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and we are now joined by professor todd gitlin whose latest book is occupied nation of occupy wall street this is not a finished book copy, but professor gitlin, could you tell us what this book is? this is not necessarily this -- this is an e-book. >> guest: its and ebook on its way to be physical book. that's the way some books are published these days but it is in keeping the proposition will spirit of the occupy wall street spirit. this is a book attempting to come to grips with where the strange phenomenon came from and why so much of what was taking place there in the park was missed by mainstream journalism and what the forebears of it are and what its differences are from previous movements as well as similarities. and what are the threads that

are moving it forward. >> host: has occupy wall street been successful? >> guest: yes and no. the yes is we are talking about it. the note is you see bumper stickers that say 99% i was in upstate new york where i saw in your candidate running for office that said the candidate of the 99%. it's now a legitimate to talk about inequality, and that the domination of america by plutocracy, by an oligarchy of the super wealthy. no, it's not successful in that it has not yet delivered concrete results except for a few cases where it succeeded in reversing a for closure or restoring some people who've been illegitimately effected. but it's -- so, it's like many movements in process. it's self contradictory.

it has its ups and downs, has its popularity's and on the popularity spigot it's a very american phenomenon. >> host: does it have a hierarchy yet? is there a leader? >> guest: it does not have a hierarchy. excuse me. it doesn't have a letter head. it does not have a headquarters. it doesn't have a form of leadership, and i don't think it ever will. what it does have is actual leadership and people who are tested because they do things that other people in the movement approval of coming and they gain respect. but i think that one thing this movement learns from the 60's is that it's dangerous to have known leaders, the celebrity goes to their head. too much power to them and the media that a nine to them and elevate them and ridiculed them.

this leaderlessness isn't something that cropped up last year. this is something that's been through the dominant tradition now for 40 years. it's now the new order of things. >> host: well, professor gitlin, is in that kind of how the tea party started as well, kind of leaderless in different ways? >> guest: yes and no. the tea party was summoned by a broadcaster on the television network, and that's not exactly literalists. i think that t. parties complicate the phenomenon and if i can plug somebody else's book, vanessa williams has written very well about it. and i hope you have them on the show. the tea party has a grassroots dimension and it also has a washington centered plutocratic refinanced face. it has a republican party face. republicans in general are more accommodating to the hierarchy. they follow the leader. they are not uncomfortable about

that. the left is more rambunctious and artistic, more suspicious of itself. >> host: the e-book comedies it constantly updated? what constantly what can you update it? >> guest: i can't be talking to you if it is constantly -- no, in so far as the various stages of the book was pretty and came back to me and i could fiddle with things i did add and afterword along with some wonderful photographs by a photographer named for shultz that will be in the physical book, but i must say i am pleased to discover on my most recent reading that the general outline of what i have to say our still what i believe, so it didn't require any radical update. but life is long and if there is

an occasion i sure i will be back at the keyboard >> host: 1963, 64, you were president of students for democratic society. what was that? >> guest: that was an attempt to collect the very strands of student protest on the left with their against nuclear weapons or for civil rights or participatory democracy on campus and to provide a sort of home where people from the movements could talk to each other and work out what they had in common. it was really quite a small organization by today's standards, maybe 1500 members when i was president, maybe 20 chapters some of which were really have some of which weren't. and eventually of course it ballooned into this fast sprawling more notorious entity that became more and more militant and ended up when it

was exploded by the faction fighting with probably 100,000 or more members. >> host: so at what point did you leave the organization? >> guest: the membership roll is very assiduous. i would say i stepped away around 67 comer early 68. i no longer felt at home. i was one of the old guards, so called. we were more methodical. fighting we were more strategic and less wild and woolly than the crowd. i was deeply troubled by all of the theatrics as the process of dancing off a cliff and spent a fair amount of time denouncing what seemed to be reckless and and unethical conduct. but, so it took a number of rahm

terms come jury grave wrong terms, which i must say is delightfully relatively free. but i never cease to believe -- although i spent a lot of time investigating what happened in this movement. in fact i was already investigating and while that was still in the process of flying apart. and i wrote earlier books on the subject. i never really shook my conviction that this was a great space reformation. that this movement and everything that went on and around where the energy behind the real gathering of the democratic energy and refocusing of democratic priorities, small de, that did this country and good service and help end the horrible war and promoted civil rights and equality, racial equality, economic equality, provided a kind of foundation

for ethical conduct among the college students. and i think it was a great renewing forests and gave rise in various ways not always expected it to the winans movement and the gay movement. it was agreed, liberating force with some severe pathologies. >> host: your professor of journalism here columbia university. heavy media coverage in the 1960's of the student movements. how does that compare to media movements of the occupied movement? >> guest: there was a disconcerting similarities i have to say. having studied pretty closely afterwards the coverage of the 60's movements when i was riding my dissertation at berkeley in the 70's, i frequently -- looking at the coverage of the occupied movement -- sort of salles journalists not learning. that is to say, what -- if it

bleeds it leaves, that is the same folks skirmish of the edge of a crowd where some people are arrested and some ugliness breaks out between the copps and some demonstrators. it's a bigger story than, let's say 20,000 people on the street as we saw -- actually, as i saw that most americans didn't see because they couldn't be troubled to put a camera of overhead and shoot the crowd. a lot of trivialization over the more exotic people, more for the photogenic attention. the shadow coverage in general was the norma. there were exhibitions come important ones, and in the 60's a lot of journalists why is up as they came to appreciate that a social movement should not be expected to behave like and executive committee or a directors. it's strange and more

unpredictable. it needs to be addressed on its own trains. so journalism isn't always scrambling to get what doesn't meet the high. what doesn't fit the formula, but doesn't fit the stereotype, and i think once again its unscrambling. so they didn't understand that. they didn't quite understand what kind of dramatic transformation was going on in it, they didn't quite get the arguments with a net. the single greatest thing that news coverage is to be faulted for is they didn't understand about the occupied movement just what a huge popular base it began with. which is actually quite different from any of the movements in the 1960's. the movements of the 50's and 60's start with the civil rights movement in the south were supported by minorities. the civil rights movement in this house has been exhausted in retrospect, but at the time,

most americans felt that it was going too far, too fast, too militant. the administration in both the eisenhower and the kennedy administration. most americans did not approve of the entire war movement when it began. most americans were enthusiastic about the war. most americans didn't believe that women should make equal wages wittman for example. most didn't think it was legitimate to be gay, let along to demonstrate in public and declare that you were. so this movement which began with a sizable supermajority who believed in progressive taxation and taxation of financial transactions, so-called robin hood tax, and increasing the quality and intelligent regulation of banks and so on those were all supermajority

positions and have been consistent even as people are dismayed by some of the tactics of the occupied movement. >> host: is there still a poor group of people down that wall street? >> guest: the police chase them. the movement is a few tens of thousands of people around the country. they were very different sorts and have different impulses and so on. but that remains the core and the confidence calls, the of meetings, they of working groups, they organize, coordinated demonstration. they are sometimes hard to find because they were deprived of a public place to assemble. so they are harder to report now. but they have their ups and downs. >> as a professor at columbia

are they concerned about social causes the sada? >> guest: this is in the matter of opinion this is fact. in places like columbia, the ivy league schools, a very substantial percentage of the undergraduates are interested in going to finance and management consulting. there was a time before the bubble burst around 2,007 and what the numbers were at harvard, princeton, 40% of the student bodies were intending to be management consultants and financial figures and this was something of a surprise to me. i expected after the great occupy movement in the fall that in the spring we would see a lot more going on at the university's. because of the load of the speed that was disillusioned with all kinds of political feeling after the obama election and a certain

sense that their bread is buttered on the side of the oligarchy not to be crude about it, i think that most students feel coolness towards the occupied movement i don't think that exists but i don't think it is denial. the exception california and other states such as a different artist against austerity budgets and the particular tuition increase, so political and economic policies right the students' lives themselves that they feel and can be around, we saw the great rather horrendous confrontations that the police managed at the denver city of california davis with pepper spray and so on. there have been such. but overall the students seem to

be -- when they think about doing something good or giving back to use the current phrase, they tend to think of something -- the view by way of service. they tend not to think of collective action. they tend to think of a personal charity but it's a different orientation to the world than we think is associated with a student. >> host: do you think the student loan issue could become a nationwide issue? >> guest: i'm not sure. i think it's possible of a strong caucus of people living occupy wall street movement who think that this one of the important directions to go ahead and occupy student at website correcting the names of the students that said this was a clever idea where you will

default on your student loans as soon as we have people doing the same so you won't feel what you are a moral criminal for taking this personal act it's conceivable and the load of debt that they are collecting car rauf from my generation they're looking forward to the still advantageous to go to college like this one but it's not a guarantee that you will move out from under your parents. >> nearly 50 years since he served as the president for the space society, how did you get involved in that organization? >> my parents were high school teachers and went to new york city public schools. i went off to harvard. i was more than anything and

mathematician. my parents were happy about that i would be a nice jewish boy nice moneymaking so i worked on one of the early dusk sized computers which had about as much computing power as my thumbnail, and i got involved in the movement against nuclear weapons against nuclear tests and the whole arms race. >> why? >> it worried me out. there was a kind of craziness about the world that struck i suppose my innocent sense of border. it just seemed unfathomable to me that the world was sort of stumbling towards the nuclear abyss without an uproar and i encountered some young activists of harvard where it was a

sophomore at that time who had some shrewd ideas about how to appeal to a bunch of harvard students who were quite cynical and silent by the way. we were through the tail end of the silent generation. so, they were quite brainy and methodical and they were not moral gangbusters or alter the militants. so i got involved in them and one thing led to another, and i was really moved by these people. i felt a lot of comfort with them so those activities led me into some feeling for the civil rights movement which the two strands lead to meetings on the people who especially the group

and ann arbor in michigan with a jump start your organization and i felt comfort. i felt intellectually engaged, challenged. what i loved about that world which was the combination of morrill feeling and intellectual rigor and clarity. these were smart people. they didn't just want to be good. they wanted to do good. they wanted to apply reason and passion to the problems of the world, and that suited me. >> you are not lawyers and 63 and 64. >> have your politics changed? >> i hope so. i don't have any cells left from a 26-year-old self, and yet i would say my principal -- to be

intellectually alive to be alive is to be thinking. i didn't know whose remark it was but of course somebody has notoriously set of course i'd change my mind. what do you do when the facts change? the world is different so i would like to think i learned something along the way but i'm not one of these people who say certain everything that happened in the 1960's is evil, was evil as he was at the time that everything that happened in the 1960's was glorious. they recognize more colors in the rainbow and black-and-white. so i regard myself as playing out the continuation of what i did then, granted i have different responsibilities at age 69 that i didn't have at age

19. so i feel i'm struck by continuity. i would like to think that i'm actually more courageous about stating my views and less fearful of bad judgment of people looking at me across side. if i have outlandish views or radical views in the movements, but i -- you know, a lot of the work that is written work that inspired me then and still does, a lot of it we read or some of it i really did, and i orient to of course there's a spirit, and i'm teaching a course this summer on the 60's and looking with my students at films about the movement and the viet nam war and what should i say? that which i found dismaying,

then i still find in coloring and dismayed today. i feel that my young self wouldn't as my old self has become. >> do you have an fbi file? >> i didn't do a foia. it's not very interesting. i mean mostly what impressed me is how foolish it all was. for example, the kept mr. spelling my name. every time i misspelled my name i acquired another alias. i was traveling a long list of alias considering their own miss spellings. i learned how serious they were about maintaining called the sick to the index by was a sort of on a roll of people

subversive, and the fury was that under the national emergency which technically i believe we were still under because the korean war had never ended the members of the security index could be rounded up. they were authorized for a roundup so they wouldn't bring down the pillars of the united states government. so i was honored to be on the security index. if you are on the security index it was important -- the fbi thought it was quite important to know my whereabouts so every six months or so they would make what they called in their language pretext call to my girlfriend or so house i was living to ascertain my whereabouts. the pay keenness and the closeness i found extraordinary.

i discovered also by decoding some files, sort of decrypting their euphemisms i could work help that as late as 1965 when i was living in chicago working on it again that poor people involved in the community organizing the did not really understand, the fbi thought that s bs was of interest not in its of light because there was a true thing but because they were somewhat in the bushes there were communist who some of us may have known for some of us were talking to. late in the game, this is after the first big national antivietnam war demonstration which was organized. this is years after the civil rights activity after the free speech movement has erupted at

berkeley and so on they don't understand there was something new in there and many, not all that many of the reports on the various meetings are in that we close this and felt like they were approaching the world through the lens of the 1950's. i'm sure they were more intelligent people scrutinizing. i think the cia people were much more sophisticated. the people was dhaka and of walking talking figures out of the old fbi peace and war radio drama which i listened to as a child. >> was there a lot of fear in the circle but i'm? of the fbi etc? >> no, we were amused by it. we intuitive that they were clunky. the fear was felt in the deep

south where some people who were also involved in the student nonviolent and coordinating committee were living under a terrorist state and people were being killed, and they have legitimate fear. they were targets, not of the fbi that of the plan and other entities. the fbi was just standing by taking notes while organizers were being beaten. but no, we were pretty spotty and one might say foolhardy but in any case, we were rather full of our own figure. >> we've been talking with professor todd gitlin and this is his latest book available as an ebook occupied nation the roots the spirit and the nation of rocket will street. he's also the author of the 60s

coming years of hoping. thank you, professor gitlin. >> you are very welcome. thank you. >> on religious liberty in the united states. this is about 15 minutes. >> on a regular basis on book tv on c-span2, we visit universities to talk with professors who are also authors. this week we are not columbia university in new york city and now joining us is a history professor at columbia, evan haefeli. professor, what is new in nederland? >> new netherland is what is often in the common known as new

amsterdam but more than just the beginnings of new york, it was a big chunk of territory which technically ran from the hudson river down to the state of delaware and putting what is now pennsylvania and new jersey and most but all of new york. a cynic when was it found? when did the europeans found it? >> neverland began in the 16 20's as a colony founded by the dutch and lasted until the 16671664 it was conquered by the english. there was a series of war and the dutch recaptured the place. it became dutch for about a year in 1673, 74. then was returned by the treaty to the english. >> what are the goals when the dutch first came to north america? what were the reans