recovery from crisis, we are dealing with not only globalism but a reaffirmation of investment abroad? >> very little. investment has been doing rather well in american affiliates abroad, but it hasn't accelerated and they cannot very readily take the orders of magnitude that we are looking at changes in the united states and in any way describe them being

shifted abroad. >> if i look at the medical charts in the median duration of unemployed or the use six unemployment, the spikes up that we have seen, they would tend towards less educated individuals. how would they fit into incentivizing business to make those structures? the answer is, we have missed a lot of construction jobs, isn't it? >> oh, it's not only construction jobs which obviously are very substantial part of the job loss, but it's all of those secondary and tertiary related issues. remember, when you bring that level of building down by half, it has an impact on the whole keynesian multiplier if you want to put it in those terms. so it shows up as unemployment not only in construction but in a whole series of other industries whose general level have been brought down by the

fact that constructions impact on income and consumption in other investment has been so profitable for his. >> how do you propose that we jumpstart this so we start building structures? >> i think the first thing we do is stop doing what we are doing. let the markets calm down and i think the endeavor to actually try to support markets is counterproductive. when you have an unbalanced market anytime, whether it is stocks, bonds, copper, zinc whatever, that market will readjust one way or the other. if you try to support it, you will merely delay the it adjustment process. i think it's instructive, one of the only areas in which we endeavor to support -- we have not endeavor to try to support crises or values one way or the other. it's the stock market. the stock market is the

particular area of the economy which has been untouched and we should just let come back the most. and it is not an accident. i think we have to learn sometimes leaving things alone and letting markets work is the way the system is supposed to function and the way it has and will. >> we can tread delicately on monetary economics without asking you when the fed will raise the target rate, i was talking to steve roach the other day at your university formerly of morgan stanley about the asymmetric challenges that any central bank faces and as you wonderfully quote in your book, you did not receive many phonecalls from politicians or presidents looking for you to raise interest rates. is a substantially asymmetric universe that any central bank works in. how do you fold the asymmetric

realities into the desire for inflation parity? >> well first of all, what i actually said was that in all of my years, are got huge bushels full of mail. i cannot recall a single request from the congress or any other political figure is said to raise rates. every single one of them said -- kill it wasn't even asymmetric. it was just zero plus and that is still the case basically because the political system seems the short-term solution and the sending off of any semblance of pain. you cannot run complex capitalist society which the average age of assets is 20 to 25 years with everything being short-term. and, there are cases when the

wise thing to do is to rob markets to liquidate. i think the best example i can give is the actual experience that we had in the resolution -- corp.. i was on the oversight board ex-officio and as a result i attended those meetings. i must have that must that they didn't have ended interestingly good job which i don't think we could do today. what they did was, 800 failed 20 or 30 years ago. all the assets fell to the resolution corporation to get rid of. it was easy to get rid of the mortgages and all the liquid assets, but then there was this very large chunk of assets which were 13 whole golf courses, 40 story skyscrapers of which eight had been built, and we could see

the erosion of the maintenance cost of maintaining all the stuff, eating away and always eating our taxpayers dollars going down the drain. what they chose to do was to bundle all this stuff and billion-dollar groups and the billion-dollar spec then was a lot of money, and they hit the market. they just basically said, we are going to sell them and of course we expected 50 cents on the dollar and that is what they got. actually we got less than 50 cents. >> why can we do that now? >> basically what happened back then was the congress was up in arms but something very interesting happened. all the people on wall street are looking at this process whereby these vulture funds had wrought cheapened taught cheap and all of a sudden were making a ton of money. what happened is, that a movable

inventory of unsellable assets was cleaned out in a matter of months and i think that reticular action by the rtc probably saved american taxpayers a very large amount. >> could we do that today? obviously are housing mess -- >> it would work but no evidence or political willingness on the part of either party to move in after action. >> you nicely got away from monetary economics fed discussion. you migrated away. you did a very good job of it. let's get back to central bank policy. central bankers have -- talks about the task of central bankers being arduous. in the past -- path forward for central bankers do they need to say do other institutions no, we at the ecb aren't going to do this. you are going to find the

courage to do this? alberto at harvard writes about this. we need institutional courage. to the central banks just have to save no someday to the task at hand? >> basically, central banks were prohibited from doing certain types of things, and yeah i would say certain things which ought to be done by government, not by central banks. for example one thing that i thought was very unfortunate was in the interventions of 2008 occurred, which is once in a 100 year event which requires that sort of action, the only vehicle available to act quickly was the fed's actual legal authority to land lend virtually to anybody under any conditions.

it was an amendment very rarely used and it was the only vehicle that would enable a quick response to occur, and so the federal reserve has the fiscal agent of the treasury accumulated lots of assets on its balance sheet and what i had -- what was going to happen very quickly is that the treasury would take over those assets onto a treasury subsidiary. and they didn't, largely because that would require the appropriated funds, which is ridiculous because it's one of the flukes and the unified budget accounting system and which as the expansion alone of the federal reserve, does not require appropriated funds but exactly the same use of sovereign resources by the

treasury does and the only difference of whether it -- the assets are held on the federal reserve or the treasury is a balance sheet is the fact of the accounting procedure, period. and the inability or unwillingness of the treasury department to go up to the hill to get a pro creations for that is what created a big problem for the federal reserve because they were literally been involved very obviously in fiscal actions, which is now with the role of the central bank should be. >> you and others that you in particular have been criticized for not raising rates in 2003, 04 i am guessing. jeffrey lacher among other set in 1990 for you to get out in front with preemption. when you see the global debate, not the fed but the global central bank debate today, about when we raise interest rates,

what data and view as a great student of data, what data should any central bank study as to know when to raise interest rates? >> well basically it is of necessity involved in the forecast. all central bank actions presuppose an outlook which you are dressing because obviously the impact of monetary policy drags out over time and you have to try to do differ what is going on. in other words, the issue of the question of our lower rates in 2003, think it was the right thing and i think it's still the right thing to do, it's insurance against the type of deflationary forces we are looking at now. but it never had any impact on the money supply. it had zero impact on long-term rates. it had no effect whatsoever in retrospect that i can see.

even such a student and critic actually of the federal reserve milton friedman, said that the performance of the federal reserve from 1987 to 2005 was extraordinary, and excellent. >> but it is fueled the leverage that led to this housing boom? >> no, i think the housing boom comes out from a different force. it was low interest rates that induced the housing boom but it was long-term interest rates because remember housing is a long-term asset and mortgages are long-term. it is not affected by overnight raids. and indeed, what caused this extraordinary housing boom was a remarkable change that occurred after the fall of the berlin wall. all of these so-called third world countries which were under

one form of socialism or another -- >> it long-term favorite. >> what they did is they essentially decided, looking at what happened to the soviet system, they switched and china became the most capitalistic economy in the world, and the extent of growth in china is really attributed to capitalism if i may put it that way for a chinese communist government. government. ineffectively what they were doing was creating a huge increase in income. remember that the rate of increase in the developing worlds, their gdp from 1991 forward, and especially from 2000 forward, that was a huge increase in the developed world's gdp which got so large they couldn't spend it. so it was all savings in a

marketplace and brought long-term rates down globally. >> 75 basis points? >> no, no, it was far more than that. what it was however was important to recognize, is that housing boom is not an american phenomenon. we were somewhere in the middle and there were 20 countries with big housing booms. and the question is -- has nothing to do with united states. >> out to squeeze in one question i know peter cook has some questions as well. i believe it's a job opening at the bank of england, gemma o'neal and others are being considered as governor the bank of england. would you accept the job if it was brought up now? >> i would ask the current governor who is a good friend and an extraordinarily good central banker to stay in place.

sir mervyn is doing an excellent job. >> we have a few great question submitted to us and we will try to squeeze one or two if we can. movements on the risk or bar of these as people search for yield and destruction and the wealth is very real. as rates rise, doesn't the bursting of the bond bubble have the potential to be much broader than the 2008 financial market at the conclusion? the? the its extraordinary difficult. it's something which was worse than the impact on the market that followed september the 15th, 2008. as far as i can see, bond prices inherently cannot move and so the sizes of the capital gains almost cannot he equivalent in that respect. that is not to say you can't. i think if you are going to look for the criteria, what type of things we are looking at, look

back in 1979 and 1980. >> let me squeeze one more in here this is a quote submitted. this is the shabby secret of the welfare state tirades against goal. deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. gold gold stand in the way of this insidious process and stands as a protector of property rights. if one grasps this one has no difficult in understanding the status of antagonism toward the gold standard. the writers suggest if you wrote these words 45 years ago the end of an essay entitled gold and economic freedom looking back over 45 years. could you give us your thoughts on that as a two-day? >> i thought it was very perceptive myself. [laughter] ron paul right that question? >> that was not submitted by ron paul. >> in fact i had a very interesting conversation with ron paul when he was complaining that the house hearing here that the federal reserve should be going back on the gold standard. i said look, the mac and people

have chosen the money standard because they want a welfare state. you cannot have the gold standard and the welfare state at the same time. you have to make the choice. we have made the decision as a society that we are dealing with a welfare state. i also told them, the normal practice of the central bank is to replicate the actions essentially that the gold standard used to do when it controlled. this is the gold standard before world war i, not subsequent. i think the markets today are telling us something very important, namely that gold is a currency. and it is by necessity have to be a zero-sum game. but, gold is the only one of them that doesn't require

somebody's credit because there is no name associated with goal. gold is an acceptable for reasons in all the years i have watched i have never fully understood. what is it about human nature which attaches itself to this particular single thing that goes back. and it has never changed. >> i ask my wife that question. [laughter] chairman greenspan thank you for the time. tom, great job.

>> i have seem to have earned a certain place where people will listen to me and i've always cared about the country. the greatest generation writing that book gave me a kind of a platform that was completely unanticipated. so i thought i ought not to squander that. so i ought to step up as not just a citizen and a journalist but as a father, husband and a grandfather and if i see these things, i had read about them and try to start a dialogue time trying to do with this book, about where we need to get to next.

>> and competitive enterprise institute hosted a panel discussion examining the solutions to the nation's immigration problems. panelists, including immigration policy scholars, discuss state-level immigration laws and how they impact the u.s. economy as the supreme court reviews the constitutionality of of the arizona immigration law. this is 90 minutes. >> good morning. appreciate everyone being here. officially presented by arizona for immigration reform, competitive enterprise institute, national immigration forum and texans for central immigration policy.

we are going to have an immigration summit right here in washington d.c. where we hope the benefit of which will be to offer some solutions and move some of our members of congress to get on with immigration reform. i m. norman adams, a texan, a co-founder of texans for central immigration policy. and just as a setting i would like to point out the fact, i don't need to tell any of you that the immigration debate is an emotional debate but that is nothing new. prior to 1923, if you arrived on the shores of as most of our ancestors did, if you came in first class, he went straight to your hotel room. if you came over what was known as steerage, you had to walk past, somebody looked at you to see if you look sick looked sick and then you might have to go to

the station for a while. but we had no quotas. we had no quotas prior to 1923. and yet even then, and still today, you go to new york and you see little italy, you see little germany, little friends. you have your segments of the restaurants. you have a lot of people settle basically with their own kind. everyone can remember the sign in the window, no irishman or dogs allowed in here. i'm old enough to remember what day czech wedding was an inter-racial marriage. so the emotion of emma gration is nothing new. just a very quick rundown, i hear so often look, what is it you don't understand about the rule of law? well folks, that is the whole problem, is that our immigration laws are broken. 1986, we have got i-9 law created by her labor department

that says if the identification looks to be legitimate, they otherwise qualify, you must hire them. we had the eeoc saying mr. employer if you don't hire them because you suspect they are illegal that is discrimination than we had the social security administration saying with a no match letter, this name doesn't match this number but do not buy this worker. your responsibility mr. employers to notify the worker to contact us. if you fire them, again you had the eeoc. that's discrimination. now, our great organized government in its wisdom has come a long and homeland security has now come along in 2010 and decided that if you have a no match letter, that is going to be constructive knowledge at the eeoc is still standing there to come after you for discrimination. so we have not -- god only knows, legally hired, italy

killed immigrants since 1986 under the current system. and the current system is basically, it's bad law and at my opinion, and again i'm a right-wing republican. in my opinion, roe v. wade is bad law. obamacare is bad law. at one time in this country, it was legal to buy, sell and own black people as slaves. germany, it was legal to incarcerate the jewish. those were bad laws. our immigration laws are bad and hopefully we are going to hear a lot of good reasons for reforming them today. todd, are you ready to go? i want to introduce todd landry and i have a personal interest in introducing this man. i'm from texas, as i said. todd is the head of the arizona a a's dear i call it enforcement immigration reform but todd was

the lone ranger on a white horse in texas. todd came down and testified to the texas legislature in this last session and let me tell you, we had 108 arizona style bills proposed in the texas legislature. that is two-thirds republican dominated, two-thirds republican, republican governor and 108 arizona style bills or you could call them russell pierce bills, that were proposed in texas. with tom landry's help we motivated our legislature to listen and think and enter meaningful dialogue. we brought broaden businessmen and todd, of course, displayed arizona as a test tube and showed us why it the laws don't work. so in texas, we are --

we have a great deal -- we give the credit i'm going to tell you this, to todd landry and the state of arizona. god bless you todd for coming. i feel like you helped texas dodged a bullet. todd landry. [applause] >> i think i need to give you another $5 now, right? on behalf of arizona for immigration reform i want to of the mutated days immigration conference. this is the sixth in a series of conferences that are intended to educate the public about the impacts state-level immigration laws have and are having on those places that have them and to suggest alternative solutions that could better address the problems without the damaging consequences. today you are going to hear from people who have dealt with this issue not just from a daily basis, not just the think-tanks from organizations with axes to grind but organizations that want to solve the problems in a

responsible and effective and cost effective manner. those solutions actually exists. you just haven't had an opportunity to hear about them and you're going to hear about them today. i want to thanks sponsors of the program, texans for immigration policy, the the national immigration reform for their support in the event and last but not least we want to extend our thanks to arizona congressman ed pasteur for assisting us in reserving his room for today's event. we appreciate his willingness to sponsor this event, where the broad spectrum of clinical views, norm adams, going two for presented here today. this isn't a partisan thing. this isn't conservative. this isn't liberal. this is a conference where people from different views are going to come and explain how we can help solve this problem.

finally, as you can see, today's program is being aired nationally on c-span3 and we want to thanks c-span for their interest in sharing the ideas of the conference with the american people. here is how today is going to work. we have two panels in the first one addresses what we have learned from the past several years of local attempts at immigration laws. it was family and pecks on business the economy, social and faith group communities but we are not going to be talking about the loss constitutionality. the second panel revives alternative solution should immigration policy from the perspective people who have lived on the borders or can live for or have been at the border for news. each will have eight to 10 minutes to give their remarks lullaby "q&a" and we would encourage you to ask many questions. hi matt. at 1110 to 15 we will break for 15 minutes so you can grab lunch and then we will come back and launch into the second panel.

so we understand that immigration is a controversial issue and we know some people in his room may have strong views one way or the other. some of them permission you're going to hear today will challenge the conventional views, and that is part of our purpose. just as the information we provide today is going to be presented in an informative and respectful manner, we hope that everyone here will be respective of those views as well. so with that let me turn it back over to norm adams who will introduce our first panel. >> thank you, todd. i am going to introduce brittany right now. brittany nystrom. come on up, brittany. she is the director of policy and legal affairs for the national immigration forum. the forum's mission is to advocate for the value of immigrants and for immigration to the nation.

her adequacy focuses on immigration reform, civil rights and human rights for all. i'm not going to read all of this. we are going to hear from you. >> thank you everyone and i just want to start by saying that talking about solutions is a great game for any immigration conference. we all know that our current immigration system is full of problems and we spend a lot of time talking about those problems. i'm guilty of that myself, but not enough time really doing the hard work to get toward a solution. i want to thank the organizers of today's event for bringing the pols feet together where we can do the real 30 work of figuring out how to move forward. so what are these problems that we have in our current immigration system? i'm going to just give a brief overview of some of the stickiest issues we are dealing with. we have families who are separated, who are seeking to reunite that are supported by

our immigration system. with businesses who are seeking a stable and skilled workforce. we have workers who are seeking protections and the opportunity to thrive and we have taxpayers who are seeking an efficient and smart use of their taxpayer dollars. these problems are threatening both our heritage as a nation of immigrants and their status in the land of opportunity for people from all nations. we have probably all heard stories about the family separation problem, families waiting years to reunite while they try to navigate through our thorny immigration bureaucracy or if they get tired of waiting, risking their lives to cross the desert to rejoin family here in the united states. we likely have also heard stories of farmers unable to harvest their crops without the help of immigrant workers they depend on for high-tech businesses unable to harness the talent of immigrant employees who are either lost in our maze of immigration visas or are in

fact-driven to our competitors overseas. what you may not have heard about is the financial cost of a broken immigration system. in a time of shrinking budgets, it's a perfect opportunity to find a solution that meets our physical needs as well. we have spent billions of dollars each year in forcing a set of immigration laws and probably most people can agree they are not working for america. for fiscal year 2012, the year we are currently in fiscally, congress spent 11.80 yen dollars for customs and border protection to enforce the immigration laws. in addition 5.5 billion was given to the immigration and customs and enforcement. the government spends an estimated $23,000 to deport a single individual and the obama administration is deporting people in record numbers. so what are we getting as a

return for this investment? that is the question that all taxpayers should really be putting towards their elected officials. along our borders in specific we are seeing a diminishing return on this investment as the border security spending climbs up, up, up, up, we actually see the number of immigrants attempting to enter into legally at record lows. so there is an imbalance there exemplified by our border. so what does a solution look like, and i'm looking forward to hearing all the panelists views on this. we know the laws on the books might be enforced, but enforcement should be carried out in a smart efficient way to prioritize keeping us safe from threats to public safety and threats for national security. in forcing broken immigration law does not serve our interest as a nation. in fact, immigrants have a

system that they can go through to become american, fewer people will try to go around the immigration system. finally, instead of spending billions of dollars year after year to track down, detain, did and deport immigrants we should implement a program that requires all unauthorized immigrants to register with the government, pay a fine, pay any back-taxes they owe and learn english. a legalization program would be a true and lasting revenue generator. according to some estimates, a legalization program with this the u.s. economy by an estimated $1.5 trillion. that would be an added u.s. growth -- gross domestic product. thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my opening remarks and i look forward to engaging in the solution conversation that we so desperately need.

>> thank you, brittany. todd, in the interest of time i'm going to bring these panelists at. you want them to move on up and where were the moderator be? right here, okay. we are going to have eddie aldrete on the closed-circuit, on television. eddie aldrete is the senior vice president ibc bank in san antonio texas. texas boy you graduated from the university of texas. i can tell you in texas he has been a leader is if not the leader in sensible immigration reform and we owe him a great deal of gratitude. i think you are going to enjoy his presentation and if you haven't seen this video on icebergs, you definitely need to see that. alex nowrasteh, where are you? cato institute.

i think everyone knows alex. if they don't know him they have gotten his e-mails. god bless you for being here alex. reverend phil reller, where are you? appreciate you being here from los angeles. we have darryl williams -- baird. this is the man who said they sure to tell you he is a right-wing republican but darrell is most famous for, he is a trial lawyer lawyer both defense and plaintiff but he is the man that led the charge to recall russell pierce. russell pierce 1070. this was the man that read the charge to recall russell and vote him out of office. thank you, darryl. and marshall phipps, do you want to be our moderator? he is with the director of immigration policy. i would like you folks to get with the program, thank you.

>> thanks so much norm. everyone who is worked in into in the to convene this discussion and congressmen pasteur for hosting. wild political prowess has prevented congress from tackling an overhaul of the immigration system, it's an overhaul that has been pointed out that is long overdue and one that many of us have been trying for many years to achieve. the pressures of a large undocumented population continued to be foisted on state and local governments and communities. opponents of immigration reform have opponents such as russell pierce that norm was just mentioning have persuaded local elected officials to pursue what

is i think a deeply misguided strategy that they call attrition through enforcement. the idea that is to make life sowed difficult and harsh for undocumented immigrants that they will pack their bags and leave. that is a simple vision that ignores the really serious challenges confronting state and local government. >> it strategy of avoidance that this serves. social safety and economic priorities. every honest observer can say we are not going to deport 11 million people. it's just not going to happen in any long-term solution to our broken immigration service had to have a program that requires undocumented to register, go through back round checks and pay taxes and learn english. in the meantime though, state and local officials to govern

their jurisdictions in a way that maximizes the interest of their constituents while dealing with the side effects of this broken immigration system. state and local leaders have tough choices to make in dealing pragmatically with a sizable undocumented population. deciding wisely wide deciding those decisions can generate significant public support and will increase the unity and stability of the impacted communities. as you all know the supreme court has expected to decide in the coming weeks whether it should have the authority to enact these attrition's reports from policy. i for one believe that these measures are crude -- clearly printed by law but we will not be debating the constitutionality of these measures today. instead we want to highlight why those measures raise a the number of red flags that should stop policymakers in their tracks before and acting such

measures. the center for american progress has explored three basic questions related to these laws and the answers on vigorously point to the conclusion that these state efforts and initiatives are misguided just as a matter of policy. first and perhaps most importantly these measures plainly do not and cannot solve the problem. at best these measures displace some of the undocumented population to less hostile states or communities. at worst they drive the undocumented population deeper underground creating even more dysfunction and more challenges for local communities. what they don't do is drive undocumented workers and their families out of the country. we have got several reports on our web site to speak to this. secondly second we have documented the cost to states that are directly connected to the enactment of these measures. for example in arizona, we calculated in the wake of s.b. 1070 passing that the state

lost at least $140 million in direct spending due to the cancellation of conferences that were scheduled to be hosted there. georgia lost an estimated $300 million in on harvested crops with a potential statewide impact of a billion dollars. those occur just because of the climate of fear that was generated by enactment of these measures, not even because of any direct correlation between the law and the economic effects. now third, we have also explored the potential economic and fiscal cost of the policies actually did succeed and what they were purporting to achieve. unsurprisingly, these measures have been shown to be deeply counterproductive and self-defeating from an economic perspective. for example in arizona we are moving 7% of the state's population would shrink the economy by nearly $50 billion

would operate more than 580,000 jobs and it would produce the reduce estate tax revenue by about 10%. so, there are again a host of strong policy reasons why a state legislators and policymakers and governors should choose these initiatives and we are going to be talking a little bit more about that today with some of the panelists you have seen up close and personal on what those impacts look like. so that will -- let me first send it to eddie aldrete and i will let you make your opening remarks and then we will we will turn it over to the other panelists. eddie i'm going to try to put up the -- >> i hope you can hear me okay. >> i think we can hear you great. >> well, i want to share a couple of things. are you able to hear me?

, yes, we hear you great. >> okay great. i wanted to share a couple of things. unfortunately when they talk about immigration we tend to get mired in the debate of what part of illegal do you not understand and the amnesty conversation and all the parts of the state attended the polarizing and very emotional. the part of the picture that i believe we are missing is related to demographics and i just want to share a couple of things with you to sort of help make that point. number one, as we all know, many baby boomers have already begun to retire. we have between 77,000,080,000,000 baby boomers at a bar to begin to retire. unfortunately there's only 67 million people behind them that are entering the workforce so that leaves 10 to 15 million more people that are leaving the workforce than are entering the workforce that we are going to experience major shortages and we are already beginning to see some of those taking place.

the second thing i want to highlight is our national fertility rate. most countries, all countries, have to have a fertility rate of 2.1 children in order to maintain replacement level, and so that means every adult female needs to have on average 2.1 children. right now the united states is at 2.1 and we continue to decline. but when you look at the 2.1 figure and you break it down by demographic groups, anglos, asian-americans and african-americans are all below replacement level between 1.8 and 2.0. hispanics are the only demographic group that are above replacement level and they are there are 2.9. where are beginning to see that in many parts of the country where hispanics are clearly producing future workforce of the country. so you have more people leaving

the workforce than entering the workforce and we are beginning to have fewer and fewer children. no country in the history of the world has ever experienced economic prosperity while also experiencing depopulation. you are beginning to see depopulation in countries like russia and japan. many believe that japan is past the tipping point in russia's population shrinks by 700,000 people every year. and in russia, they have tried numerous things, including creating a new federal halliday which is a national day of procreation where everyone is asked to go home, turn out the lights, close the curtains and do their patriotic duty. [laughter] now if you take a look at what is happening across the country, one of the things, when we talk about immigration, is the many members of congress and people who get very heavily involved. they like to move from immigration over to order

security. they are two separate issues but i want to share one statistic that surprises a lot of people and that is that 52% of the united states border patrol and customs agents are eligible for retirement this year and 2012. 51% of all customs and border protection agents are eligible for retirement this year. don't take my word for it. that statistics come from the gao. so when a member of congress or a presidential candidate or anyone says we need more boots on the ground, my question is where do you plan to get them from? now border patrol isn't the only law-enforcement agency that is experiencing difficulties. the dea has lowered their drug standard in order to become a dea agent. the fbi has lowered their

standards in order for you to become an fbi agent. local law enforcement agencies here in texas across the major cities are now cannibalizing from each other, offering $20,000 signing bonuses in order to cannibalize the neighboring cities, the police department. why? because many of these law enforcement agents are made up of retiring baby boomers and so when you look across the country, if you want to get stuck on how high the border fence should be, my argument is rome is burning and no one is paying attention to it because it is forwarded in the demographic changes we are beginning to see. now here is another major factor that unfortunately people are not paying attention to and that is that for centuries, people moved to where the jobs were. we have seen this migration pattern from rural areas to urban areas. the problem is now that jobs are moving to where the people are. that is why microsoft software

to the software engineering plant in vancouver, opening 1500 jobs. microsoft has a multiplier effect which means for every job microsoft creates, four others are created in the interesting -- to support that job. not only do we send high-tech hide job -- skilled jobs to canada. meanwhile california agricultural producers are moving their operations to mexico. why? because they can grow their produce their and labor is plentiful. i still want someone to explain to me when it became a good idea to grow our food supply in another country. so all of these are economic compromises to our inability to solve this problem and to have meaningful immigration reform. i just want to mention a couple of other things.

the elderly population according to the american association of medical colleges, the elderly population in the united states is expected to double between 202,030. we are already in 2012 so the problem with that is one third of the workforce is made up of baby boom doctors. so if one third of the physicians are leaving the field when the elderly population is doubling, we have a declining number of people per capita since 1980 and my question is who is going to be taking care of these people? so if you look at the aerospace industry, 40% of the aerospace industry is eligible for retirement in 2012. we have been in iraq. we have been in afghanistan. we are concerned about israel and iran. three or four years ago the secretary of the air force said we had a geriatric fleet and the

entire u.s. air fleet had to be replaced. keep in mind when it comes to our tankers and are refuel or sand art cargo planes, those planes are traditionally twice as old as the pilots who fly them. dwight eisenhower was president when the casey 135 and the c-130's were built. so how do we ramp up production and replace our aging fleet when 40% of our workforce is about to go out the door and retire? we have an option. we can either import labor in order to keep up with demand, or we can go the way that europe has gone. all of europe is far below replacement level when it comes to fertility rates and i want to repeat this very important point. no country in the history of the world has experienced economic prosperity while experiencing depopulation. finally, i will end on this point. if you look at mexico, mexico's

fertility rate in 1960 was seven which means the average adult female in mexico as having seven children. today they are at 2.2, right in the united states and they are expected to fall below replacement level about five years after we are and we are already there. so the only future pocket and we ever be seen some hispanic data that people are migrating back to mexico, the only future pocket, human capital are going to be coming from countries like india and china for a short while and many of the countries in africa. so we have a choice. we can either import the labor that we need to keep our economy going or we can declare an a new federal holiday and start a national procreation day. with that, i will stop. [applause] >> thank you so much, eddie. that is great and i'm all for

the national holiday but maybe we can do both. call-in cult. .. is what is staring you in the face. i want to attack to you from the

angle of vision of representative of diverse faith communities, serving diverse communities comprise step undocumented people, recent immigrants and other citizens that s.b. 1070 and its cousins like george's h.b. 87 in alabama's h.b. 8656 have negatively, significantly and negatively impact their communities. others said he will speak about the damage is already down to arizona's economy, which the arizona legislature itself admits millions lost from lost revenues to to raise them, unemployment rates exceeding national averages, businesses opting to locate other places, regulatory business practices set for growth and impact of

departure of young, strong, creative entrepreneurs and [cheers and applause] used. how to use in people stories. but stares us in the face for instance our 11 latino congregations comprised of undocumented and citizen who have the very city where the author of s.b. 1070 russell pearce lives. that pulls mom-and-pop restaurants, mom-and-pop stores and these ambitious creative men and women who have come to a new place and been able to initiate commerce and economy. it pulls their children, pulse purchasing power and even more importantly perhaps it pulls that kind of support within a community like having a babysitter for a friend you can create at the bus stop or say hello to at the post office. it pulls them out of your

economy and not of your community itself. i called a pastor in alabama's head was going on in birmingham right now? he said everybody ran. crops are sitting unharvested. they brought in some other workers who work for one or two days and i must. we have a food pantry at our church where we assist with me. the needs are still there, that people are too frightened to come and meet them. we support national reform. a way to document those who want to stay so that we can support them. laws have been made which complement welcome and care. what we see her women whose husbands go to work or vice versa and their cell phone battery may die on the job and they call them and they can't have a voice mail they wonder, it may have been our spouse then picked up on its feet?

for me and my family see them again? we see people on the edge, self containing two self-imposed foundries and borders between two freeways in arizona and two major cross streets within a three-mile radius they work only in that area, shop in that area and return home because they were afraid to go out of that area. we also see increased voter registration among latinos. we see participation in barrio defense groups and we heard a young girl probably about age nine cry out and a community forum, my daddy is not illegal. he is sergio. and he is my daddy. you claim liberation by first reclaiming your name and then

pay reclaiming your being. obfuscation of the truth goes to the very beginning of the popular story about how s.b. 1070 came to be. you know the story. independent state legislators frustrated by federal inaction of our national immigration crisis boldly took it upon themselves to create legislation to combat among other things that illegal immigration and secure borders. they were hardly independent act and legislators. s.b. 1070 and nearly all other similar legislation or present similar and others date was drafted, quote unquote by members of the legislative group of federation for immigration reform. you know that. they're publicly announces its mission to fight our massive immigration crisis. it raises the question, which i

invite you to consider because the way you answer this question will help you determine what solutions you buy into. when and why did our national common good become threatened by immigration? back to fair, president dan stein in the first two i quote, works to ensure america is the same livable place we inherited from our parents and our forefathers whose parents, which forefathers probably not those who lived in the southwest vibrant cultures and vibrant economies before plymouth rock and well before most of the legislators drafting this legislation and families ever step foot in this hemisphere. here is what we see an agenda, and efforts to a certain culture

superior to others. fares influenced by a christian reconstructionist theology which he anti-federalist ideology, which declares the u.s. constitution guarantees to many rights to too many people. we know which people deserve the rights and which don't. cultural imperialism is wrong. racism is deplorable. both are evil and evil can only be obfuscated for so long. eventually it comes clear. a sure sign when it turns and devours it does serve in. s.b. 1070 and nowhere attrition through enforcement, has nowhere created health and community is only broken. salsas data, family lived in arizona for a generation.

he was working in his yard and remembers he had to mail a letter. so was the central deacon, never been in trouble with the law, gets along with this community fine. went to the post office but still had his jeans on an extra half. he was followed by police and stopped in the post office. we please get out of your car? so you show us your papers? whatever is done done, sir? you know that dress becomes the way for law enforcement officers to be calm enforcers to determine the likelihood of a person being illegal. i don't know a single latino family who has not had a family member stopped in a similar way.

i would not have been able to say that a year or two ago. proponents of s.b. 1070 proclaim enforcement policies will assist us in preventing terrorism. trust me, there are more people who look like timothy mc dey driving through the streets of arizona fanlike solipsist ida and we are not getting stomped. we see papers selection process is more about driving especially if you're wearing a straw hat. talk about the erosion of common goods see nothing about the rule of law. one final story. roosevelt is 14 years old. i matter when we were speaking together. she came out to me before i spoken to pastor, will you please pray for me? the sheriff's deputies came and took my father and mother from our home today. after a satanic is about.

14 years old. she told me the story of her father, armando. armando grew up in my salon in the southwestern part of mexico and was recruited to come in the late 80s to the border as we dyed water as an el paso to work in the? at your attire. international companies from china, australia, korea, united states, recruit 300,000 people to live in the colonial opera without electricity without water. they were 432 pesos a day when i first got up there. they devalue the peso and half toys. so after a couple years they were earning a pesos a day. which at that time was 10 pesos to 1 dollar. they worked hard and took the city bus into the city of war as to build their houses, community centers, churches. while the mchugh adored

uplands decided they could make more money by moving into the center of mexico. and then into central america and the southeast asia. armando worked at the plant which was generously 10 and he could have another job if you wanted to relocate to new mexico, albuquerque, phoenix. he opted to go to phoenix and they helped him with his immigration papers and he and his children. the maricopa county sheriff's office came because his paper had been in the work for 14 plus years had not come through and he was illegal. he took roosevelt his mother and father from her home and left laughter is a valid to care for her alive and, nine and 6-year-old siblings alone. talk about an erosion of social conscience to say nothing about

our punitive path towards citizenship. s.b. 1070 others are not creating safe communities. they are breaking them. what kind of value system is that? and finally and in addition in this country that has been proposed, it is illegal for me to members of the sikh community to offer care to transportation, assistance to people who have crossed over the border. often the great political engine that drives our lawmaking scam than five overt track oil by eco-and political expediency, but sometimes it sinks into the stable track of progress, emancipation, civil rights, south african truth and reconciliation and suddenly people start hearing words like this being used in forming

public policy. fairness, a quality, forgiveness we had love to begin of integration solution from foundations like these. thank you. [applause] >> terrific. thank you so much. there'll come i think we'll i think we'll turn to you now if that is okay. >> happy to do that. >> by minister williams, commercial trial lawyer. as banal as 36 years in the courtroom. i like the courtroom. and one of those trial lawyers who goes to trial, by the way. i think there's a lot people who say they are trial lawyers and all they do is settle. i have tried hundreds of cases and yesterday i was in trail in

court in yuma, arizona and as i was flying my plane back from yuma to phoenix, it occurred to me that yes, yuma, arizona they picked 12 million heads of lettuce a day. if you go to your story here, you probably came from yuma and all that lettuce is picked essentially by people who come from mexico and pick that lettuce for us because the population of the united states won't support that type of industry. i am a mormon, proud to be a mormon. and russell pearce was in a huddle a mormon district in arizona and i was offended by his bigotry in his jingoistic approach to hispanic people. i come from a right-wing

republican family. i myself am right of genghis khan. i will tell you without wan this immigration became an issue in arizona come onto my brothers called me up and then let's join the group there goes down with their guns. let's get our guns and go down to the border in force this border policy. and i said now my brother is a business man. and i've been a lawyer. i said let me think about this a little while. and so i began to study it out and to write an essay which is available i think on the website or if you don't have it teach you -- if you go to my bio, right to daryl williams at bw.not all send you a copy because i want to study out what it was what made people so

emotional like i was preparing to go to the court room at our immigration policy made no sense and i wasn't going to join the minutemen and go down there with my guns and try to protect our border because it made absolutely no sense. i have to tell you a few years ago, 10 years ago i decided i didn't know spanish so i taught myself spanish and i did that because the mormon church has a very large -- over half the church speaks spanish. i thought i'm devout mormon. maybe atoning case the church needs to use me somehow. i've got a lot of clients because they speak spanish. it's been a great boon for me. and sure enough my church asked me to speak in a spanish-speaking congregation were for not playing nobody there had documents.

but these are wonderful people and i loved them dearly. i thought my gosh, they are religious, family oriented, epitomize what has made our country great and i agree we need those people coming here to re-energize us. to re-energize us. became the way us. became the way that he did, as something had to be done. so it may set and i sat on the high council of the mormon church, which really doesn't mean very much i tell you. but i am fairly well known in arizona, phoenix and so i started giving what is called fireside. i sat down with people who were mormons to talk to them about immigration and i'll tell you that predominantly the people who came to those meetings came with the attitude that i was crazy and i didn't understand

this fact that we've got laws and these people are illegal, don't you know. but part of illegal don't you understand? i can't tell you how many times i've heard that. but if you give me 45 minutes or an hour with any group, whether they are tea party, the strongest proponent, they will either get up and walk out showing their bigotry or they will be persuaded that there is something wrong with the likes of russell appears and the likes of bills like 1070 and there is a need to change. i was always impressed. i read the biography of adolf hitler a few years ago. as in germany and so i picked it up. i did not know that the thing that kerry to hitler on as way as other sensitive issues with sigmund freud who is an austrian

you see, hitler read or had read was informed about the comment in his book, saying that i'm going to quote this year, a group is extraordinarily credulous and up into influence. it has no critical faculty, does not exist forward. it digs in images which call one another out by association and his agreement with reality is never checked by reasonable function. the ceiling and group so the group is neither doubt or uncertainty goes directly to extremes. this suspicion is express comments until he changed and incontrovertible certainty. a trace of antipathy is turning to hatred of anyone who has to produce an effect these down adjustment he must repeat the

same thing again and again. if you want to repeat the same thing over again and again this group will not think critically about it. you need to have the sort of educational experience that i could have when i met with voters and russell pearce's district and informed them of the reality and the facts. and once i could educate those people, then i could win. now here's the problem with politicians and your site couldn't be a politician. my lab partner with the house later for about 10 years and he and i have this particular debate about what you cannot bend, which you can have have been politically. and i don't care what can happen politically. i am looking for what is right and what is wrong, what is good

and what is bad. and i know think that anyone is obligated to sitcom to a bad lot. and we all know examples of bad laws. and then i retrospect, we have to believe they were bad because slavery in america is an example of that. we've got in germany at that. it's illegal to harbor and yet now we make heroes of people who ignore those laws. i have hispanic people who work inside my house and inside my yard. they don't speak english. i have no idea if they're legal or not. i'm not going to pass them. i don't care. these are good people who work for me. starting in the 1920s, we had

horrible things begin to happen in the united states and here is the fact they're probably many people don't need to know. one of the laws that was instituted i'm going to reach you a quote here by senator david reid. he was a big opponent of these immigration laws in the 1920s. this bill is for those of us who are interested in keeping americans stock up to the high standards. that is people who were born here. there's the old nativist movement in an 18th century, even benjamin frank unheated immigrants. he said the economy or and don't want a language and we shouldn't have these people here. we have senator reid in the 1920s who is a big proponent of immigration laws. and guess who used that in the words of our good senator reid, to justify what he did to the in europe? i think that the solution to

immigration is education and letting people know what the real facts are. the fact that arizona suffers in the billions of dollars because of things like s.b. 1070. the fact that they are not a burden on our society. how many times have i heard in speeches and in the press, wow, you know they use are emergent day care services at the hospitals. i'm going well, yeah, those are disproportionately used and why do we talk about that. and if you look at the benefit cost of those things and for texas. and so i don't understand what's happening here. and by amanda speak in a group

somewhere. teacher merce jingoistic right-wing teapartiers or anybody like that and give me 45 minutes with them and they have to change your view or say regrettably like my law partner said to me after i type to hand. he says i just don't want to talk about this anymore. i can't argue with you on the fax in your reasoning, but i know what i believe and that's what i believe and i don't want to change. that is the attitude we need to change your america. there's lots of god to be fixed. i wish i had an hour to type to you. >> thank you so much. [applause] >> so we may inviting me to speak. we'll turn our backs to conclude the remarks that will open up for q&a. >> thank you you i want to begin

by thanking the competitive enterprise institute, national integration forums and sensible immigration policy for putting this conference on. let me begin with just some simple facts about the economy of arizona. immigrants are businessmen can employers, consumers, renters can investors come out of print or some arizona opera; the grand concentrate in certain sectors of the economy and these are the ones most heard a s.b. 1070 similar bills. data firm prior to the great recession so i can demonstrate to you just how important immigrants are for economic growth. 44% of workers and agriculture are immigrants. immigration enforcement has destroyed many farms that grow fruits and vegetables in the state, force others to grow more expensive less profitable crops like wheat they can be harvested by machines and move a lot of crops and activity in the border to mexico.

23% of workers in arizona are in the construction industry. the construction industry has been decimated by the housing collapse that has been heard even more in arizona because of wildlife at 1070. housing prices in june 2006 through to the trot at september 2011 they declined a whopping 55.9% in price. was a second-worst decline of many many american major city in the united states. immigration policy did not deserve all or maybe than most of the blame for the decline in price but one major reason why it was so great and the next is because the state drew about 100,000 people with s.b. 1070 and the additional 100,000 people with the other previous law and sanction law. 100,000 unauthorized immigrants, mostly in maricopa county would have rented or bought quite a few houses or rented them and so down the housing price collapse but they couldn't because they weren't there. 20% of workers in manufacturing immigrants.

fabricate metal was hurt tremendously but a great reception but having the work force diminished by these restrictive laws and attitudes allowed to increase. leisure, hospitality, services, wholesale trade and numerous other industries have an immigrant work force larger than percentage of arizona's foreign-born population and may have also fared more than other industries in the other state. arizona's employment rate has been at or above the national average since may 2008, not long after the employer sanctions law went into effect. s.b. 1070 like employer sanctions is mostly about punishing businesses are hiring the labor they want. for those of us who think highly of free enterprise and individual liberty and the government should be smaller and less intrusive, s.b. 1070 combines the terrible work-based interventions of american left-wing social law with american civil liberty violations onto one contact

bill. the state's mandatory verify program. and it links to a diaphragm agencies like the fbi come immigration services, department of homeland security, and other agencies to verify work is eligible for the glimpse we been in the united states. he verify slowly been combined the state level is to the so-called right initiative, which will then link up photographs with these results. for businessmen are supposed to do is take the identity information of new hires and check it the database. most of the time the system works alright. too often workers are not approved. if it cannot prove he is really authorized to work in a timely manner the worker is not legally allowed to be employed. we have laws in this country

that mandate that workers ask permission from the federal government to get a job. that is not a free-market economy if i've ever heard one. most of the time either fireworks time. he verify produces an inaccurate result. derek identity system are not caught by either a five and worse than 1% of legal american workers were probably the arthritis. try to fix the records which sometimes required privacy act request with the federal government which takes 104 days to require. when intel corporation arizona submitted numeracy verifier queries in 2008, 12% of its workers were not confirmed. these workers will eventually cleared and authorized to work, but intel said it was quote only after significant investment of time and money, lost

productivity and effective foreign national staff come in many hours of confusion, worried and upset. another arizona firm, mco enterprises which owned dozens of restaurants reported as if he verify queries were not confirmed. worse, the nonconfirmation race for the go foreign-born workers was 75%. that is because of the whole federal databases that haven't been killed. these examples and reasons are why since 2008 either if i was mandated in arizona 30% of new hires in the state are not checked through the program. that number has been remarkably steady since 2008. arizona's first in good workers and businesses to the black market but better than dealing with the verify. at least in the businesses% days. hiring employees expensive.

when you make it more expensive to hire people you will get if you don't want that result, i suggest that you encourage people or not be a proponent of the verify. in conclusion they harm and he verify and makes it more costly to hire workers in fear means entrepreneurs and consumers that produced -- that can stand the american goods, services and real estate produced in the state. arizona has been especially hard-hit by housing collapse and subsequent great recession partly because of immigration courts and policies. arizona could not have such policies at the terrible federal immigration minus not in the. the vast majority of unauthorized and potential immigrants, there are no visas available. that is the simple fact. federal immigration reform

should administer employment decisions and allowing players and employees to make their own arrangements about government intervention, even if they happen to be different countries. [applause] >> so we have heard a pathway of reasons for why we need federal immigration reform. for the moral imperatives but what it means not at least the economic implications of broken immigration laws. i will open it up to you all of you for any questions that you may have, but as you guys are thinking about your questions --

okay, we'll start right off with you. >> my name is kimberly, candidate at george mason university and especially smith's immigration and trafficking have been working hard night of the past six years and i just wanted to touch on the point that the trial lawyer, i'm sorry forgot your name with regards to education as the solution. i agree with you, but my question is for all panelists, is there enough evidence to conclusively educate? my dissertation, which i'm a machine that asked the question, does 287 disproportionally affect the number of latino brought into the justice system and from my experience on that issue and many others, there is not enough evidence or not enough data sets available to me than answer that question on a generalizable level. and so, before i think that you can offer solutions and present

possible policies that might actually work need to have the s possible to say was going on, how weekend that congress and other organizations more research to a rigorous research because there's a very famous mark twain things sane various statistics because either side of the debate can present shoddy evidence to support your position. so i would just say, to think that evidence exists? >> let me respond to your question here. >> i like you i'm very skeptical when it comes to evidence and i spent my life in a courtroom cross-examining people because i have an expert assessment is doing my job is to destroy that person. more often than not i can't because i can show other statistics that counterbalance that. the education i am talking about

is not statistics. that is misdirection. the direction i'm talking about is what is this country about? so let's start with fundamental principles. what makes the free market work? what type of morality undergirds this issue? what is the work on the move that holds our community together? i never get to talk about that in the court room because it is a cold facts of what you're talking and who is right and who is wrong. my view is no one is right and wrong in the courtroom. it is when in the spirit on a major issue like this, what you need to do is educate people about the underlying principles of humanity and goodness and the good reverend here todd about that. and i think that is the important issue and that is what i talk about when i talk about her immigration laws of people.

i stare up at the initial naturalization acts in the 18th century, the early 19th century, the chinese exclusion act signed by no less president chester arthur in 1982 and metamorphose coming in now, we have a history of the briley is bigotry in this country. those that are here want to iraq to live. there is a 1920 political cartoon that says, keep out -- and there is a wall at the border and uncle sam is on one side and says, no way. the people on the other side are irish immigrants. and so, the refrain has remained the same. this is the focus has changed over years. it is the movement of the 19th century was shocking.

it is the history of the issue got to be the principles of free country like america. the united states supreme court on this issue a little while ago. it's about 5000 businessmen in arizona. and it's replete with the kinds of statistics to the effect the commerce clause. but that is not the education. the education is and which are doing. the education is to our week week? and wished we'd be a quiet >> just real quick, i think that garrow -- gerald makes --

>> my mother's fault. >> ask an excellent point that there's a values conversation happening here and it goes back to some degree by which you are quoting from detroit about conversations about facts and statistics in convincing people on that basis. that has been a nap help battle and there is closed and let the statistics do not necessarily on something that focuses to 87 g era sound analyses strong policies. there is ample evidence that the state is theirs and that if we were to rationalize our national

immigration policies that we would see substantial increases in cumulative gdp that contrary to that and that goes to the question of cuba's population and nurse and their 60 million people and that's the usual and the economy. we spun on a conservative beaver tenure. and it's actually very similar to what the cato institute, center for american progress left-leaning progressive organization of the cato institute came and did their own independent analysis and came basically at the same conclusion, which would see removed these people and have a huge hole to the economy. give them the opportunity on an even playing field and increases

across the board are significant. did you follow up? >> thank you for both of your responses. one thing extremely important to me. the economics of the renovation is what means the country is that it's extremely important to disseminate that information in a way that's easily accessible to the average joe. if i'm reading studies, i understand p. values and intervals and everything like that. the average joe doesn't understand, it's painless and not not going to make an educated but we want. just my response to daryl, that kind of education is necessary, but the statistics that i'm talking about are also valuable because of a state constitutional issue of violations of the 14th amendment. that is now at the conference is about.

that needs to be brought to light. having good rigorous rigorous evidence of support because right now they're not even adequately reported that the city to even be able to test this. >> let me respond to that. you have to remember most of the groups are just the elect dry. i'm talking to the regular guy who goes to the voting booth. and i will tell you that the average american is not a good on standard deviations. they are not wrote that on confidence that theirs. they're not real good on reading scholarly analyses and reports. they're not real good at parsing whether this is a biased report with a certain perspective for this is truly object to is academic report. they are not good at that. i've had people in this room are important because i expect five representatives and their staff to be good at that sort of stuff. and that is where it's available. there's lots of it out there.

the statistics on arizona come on what is happening because the economy are stark because these bills have heard us. not only that, what happens is people flee arizona and then they go to another state. and so is third in the tournament commerce clause issue constitutionally is but that is. if i start talking about the commerce clause and working versus sterling and the constitutional interpretation with people, their eyes glaze over because the average person who posed doesn't think at that level. very superficial. >> i'm just going to jump in here real quick. you're just looking for hard, statistical facts to support the fact that we need sensible and accretion reform. i'm going to add to it eddie aldridge said and of course this will always bring out some loser nonsense that provide abortion.

you go to the cato institute and these guys will tell you it's an absolute fact it's not debatable that more american workers that enter the workforce especially in the unskilled level. that is a fact. number two is eddie aldrete pointed out to us it is at the level it takes for society to exist. and if they start coming from south of the border because they so happens the ones that have enough babies to keep this boost in that regard, then we've got a big, big problem. you tie that to the heart, cold fact this is wrote the wage 39 years. it is a fact. we are pushing 60 million babies. could've been american-born workers we have legally aborted because it a lot. we are here to talk about

immigration, but let's leave that part of it. those people are not here and we have got a real crisis coming in this country if we don't turn our birthrate around. i think you have some cold, hard facts for convincing people why we need these immigrants. it's right there in just arithmetic. thank you. [applause] >> you know, i would just echo what she said, which is their is an important communication gap that needs to be filled and we've tried to do that in some respects by distilling, you know, some basic numbers. and it's worked to a certain extent the 144 million or 141 million in arizona and was conference cancellations. that has become standardized reporting. the $1.5 trillion in cumulative gdp that brittany mentioned

before, which is what we did a year and a half ago, those numbers i think are important to get out there so it becomes part of the common dialog. but we have more work to do obviously we wouldn't be here today. did you want to anything, alex? >> ready to go onto the next question. >> okay. >> congressman scott garrett's office. this question is for alex. you talk about the cost to either fight how it makes an expense for businesses. can you talk a little more about the cost of government and business is, about you verify a? >> yeah, so as part of this entire process. all of these enforcement laws. he verifies the continuation started in 1986, part of the irca informer control act.

according to a regulatory review done this year, employers spend annually 13.5 million hours dealing with the i-9 form. that is the symbol when we all fell out when we get employed in any kind of firm. i just sold them out not long ago. out of all of that time that private employers spend on that and employees every year it's about 18.5 million hours. that's a lot of hours based on a government form that doesn't really add much. when it comes to be verified, some of the main cause for the economic cost, specifically dealing with problems in the system. one of the problems the gao discovered when entering into the system is the system doesn't like hyphens. if you have a hyphen in your name, and he had to come back as a non-confirmations to stand are very much hyphen because of that. that disproportionately affects people who are hispanic because there's an increased number of hispanic names that have hyphens

in them. part of the problem also has said he verifies does not function like a national i.d. system. it's got all the worst aspects come in and of the decent ones. i'm not in favor of national i.d. system. it's terrible across the board. the government database somewhere else. you don't have a piece of paper that says my name is alex nowrasteh, and this is where you work. if the guy behind computer screens saying sorry your information doesn't match. this is no good. if your information to the magic is something called a tentative nonconfirmation which means have a certain amount of time to prove to the employer you are legally allowed to work in the united states. the thing is to correct a lot of the errors in the government system in databases, the government won't release a lot of the information without something called a privacy act request because the information is personal and takes a lot of time to get to that. the average amount of time is 104 days.

you have 120 days max meant to solve a tentative nonconfirmation. that doesn't leave a lot of time or space for somebody to run through them he verifies system to actually solve the problem and make sure they are legal. if you are to take a look at the bureaucratic steps for solving the verify problems, i wish i brought this, but the gao documents from the 2010th study of the verify basically pulls a full page of areas. nice little diagrams there is a people talking other bureaucrats, other systems and information from the government and going back to the employer. quite frankly when we have an unemployment rate, the economy is suffering. the last thing you want to do is make the system more complicated than it is to hire somebody. so there's a lot of states now that make it mandatory to high year and what were going to see is what we have seen in arizona, which is more hires going into

the black market and not a check to the system. instead of having more people hired legally, will have a lot of people hired in the black market in a cash only economy, which is the intended effects of the law. >> construction worker coming to my house a few months ago, years ago. he worked on my house. there was no work that i needed. i'm preserving the brazilian rainforest for having 600 feet of brazilian mahogany in my house on the floor. he was repairing some of that. he says to me, can you pay me cash? i said why? he says well, i have a day job and i pay enough in taxes already. now i'm one of the less than half who pays taxes in america today. so that upset me immensely.

but give them a check and a sentiment 1099 because the skies on the black market wanting cash. i took a cab here today. i want to pay with a credit card because we only take cash. i said why? he says well it's easier to keep track of. i said yeah right. i took a cab and all of a sudden guy said can you pay me cash? i said no, credit card. he said well, i have to report it is what he said. i said take my credit card. there's a black art in america. and part of this is a lot of employers and i'm an employer. i have lots of employees. we hired them. we just 1090 nines them. we put them on so we walk around this blog. and i wonder how many people do that. my criminal for that? and that we work to make sure we

can verify. we heard one hispanic lady who is 18, did not. she worked at our office as a receptionist because we needed a bilingual person and i walked in one morning and she was crying. she got deportation papers. and so i walked by her, tapped my office manager. i hired an immigration attorney on my own dime to solve a problem that was a bureaucratic snafu and got her so she was brought over when she was two years old by her mother. she was an american as much as anyone was here, but she didn't the papers that her mother had a green card. her paper work was not good in their going to throw her back to mexico where she never lived. the expensive as for firmware into firmware into the thousands and thousands of dollars and i would multiply that and it's outrageous that the government is doing to me.

>> i want to make a point on this referring to the black market. this is a really big issue with the enforcement only legislation, which is basically tracked with what russell pearce wanted. when we pass enforcement only loss, which i would put the verify under that category, those laws only apply to employers who admit to having employees and employers that have followed the law by completing the i. nine rd got in a match in taxes in most cases provided workers compensation, some health insurance one k. et cetera. when we have -- we apply either side for any kind we have a rate, and i-9 audit, what happens is that those employees who i-9 records don't match, they don't have either -- they barred a social security number

or the fake number minutes at the flea market or whether they are, for whatever reason they don't give the country. they move away from the employer who has been to.and in matching taxes then move to what alex is referring to is the black market. basically they move to 1090 nines for a. they go on work where people will bring them up in a pickup truck, hand them the tool and it clearly employees at irs rules, but will be treated and paid within i-9. they're not independent contract areas like you are describing an independent contractor remodeling your house. at the worker who gets dusted off for the job because of enforcement only laws. we shoot ourselves in the foot and a friend of them to payrolls where we are no longer collecting payroll taxes. that is the number one reason from a financial standpoint that

immigration reform would be a boom to her payroll tax revenue without any tax revenues. >> sorry for the interruption. >> i think we have time for just one quick last question. >> i wanted to see if any of you could touch a little on the possible effects of s.b. 1070, if it by the supreme court is going to have arizona's neighboring states such as to mexico. alex, maybe you can catch on the economic effects if you have any data on that. >> i have a little data on the effects of new mexico. new mexico is very better than most other states in the union during the great recession for a number of reasons. one of the main reasons as he has seen a lot of people have left arizona as a response to last have gone to neighboring states, utah, nevada, new mexico, texas because texas is better policy across the board

that lower taxes, no state income tax. so what you see is an increasing number of consumers, entrepreneurs and workers who go to these days. what's interesting is the studies of entrepreneurship from the immigrants regardless of status are more than twice as likely to start a business as our nativeborn and hispanics are almost twice as likely to start a business than non-hispanic americans. what you see in places where the economy is doing better than places like arizona, where is doing worse as more business creation. more job creation for business and immigrants are driving force in job job creation, both of themselves starting businesses and providing a lot of the other support that businesses need to be able to get started. so i think you'll see an increase in economic growth in states that receive more immigrants as a result of them going there and because the states are uttered in arizona,

so that if witchel and i've seen. as a result of public services and problems like that, texas doesn't have a large welfare state compared to other states like california, for instance. and the taxes are lower there as a result. if you see temporary families in texas it's about a fourth of the amount that it is in california. immigrants aren't going to states with high welfare state through the codices like texas that have low welfare states, most taxes and economic growth and seem to add to that. >> let me just add to that. the amicus brief by side on this issue deals with that precise issue and there's lots of statistics and vacation for some of alex's work in that brief periods to get a copy of that brief. it is replete with citations and statistics on that. >> when enforcement through attrition becomes acceptable, where does it stop? who is the next group? when senator pearce was building

a coalition for s.b. 1070 can be granted what to need, what i call a anti-women, anti-gay legislators, which is now coming up, that they signed on with s.b. 1072 come through the next session and of course he was voted out of office. but not just the economic issues, the moral issues i think we can anticipate anti-gay and anti-muslim legislation coming down the road. >> thanks for bring it back to the moral issues. >> can i say when that didn't quite >> sure. thank you for the work you're doing bless you and your passionate phd work. i want to say that i know when the framework of this discussion, taca academic angst in demographics and the berger issue is of concern. i just want to say the heart of

this to me and the one very brief story, a group of students come to phd candidates from colorado went down to the migrant trail, which as you probably know as the trail of dead migrants through mexico tours the u.s. border has been locked in a long time. they might have come from guatemala or central america -- i mean, central mexico. they had been lacking for a long time and students from colorado win out because people go and assist them. the people haven't eaten, don't have water, decent clothes. the people in the mexican side of the border offers support. this group didn't speak spanish very well. this group of migrants working through the desert and said that if enough, call me that, all quiet and a senior group of white people yelled at them

rebranding away. so the student said again, spann said [speaking in spanish] and the groups of migrants came back to the desert and said we are sorry, we don't have much water, we don't have much clothing. we don't have much to did we don't have much been the same. but what we have, we will share with you. and on the other side of the border, it is illegal to offer carrier beyond these questions of democrats six hamburgers as what about our hearts? and does our heart matter in your formulation as staffers of public policy? thank you. >> were going to have to stop there. thanks. >> president obama arrived in afghanistan today on a surprise visit to sunny postwar agreement with president hamid karzai.

.. >> here on c-span2. >> between 1971 and 1973 president richard nixon secretly recorded nearly 4,000 hours of phone calls and meetings. >> always agree on the little things, and then you hold on the big one. i mean, hell, i've done this so often in many conversations with people, i say, well, we'll

concede that and make them all feel good, but then don't give them the big one. >> hear more of the nixon tapes including discussions with future presidents, key white house advisers and intelligence agency heads saturdays at 6 p.m. eastern. in washington, d.c., listen at 90.1 fm and at c-span radio.org. ♪ >> this week on "q&a" author naomi schaefer riley discusses her latest book, the faculty lounges. c-span: naomi schaefer riley, on page 11 of your preface, you say

it's a con game made to suit the interests of the tenured faculty who would prefer to write obscure tomes rather than teach broad introductory classes to freshmen. what's the con game? >> guest: well, it occurred to me in researching this book that the professors have very different interests than students and parents do in higher education. what gets rewarded if you are a professor is publication, publication and more publication. and it's actually not in your imagination, in case you've read an academic book lately. it's actually supposed to be obscure because you as an academic have to, basically, blaze new trails, you have to always be saying something new. so, for instance, there were a hundred new academic works published on shakespeare. now, love shakespeare, studied shakespeare in college, but i have to wonder whether it's actually worth a professor's time to be writing new, kind of,

you know, theoretical twists on shakespeare as opposed to teaching a broad introductory class on hamlet. c-span: where did this all start, the need to publish? >> guest: well, it started with the progressives in the 1920s. there was this whole idea of a research university which came over from germany and sort of planted itself on our shores in the early part of the 20th century. and it was really sort of kind of two things, one was with the scientific research, you know, especially in the physical and biological sciences people really were blazing new trails. and, you know, there was a lot of new ground broken. and the whole idea was that nobody really could judge the quality of the work unless you were really, truly familiar with this sort of new, complex scientific system that was being imemployeed. and, you know, i think i get that on some level. but what happened was the standard for the physical sciences then shifted over into the social sciences and the humanities. and suddenly those professors always had to be saying

something new, and those professors could only be judged, again, by people inside their field. there was also another progressive idea which was that the professors were supposed to sort of form the experts in society, they were supposed to be what we now call the public intellectuals, and they were supposed to be kind of adding to society's store of knowledge. and again, i think this is what one result that you see of this today is that professors kind of stand apart, and we are not supposed to, you know, in the broader society kind of really question what it is that they're doing when they're engaged in their research. c-span: the title of your book is "the faculty lounges and other reasons why you won't get the college education you paid for." where'd you get the idea, and why is this necessary now, this book? >> guest: well, you know, higher education right now i think we're having kind of a crisis of confidence. if you look at the surveys. you know, generally, americans love higher education. i talked to one pollster who said, you know, it's like mom and apple pie.

and, um, but i think right now the costs have gotten to the point where people are really questioning higher education's value. and so in my opinion this is actually a very good time to look at kind of where we've come and not to say that we need to scrap the whole system or that college education isn't worth it, but to say that we do need to build more accountability into the system. and i think that for students and parents who are paying those tuition bills, we really need to have a good sense of what kind of undergraduate education they're getting. c-span: how many schools are there in the united states that grant four-year degrees? >> guest: about five or six thousand accredited colleges. and so, you know, it's obviously hard to write kind of a broad book that kind of covers what all of them are doing because they're engaged in many kinds of acttivities, you know, some of them consider themselves more vocational, some consider themselves liberal arts, some want to be research

universities. but there are some things that they seem to have in common, and one of them is this sort of drive to research. i was very surprised to find that even at community colleges in so-called teaching universities, you know, not research universities the drive to publish is what is always rewarded at these schools. c-span: what kind of a home did you grow up in? >> guest: an academic one, of course. [laughter] c-span: where was it? >> in massachusetts. my parents met at the university of chicago, and now my sister has her ph.d., so i'm the last member of her family without one. that will tell you something. but, i mean, i grew up very -- with a deep sense that higher education can be extraordinarily worthwhile and that it can really, it can change your character, it can change your life, it can change your career, it can change everything if it's done right. um, but what i worry about is that the many of the faculty -- and it's not just, you know, the

faculty individually making decisions, but the incentives that are put in place in the system, i think, are what are undermining the undergraduate education. c-span: where did you get your degree? >> guest: i got my degree from harvard. c-span: in what? >> guest: english and government. c-span: was it worth the money? >> guest: well, you'd have to ask my parents, it was their money. [laughter] no, i think it was. but i had an advantage. i mean, i had parents who actually were insiders and who were able to advise me about what kind of classes to take and which professors were actually interested in teaching. and, you know, and i knew what to look for. and i really think so few people have that going into college. and, you know, their parents are just thinking, well, this is the next logical step. i want, you know, junior to be a member of the middle class or the upper middle class, and i want them to have a good job, and i want them to, you know, get something out of college educationally, so let's just send them here because this is

what "u.s. news & world report" says. c-span: where do can your parents teach? >> guest: my father teaches at holy cross in worcester, and my mother doesn't teach anymore. she taught at a number of colleges before she founded her own think tank in worcester. c-span: so what do they think of this book? >> guest: well, you know, i joke with my father. the subtitle of the book could have been confessions of an ungrateful child. but i think he takes some of the criticisms of the book very seriously, and i think, you know, he feels as if, you know, being at a small liberal arts college some of the criticisms are not as applicable. but, you know, in a great deal of ways, you know, small liberal arts colleges are not really representative of what most americans experience in higher education. but i always emphasize to him that this, that the finding -- one of, i think, the most important things that i learned researching the book was that for every additional hour a professor spends in the classroom, he or she will get

paid less. and that was true not only at the big state universities, but it was true at small liberal arts colleges. c-span: wait a minute, let's go back on that statistic. what are you really saying? that if you're a teacher and you're in the classroom, the more you spend in there, the less you make? >> guest: basically, anytime spent in the classroom is time not spent writing. so depending how you divide your time, that will determine what level you will reach. c-span: who are they writing for? >> guest: each other. i mean, i don't know, you know, when the last time, you know, you picked up kind of an academic publication was, but even harvard university press, i think, recently said that the average circulation of one of their, you know, one of their academic publications is 250 books. so when you consider that a lot of those books are actually just purchased automatically by libraries and, you know, that's 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, you know, academic librarians complain about this to me. but, you know, students complain too. so to me, you know, somebody wrote a paper recently where they said that the academic publication industry was driven by the producers and not the consumers. and, you know, i think that says it all. c-span: was this book your idea or the publisher's idea? >> guest: it was my idea. c-span: i ivan rd now owned by roman and littlefield? >> guest: yeah. c-span: define the word -- well, not define it, but explain how someone gets tenure, and what is it? >> guest: so, um, when you go to a university, you could be offered something called a tenure track position. about, i don't know, maybe 40-50% of academic positions out

there are either tenure or tenure track now. so if your on the tenure track, what happens is when you arrive at the university, they start a clock. and the clock goes for about seven years although at some universities it's lengthened, i think the university of michigan recently electionenned it to ten years. and during that time you have to show why the university should keep you on permanently. and what you do during that time the university, most universities claim that three things matter. what matters is your publication record, your teaching record and your service to the university. so serving on a variety of committees. they call this in academia, they call in the three-legged stool of academia. so during that time which, you know, by the way, coincides with a lot of other things in your life. people have pointed out, for instance, usually this is sort of between 30 and 40, say, when women are maybe wanting to have children, start families, do other things. this is when kind of the most intensive part of your career is going on, when it's kind of an

all or nothing. so at the end of that clock, a committee -- usually, basically, of your own department members -- will look at that, at your record and say up or down. c-span: so your fellow professors are doing this. >> guest: exactly. and most of them in your own discipline. it's not like some professor from another department who doesn't know you. it will be the people who you have basically been with every day for the last seven or eight years will be sitting in judgment of you. c-span: secret judgment? >> guest: oh, absolutely. the committees are not made public. and there was an interesting piece by a professor at tufts about how he did not get tenure at the university of chicago a number of years oog. and he was talking about kind of -- and his wife actually even contributed to the piece, too, about how it feels to be judged in this way by the people who you thought were closest to you and who you had worked with collegially, and they go into this back room and decide about

your future. so what happens at that vote, the tenure vote is you either get to stay on permanently, or you get out. c-span: immediately? >> guest: there's no, you know, by the following academic year. there's no in between. it's not like, oh, well, we'll give you another couple years and see if your publication record improves, or why don't you just stay on on a part-time or temporary basis. c-span: what's the percentage of professors teaching on the tenure track that get tenure? >> guest: i'm not sure. i mean, i think what -- you know, if you're on a tenure track, that means that they have a tenured position available at some point in the future. so some universities have started to cut down on the number of tenure tracks, that is, when somebody retires, they will say, okay, that's going to be, now, an adjunct position which we should get to in a minute. but, you know, getting turned down for tenure is a very, is a

very common thing, and i think a lot of people feel like they've been led on, like they do this certain number of years at a university, and once you've been turned down for tenure at one university, it's very hard to start from scratch at a new university. c-span: do they give you any warning during those seven years that you're not doing well? >> guest: some universities give you updates along the way. but, again, i mean, it's a very, it's a very personally-driven process. and, you know, some schools grade you based on your collegiality which, you know, sort of -- [laughter] how well you play with others which i think is kind of insulting to a professional. but they also, you know, they'll give you some sense, you know, in terms of how big your stack of publications is, you know, how they think you're doing relative to other candidates. but from what i've read and be a lot of people find it to be a surprise if they don't get tenure. c-span: is there any appeal process if you did not get tenure? >> guest: some schools have them. i mean, you know, and, again,

there's a lot of -- there's not a lot of transparency in the process. and i think that that should bother more people than it does, particularly t universities. -- at universities. so some schools do kind of have this back alley way of find being your way into maybe, you know, the president's office or the provost's office and saying you want to be reconsidered, and maybe then the provost will suggest to the department it's time to reconsider. but a lot of them it's really hard to discern. c-span: help me out here, the professors don't have a transparent process, but if you listen to what comes out of a professor over years, they're demanding all the time of openness. >> guest: yeah, well, you know, the professor is not among the more self-reflective bodies, in my opinion, and i think there's not a lot of examination of what goes on. you know, they want to talk about, you know, bioethics, they want to talk about, you know, government ethics, but there's not a lot of talk about what

goes on in the academy and the ethics of that. so i think the lack of transparency in the tenure process is one of the biggest problems that i see there. c-span: if you were to point out the person that you know that hates in this book the most, who would it be? >> guest: boy. let's see. well, i think, um, the head of the american association of university professors was asked to comment on my book by inside higher ed a few weeks ago, and i think he said that it left him speechless. so i was happy to take credit for that. but i think he was, he was very, very angry and particularly, i think, what most professors disagree with in that book is my argument about tenure's connection to academic freedom. that's sort of the first thing that comes out of professors' mouths when you say why do you need tenure, and they will automatically without thinking just say, oh, to protect academic freedom. so i have a chapter in there,

it's the first chapter, and i talk about, you know, what is academic freedom, and why does it need protecting? one of the arguments that i make is about the rise of vocational education. you know, tenure was originally this idea that professors should be able to be protected when they go out on a limb and say something controversial about their discipline. you know, and be i say, okay, well, maybe on the hard gins you can see how -- margins you can see how this would be important in the case of a couple of humanities professors, maybe cutting-edge physical science professors, but, you know, professors of business administration, and then i sort of also talk about, you know, some of the new disciplines that have come up. you know, security studies. there are, there are basically professors of cooking who now have, you know, professors of nutritional studies who have tenure now. and, you know, when pressed, you know, someone at the aup or a professor who is, you know, towing the party line will say, oh, well, we need someone with

tenure and security studies so they can, you know, talk about immigration even though it's controversial. and someone in nutritional studies needs to be able to say something controversial about obesity. you know, this could go on indefinitely. there's no limit to the number of controversial things that need protection. but, you know, in my opinion i think the, you know, the bounds of academic freedom have just gotten, have just been pushed too far. c-span: you wrote the american people themselves are directly responsible for what she sees as the oppressive atmosphere on campus, and you're referring back to a woman named bernstein. what are you talking about there? why are the american people responsible? >> guest: so elizabeth bernstein is vice president at the ford foundation. and i went to hear her talk at a conference on academic freedom in new york a couple of years ago. and the ford foundation gives so much money to higher december that, you know, the audience is enthralled to hear elizabeth

bernstein talk. and she began to list the threats that she saw in the american academy to academic freedom, and she listed, oh, you know, conservative religious groups, she listed anti-evolution groups, she listed republicans. i mean, it just sort of went on and on. but at the end she said one of the biggest problems she saw were cable news networks like fox, for instance. that were telling the american people about professors, you know, um, like the man at columbia who wished upon, you know, america a million mogadishus or, you know, or telling people about ward churchill, telling people that the outrages of american universities. and to her, you know, the problem was not the outrages, the problem was now the american public was interested in the outrages. and, you know, the idea, again, we get back to this question about, you know, you think that university professors and the people who are interested in higher education want

transparency, you think that's sort of one of their buzz words. but, no, they look at transparency as, oh, now all these, you know, sort of the little people are now looking over my shoulder, and they couldn't possibly understand the scholarship that i'm engaged in. c-span: you in the next paragraph say just to be clear, was a representative of the ford foundation, the sugar daddy of modern -- is that what they are, a liberal foundation? >> guest: oh, sure. i mean, ford foundation, basically, was responsible for sort of, you know, funding the great society before it was, you know, funded by the government. i mean, and even now if you look on campus, i mean, what are the programs the ford foundation funds? they fund the difficult dialogues program where as a college they will give you, if you're a college administration, they will give you $100,000 to promote dialogues on your campus about race, about sexual orientation, about all these things. but for ford, you know, the

answers are already clear. i mean, you know, the problem with race is that, you know, minorities are oppressed, and they're still oppressed to this day, and they're still suffering from the legacies of slavery, you know? sexual or yenations are all good, it's just a matter of choice. they're not dialogues, they're just, you know, sort of one-sided propaganda campaigns. c-span: where do you come from on the political scale? >> guest: on the right. c-span: how did you get there? >> guest: i came by it honestly. i mean, i think my parents both qualify themselves as conservatives. although, you know, i think that i've thought about it enough too. i mean, i used to work for "the wall street journal" editorial page, and i largely agree with that sort of philosophy on free markets, you know, economically, but i'm also something of a social conservative too. c-span: your father teaches at holy cross. how does a conservative, i mean, the implication is that there

aren't many conservatives in the academia. >> guest: there are not. it's, you know, one of the things that people like to say about tenure, and i interviewed a lot of conservatives who defended tenure because they said, look, i would lose my job tomorrow if i didn't have tenure. um, but the idea that tenure has really protected dissent on campus is one that i think we have had enough experience with to examine a little bit more carefully. you know, just to give you an example, you know, when barack obama was running in the last election, american professors gave eight times as much money to him as to john mccain. now, obviously, john mccain lost, but it wasn't quite by that margin. but, you know, it's not just politically that dissent is not protected. i mean, i talk to people who were familiar with arguments in physics departments, and they said, look, if you come out with the long view of string theory,

i mean, you will also be sort of pushed out. it's not an environment that tolerates dissent of any sort very well. um, there was a story recently about a professor at ohio university who actually got tenure. he was, um, he had been a journalist before, and he got tenure. and then he wrote a piece for the chronicle about how he'd resolve to act from now on now that he has tenure. and basically he just said, uh, i'm done. i'm not going to rock the boat anymore, i'm not going to stand up anymore. you know, it was just like someone who had been beaten down. and i think, you know, that process we were talking about, that 7-10 year process where you're with these people, you know, every day, and you're trying so hard to please them because you want that job for life. i think what it just promotes is an atmosphere in which everyone keeps their head down and their mouth shut. c-span: have you ever run into

anybody who's conservative in a college atmosphere and who keeps their head down on their politics until they get tenure? >> guest: you know, i guess i sort of hear these stories apocryphally. you know, this was sort of the famous line of my former professor, harvey mansfield, who sort of jokingly advises people who ask his advice to, first, get tenure and then hoist the jolly roger. c-span: by the way, he sat right there one day and said he was only one of six professors in harvard. >> guest: who was a conservative? c-span: who was a conservative, yeah. i'm sorry, who was a conservative. >> guest: i'd probably come to a similar mentality. [laughter] yeah, i think -- but it is a rare person, i think, who can control themselves for that long and then suddenly at the age of 40, basically, wake up and start speaking their mind. i mean, it's -- if you can do it, if you can kind of sneak under the radar for that long, fool people into thinking, you know, this is somebody who will really get along well with, you

know, the liberal atmosphere at the university and then all of a sudden wake up and say, aha, i have tenure, now i'm going to out myself to everyone, you know, good for you. but i don't know how many of us can, a, sort of keep it to ourselves for that long or, b, once we have, you know, really want to offend all the people that we've befriended. c-span: i know this is off the subject of the book, but you went to harvard, and you're a conservative, and there aren't many conservatives teaching at harvard, but they didn't change your mind. >> guest: no. i mean, look, i don't -- i mean, harvey was talking about political conservative. i took a number of apolitical classes at harvard. like i said, first of all, i was a major in accomplish and government, so -- english and government, so i took government classes with harvey mansfield, peter berkovitz and a couple of other prores who i think would classify themselves as conservative. but what i really liked about the professors that i had was that they left politics at the door. i mean, i took classes on

shakespeare and plato and even harvey mansfield who was a well known conservative outside of the classroom, we didn't sit around discussing republican talking points or something like that. in fact, i remember he, you know, his last sort of popular book was on manliness. and i took a graduate seminar with him, i think it was my senior year. and a number of kind of let's just call them radical feminists showed up. i think they wanted to really disrupt the class and, you know, get their views heard and protest, you know, the idea that we would even have such a class. and, you know, harvey mansfield sits down, and he's a very sort of mild-mannered guy, and he just sort of starts talking about plato and courage. [laughter] and i think these women were just like where do we go from here, you know? i thought we were going to talk about gloria steinem, or i thought we were going to talk about some sexist pig that we

can start harassing. and i think my point is that, um, you know, so many of the professors that i had i appreciated the fact that their politics were not part of the curriculum. c-span: you say that in 1994 that there was, they could not restrict the age, well, at which you had to retire. i mean, we used to have to retire in this country at 65. it was originally passed back in the 80s schools got to, what, '94 when -- >> guest: yeah. c-span: what has that done to the universities? >> guest: well, it's exacerbated the tenure problem. in fact, many people who say to me why get rid of tenure, why not just reinstitute mandatory retirement? what you have on campus now is a lot of aging baby boomer professors who are not really doing their job very well, and they're just kind of waiting until their 401(k) gets big enough that they feel comfortable retiring, and every time the market takes a hit

they're like, ah, just one more year, i'll stick it out. so it's a problem, and i certainly see how mandatory retirement could solve that in some sense. but i, i'm very reluctant to go that way. i mean, i had some great professors who were 70 years old. i think -- i shouldn't say but, certainly, harvey mansfield is well over 70 now, and many of my professors that i had at the time were certainly well over 65. they had great experience teaching, and they happened to be good teachers after that. so why should we arbitrarily kick them out just because some people at that age decide that they're not going to do their job anymore? c-span: if i had tenure at a school, does it really mean that they couldn't fire me? >> guest: it's technically not supposed to mean that, but i have to say i have talked to so many administrators who have just said it is never -- it is almost never worth it to fight that battle. i mean, we mentioned ward churchill a minute ago. when i started this book, i kind of resolved, okay, i'm not going

to mention ward churchill on every page. he's kind of an outlier, you know, and people are sick of him, and by the time the book comes out, he'll be old news. the week the book was published, the colorado state supreme court decided to hear his case. this is a man who six years, i think, after he was fired is still fighting this battle. so you're, you know, the president of colorado university, hank brown -- who, by the way, has stepped down. he must wake up every morning and think, my god, he will not give up. it cost the university so much money to get rid of these people even when they have a great case. play jarrism, shoddy scholarship, there was so much wrong, yet it will continue going through the courts. the lesson identify gotten if -- i've gotten if you look at inside higher ed or one of these industry nude letter -- newsletters, they periodically run advice on how administrators

can gently push these people out. and one of them i was sort of shocked to read was how an administrator can say to a professor for whom it's time to go, well, you can still teach one class, okay? so one guy wrote in saying that they had tried this at his school, you know, so they had hired a new, young professor, dynamic professor to take the place of this aging professor that everybody agreed was incompetent. and then they had this fight over who was going to teach this one class because the professor -- well, you promised i could stay. and so the compromise was they would each teach a section of the class. the article, by the way, was called "you'll pry this course from my cold, dead hands." so they have this fight over, you know, who is going to teach the class. they each decide they're going to teach half of it, and there's no mention in this article about how half the students taking this class are going to get someone who's utterly incompetent. to me it demonstrated that tenure was just, it has nothing to do with the student. i mean, the teaching is the last

thing on these administrators' and faculties' minds. c-span: define the differences a state school versus a private school. what's different if you go to one or the other? >> guest: as a student or as -- c-span: yeah, i mean, what are some of the overall differences about unions and tenure and costs? >> guest: right. so the tenure system is not much different. you know, people go back and be forth, you know, between public and private universities, and they largely have the same system. it's still the seven years. there are sort of, there's some different rules about what is protected speech and different kinds of senses of academic freedom because with the public schools the courts are more involved because it's taxpayer-funded. so the tenure system is not much different. unions are certainly somewhat different, but -- so what happened was in 1990, i think, there was a ruling by the supreme court that said, um, if

private universities did not want to recognize faculty unions, they did not have to. the ruling was called the nlrb v. seen baa university, and it says faculty are like management, and so they cannot -- they need not be recognized as a union. public university campuses, unionization, public university campuses is one of the fastest-growing areas of organized labor right now in the country. you have a situation where the unions have recognized that, obviously, the manufacturing base is shrinking and the private union base is shrinking. so public sector white collar jobs are where the growth is going to happen. so you saw, actually, some of this. i think people were a little bit surprised during the fight about wisconsin a few months ago to hear that there actually were unions of professors at the university of wisconsin. i mean, unions are generally something we think of as, you know, for people who are, you

know, in jobs where they can really be exploited, where maybe they're not -- you know, people are not as educated. and yet it's really growing in higher education. so, um, that's one big difference. and i think you're seeing, you know, the effects of that. i mean, unions at the bargaining table will mean, you know, less distinctions in terms of merit pay, you know, it will, you know, pay will be based more on, you know, your level of seniority. and a lot of professors and administrators i talk to will say unions have been a force for mediocrity on public university campuses. c-span: so i go to -- i guess i have to have a ph.d. if i'm going to get tenure. >> guest: yeah. c-span: which takes me how many years? >> guest: well, that's lengthening too. you know, it used to be five, six, seven years. now the median time to obtain a ph.d. in english is 11 years.

c-span: for just the ph.d. time? what do you do, teach while you're going through -- >> guest: you do, but it's not because you're working on your ph.d. part time that it takes 11 years. in fact, louis mannon had a piece in harvard magazine a few months ago where he speculated one of the reasons it's taking people so long to get their ph.d. is this mandate to find some new twist on things people have written about so many thousands of times that, you know, you'll finally find the topic, and then you'll realize that somebody else, oh, my gosh, has written that five years ago in some obscure journal, and you'll have to start from scratch. c-span: so can you characterize how much money people make that are professors? >> guest: not a lot. um, you know, this is, you know, a full professor, you know, it -- c-span: full professor means you're at the top of your game. >> guest: yes. you have tenure, and you can't really be promoted anymore. so you're probably, by the time

you're full professor, let's say you're late 40s maybe. and you, you know, you could be making depending on the university, depending on the area 60, 70, $80,000. i mean, the salaries of professors don't outrage me. i don't think that's the problem. c-span: that's really not why i asked, because i wanted to go on and they have tenure, and they're full professors, and they make let's just pick $70,000, how much actual teaching do they have to do? >> guest: well, let's start with the public research universities. c-span: you've got tenure now, you don't have to -- >> guest: sure. c-span: you're not on the -- you're home free. >> guest: at a research university, you could be teaching probably as little as two classes a semester. c-span: three hours a week each? >> guest: pretty much. c-span: six hours in the classroom a week? >> guest: yeah.

the assumption is you will be spending approximately half of your time doing research. so if you ask a state legislator, for instance, oh, how much are you subsidizing research at your state university, and they'll say, well, it's not that much, the answer is a lot because you are paying people a full salary to only be teaching half the time. c-span: do you by chance know who gets the most amount of money of all the universities for research? >> guest: of all the universities for research? oh, you mean of -- c-span: federal grants? >> guest: no, i don't. there are about 100 universities in america that make up something called the -- are part of a club called the american association of universities, and the only way you get into that very prestigious club is by having, is by getting a lot of federal grant money. and there was, actually, a couple schools actually recently got kicked out of it. well, syracuse decided it was about to get kicked out, so they left voluntarily, and i think the university of nebraska, actually, just left too. what was interesting to me about the syracuse case was that they

were actually getting some private money for some of the research they were doing, but that doesn't count for the aau. you have to be getting federal money. so the prestige is all wrapped up in this must be, you know, public government funds. so at a time when we are trying to figure out how to cut back and how to reduce the cost of higher education, they're thinking how can we get more out of federal dollars? c-span: can they make money outside the classroom, outside the university when they are tenured professors making $70,000 a year and teaching two classes a semester? >> guest: sure, sure. c-span: how much of their time -- in other words, who holds them accountable for research? >> guest: you mean, could they be making money doing research, like, for a private company? c-span: well, in other words, if you're -- again, i've been in school for 15 years, i've got a principle professorship, i'm teaching my two classes, but i really find myself capable of making lots of money over here, and i don't want to do research for the school. can you just blow the school

off? >> guest: um, it would be, it would be hard to just blow the school off. i mean, usually what happens with research, with, you know, real research grants is that the application has to come from a university. so you're applying as part of a university program. it's hard for one single professor to just go off on his own and say i want to get research from the national science -- funding from the national science foundation by myself. but it would be a different story, for instance, if you have, like, a drug company. and this is where some of the controversy has happened recently. where you have professors who have, you know, kind of reached their own private agreement either with biotech companies or drug companies where they're making money, and it's possible that their research is actually in some ways coming into conflict with their job. because the private companies, obviously, have particular ideas about, you know, the domain that they're in and the, and who owns this information.

whereas the university, again, this comes back a little bit to the transparency question. the university is supposed to be this free exchange of ideas, and everything is out in the open, and we're all supposed to be able to, you know, understand what's going on in these labs. so a professor, you know, there was actually recently a story about i think it was in "the wall street journal" about a student who had turned in a paper, maybe it had to do with biotech or computer coding or something like that, and the student was actually working for the company and felt like he couldn't complete this assignment without somehow violating his contract with this outside company. so there's a lot of, i think, um, conflicts of interest that are going on. c-span: what's an adjunct professor? >> guest: so an adjunct professor is by very definition a temporary position. now, there are adjuncts who could be teaching for 25 years in the same place, but their contract renewals generally happen on a year to-year or even

a semester-to-semester basis. they don't get tenure, and they are not on the tenure track, so they will never come up for tenure. c-span: and they don't have to have a ph.d., i assume. >> guest: they don't have to, no. many of them do. so what happens is adjuncts actually do the bulk of the teaching. because -- c-span: in all the schools? >> guest: in -- not in all schools, but in large universities where you have a senior tenured professor who kind of opts out of life in the classroom after a certain point except maybe graduate seminars or perhaps upper level undergraduate seminars. so the adjuncts are sort of, basically, brought in to kind of teach, you know, political science 101 -- c-span: hey, how much are they paid? >> guest: very little. in some cases significantly less than minimum wage. their working conditions are -- there was a film that i watched when i was doing research that

actually compared them to migrant workers. and i have to say i thought the comparison might have gone a little bit far, but it's pretty disturbing. i mean, they find out the week before the semester begins whether they have a job at all, they get paid next to nothing -- c-span: yeah, but give me an idea what they get paid. >> guest: so there was a professor that i talked to at cal state fullerton who, i think, was getting paid maybe a thousand dollars a month or $1200 a month. c-span: you had one in here that was getting $549 a month. >> guest: yeah, yeah. c-span: is that over a 14-week -- >> guest: they're paid by the class. c-span: in other words, their class is 14 week toss a term, three hours a week, what is that, 42 hours? >> guest: right. well, so it's not just the -- well, what you have to consider is not just the teaching they're doing, but they're also responsible for all the grading of papers and things like that, so there are definitely activities outside the classroom. and, you know, one woman who i

talked to said, well, i could have 200 kids in a class, they'd assign me one graduate student, you know, who would be with me two or three hours a week. so what do you do with that? do you -- you're going to personally grade, you know, 200 papers three times a semester? a friend of mine actually teaches at a large university in pennsylvania, and she's been told by her department to stop assigning papers altogether. or even exams that involve essays. everything should just be multiple choice now. c-span: why? >> guest: because it takes too much work. because they don't have the labor available, they say, in order to grade those papers, so just do can it multiple choice. c-span: so on a percentage basis nationwide in state universities, how -- what's the percent of people that are adjunct professors in a classroom? >> guest: i think it's like 60% now. c-span: what about a place like harvard? that's private. >> guest: it's not a private/public thing. it has a lot to do with the size of the university and to what extent they expect the senior

people to be doing research and not teaching. so i'm not sure what the percentage is at harvard. c-span: what does your dad teach? >> guest: political science. c-span: how many courses a year does he teach? >> guest: i think he teaches six courses a year? three in the fall, three in the spring. c-span: and why is it at holy cross, which is a jesuit school, why does he get three, and if he was at harvard, he might have only one? >> guest: because harvard is a research university. c-span: and holy cross is not. >> guest: right. holy cross is considered a liberal arts college, a teaching college. c-span: you mentioned you were at "the wall street journal" editorial page. when did you work there? >> guest: i left about a year and a half ago, and i worked there for about five years. c-span: what'd you do? >> guest: i edited culture columns and religion columns, and i wrote about higher education. c-span: how did you get that job? >> guest: let's see. well, i worked at other magazines. i think i worked at "commentary

magazine," i interned at the journal, actually, right out of college, and i wrote another book prior to joining the journal which was about religious colleges in america called "god on the quad." c-span: and why did you do that? >> guest: why did i write about -- c-span: where'd you get the interest in "god on the quad"? >> guest: well, i visited two schools that had just opened up, one was called patrick henry, and i wrote a piece in a magazine and wanted to look into why these schools were growing so rapidly. c-span: patrick henry's right down in virginia. where's the other? is that down in florida? >> guest: when i visited, it was in ann arbor, michigan. c-span: what did you find out about those two schools that you find most interesting? >> guest: they were attracting some extremely smart kids even though at the time neither one of them was accredited yet, and they were attracting kids who did not want to kind of just stay in a religious kind of ghetto, but really kind of bring

their ideas to bear in a world of public policy or law or any number of other fields. c-span: and commentary, how long were you there? >> guest: two years. c-span: that's norman pa hortsz publication? >> guest: yeah. c-span: what did you take away are that experience? >> guest: well, i was in charge of editing the letter there is which i don't know how familiar you are with commentary, but it's sort of an extensive letter section. you know, i became familiar with the intricate says of a lot of debates about foreign policy and domestic politics, and i also kind of became more familiar with the way a magazine works and how it actually gets produced. c-span: going back to this book, "the faculty lounges and other reasons why you won't get the college education you paid for," who thought of that title? >> guest: that was me. c-span: where did you get the interest in this? where did that start? was it at the journal when you started? what triggered the idea that you said ivan will probably publish

this book? >> guest: well, i tried to sell it to other publishers, too, but he bought it. [laughter] c-span: when did you start that process? >> guest: it was about three years ago. look, i've been covering higher education for a long time, and i think what was the driving force behind this book was, again, this sense that i had this advantage that other people did not. i kind of understood what was going on behind the scenes in higher education both because of my background, you know, in terms of my own family, but also just because of all the reporting i had done on higher education. and, you know, what happens when a student walks onto campus today, there's, you know, you're an 18-year-old, you walk onto a college campus, and someone hands you a guide this thick and then says, ah, pick anything. see what you like. and, you know, administrators kind of tout it as this choose your own adventure game, and it's not. i mean, 18-year-olds, the bottom line is 18-year-olds don't know what they don't know. and to me, pretending that, you know, they're going to be able to craft for themselves a

brilliant education when often many be of our general education requirements have been dropped, the core curriculum has been dropped. people like to talk about how, oh, they think that, you know, people who are wrapped up in the idea of a core curriculum just want the great books of western civilization, and it's their attachment to western civilization. i want a core curriculum because i think people need some basic foundation. the education that an 18-year-old will craft for himself is completely haphazard. you'll have animal behavior for an hour on monday, introduction to psychology on tuesday, you know, french literature from 1800-1850 on wednesday, and at the end of four years of this can you really say what this broad education you were supposed to have, what that turned into? and this, you know, professors are doing this, too, because professors want to spend their time researching their own little, narrow subject. they would also be perfectly happy to teach a class in their own little, narrow summit. and no one is saying to them,

no, no, no, you may prefer to teach a tiny seminar on an obscure topic, but what these kids really need is a broad introduction to your subject. c-span: you say there are no jobs for tenured professors out there, but you say your sister has a ph.d.? >> guest: she does. c-span: is she teaching? >> guest: she teaches at new england conservatory where they do not offer tenure. c-span: did she do that on purpose? >> guest: no, i don't think so. [laughter] i think she would have been perfectly happy to accept a tenured position. c-span: so you also write for just the reason that larson elucidates, higher education is so broken right now that it's time to change the pitching mound and the distance to the bases -- are you a baseball fan? >> guest: a little bit. c-span: not to mention the strike zone and the number of players on each team. it's so broken? how come -- why are all these schools' lists to get in much bigger than the spots in there to get 'em, to bring the

students in? >> guest: well, you know, there are a couple of ways in which people, you know, try to measure the quality of higher education. one is they say, you know, look, we're the envy of the world. people come here for our colleges and universities, and to that i say, well, first of all, you're talking about a very small percentage of kids. you're talking about generally graduate students who are coming here for our, you know, hard science classes. so it's not all of american higher education that is the envy of the world. but the second thing, i think, that people seem to forget is that higher education kind of has a monopoly at this point. colleges have monopoly on credentialing. people want to get into college because college right now is the ticket to the middle class. and i don't begrudge people that. i don't say, well, you know, you should just, you know, you should find another way because right now we don't really have much in the way of another way. we don't really have a lot of apprenticeships, and college has become kind of the catch-all for every different kind of career

you want to pursue. but to me, i think we could do better. there's, there was a story a few weeks ago, maybe a couple months ago about the founder of paypal who offered kids, i think, $100,000 if they would drop out of college and come work in silicon valley or, you know, create their own kind of start-up instead. and, you know, a lot of these kids kind of already had credentials in the sense that, you know, they were already working for ibm at the age of 13 or something like that. so they weren't going to have trouble getting a job. but his point that i think he was trying to make was, you know, there is a price for this, and, you know, you could spend four years and this amount of money on something, but you better understand what the value of it is. and for some people it doesn't have much value. for some people, you know, you can, you can get a job out there without it, um, but the other question is, can't employers find a way of measuring, you

know, someone's qualifications for a job without just using the college degree? and i think we need to think more creatively about that. c-span: who have you listened to in your professional life that talks the best about tenure? who's the most convincing? >> guest: who's the most convincing -- c-span: that it's the thing to do, it's right. >> guest: let's see, oh, that's an interesting question. um, you know, i guess there are a number of conservative professors i talked to about it. i mean, look, john silver, for instance. i don't think he is in favor of getting rid of tenure, but i think he thinks it's in need of serious reform -- c-span: he was the president of boston university. >> guest: yes. c-span: 85 years old. >> guest: yeah, yeah. no, i think he has very strong opinions about the reform of higher education, but thinks we do need to keep tenure. and, look, um, you know, i think

tenure has protected some very smart people, um, who have said some dissenting things that needed to be said. and, you know, i understand that my argument sort of throws them under a bus. i interviewed checker finn about this, he's a former assistant secretary of education who now works on education reform issues, and he sort of summed up what i eventually took as my position which was, you know, saving the jobs of 400 conservatives is not worth safing the jobs of 400,000 liberals. he said the situation is so completely unbalanced now that the idea that we're just going to keep the system because of the few conservative professors who are out there just seems silly to him. c-span: what's the cherry award? >> guest: the cherry award is a teaching award, and i think you get maybe $200,000, um, for being, basically, the best professor in america. so a couple of years ago when i was at the journal, i did a story ant the three finalists --

about the three finalists. it's given out by baylor university, and students can nominate you, other professors can nominate you. and you, basically, there's a committee that eventually sort of judges the finalists and decides, you know, who will win, who will win this award based on their ability to convey information to students. c-span: by the way, again, sorry to the interrupt, but ken starr is the president of baylor university, now, and it's in waco, texas, in case people didn't know where it is. and you wrote about the three that were the contestants -- roger rosen brat who people would know from public television, and two other gentlemen, do you remember their names? i'll try to find them. oh, mr. berger, edward berger? >> guest: he was actually the eventual winner. c-span: and elliott west. >> guest: yes. at the university of arkansas. so i actually went to see berger and west in person, and they're two very different kind of styles of teaching.

west is, you know, he's not dry, but, you know, he sort of is telling a story, and he's been telling this story about american history for many years. there aren't a lot of fireworks or she shenanigans going on, bui was sitting in an audience of 200 people, and the only visual aids, he was putting up some slides of, you know, of historical photos. everyone was just sitting there and listening to him utterly rapt because he kind of knew how to tell a story, and there was a lot of information being conveyed. and he wasn't, you know, reading off of notes and just sort of staring down like this. he really was engaging with the audience, trying to see are people awake, are you listening to me. and berger was sort of much more dynamic, kind of, you know, doing a little more jumping around. but, again, you know, there weren't a lot of fireworks, and he, he really, he did, um, a speech at parents' weekend at williams, so it was parents and students. but, you know, he's a math teacher. now, you know, and this sort of struck me because the best

professor in america is a math professor. i mean, you have to not only sort of convey these ideas, but you really have to engage people who, you know, lots of people just have to take his class because it's a requirement. you know, he's teaching kids who are not necessarily interested in the subject, and he's making them interested. c-span: let me ask about you said the best teacher in america, according to -- >> guest: according to the cherry awards, yeah. c-span: who judges the cherry awards? >> guest: the faculty, and they bring in people outside the -- c-span: of baylor, and the winner gets $200,000? >> guest: they have to come to teach a semester at baylor too. the reason i highlighted this was when people are talking about why we judge professors by their publications and not by teaching, the first response is, well, you can't really measure teaching. teaching is just all subjective, you know, you know good teaching

when you see it. i don't think that's true. i think that's a total copout. i mean, these are, these are professors who, you know, there are ways of measuring. you know, everything from the lecture style to grading. when someone gives you back a paper, does it just have a, great job, exclamation point at the end, or is it all marked up? are your grammatical mistakes corrected? is there a sense that the professor has really engaged in this process with you, or are they just going through the motions? c-span: how old are your kids? >> guest: 2 and 4. c-span: do you think by the time they're old enough to go to college you'll think it's a good idea to go to college? i mean, based on the fact right now one school in this country, i think, is $60,000 a year tuition. >> guest: yeah. um, i think that if you pick and choose very wisely, it is possible to get a decent college education. but you have to be really careful. and it begins with, obviously, the process of choosing the

college. i mean, i can't tell you the number of people who i hear talking about, they go visiting, going to visit colleges with their high school juniors in the middle of the summer. i ask them, why? what are you doing there in the middle of the summer? are you just looking at the scenery? can't you just look at the view books they sent you? go, sit in on the classes, and don't just sit in on the classes that they say, oh, you can visit this upper level constitutional law seminar. you won't be getting there until you're a senior, if then. go visit an intro class in a subject you're interested in. c-span: did you do that before you went to harvard? >> guest: no, actually, i spent my freshman year at new berry. c-span: why did they do that? >> guest: because they knew that those were the places that i would get a good education, and harvard was not among them, by the way. c-span: why did you switch from middle bury to harvard? >> guest: it was a little too isolated for me. >> c-span: in vermont.

>> guest: it's in the middle of vermont, and i just, you know, sort of socially i didn't feel it was right for me, but i also felt like the students weren't as engaged as i found them to be at harvard. c-span: where did you meet husband jason? >> guest: at "the wall street journal." c-span: and you two live where now? >> guest: in new rochelle. c-span: and what does he do? >> guest: he still works at the journal, he's an editorial board member. c-span: when did you finish this book? >> guest: well, the book came out in june. c-span: yeah, but when did you finish it? >> guest: i finished it last fall. c-span: so you're on your way to the next book? >> guest: yes, on a different topic. it's about interfaith marriage. c-span: is that what your situation is? >> guest: not quite. my husband's of no faith, but it's a subject that interests me. the thing i write about most besides education is religion. c-span: and when do you plan to have this one completed? >> guest: well, due in june to oxford university press, so if

editors are listening, june. c-span: big book -- this is not a huge book. is the next one bigger than this one? >> guest: i think it will be. the next book is a lot of, um, i got funding to do a national survey on interfaith marriage, and i also spent about four months sort of doing, traveling to do interviews with people across the country, so it's -- this is sort of more, you know, kind of a summary of a lot of things that i have learned about higher education over the last number of years as a reporter. c-span: the name of the book again is "the faculty lounges and other reasons why you won't get the college education you paid for" by naomi schafer riley, and we thank you very much. >> guest: thank you. ♪ ..