>> to find out what can be learned and applied to troubled areas of the world. this is about an hour. >> well, good evening and welcome to the new york society library. i'm mark bartlett, the head librarian at the library, and it's wonderful to have you for an event during national library week which we are celebrating here at the society library. i'm glad you could all be with

us. we're also pleased to have the folks from booktv from c-span with us tonight, and they will be recording this event for future be broadcasts. as we begin, let me ask you to, please, if you have a cell phone, a pager, anything electronic to just take it out now and silence it, and your neighbors and viewers of the program will appreciate it. tonight i'm especially honored to the have two very loyal society library members speak to us about their new book, "pax ethnica: where and how diversity succeeds," published by public affairs here in thy. karl e. meyer and shareen blair brysac have been members of this library since 1974. mr. meyer and ms. brysac are the authors of numerous books which you will see in your program, many of which are on display here at the front of our members room. i would like to take a moment to mention that the last time they

spoke for us in 2008 they talked about their book "kingmakers: the invention of the modern middle east," and the recording for that event is available for viewing on our web site. the new book, "pax ethnica," has received early praise. the winnipeg free press applauds it and writes: nonspecialists in the social sciences will find it accessible, and because of the breadth of the subject matter, containing much food for thought. kim cuts reviews calls it a good news book based on serious research about how traditionally hostile groups can overcome differences to live in harmony. the book is a skillful rendering of an inspiring message. our friends from the corner bookstore are with us tonight, and they'll be happy to sell you a copy of the book, and the authors will sign it for you after the event. and we will have a question and answer period. i do know that we have a very informative and challenging

presentation this evening, so, please, join me in welcoming karl meyer and shareen brysac. [applause] >> thank you, mark, for the kind introduction. and it's very nice to be here on national library week because it is our favorite library, and i always used to say that karl's membership came as my be dowry -- as my dowry. [laughter] i'm going to give a short introduction, and then karl will give a brief summary of the book, and then we will have time, i hope, for questions. now, we, as you can see, have written a lot of books, three together, and you can imagine we've given a lot of book talks. and one question we're always asked is how do you get the idea for your books? the other question we always get

is how do you keep your marriage together and a full set of dishes and still write books together. the genesis of pax ethnica happened over lunch one afternoon in the summer. as historians and journalists, we have spent our entire careers chronicling ancient hatreds, ethnic cleansings and genocide. as you can imagine, this becomes very depressing. why not, we asked ourselves, write about places where harmony prevails? people of different faiths get along together. surely there must be such places. that we never, ever hear about in the news media. good news is usually no news. in pursuit of ethnic peace, we conducted nearly 100 interviews with mayors and ma ha rajas, bra mans in india, factory workers in marseilles, diplomats,

schoolteachers, college professors and their students, journalists, publishers, musicians, imams, priests, rabbis, social workers, youth organizers and sports and cultural ministers among others. how did we decide on our title, "pax ethnica"? well, pax, as i'm sure most of you know, means peace in latin, and greek -- and ethnos is greek for people. naturally, we hoped that the longevity and currency of other paxes, pax ethnica, pax romana will be visited on pax ethnica. how did we choose places to study? first of all, they had to have of a mix of ethnicities. then, as in the case of marseilles v. paris or carola v -- [inaudible] these were places with similar

histories but very different outcomes, so there could be a comparison, and we could ask what went right. now, gonna turn it over to karl. >> thank you. um, shareen will also have a chance to correct all the errors that i may make, and we will both be responding in the question period. but when we were discussing our whole project, the very subject we were writing about, multicultural itch, literally -- multiculturalism literally went with viral. its failings were decried in 2011 by the leaders of france, germany and britain and here, for example, is how president sarkozy remarked in a television interview about diversity. if you come to france, he said,

you accept -- [inaudible] with the single community which is the national community. and if you don't want to accept that, you're not welcome. we have been too concerned with the identity of the person who is arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him. earlier chancellor angela merkel called multiculturalism, quote, an utter failure, unquote. this was during a nationwide debate stirred by a best-selling book written by a german banker adhering that muslim immigrants had made his country, quote, stupid, unquote. merkel's comments were echoed in britain by prime minister cameron who claimed that under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives apart from each other and the mainstream. well, on the surface this disillusion seemed to us paradox call since the european union is

itself a vibrant example of multiculturalism. it blends 20 republics and six monarchies whose 500 million citizens speak 23 official languages, three of which -- english, german and french -- are working languages. however, it's not the usual slaves, celts that promote these lamentations. it is a specific minority. the noneuropean migrants who began arriving in europe in large numbers after the second world war. today there are about 20 million muslims in europe or about 4% of the total population. muslim newcomers and their offspring comprise an estimated 7.5% of france's population, 5% of germany's, 4.6% of great britain's. this is, these are the figures that are put forward by the well-respected pew research center as of january 2011. yet all such figures are

estimates sitdefinitions are plastic -- since definitions are plastic as to what beliefs and which genes identify a muslim incontest my as islamic subcultures have multiplied, so has european concern about a possibly hostile minority. a quasi-populist backlash that spread from the baltic to the adriatic along with validly anti-immigrant parties. their more extreme leaders claim these islamic interlopers are responsible for rising crime, juvenile delinquency, the abuse of women through forced marriages and for honor killings. played down by the alarmists is the soft factual base for their worst case scenarios, discounted or ignored are repeated surveys indicating that most muslim newcomers are either secularist or nominally observant and that most aspire to a normal life within their host countries. minimized is the hard fact that islam, like christianity, revels in diversity and that its

adherents are of many quarrelsome minds. and it's also worth recalling that before the muslims arrived european countries were shaken by disputes among an overwhelmingly christian peoples. thus, our first example is the city of flensburg. when we mention it to even our better traveled friends, they say where's that? well, it's a town, it's a picturebook town the baltic sea in the border lands between denmark and germany. and when you go there, it's hard to realize that this is at the center of one of the oldest established ethnic and civil conflicts in european history. the famous -- [inaudible] question raised for nearly two centuries. and if you look back at that time, you'll find that the

scllesswi g/holstein, after world war ii it was the scene of hardly-fought plett sides, riots, demonstrations and, indeed, after world war ii part of it having been hiked into germ -- hived into germany, an interesting thing took place. what was interesting was this: that the allies came in 1946 to the danish government and said, would you like to get schleswig back? and the danes came back to the allies, and they said, no, we don't want it. thank you, but no thank you. what we want instead is convincing guarantees from the new german republic that it will protect the language, cultural, political and religious rights of its danish-speaking minority. well, they drafted an accord,

and we went there to see if it had worked. and, indeed, it had. when you go there, the people or can choose -- can choose if they want to be danish, or if they want to be germans. and you can't dispute or contest their choice. that when we were there, we had a wonderful meeting with the danish council who has a kind of palatial edifice above the harbor overlooking the town, and a very distinguished gentleman with dapper clothes who relishes telling you the history of the whole thing. and he says, well, he says, we get money from the danish government, and, in fact, there's a german minority in denmark. and when there weren't enough germans there to elect a member of the danish parliament, they changed the rules so there would always be a representative of

the danish minority. meanwhile, we talked to the two with danish representatives in the state parliament in germany who lead a party that takes care of the danish interest. and, thus, our first example was one that was quite interesting because let me put it to you interestingly. they traded land for peace. that the danish government decided it was more important that peace, rather than have a hostile german minority embedded in their own territory. and in doing so, they created a precedent for other similar situations. one, notably, was between italy and austria in the era between -- this was an area that was ceded to italy after world war i, and they decided to do,

to follow the danish example. and they, too, have granted autonomy to the german-us austrn ethnic group rather than split it up and go through this endless argument. so, um, we wanted to find other examples of other -- in all of our cases, we wanted to see if there was some wider point that could be made. so we went to the former soviet union, to the new republic of tartarstad. and that was interesting to us because, again, it was something -- people are always confused, that must be in central asia. we said, no, it's not one of the five stans in central asia. instead, it's one of the constituent republics within the russian federation, and it's split between 43% russian

orthodox and 51% -- i'm giving approximations -- muslim tartar population. yet again not only has peace presided in tartarstan, but in ca zahn, the capital, you have one of the largest mosques in europe dedicated seven or eight years ago next to the renovated orthodox cathedral within the kremlin overlooking the volga river. this was interesting to us because in soviet times there were 15 union republics, 18 autonomous republics all with a roughly ethnic base, and the joke was they were never autonomous, nor republics. and that when the soviet union collapsed, it was a question what would happen to the other ethnic places. in the case of chechnya, as you all know, civil war broke out

ending in the flight of russian authority, and it's still a scene of violence today. ca zahn was different. the capital had an interesting president. his name was shamiyev. and he had been an orthodox communist, and he had been the regional boss of tartarstan. be but when he saw what was happening, he decided to try something interesting. and that is that he wanted to make a deal with yeltsin, then the president of russia, that would give substantial awe on a, particularly cultural autonomy, to tartarstan. and what he did was he stretched the word "sovereignty." he sponsored a member side in which the peoples of tartarstan voted overwhelmingly for sovereignty. but if you look at the wording of the resolution that they

approved, one word is not in there. the word is "independence." so it was based on mutual respect and justice and so forth, all of the resident words. he went to yeltsin, and he struck a deal that in return for significant tax break, cultural rights, etc., that tartarstan would remain within the russian federation, and the deal was for a ten-year period. when yeltsin came in after -- excuse me, when the deal was renewed, it was trimmed back to some extent, but it's substantially still there. so you can see that the word "sovereignty" has an interesting implication that could apply to other areas based on the tartar model. well, we turn as well to marseilles, france's second city and home to europe's biggest

muslim community. around 240,000 out of 839,000 inhabitants. moreover, there are sizable jewish and orthodox minorities, roughly 80,000 each. and as well every other nation and origin you can think of is represented in the marseilles. i should add that i've written an op-ed for the times which will run tomorrow which is drawn from the chapter on marseilles but which is timely because this has become an issue in the current presidential election in france. now, what happened that was interesting is what didn't happen in marseilles. in the year 2005 when there were car burnings and teenage riots spreading from the suburbs of paris through nearly every major city this -- in france, marseilles was at peace.

there was one brief splurge of a few cars being burned in the greater area that it's in, but otherwise it was calm. and why? we went there to find out. and we saw the mayor, and we saw representatives of the different communities. and we found that there was an interesting combination of factors which accounted for ethnic peace in marseilles. some were obvious, some less so. as everyone said, they've got beaches, good weather. as everyone also said, football -- the local soccer team -- as a bonding, it's kind of the great coliseum, 50,000 in which all the people get together, has a, the feeling almost of a quasireligious binding, bonding quality. but there were other things at work too. one thing that was at work that

was interest aring to us -- interesting to us was you had three mayors in a row starting the end of world war ii who didn't go along with the standard french notion that citizenship is between total equals, and it's wrong and dangerous to inquire into the ethnic backgrounds of the people. in france in census times, no questions are asked about where you came from or any kind of ethnic or religious data. but in marseilles the hay yours decided that -- mayors decided that they would try to give rewards to a flood of incoming migrants coming in the 1980s after algerian independence, you had nearly a million refugees or refugees who were colonists in algeria or indigenous muslims flooding into france.

they decided that they would get some benefits to the people in the form of housing breaks, political office. and can they set up -- and they set up something called marseilles hope in which all the different communities would have their representatives meet regularly, and if something happened that required attention, they would then -- as they did on 9/11, they had a big meeting to discuss that. but there were two other things that were of interest. one was we did not realize until we were there of the universality of rap music and hip-hop. [laughter] that starting in the 1980s when french visitor went to the bronx, they came back and took the forms of rap music, adapted it locally, and in marseilles you have all these bands who

provide -- how can i put it? -- a diffusing mechanism for people who are frustrated, who are alienated. we talked to some of the hip-hoppers and the rap singers there, and they all agreed that the one ting that really was important in -- one thing that really was important in marseilles was the people there had intense local pride. they considered themselves, first of all, as marseilles, and when you go outside of paris and you ask them what their nationality is, they would never say parisian, and they'd never say french. they would say maghrebian, which is what most of them are. but there was something else that was interesting. we saw the mayor, jean claude -- [inaudible] a centrist mayor, and he's been there for about ten years.

and he told us all the obvious things that there's not -- the neighborhoods are mixed up, and is forth. then he paused, and he says, well, there's something else too. and we said, oh? and he said, well, you may have heard we have a narcotics problem in marseilles, and we have some organized crime. he said the people involved in that commerce don't want teenagers burning cars in their neighborhood because it brings in the cops. and we then talked to other people who said, the mayor actually said that? so there was also the role, backstage, of what the french call le milieu which started with the course cans but is now multi-national. marseilles was interesting to us in every way because if you go elsewhere, you find that values are different and that people are not aware of what a miracle they have in their own country. so we were glad to write about that. and as i say, we have an op-ed on that. okay, then we went to india.

now, india was particularly interesting to us because there's the state of carola which is in the southwestern strip facing the arabian sea is not one of the richest or most blessed with resources state in the great democracy of india, but it has the highest life expectancy, the highest literacy, the best educational system. it has in every respect all of the things that you regard as measures of a successful community despite the fact that carola is made up of a majority of hindus, just a smaller group of muslims, a substantial christian population. in fact, the christian population goes back to practically 2,000 years, and so this state where you have three major groups, then you had the

least of one of the most unexpected things, the role of the communist party. there's an indigenous communist party in carola. its leaders decided after indian independence to adopt the electoral path rather than the revolutionary path as other indian communists, particularly in bengal, did. and that meant they fought regular elections. and so you have an interesting cycle in the carola to every five years the voters there switch from a leftist-led coalition to a congress party-led coalition. congress party is now in charge. with the muslims constituting about 30% of the population. a balance of power thing. what it was was that the communists realized that if they were going to get anywhere, they had to build coalitions. and they built coalitions that crossed the caste lines, the religious lines, etc. , and that was one major element, but there was a catch.

the catch is that carola is also highly dependent on migrant workers. as the people tell us, all our exports have to be of high quality, including our people. and they have a million-plus migrant workers in the persian gulf, mostly in the emirates and the arab states, most of them muslims who send their remittances back to carola. and the remittances total more than the carola government gets in tax remittances from new delhi. so, you see, that's an element in there that's very important. but it's an able, and the carolans have been able to use this to address serious problems, among them the problems of women's rights and literacy to a degree of success that's the envy of the other

states of india. okay. so then we came to our fifth example, and our fifth example is close to home. it's right across the east river. it's queens, new york. queens, new york, is really one of the national treasures, an unrecognized national treasure. it's 2.3 million population. if queens were a separatist city, it would rank fourth in size in the united states after los angeles, new york -- sorry, after los angeles, chicago and brooklyn. queens would be the fourth be largest entity. that queens, people of queens speak 138 languages, 15 of them widely. that after world war ii there was a period of some problems, black/white tension and ore things -- other things in queens. but then in 1965 the immigration law was changed doing away with

national origins as a test for how many people you could send in. the dates were suddenly -- gates were suddenly opened to substantial newcomers from latin america, africa, middle east, asia. and jfk became the modern equivalent of ellis island. b millions came through queens, and of those millions a lot stayed because it was very handy, it was right around the airport. and then you, again, had institutions that facilitated peaceful relations. community boards. every queens -- queens is kind of a patchwork of as our friend andrew hacker told us, queens doesn't exist, and it doesn't in the post office sense. if you address a letter to queens, new york, it'll get returned to you. queens you have to put the community, you have to put in a story of flushing, jackson heights or wherever. that's the postal address. and there's an intense pride in these enclaves that have all

sprung up that could not be more diverse. there i have to say we had a wonderful meeting with the current borough president, helen marshall. and, again, you could see what human agency -- she was the second woman to be borough president, first was claire shulman who until ten years ago or so was a long-serving borough president there. and claire shulman not only was interested in politics, but in culture. and she was the one who facilitated the establishment of the queens science museum, of ps1 and various arts museums and set in place what she called the general assembly. the general assembly is where you have a meeting of all the different can ethnic communities. so helen marshall came in, and she adopted -- helen marshall, i have to tell you, is an

afro-caribbean-american. her roots are from guyana, and she grew up as a librarian, as a schoolteacher, active in the pta. went into politics and was involved as a peacemaker in black/white issues, black/white -- there were some serious ones in the 1980s. became borough president and said she had a marshall plan. and her marshall plan, part of it was the queens assembly. and as she reminds you when you see her, the united nations when it was founded in 1945, it's first offices were in queens in these leftover pavilions from the world war -- world's fair of 1939-'40. and that's where the universal declaration of human rights was drafted x they still have some markers in the museums on it. so anyway, she had her marshall plan. and part of her marshall plan, and i think this is very interesting, is that she has a

calendar every year of all the major religious national holidays of the various communities in queens. we asked her when we saw her, said, well, do you ever get surprised? she says, oh, yes. i didn't realize we had a significant polish community right near the border with brooklyn, and she said, i went there for a national day, and, you know, i used to like to dance, and pretty soon i was doing the polka. you get an idea feistiness is helen marshall's middle name, and when you see her -- this is what i thought was really interesting and telling -- you get a button. she gives you a button, and the button says see -- visit queens, see the world. and you visit queens and do see the world. that if you go out to jackson heights, we can talk about it in the question period, you not only have every kind of community, but you have a

culinary paradise, that you can go from one restaurant and one cuisine to another. from greek restaurants in astoria to the indian restaurants in jackson heights. and so queens is also a success story. and what strikes me about it is that when you talk to people in new york and manhattan, they all say, oh, yes, but it's not -- nothing is made of it. nothing -- there's no, there's no celebration. so we have came through after doing all these studies with a plan, a guideline. and the series of guidelines grew out of our various visits to each of these places. and you'll, i'll just give you the short version of each of our guidelines, and then we can expand on it in the question period. it says wherever feasible, number one, choose peace rather than land. two, take time to make the case -- economic, cultural,

political -- for diversity and do not leave unanswered stereotype caricatures or currently unpopular minorities. three, do not obscure the second passport or demonize hyphenated citizenship. greek-american, italian-american, african-american, etc. are all ways in which people connect with each other as well as with the country they live in. four, fear not the persistence of minority tongues. five, in providing homes for new immigrants, horizontal appears to be more successful than vertical. that is kind of the brutalist projects that ream paris. you don't find there's one exception in queens, but otherwise most of the outing in queens -- housing in queens is either single-family housing or four or five-story apartment houses. just one minute.

oh, shareen, i knew i'd screw up this one. [laughter] just a minute. i'm looking for six. four, five -- three, okay. oh. give me the book, ted, and i'll find it right here. thank you. [laughter] it's in the back of the book, and i should add a footnote about the back of the book that i'll come to in a second. i'll come to six. this is the chapter that we call the future of us all based on a book about queens by the socialologist and -- sociologist and anthropologist roger sanchek. and we said, six, do not underestimate the power of parental and civic associations. seven, use public libraries to

give immigrant newcomers a welcoming space where not only books, but dvds are available in their mother tongues. and we'll talk about maybe that in the question period because queens is not only an outstanding example of it, but it already has a foreign policy, its foreign partnership with other diverse commitments around the world including in china. eight, making empowerment of women the requirety, the better to promote economic growth and smaller families, combat spousal abuse, raise health standards and provide role models for students. nine, celebrate differences of creed and culture with a calendar that records the major religious national festivals and holidays, as well as i just mentioned. ten, recognize, celebrate and elect the political leaders who actively promote diversity be they presidents, mayors, borough presidents or governors.

eleven, do not underestimate the allure of popular culture, rap music or sports to diminish class and ethnic differences and foster a society in which someone named barack hussein obama can rise to the political summit. now, i'd say an interesting thing when we were writing this final section, the discovery that i made was washington irving. he's one of those people whose names resonates, and you never read. then i discovered three ways that washington irving was important to our thesis. first, serious interest in islam. he wrote a two-volume biography of mohamed. i see it in the catalog going back in the 19th century that -- [inaudible] that he helped restore interest in gras nay da and -- grenada and moorish spain. second, he loved public

libraries. he was a member of the trustee of this library. he became the president of what was the genesis of the new york public library in a building where the public theater is on astor place. and he was the president who helped start the whole movement going forward. and third, and this is the footnote that i thought was most fascinating was brandy. he saw that one way you could bring people together was to give them an interesting identity. the word "gossip" was something he came up with, and so was knickerbocker. knickerbocker, there are 100 knickerbocker associations. it's a made-up name based on a fictitious so-called biography, history of dutch new york, and it became the prototype for a form of branding that was very important for this city in the 1990s when there were all kinds of crises here, fiscal,

racial, etc. and when lindsay was the mayor and one of the things they came up with was they thought if they could find some way, something that would bring people together and someone got the idea of the big apple coming from a sports writer in the 1920s. and now if you look on the internet, there's something like 100 big thises and big cucumbers, etc., all based on the precedent of the big apple. so anyway, those were some of the things that we came up with. and i'd be delighted to, if shareen will come up and join me. shall we sit down? okay. [applause] >> so we'll be happy to take questions. so i think there's a microphone that she'll bring, sarah will bring around. questions? >> right here.

>> difference, to some people it seems to set up a notion of barrier or problem or something to be solved. my first be grade teach -- my first grade teacher, we had difference was something you went, ah, what is this, you know? and you were curious and invited to explore. and understand. and i must say that having been penetrated early has made for a wonderful life. [laughter] on three continents. but i wonder as you went around, and i noticed this in your, in the comments that reviewers made, that they were taking the notion of difference as something that was if not hostile, at least to be, to be wary about. many of what you -- anyway, go

ahead. >> well, i think the debate now, um, and here is where canada, the former white minority countries, australia, canada and then the united states, we emphasize diversities because we're nations of immigrants. everybody except in this case of canada, they're native canadians, australian ab aborigs and our native americans came from somewhere else. so we have this melting pot idea that -- or we can access and celebrate diversity. the european model is assimilation. you should be french. there's no such thing as a french-algerian. there's no hyphen in france as there is in america. you can be african-american,

german-american, whatever. and so there's a different model, and that's what they're struggling with in europe now, is this idea that they've let too many outsiders in, that they liked having guest workers in germany, but they wanted the turks to go home after they, you know, served their 15 years or so. and that's, it's a very different model. and i think for americans it's not a big deal, diversity. we like it, we like all the ethnic food. i mean, that's what's wonderful about it. a lot of us, for instance, in new york -- i grew up in colorado, and that's what i came to new york for, was the diversity. >> can i add something, though, that that's the good side. there's also a dark side. that in your chapter on diversity and its discontent we recall in the united states the marginalization, the attacks on various minority religions or

minority groups starting with the right after the revolution with the french and the passage of the alien and sedition act. and we recall until 1960 that a roman catholic was considered an impossible candidate for president. and that as you look back on all the different groups that have been in the u.s., all of them have gone through some hard times whether they were german-americans during the war or the japanese who were interred after pearl harbor. so there's that aspect too. but the saving grace is that we have learned -- and this is something, i think, puts us in the contrast with france -- to look back and when we made a mistake, try to redress it, that let's take a case of the japanese-americans who were interned, that both governor reagan and george h.w. bush who

enlisted on pearl harbor day in the navy became the most -- he fought 54 missions, got every -- i think both of them presided over the compensation and restitution and apology to the americans who were herded into concentration camps during world war ii. and that's happened whereas the french to this day find it very difficult to come to grips with their own record in algeria. algeria's a very interesting, special case. algeria was not an overseas -- it was legally a department of france. algeria was like brittany or normandy. but the difference was you had three million berbers and algerian arabs who couldn't vote unless they disavowed their religion entirely, and even that was very different.

so the vast majority of the people in the country that talks about fraternity were voteless noncitizens. and that led to an eight-year very bloody civil war, and sarkozy, when he made a trip -- we quote him in the book -- to algiers, his one and only trip to algiers said let's not talk about repentance and apologies. he said that doesn't go for relations between states. let's talk ahead, let's look ahead. the algerians feel, and i think with justice, that they're owed some kind of statements of repentance for what happened. and having been promised self-rule, they never got it. that's a general problem among nations. not just the french. the turks the same problem with the armenians, the japanese have the same problem with their war record in china and korea. but that's the dark side, and that's part of what we're trying to address.

>> [inaudible] >> okay. >> this is a wonderful book. congratulations. it's a tour de force and delicious writing. the beautiful portraits, the amazing research sucks us in to a subject matter which is extremely complex. but you seduce us into believing we can understand these amazing issues. how do you -- would you consider considered aing a 12th rule? -- adding a 12th rule? there's always another one, which is try and find for yourself an external framework which provides some sort of stability for the resolution of your differences? if you think about, just some of your examples, queens has the united states government, carola is within the indian state, you know, flensburg, the germans and the danish government promoted a reconciliation.

even in northern ireland the british and irish governments were promoting coming together. so it's just like you to think about or comment on that, please. >> karl? >> well, two things. first, i think that a lot of the problems within countries are caused by external forces of neighbors or others who have proxies within the country. the difference between switzerland where you have three languages and people get along is that in the 19th century switzerland's neighbors decided it was in their mutual interests to have a peaceful switzerland with its banks and other benefits. as to other external things, i think this is the problem with the united nations that we're seeing right now in syria. the limitations and the difficulties of external peacemakers going -- we're still at the lower bar as far as the

moral progress in that direction. >> [inaudible] i can speak loudly enough. >> sure. >> may i ask a question -- [inaudible] what it is, could you comment on american religious diversity over a long period of time where there was conflict? and today we look at the supreme court which has, i believe, only one -- maybe no protestant members, but maybe one. it's basically made up of catholics and jews. are you surprised by that development? in a country that's still largely very protestant? >> well, that's the vicissitudes of the nomination process and the way the appointments go. but i don't think that it's made

any serious difference in in the arbitration of church/state issues, if that's what you're suggesting. >> no. i'm just thinking is, has this had an impact on the population as a whole, that we have become less interested in the religious background of candidates for public -- we're about to test this with a more more going to be mom -- mormon going to be nominated for a major political party. and religion has come into the national election here. >> right. >> and i wonder, is it less than meets the eye or more than meets the eye? >> [inaudible] >> i -- so much to me of the emphasis on religion is a regional thing. in colorado, for instance, there was a lot of antipathy towards mormons because it was the next state over. in new york i don't think we

experience that same thing. we don't know that many mormons. they're not our next door neighbors, so we don't, we tend not to have an opinion about mormons. and in the past history of the united states we had an enormous amount of presbyterian president is the and secretary of states. we don't have that anymore, but it really didn't seem to make a difference, and i don't know, but my perception is that we have in a way gotten more obviously religious. it didn't -- when i was growing up, it didn't seem to me that the president had to go to church, that this is a new phenomenon where you invoke god, you invoke god at football games, you invoke god at hockey games. so it's a new phenomenon. >> well, i'd add one other thought, that the american experience bears out the fresh yens of james madison in federalist 10 in which he said one of the benefits of a large

republic is that you would have local factions, but the factions would tend to neutralize each other in a large cap vas and that we were safer that way. and i think our national experience suggests that madison was right. >> absolutely. can i just switch to another question if i'm allowed another question here? to another part of the world. you referred and refreshed my memory from my regents preparation examination in high school about shlaes wig hold stein, and i thank you for doing so. in the land for peace concept and also between the italians and the austrians. have you given any thought to applying that principle to a very dangerous part of the world -- >> sure. >> the west bank -- >> absolutely. >> and do you see any light there? >> well, in 1967 at the end of the war the idea was that they would trade land for peace. >> yes, certainly. >> that was the whole point of -- but this, of course, has

never really happened. and, in fact, i'd like to go back to an earlier lesson in that area which was after 1948. abdullah, then the king of jordan, absorbed the west bank chstles full of palestinian -- which was full of palestinians, and they were different from the jordanians which were his tribesmen. and it turned out to be a very bad thing for the jordanians in that he was assassinated because he had this disgruntled majority population in the west bank. so it's always been, you know, a very tenuous thing there, and they would be better off. you don't have -- as a friend of ours once said, you know, you don't have -- what was the, can you quote him exactly about the, about you don't -- until you have the borders that guarantee the next --

>> well, he said that the old notion about frontiers was that no border was considered entirely right unless it made the next war inevitable. and that was true in first century in european history, and i think there's a problem here in the middle east generally that the borders were imposed arbitrarily after world war i at the paris peace conference, and they don't match -- there's an overlap and a difficulty. but i think in the long run that the, that there will be a settlement based on mutually-agreed borders between the palestinians and the israelis and with guarantees on the minority rights on both sides. >> thank you. >> thank you very much for your talk. i'm wondering if there are any examples that, um, get very close to the place that you'd

feel comfortable writing about as a glowing example but reached a break point in the story where it goes from seeming on the right track to really going off the tracks. are there anything, any examples that you find very interesting and yet somehow very troubling -- >> well, an obvious one is former yugoslavia where you had a high degree of intermarriage between various peoples in bosnia and elsewhere, and then it fell apart. one reason it fell apart is what i'm saying about foreign intervention, that in 19 90 germany recognized croatia as an independent country. and when it did that, i think it was one of the most disastrous decisions at that time. it led to the breakup of all of them, and each of the ones had a different foreign patron, that the russians were with the serbs and etc., etc. it's as if italy said that they would recognize the italian

speakers of -- as a separate canton. so, yes, there is a case where things looked good, and they turned badly. >> be well, in a sense our book is comparative political science because we do compare carola which has really as close as you can come to ethnic peace in india between muslims and hindus as opposed to gugarat which is synonymous with community be riots, ethnic cleansing, the killings that went on in the 1990s and the stronghold of the bjp which is the-in pew national -- hindu nationalist party sort of stirring up divisions all the time as opposed to carola. actually, carola has the richest muslim population in india, and that is a good thing because they don't feel disenfranchised. they do swing the vote between the communists and congress in india so that they're 25% telephone i'm sorry, of carola. their 25% is very important because if they throw it toward

congress, congress bins. and in they throw it toward the communists, the communists win. and the other example is chechnya and tartarstan where chechnya and tartarstan had sort of equal populations of russian orthodox russians and muslims. and yet when in 1990s chechnya really went up in flames partly because of the diev who was, you know, one of these leaders who stood up ethnic tension. whereas there was a big point of damping down ethnic tensions although he was not above busing people in to sort of -- who were very strong tartar nationalists. he would kind of bus them in to the capital. and as they would sort of demonstrate, um, that they wanted to have tartar

separation, tartar nationality, and sort of this would illustrate to the russians that, look, you don't want, you know -- support me, because otherwise you'll get these guys out here. these are our nuts. so that's -- but he very cleverly manipulated all of that and never, ever talked about complete sovereignty, complete autonomy. he talked about sovereignty but never mentioned the word "autonomy." it was never going to be a separate -- >> independence. >> independence. it was never going to be -- whereas chef any yangs were always talking about independence x you can't really have an independent chechnya. it doesn't have -- it has a lot of the oil refineries of russia. there are lots of reasons that chechnya doesn't work as an independent state and, in fact, they're totally held up by the russians now. the russians are pouring hassive amounts of money into chip any ya and rebuilding to keep the tension down. >> maybe one more question?

>> i was interest be inside your comment -- i was interested in your comment about the horizontal housing because this reminded me a bit about the situation at bell labs. it's been written about, that offices were right next to each other so people could intermingle and exchange ideas. and i'm wondering if you could comment further on that horizontal housing that you mentioned. >> well, we really comment on it mostly in the chapter on marseilles because marseilles was the lab for -- [speaking french] and while that is an interesting building architecturally interesting, it was a template, the model for a lot of these massive housing developments that ring the 93rd district of

parisian suburbs. and those buildings are just really housing for -- they're not squalid. they are really fairly decent housing, but they're ware howes for the immigrants -- warehouses for the immigrants. and they are very, very unpopular with the people living in them. and mainly because they're confined to these. they're really ghettos of one building after another building after another building. >> i'll just add a footnote to that, that in queens we have a whole section on leftrock city which is an attempt to also have a big, massive 20-story-high towers built around shopping centers and everything like that. well, they went through some bad times in the 1970s and '80s when leftrock, the developer, was sued on the grounds that he

was not an equal opportunity renter. and you had an outflux of middle class, predominantly jewish tenants and an influx of african-americans, many of them in the lower income scale. so there were real kinds of problems there. but then an interesting thing happened in the 1990s. two new groups came into leftrock city. one were the bocarian jews, and the other you were the maghrebian muslims from africa, and here you have two peoples that have conservative social values that are used to living in both cases with other -- the bocariians had lived with muslims for a long