>> we'll have to get along with all kinds of people, but my opponent has spent her entire campaign and tonight attacking national republicans. even i don't agree with them on various issues, but they're the very people we'd have to work with to get something done. it's too risky to send my opponent to the senate. she's not a strong leader, has no history of getting things done and doesn't work well with others. i poe you haven't agreed -- know you haven't agreed with me on everything, but you know me, and you know my record. i ask for your continued trust and for your vote so i can continue to get things done in

washington for the people of hawaii. mahalo. >> moderator: thank you, governor. thank you both for participating in tonight's debate. we'd also like to thank our panelists. also kitv 4, and we want to thank our viewers for tuning in and logging on. the general election is exactly three weeks from tonight, so be sure to stay with kitv 4 news for complete coverage of 2012. our coverage on november election day begins at 2:00 with diane sawyer following the presidential race and other national election news. kitv 4 will begin coverage of our local race at 6:00 that night. on behalf of kitv 4 news and civil beat.com, thank you, aloha and good night. >> and we have more campaign 2012 coverage coming up live here tonight on c-span2. we go to phoenix for a debate between candidates vying for a

seat in arizona's new ninth congressional district, democrat and former state representative key stint cinema is up against republican city council member vernon parker live tonight at 8:30 eastern here on c-span2. and live now to remarks from the former director of mossad, israel's intelligence agency. he'll give his perspectives on the israeli/palestinian conflict, also iran's nuclear program and the uprisings in syria and egypt. ephraim halevy has served in the no o sad for almost 40 years. this is just getting started. >> 2,500 people since its inauguration. um, jane harman, the president and ceo of the wilson center, will introduce today's speaker, efraim halevy, the former director of the mossad and former head of the israeli

national security, and aaron miller, the center's vice president for new initiatives, will moderate this session. jane harman resigned from congress on february 28, 2011, to join the woodrow wilson center as its first female director, president and ceo, and you can imagine how thrilled we as women at the center are. and you don't want me to continue with your -- i practiced. [laughter] i need to say one more thing. okay? the -- i can't not say my friends in los angeles would kill me if i don't say you were representing the aerospace center of california during nine terms in the congress and that you served on all the major

security committees, six years on the armed services, eight years on the intelligence and four on homeland security. and congresswoman harman has made, has covered almost the whole world including ten days ago is she returned from kosovo. >> right. >> and i will introduce afterward aaron. >> okay, all right. thank you, haleh. and haleh is an example of probably our proudest example of the role women play at the wilson center. the middle east project is one of our most important projects, and this gift from chairman joe gildenhorn and his wife, alma, who are right there, makes much of our work possible. and it's not just the gift of dollars, it's the gift of their time and energy and insights. i am thrilled today, very briefly, to introduce a friend

of mind, e rage halevy. -- e rage halevy. as you heard, i spent many long years in congress, in fact, i call myself an escapee from the united states congress. i'm now at a place that is bipartisan and very serious and focused that has civil dialogue and has very little resemblance to my last line of work. but at any rate, while there and while the ranking member of the house intelligence committee, i met numerous times we've rage when he was the director of the mossad. it was a very difficult time for israel and us, and he always provided and still provides wise counsel. one of the things that people may not know about him is that he was the principal, secret negotiator of the israel/jordan peace treaty, and it's easy to forget that, that role, but it is important to understand how

crucial that peace treaty is now as the region is so volatile. there's a bit of good news today, i'm told the new egyptian ambassador to israel came today to announce that israel -- that egypt will abide by the peace treaty, will abide by the peace treaty with israel, but we have relied on the peace treaty, israel has relied on it, and so have we, for many years. as haleh said, we watch developments in the middle east very closely here. the president of yemen came a few weeks ago to speak about a way forward for his country which is trying hard to become a strong ally in the fight against terrorism and has huge economic challenges. we just held the second of three meetings on how women are faring in the arab awakening. last month a former deputy secretary of state and

ambassador tom pickering and other senior national security officials, military officers and experts with decades of middle east experience presented a report that they have written, a balanced, nonpartisan, fact-based report on the benefits and costs of military action against iran, a topic that i know we all are assessing, and i am sure that efraim halevy has views on. it estimates an israeli air strike could delay iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon by up to two years, but that it would not replicate the success of strikes against single reactors in iraq and syria, etc. at any rate, it's a topic on everyone's minds. let me just say this, as this -- as our endless presidential election draws to a close, it is a pleasure and relief to me to have a very serious thinker about the world.

not just a serious thinker, but a serious doer come to share his insights with us and, perhaps, to provide even an hour of the ability, um, to not watch a negative ad and to watch a very important presentation. i'm not sure, are you introducing aaron, or am i? oh, haleh's back to introduce aaron. i will just say that he is an enormously-valued colleague at the wilson center. his voice on the middle east and many other topics is heard around the world. efraim says he's met multiple times, i guess, on this visit with aaron. i said once is enough, but apparently not. and aaron, um, really does dazzle us with his insights into the middle east, and they were on display just a couple days ago in another forum that we held. so haleh's coming back, i think, to defend my attack on aaron, is that what's next? >> to complement.

>> to complement. oh. so are you coming back? what's happening? all right. well, efraim, welcome here. again, it honors us to have you here, and i'm very much looking forward to your remarks today. >> thank you very much, jane. can i -- i was told by the various cameras in the room that if you could put on mute your cell phones, blackberries, whatever you have because it also interferes with our live webcast that is picked up around the world. so we have a very wide audience watching this. as i said earlier and jane mentioned, aaron david miller is going to be moderating this session, and he has been a wonderful colleague both for two decades he served as an adviser to republican and democratic secretaries of state helping

formulate u.s. policy on the middle east and the arab/israeli peace process. he served as deputy special coordinator for arab/israeli negotiations, senior member of the state department policy planning staff in the bureau of intelligence, and he is the author of five book on the middle east -- five books on the middle east. the most recent one, "the much too promised land: america's elusive search for arab/israeli peace." but he has a forthcoming book which is very exciting, i've read the manuscript, "can america have another great president?" mr. halevy, welcome to the wilson center. aaron? >>haleh, thank you very much, and, jane, thank you very much. it's an honor to be here. let me welcome all of you again to the woods roe wilson and national center for scholars, a

living memorial to our 28th president and our only ph.d president. that piece is only important because i invoke the spirit of woodrow wilson who believed in breaking down the barriers between the academy and government. we need wilson more than anything else now. jane, i think, is committed to insuring that that spirit stays alive and well as lee hamilton had. effective thought before effective action. deliberate and effective thought before effective action. and we need wilson and the liberal thinkers now more than any time i can think of. never have i seen a period more complex, more potentially dangerous and more fraught with difficulties and perhaps some opportunities during the course of the last 40 years. and if it's difficult for the united states, it's certainly difficult for the israelis. an early friend once said to me that the israeli dilemma was

embodied by the following notion: during the day the israelis fight the arabs and win -- an israeli speaking now -- but during the night the israelis fight the nazis and lose. now, how indicative authoritative representationtive this notion is in terms of capturing the dilemma and the conone da that israel faces as a small power, very e factive -- effective with a very big reach is arguable. but what it is not arguable is t you have a set of security challenges. israel is not a victim and shouldn't be seen as a victim. but there's also the danger of trivializing the security challenges that it faces. no one that i know is better equipped, prepared both by virtue of experience and temperament than efraim halevy to guide us through this maze at a very important time. i'll just conclude, he has three things. i wish i had more of them. one is clarity, the capacity to

rise above detail and gain a finish of perspective. a second is honesty. the capacity to actually assert what it is you believe. and finally, integrity. to defend those views with consistency and with principle and to alter them when, in fact, reality demands that they be altered. so, efraim, i'm going to turn it over to you. he will speak for about 25 minutes, i may ask a question, then we'll go to yours. i can only say one thing, please, this is questions. please, tell us your name and then ask a question. efraim. >> thank you very much. first of all, i'd like to thank jane harman for her warm words. i feel a little abashed, i must admit. i would, would hope that many of

the things she said are as true as she thinks they are. [laughter] but i'll leave it to, for further judgment. i wish to also thank aaron who i've known for quite a long time and with whom we worked very, very closely on some of the key issues which have bedeviled the region over a long period of time. and i was very, very honored when he approached me and asked me whether i would come to speak to you today, and i thank you for the opportunity. i want to thank everybody else who's involved if making this event possible. -- in the making this event possible. um, i would like not to speak in a very orderlied way, in a very regimental way. i'd like to offer a few thoughts in the next few minutes on some of the major aspects of the situation in that troubled region where israel is destined to be for the next 2,000 years at least. first of all, we had an event a

couple of days ago which i think was not recorded here without much attention, a missile was shot from the gaza strip to one of our cities in the south of israel, and it hit a children's kindergarten. thankfully, it was at night, and there were no children there. i mention this because had this missile, had it been sent in the day and had this missile hit a kindergarten with children in it, the number of fatalities would probably have been very high, and this would have led, in my opinion, to a immediate change in the situation not only between israel and the gaza strip, but also in the entire region. it would have been a changer.

not a money changer, it would have been a regional changer. i'm saying this because we are living in a situation here in the middle east where individual events have enormous effect on a whole range of issues. and it is often in the hands of individuals to bring this about. this is the situation we're in. i will say, by the way, in this respect that the fact that israel now has a, one means at its disposal, a system which was developed over the years called iron dome in which we are able to at times to detect these missiles before they reach the destination and to blow them up in the thin air, this has also been a money changer in the middle east. if we did not have this means, if we had not developed them over the last few years, we

would be at the mercy of this kind of rocket attack, and we would have to resort to other means, and we would have, probably ultimately, to move into the gaza strip and retake it. and were it not for the support of the united states of america in developing iron dome and in financing key elements of this program at a very critical time, again, we would not have been in a position to conduct our daily lives the way they're being conducted today. i'm saying in the because one of the aspects, one of the features of the middle east is that these individual events which cannot be foreseen can have an enormous effect on the course of history in the middle east. similarly, i would like to mention an event which took place slightly over a year ago when the israel embassy in cairo was attacked by a mob, and the

last stages of that event five israeli guards were behind an iron, metal door which was the only obstacle between them and the mob. and after several hours of an event which had been unfolding, israel did not have the capability to have capacity at that moment in time to prevail on anybody in egypt to take action, to avert what would have been a disaster which i will mention in a moment. at that moment the prime minister of israel, mr. netanyahu, who was in the situation room in jerusalem and who had been personally handling the crisis as prime minister, turned to the president of the united states and asked for american intervention. to prevail upon the egyptian forces, the egyptian security forces to take action. and the president of the united

states was faced with the situation if which he had to make -- in which he had to make a quick decision. a, whether he would, indeed, try to take action to put the diminishing prestige that the united states had at the time in egypt, to put it to test, and whether to bring about a change or avert a disaster. and he had very little time to take a decision. and i don't think it was an easy decision because had it failed, not only would have been the result that i will mention in a moment, but also it would have had a very serious effect, in my opinion, on the overall policies and capabilities of the united states in the middle east if they had failed in averting such a disaster. and the president took the decision, and he instructed those who had to deal with it to make an approach to the egyptian authorities, and the five men were saved through an operation

of the egyptian special forces and were spirited out of the embassy. had this not happened, instead of five live persons arriving back in israel, we would have had five body bags arriving in israel. and in my opinion, this would have been a critical change in the situation in the middle east. again, one solitary event with enormous con we thinksequences d decisions taken on the spot by people who have to weigh things very quickly and who have to determine very quickly how to act in a given set of conditions. whereas in the past we had relative stability in the middle east, we had rulers, we had the traditional rulers, we had monarchies, we had

principalities, we had dictators of one kind or another, but there was an element of stability. today there is no such element of stability. and most of the cases the powers that be in countries in the middle east are, a, to the a large extent still fighting for their credibility and fighting for their capability to govern their countries. and the result of this is that the actual sovereignty of countries in the middle east is not preserved in large tracts of the countries of which these governments supposedly are in power. so, for example n egypt when we -- in egypt when we speak of sinai, is sinai a part of egypt? yes.

does the government of egypt have control of what is happening in sinai? no. i don't have to say that anymore about syria. it's quite obvious, quite evident that the government in syria does not have the capability to exercise sovereignty throughout syria. just a week ago a number of villages very close to the israeli/syrian border were overrun and taken over by the free syrian army. and this presents a problem to us. it also certainly presents a problem to the senior authorities in damascus. and, therefore, it's more obvious now than ever before that central governments less and less have control of the destinies of large tracts of their territory. i mentioned, for instance, lebanon where in the south you have the hezbollah which actually controls that part of lebanon.

and if any authority and capability to influence events on the south. take iraq which has emerged from the situation which it has been after the events of 2003 when saddam hussein was overthrown. to say that the government of iraq has control over the country is, would be a very large exaggeration. the kurdish area in the north is more or less a semiautonomous area. quite prosperous and quite successful, but in terms of control, does it control? i think it would be a fallacy to say that the forces in baghdad control what is happening in every part of the country. even in recent weeks take the situation in saudi arabia where there have been riots and uprisings in the east, where

there is a large shiite majority -- minority. there have been clashes between the forces, the security forces of the kingdom of saudi arabia. and the shiites there. that is a very sensitive area. i would like to recall where there is a lot of the oil of the kingdom which is concentrated there. and it is also very sensitive because the shiites, of course, in terms of religion, they defer to tehran and not to mecca. so even in a country like saudi arabia which enjoys relative stability there are problems there, and rising problems. so we have this situation which we have to deal with which is a very difficult situation both for the governments in place and also for other governments like the government of israel who has to determine what to do. and, of course, we have a situation in the palestinian authority where the authority

doesn't control all of the territory which supposedly is under its governance. the gaza strip is under the control of the hamas today. and even in the west bank the hamas still has a very, very serious presence despite numerous efforts which have been carried out to subdue them. so as far as palestine and the palestinians are concerned, they are split down the middle both politically and geographically, and here again the authority in ramallah does not control what is happening in the gaza strip. these are situations which we have to take into account when we look at the situation, when we look at the overall picture which presents, is presented to us in the middle east. the third point i'd like to make is this, that we have in the

region a clear upsurge of religion as a major power and a major factor in the governance of countries. secularism in the middle east is in decline at the moment. for a very long time, secularism was succeeding. i'd like to recall, for instance, the famous party, the baath party, the socialist baath party which was a secularist party which governed syria and governed iraq for quite some time. and to a large extent the government of hosni mubarak and anwar sadat was a secular government. of it was not a government which was religiously motivated in the way it's carried out its

business and daily affairs. today religion is a major effect in the middle east. islam is a major effect. and as a result of that, the divide, this thorough divide between the shiites and -- the shia and the sunna, this is something which is a major political phenomenon which we have to deal with in the middle east. which the middle east has to deal with as it goes along. this is not something we had sometime ago. and even in turkey which is still a secularist country, nevertheless, the religion has you well know has come not to dominate the scene, but it's certainly had a major effect on the scene after the success of the ak in turkey. so religion is something which has to be contended with, which has to be dealt with. and i would suggest to you this

morning that i don't think we have found the ways and means of dealing with religion as a political factor in determining international relations. we have, also, other aspects of the situation where we have to be very clear about. first of all, i'd like to mention the fact that russia is returning to be a serious actor in the middle east. for over a decade is -- for over a decade and more after the dissolution of the soviet union, russia did not play a major role. but this is beginning to change. it began to change after the events in libya where russia suffered a second setback from its point of view following the setback it had in iraq after the

fall of saddam hussein, and the fall of russian influence in the middle east is a result of these two events. we're now witnessing the beginning of a russian comeback in the middle east. a, in the way that russia is battling alongside the regime in damascus to maintain the situation in damascus, to maintain assad in power and, b, only last week i'd like to recall or to mention to you that russia assigned a very large arms deal with iraq for over $4 billion, if i'm not mistaken. and it's ironic, i'd say, that after the united states had toppled saddam hussein within a but years now the russians are beginning to come back to the

middle east through iraq, of all places. russia as a middle east power alongside the united states is beginning to show its mettle in one way or another, and this already catapults the middle east back into the realm of international politics into what was once the big divide of so many years between the communist bloc and the western bloc, between the united states and the soviet union. ..

and then we have iran. we don't mention iran. so i mentioned iran. please note. and we have iran which is now undergoing a very difficult period in its history. it has resumed its program for

obtaining military nuclear capability. it has confronted the world at large. it has confronted both the west and the east and i will come back to that in a moment. and the fact of the matter is that iran is facing up notwithstanding the fact it is now undergoing the pain of sanctions which are binding and effective and not only affected the economy at large in iran but also the business sector and of the financial set up in iran, the rapid devaluation, which is losing the value in the tens and tens of percentages and the official right i think is less than half of what the practical rate is today.

i said in israel the other day that if it is for tag to the dollar that would rise to five, the banks and no is really what we've even one speeeleven in the bank. i don't know what happens if the dna evaluation of the american dollar because i cannot imagine that there ever will be a devaluation of the american dollar because i don't know to what it would devaluate. but any rate, the situation in iran is rapidly developing, and there are serious problems in iran, very serious problems. just last week ayatollah khomeini, the spiritual leader and practical leader in iran spoke three times in one week. he doesn't often speak in such succession. and of course, he more or less discounted the whole account of

the effect of sanctions on the middle east. on iran but it's obvious that he is speaking like that because the population and large in iran is feeding the brunt of what the sanctions are. and the problem is what to do about iran. how to deal with it. and i mentioned again what i said a couple of minutes ago as far as iran is concerned, there is a more or less united international front against allowing iran to obtain a nuclear capability. we say the five plus one are going to be who are the five plus one let's remind ourselves the members in the security council which include russia and china and the one is germany. so it's not just that the united states doesn't want iran to

achieve the capability. it's also russia that doesn't want them to achieve the socials capability and china doesn't want them to achieve the capability. how to obtain this operation, this tool if i can put it at that to get the iranians to change their policy on less. it's a major policy of the united states. i would like to mention to aspects of this. the distance between tehran and moscow is the distance between tehran and jerusalem. and i don't think the russians would like to be under the threat of a potential threat of an irony in the week as the

sixth tags capability. so there is room here of course for a very intensive and very professional effort to get the oranges off the hook and therefore get all of us off the hook -- oranges off the hook and therefore all loveless off the hook. it is a test for diplomacy. how to bring the major test for keep devotee of minds and brains here in washington and elsewhere around the world. i think it is doable because in the end they have shown on several occasions in the past when they realized it is not in their national interest to continue with the level of confrontation which they have developed over the years against the entire world, they found ways and means of backing down.

i would like to mention two other aspects in conclusion in my opening remarks. the relations in the middle east and the entire world have gone through a lot of problems in the last couple of centuries. the people of the middle east have had various types of relationships with the powers developed. besides the basic interests, economic and geopolitical, they're have been three other interests who should be very important for people in the middle east. one has been to try to preserve their way of life, and their way of life was not the western space system. the was not having parliaments elected the way they are elected

here. i cannot imagine a presidential campaign in egypt that i can which is happening here. but maybe some of you do not think this would be desirable but that is a different question. the fact of the matter is i cannot imagine such a presidential campaign in cairo or damascus for riyadh or even in tehran. as it is a question of culture, basic culture and we haven't found the ways and means of how to engage in the interim cultural dialogue. i would like to recall there were the united states efforts to bring democracy to the middle east by the republican administration, by the way, of the previous president. and it didn't work because it does not work in that part of the world in that way.

therefore it is not the question of how to bring democracy to the middle east. it is how to have a system which is a different system for better or for worse. number two, there is a basic problem in the middle east of the arab nations and also the iranian nation of dignity. if they feel very deeply that they do not enjoy the dignity. i don't know how to describe what is dignity. i cannot give you a recipe of what are the competence of dignity. but dignity is figured very high on the list of elements which are troubling countries in the middle east. a few months ago i happened to be in a meeting the various people in putting iranians who

were people from tehran, not of the opposition. this was a short time after the round of talks between the five plus one, the renewed talks in iran and islam -- istanbul. i know they said how wonderful the talks were. if they were wonderful for three reasons. number one, the dignity was respected. and how was it respected? is respected because the talks conducted around the round table that meant to say every person of around the table was not sitting at the head of the table. they were all equal. that was dignity. you might think this is childish. you might think this is not something that is of importance. it is. dealing with a country like

iran, we have to deal also with their eccentricities and concerns, personal or otherwise, national and otherwise. sometimes it is not all that difficult to deal with it if you know how to deal with it. it is not to say that you have to give up on substance or that you can and behave in a way that creates atmosphere is. and that is the third thing i want to say, atmosphere. there is in the middle least an atmosphere of despondency. people don't believe anything good can come of what has happened. nothing good can come of what's happened in syria and nothing good can happen with what is coming any jet ultimately. there are no easy solutions. there are no solutions whatsoever in reasonable

distance from today. how do you feed 80 million alves in egypt? nobody really knows how to do it. how to feed 80 million malthus in tehran. very often when you don't know how to do things, you prefer not to deal with them and hope they will go away and something will happen to remove them. i will stop here because i didn't want this morning just to begin with the nitty gritty of problem eight b and c. i thought it was essential to put things in perspective. one of the things that we have lacked is we've dealt with problems as they came along as the nitty gritty came along so the problem has gone further. but we have to i think the way that we look at things we are

going to have to live with this kind of situation for some time to come and if that is my last observation. i don't think we are in the business of finding quick solutions or basic solutions to most of the problems in the middle east in the immediate future. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. there was a lot of fanatic altitude and i really appreciate it. i will take advantage of speaking asking the first question. i have one question for you do you believe that iran, with a nuclear capacity, constitutes an existential threat to the state of israel?

>> the first of all i would say no, i don't think there is an existential threat to israel. i don't think that the existence of israel is at stake. i don't think there is any power in the world which can bring about the demise of the state of israel. i say this because i believe in this and there's a matter of believe lonely of counting soldiers and accounting bombs and. i recall how israel was established and came into being. i was there. i was a young boy at the time and i write in what was palestine in april 1948 and during the war of independence. i can tell you the heart of israel emerging from the world and independence considered less than 50/50 and the secretary of the

announce that they have a nuclear capacity you begin the countdown to the end of israel.

the essence of the statement that there is an existential threat, and i say it very clear and practical terms if you stay there is an existential threat and if you see that tomorrow morning the iranians have a capability to begin the countdown to the end of the state of israel and this will never be the case. never. so how do we protect israel and that individual will be? i will not go into the details. i will say that they have numerous capacities to deal with such a situation. military, strategic and otherwise. and i don't think that the iranians will be able to do what they want to do and we will take the necessary steps to see to it that they are not able to do it. i think there is a fallacy in using the sense of an existential threat to israel because it means to say that the

iranians have it in their capacity of the of a nuclear capability. in other words, we as iranians or the world are telling the iranians if you get the bomb you will have the capacity to destroy israel. you will be in reach of your aim to destroy israel, and i think it is wrong for the sides to have one side telling the other side you know, there could be a situation where you could actually kill me. that's not the way to run a war or a strategic program at all. so you would say to me some of what i have said lack some specifics. yes, but i cannot go into specifics this morning because if i did this i wouldn't be able to go back to israel. [laughter] but i can assure you that we've been on very dire straits and situations many times in our

history coming and we will overcome. i would much prefer this not to happen. but i will try to convince from their point of view for their getting a nuclear capacity is a threat to them it means to say that we must craft the strategy to do this and we have to talk to them and we have to have dialogue with them coming and i am a great believer in dialogue talking to people. i would never have been married had i not spoken to my future spells and convinced her that she would take me seriously. you have to talk to people and you have to speak to their minds and their thoughts and their feelings and so forth. and not just hammer them on the head. you should hammer them on the head as well.

at the same time, one hand use the hammer and on the other hand use it in the even that you can outstretched hand. >> thank you. jeneane? >> that's all fascinating your three points about learning to liaise with a different system land understanding dignity and changing the atmosphere are adding crucially important. my question is how important is it to achieve these things to put a muslim face on whatever response we have to iran and syria to be part of a group led by e3 regional organization our country like turkey that has one would hope cultural and instinctive understanding is in some of these things.

i think it is important to impress upon the other side that just as they need to survive in this world, economically and otherwise, they have to talk to us as well and recognize us as well. i don't think we need to speak to them as if we have muslims to talk about. no, on the contrary, maybe not. but i do think there have to be muslims on our side of this divide who are part of the party and yes i think turkey is very important and everything should be done to bring turkey on board. and i think this is also durable and it means to say that we also have to preserve our dignity and use a bit of intelligence here and they're not in terms of the craft i was dealing with intelligence of the mind, how to deal with individuals. you have a vast capacity in this country to deal with people.

you do it in the business, the business world, the scientific world, it's all a question of dialogue of talking to people and of trying to bring them around and i think it is doable, yes, and we've done it in the past. we signed the peace treaty with egypt and with jordan and we get through talking to them. we didn't do it otherwise. we talked to them secretly and then a semi secretly and so forth and i think this is the way to do things. and ultimately, despite the tendency of people to say that in the muslim world you have these sort of strands of suicidal tendencies, no, basically they are not suicidal. although they sent their children into the battlefield and the iraq and the iran war they are not suicidal. by the way they said the

children into the war the didn't themselves go into the battlefield. >> i have a question -- we have over 60 people and other rooms who are watching this one comes from egypt who wants to know how does the rise of the muslim brotherhood in egypt affect security cooperation and the security interests generally? >> first of all, we have a peace treaty with egypt, and the egyptians are adhering to the treaty and in very strict terms. there are areas in which there is a daily content between the israelis and egyptians to deal with security problems in the sinai and i think president morisy has made it clear they will abide by the obligations. i think that we have to accept the fact that egypt has the

right to decide on its own system of government and the citizens of egypt have the right to choose their government, and that is what they did. and indeed, when the president morsi was elected a less than a few hours the president-elect send him a message of congratulations and asked him to work alongside together on the issues of the common concern and i think this was a right thing to do. he didn't say because of the muslim brotherhood i will not do this and was the right thing to do and he in this way took the initiative and i think that he also set the tone for what might happen in the future. morsi is to be encouraged in this way and there are two ways of encouraging. first of all there is a way of inducing people using inducements and also it is a method of has used the method of

saying what the penalty might be if it went to of the right way and that is the way the relations are conducted. it is intent on the entering into a confrontation with israel at the moment that he should be interested in to have the problems in egypt which are gigantic, social, economic and others, and i don't sense that there is any great appetite on the part of the egyptian population to go to war with israel. i don't think this is true and i don't think it will be true for a long time to come but we shouldn't rest on our morals. we should do things and take initiatives in order to develop a relationship with the egyptians. by the way, i will say that the muslim brotherhood and as a movement which is not restricted

to eject the the muslim brotherhood branches throughout the middle east and arab countries. one of the muslim brotherhood happens to be presently ruling part of palestine in gaza and i said over recent years this we should find ways and means of dialoguing in the muslim brotherhood in gaza and it's not been a popular view but once we have a dialogue with the muslim brotherhood in cairo i don't see why we are inhibited from talking to the sister organization in other parts of the world. >> yes. could you identify yourself, please? >> use a microphone. >> yes, please. one second. the microphone is coming. >> i am from the arab league. regarding stability, i had the impression that because of the changes that took place in the

middle east, much less secular states now this maybe they are not happy with it and have the fiscal. now, with the arab spring and other countries that experienced the arab spurring we don't know which ones, this would be the time wouldn't be independent because those leaders now which are new, muslims are not, the muslim brotherhood are not, they are accountable much more than the leaders before who are dictators as you said to the issue of the palestinian and to the public opinion. and this may be the time is not in the benefit for the benefit in the long were the short term. is it not the time now to put the peace plan on the table as the right time to you think? thank you.

>> well, first of all i've never thought that we should be happy or unhappy with what is happening in the arab world. our capacity to influence what is happening is very limited to say the least. therefore, i think we should accept the facts as they are. whether it is good or bad for us and what has happened in the arab spring is immaterial. we deal with the situation as it is and not on the one hand to be real let fact in the past things are different than they are today. in the future they might be better than they are now. this is the way it is at the moment. i think that there has to be a mutual movement here between us and the countries surrounding us. the day in which there was a united arab front against israel, and each country in the

arab world has its own interest at heart. this began with the egyptian teaching in 1978 and continued with the palestinian agreement that we had coming in the continued with peace with jordan. there's been constant rounds of negotiations between us and the syrians just last week or this week i think it was, there was a revelation that was a year or two ago. the united states was brokering a kind of effort to bring about a new initiative to settle problems from israel and syria and this was confirmed in washington. so we should always be on the alert to try to get these things done. i think yes, if the palestinian problem needs to be attended. the problem is. but whether the israel policy is not good concerning the palestinians, the palestinian

world is split at the moment. it's split geographically and split politically. those who are ruling the west bank are not the people who are willing gaza and those that are rolling gaza are not from the west bank. it's not within israel's capacity or our task to try to bring about unification between the two. and i don't think we should be involved in that. we should have a problem as a result of this and deal with the problem as it is. i don't think my view is that it mahmoud abbas and all the respect we have for him does not have the mandate to sign off for the entire palestinian people. i would like to say that six years since the elections for the palestinian parliament. ..

a condition for going to be part of a political process. this was done under the republican administration of george w. bush. so the fact is that there is no, unfortunately at the moment, a legitimate representation of the palestinians which can deal with the situation. this is something that has to be corrected in my view, and can be corrected. whether we should do it on the basis of the arab initiative,

i'm aware of the arab initiative. it has various aspects to it. i would like to draw your attention to the fact that in the roadmap for the resolutions, problems in the middle east which was promoted by the united states and then adopted by both israel and the palestinians in the year 2003, and subsequently was reaffirmed in 2004, in that roadmap there is a preamble which states what are the basis for a resolution to the problems it and one of the elements mentioned is the arab peace initiative. it is mentioned specifically as one of the elements which is the basis for reaching an agreement. so i say yes, that be a part and not the only basis for this. but what it needs to be is a genuine effort on both sides to reach a solution, solutions usually mean compromise. and ultimately israel will have

to compromise and the palestinians will have to compromise. they all live together side-by-side. i mention again, i don't think -- the moment there's a practical possibility of because the question will be who represents the palestinians and who can actually implement the agreement once an agreement is made. and i don't see the capability of implementation on the side of the palestinians at the moment. >> another question in the overflow room. you've had experience with dealing with jordan and the monarchies, the moroccans, the jordanians so far have fared much better in the face of the arab spring and the so-called flow republics or president. are you concerned about the future of jordan? >> i think, first of all, i think personally the monarchial system of government is a very good system. and difficult times we had a

monarchial system in jewish people. i sometimes wonder looking at israeli politics if we would have a good idea to bring back at king of something to rule us, we would be in better shape made we are at the moment. that is of course an aside. [laughter] spent i'm not promulgating it at the moment. what i'd like to say is this. i think jordan is going through a difficult time. i think the king is handling the situation very, very capably. i'd like to mentioned that traditionally, the king of jordan has always, both himself and his late father, who i knew, whom i had a long lasting relationship, over several years, on the health of several israeli prime ministers, was always talking in the position,

jordan is now under extreme pressure from the north as well the overflow of refugees into jordan has been a problem. after the desert storm there was a big flow of refugees from the gulf states into jordan. and after the iraqi second war, there was a big flow from iraq into jordan. now there's been a flow of syria refuse into jordan. jordan is not such a big country a conservative such a large influx of refugees. so that is also a complicating issue, and on top of all that as you probably will recall, several occasions there have been larger groups of palestinians have moved into jordan as a result of the war of independence but then the war of 67. so jordan, having all of this on its shoulders, one has to complement the leadership in jordan over a long period of time, handling the situation so capably.

and i think that given the resilience of the regime at the moment, i think there is a good chance that the regime will overcome the current problems, and certainly israel values the relationship with jordan immensely. the largest, the longest border israel has with an arab state is with jordan. and many years have gone by. this was a border which was a source of constant terrorist activity which was conducted across the border into israel. this has now stopped them. the most peaceful border we have today, and we hope it stays there. i say the most peaceful border, although we have one more line which is also a line which has been -- that is the disengagement line between us and syria which has lasted since 1974 to today, is 38 years. 38 years of a line which where we have preserved a relative

peace, i think is a big achievement for both sides. >> yes. >> hi. my name is julie. i'm here with human events. thank you for your time. i'm wondering what you make of the fact that the main suspect in last years iranian plot to assassinate the saudi ambassador to the united states pledged guilty in a u.s. court yesterday? what does this maybe say about, you know, what the iranian government is willing to do? >> well, it didn't need this particular case in order to prove once again that the iranians have been involved in terrorist activities against persons and against states and against countries for long periods of time. iran uses terrorism as a major tool of its international

relations. it's as simple as all that. and iran has promulgated others as well, individuals as well, and also has been shipping arms and equipment into areas inside the middle east. syria is one case now in point. there's an iranian force, iranian forces battling on syrian soil against syrians. there are iranians have been in lebanon for quite some time, and you have been -- who has been handling equipment in lebanon which has been a great danger to israel. iran has used the state of sudan as an area through which they could send equipment into the gaza strip. as i said, the case itself is a

case. it shows the audacity of certain iranians. it also shows i think that the iranians, in addition to talking to them, must be told in no uncertain terms by actions taken, by the actions of the u.s. government, that certain types of conduct will never be tolerated. >> diane from the middle east wants to know what your assessment is -- [inaudible] public announcement for desire for redline. >> i was hoping that i would not be asked that question. [laughter] >> i must admit that i

understand the desire of the prime minister to draw a line, both substantively and also figuratively. i think his appearance in the united nations general assembly was a very successful appearance in terms of the quality of his delivery and also i would say the convincing arguments he made. generally speaking, we have very bad experience with red lines. israel has drawn redlines almost on any issue you can imagine over the years. we have drawn redlines on our relations with the palestinians but we have drawn redlines with other countries. then afterwards we have sometimes had a problem of reconciling our decisions with the red lines we have placed. so i think the use of a redline creates clarity on the one hand,

but also a creates a commitment that not always can be mixed. and, therefore, i personally felt that the use of the redline is not conducive to the ultimate aim. as i said, previously in the opening remarks, i don't think that we will benefit from bringing iran publicly to its knees. i think we need to find a way in which we can obtain the desired results, and enable them also to feel that they have in certain areas, they have gained something beyond just a simple removal of sanctions.

i don't think that ultimately drawing the red line will convince the iranians. i think what will convince the iranians is a mixture of, as i said, use of practical means in order to make it clear to them, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that the world will not accept a nuclear military capability. that's another one. and on the other hand, the world is waiting to address some of the concerns of iran in one way or another. iran is going to have a difficult problem. i don't commiserate with the iranians. don't misunderstand me. i'm not here to plead their cause in any way whatsoever. there are two things, there are two things, not one thing that

their ratings will have to come to terms with. they will have to come to terms with, a, the absence of nuclear capability and b, they will have to come to terms with the state of israel. their refusal to accept the rights of a sovereign state, a member of the united nations, as a viable state, as a state which is legitimate, is unacceptable from any point of view. from any aspect in any angle whatsoever. we cannot accept the iranians will be allowed to delegitimize another state, whichever it is, and survey from our point of view, not israel. so ultimately the iranians will have to swallow to bitter pills. not one. one pill will be the pill of the nuclear threat, and the other will be the appeal of accepting israel's right to exist. now, despite all the rhetoric which we're listening, we're

hearing from tehran, i believe that iranians in places of power understand that israel is here to stay. they realize that israel is not going to disappear, as it will not disappear. and, therefore, they will have to come to terms with this reality. and these two elements means to say that in order to achieve the aim, you have to find ways of getting them, what did i say a few, a few minutes ago? the result, issues of dignity. it's a difficult thing to do. it's very difficult. i'm not saying it's going to be easy. but i think it's something we have to do. because we have to look at these things positively. we have to find a positive way of dealing with a situation the way it is. and i had a teacher very many

years ago who always used to say to me, think positively. and i didn't always understand what he meant. and i begin to understand in my later years what this is all about. spent i think we have time for one more question. [inaudible] >> actually wait for the mic back. you are the last questioner. >> hi. my name is whitney and i'm with fox news and i was just wondering, in your assessment what is the current relationship between the administration and the israeli government? and do you think israel could militarily strike iran's nuclear program? and would there be support for a unilateral action?

>> what i was afraid you're going to ask me for this to target, and i would have problem of -- [laughter] >> i think that the relationship between the administration and israel has been a very good one. and i say this, describe the various bumps along the road. we've never had perfect relationship between israel and the united states. that i can tell you. we had times when we're faced with a very, very severe actions taken against us by american administrations. in 1966, russia and the americans teamed up to issue a joint ultimatum to egypt -- to israel to withdraw from the sinai from the sinai campaign. this was the height of the cold war. maybe it was an israeli achievement we brought khrushchev together with eisenhower.

but nevertheless, a painful experience. i don't want to sight of the cases now, at this particular point because i don't want to ruffle feelings around this table, during an american election. but the fact of the matter is we have had all kinds of relationships, and i judge this by the fact. i think the last four years we've had a relationship with the united states on the practical issues which are pro israel, the like of which with never had almost two in average administration. i don't want to get into much more trouble than i already have this morning. you have asked me about the strike. i'm on record as saying that i think the strike had on the last resort but we should realize what would be the possible results of a strike. there's also a morning after.

.gov in terms of how long, how far this strike will achieve the desired aim. let's imagine for arguments purposes that we will strike and we will obliterate the entire iranian capability, okay. what does this mean the morning after? that suddenly the sun will shine and everybody will be happy at the our brains will say well, we got the message now. now we're going to go sit in peace and drink iranian key together. no. i don't think so. so i believe a strike, is the last results. now, the greatest achievement in any war, an ancient chinese strategist said, in a war which

is one without firing one shot. and i think our aim should be to win the war without firing a shot. how to do it, sanctions, more sanctions, more sanctions, and many other things. the fact of the matter is, the fact of the matter is the sanctions have not brought the end of the probe or. sanctions are hurting very much. the fact of the matter is that many of the people who say that sanctions will not succeed are also those who are demanding there be more and more and more sanctions. and those -- there's a contradiction in this because if you don't believe sanctions will be successful, why press for more sanctions? so i believe that sanctions are effective. not effective enough yet. that has to be a combination, as i said. a combination of two things. now, i don't believe ultimately

that whatever is going happen in the end, it will be a clear-cut decision which will emerge. it will be a part of situation for a little while. just as after the cuban missile crisis, and i've been reading about this in and weeks, the exact contours of what actually was agreed to resolve the crisis only emerged after some time. key elements of this story are even just beginning to emerge now 30, 40 years. and i would settle for all kinds of arrangements in which the ultimate, the ultimate solution was a solution which was reached. and yet -- is where benefiting from the fact that iran is on the local pursuing. but what exactly happens with emerge after some time. there are ways of doing this. if you did with the cuban

missile crisis, maybe you could do it as well. i'm not saying you can. i'm saying it's to be tried. i think there are many things that have not been tried yet. that is my contention. this has to be tried and it has to be tried with an immense, and thence investment goodwill of trying, trying and getting the solution. i think it has to be done. and it has to be done by people who are solution oriented and not war oriented. >> efraim, thank you. please join me in thanking efraim for a wonderful presentation applau. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> if you missed any of this program you can see it in its entirety in the c-span video library. go to c-span.org. we have more live coverage coming up later today her here n c-span2. former united nations secretary-general kofi annan will this be at the brookings institution. you will talk about his experience and efforts to protect human rights. he was awarded the nobel peace

prize for his founding of the global aids and health fund. you can see that live at 3:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> more campaign 2012 coverage coming up. live tonight here on c-span2. we had to phoenix for a debate in arizona tonight congressional district. kristensen cinema is a because republican and paradise city council member vernon parker. that dish it was great result of a 2010 census. and again that debate will be live tonight starting at 8:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> the road to the white house goes through new york city tonight. both president obama and mitt romney will be appearing at the 67th annual alfred smith memorial foundation dinner. it's a fundraiser for catholic charity but also gives the candidates a chance to lighten the mood and poke fun at themselves and each other. here is more about the dinner.

>> what is the al smith dinner and how did it come about? >> the al smith dinner is the most famous as a place that presidential candidates show up every four years. and they show, democrats and republicans. it's a memorial dinner for smith, and i think it's a think of anyone has heard al smith's name at this point, that that's where you've probably heard about al smith, unless you hang around these hallowed halls. but in general, it's probably the most lasting public legacy, the place where his name gets out. but it's held every year. it's not just every four years. we have prominent figures coming in and it's a memorial dinner. is a catholic charity dinner. and it's a place that people get together and try to assess the legacy of al smith and presidential candidates always, especially trying to crack a good jokes. >> and, in fact, they show up together, most times. they show both democrats and

republican nominees show up together. we want to show you some of the past al smith dinners. >> might i ask if monsignor clark would come up your? these -- i have no intention of standing. >> i must say, i have traveled for many years, i've never quite understood the logistics of dinners like this. and how the absence of one individual could cause three of us did not have seats. >> vice president, i'm glad to see you here tonight. you said many, many times this campaign you want to give america back to the little guy. mr. vice president, i am batman. [laughter] >> as i looked out at all the white ties and tails this evening, i realize i haven't seen so many people so well dressed since i went to a come

as you are party at kennebunkport spent we had good news out of yugoslavia, especially pleased that mr. milosevic has stepped down. one less polysyllabic name for me to remember. [laughter] [applause] >> do you know what this world really needs? it really needs more world leaders named al smith spent it is an honor to share the diet with a descendent of the great al smith. your great grandfather was my favorite kind of governor. the kind who ran for president and lost. [laughter] >> and again we will have live coverage of tonight's al smith dinner in new york with president obama and mitt romney. it starts at 9 p.m. eastern. it will be on c-span.

>> i have to be honest with you. i love these debates. these things are great. i think it's interesting that the president still doesn't have an agenda for his second term. don't you think that it's time for him if i were put together a vision of what he knew in the next four years if he were elected? he's got to come up with that over the weekend because there's only one debate left on monday. >> so let's recap what we learned last night. a tax plan doesn't add up. his jobs plan doesn't create jobs. is deficit reduction plan adds to the deficit. so iowa, everybody here has heard of the new deal, you've heard of the fair deal. you've heard of the square deal. made romney still is trying to sell you a sketchy deal. we are not buying it. >> watch and engage money as

president obama and mitt romney meet in their final debate, moderated by bob schieffer from lynn university in boca raton, florida. our debate preview starts at 7 p.m. eastern followed by the debate at nine and your reaction at 10:30 p.m. all live on c-span, c-span radio and online at c-span.org. >> so it starts an economic argument. men are having a hard time adapting to the economy and women are adapting more easily. i can't tell you why. there is -- just to stay in his spirit, in its education and credentials. economy is fast change, who knows what is going to throw at us. women seem to be getting those skills and credentials at a much faster rate than in a. they seem to be more noble. and that filters down into our society. in the book i talk about how that changes marriage and our notions of fatherhood and what men can and can't do in families, and a young people have sex and make decisions. so you really start to see it

having an influence in our culture. spent saturday night at 10 p.m. eastern on sunday night at nine on "after words" this weekend on c-span2's booktv. >> a discussion on creating a new culture for a america's schools at the most effective students performance organizations and gives teachers the right incentive. the panel looks at finland's approach in raising the standards of teachers election. the aspen institute host this portion that took place yesterday. it's about an hour. >> welcome to the aspen institute. my name is ross wiener, i'm vice president and executive director of education society program. and our behalf of our department of grudges go of education and american enterprise institute, welcome to today's panel discussion on education reform. so, the last 30 years in education policy in this

country, it's been dominated by standards and accountability reform. and while we have made some modest progress, especially in elementary and math, we really haven't made the kind of dramatic progress we want to see. and really it leaves us with a status quo in terms of achievement and equity that is not sustainable, not acceptable morally, socially and economically increasingly. so and even with those results with current education policies are large enough how do we get better at the standards and accountability of work that we've been trying to do over these last 30 years. of those are very important issues around how do we do spark of how to recover but those policies, how do we extend them from just schools to principal's and teachers. but into this context then comes the working group on the future of scornful. so about four years ago a couple of professors from harvard graduate school of education who

are here today, bob schwartz, but they convened a group of scholars, of educators, researchers and policy experts to really have a different kind of conversation. to really sort of question some of the basic assumptions and ask are we going in the right direction, are there more promising foundational principles on which we can based educational improvement efforts and education policies. they studied examples from across the u.s., internationally, and other areas of social science research to again get at this question of what should the future of school reform look like. and they have produced a volume of essays. and if you don't already have it is available for sale at front, the future of education reform. and i think the future of school reform, i think one of the interesting things about the group is that they didn't come to consensus. that wasn't the goal. it was really to help each other

honed a set of ideas, a set of proposals that they could be shared to start, to get all of us to question our assumptions, to really try and look anew at these issues. so there's some tension any ideas you here today. there's some complementarity. they don't necessarily carve out one vision. i think that's actually the job of all of us, to think how would we recognize these different ideas and make new path forward. so today we'll hear from six of the authors. each will articulate their big idea. tabletalk little bit about the problem they think it addresses and why they think it will improve education. then we'll hear from a couple of expert respondents who will provide a reality check, who will give some of their ideas about how we might move forward with these ideas, and then hopefully start us off with some questions. then we will certainly engage you, so think about your comments and your questions. so the format of today, we will

do two panels, and so now and introduce the first and then i'll introduce the second. so in terms of the authors from the futures of school reform, we have a bob schwartz from harvard graduate school of education. terry moe, the william bennett munro professor of political science from stanford university and a senior fellow at the hoover institution. and helen janc malone, and advanced doctoral student from harvard graduate school of education. after they propose their big ideas to you, and they will take about five minutes each and will try to keep into that, then andrew rotherham, a founder of bellwether education consulting firm will again give some of his comments and starts off with questions. and then we will have a period of q&a and comments, discussion with the audience and then we will flip in a new panel of which will be jal mehta from harvard graduation school, rick hess and richard elmore, also

from harvard graduate school of education. and heather harding, vice president of research at teach for america will be responded for the panel. and then again we will open it up and bring everybody in for the discussion. so today i hope is a great opportunity to question our own assumptions, to probe our own thinking. so we can come up with new ideas. but we should be mindful, these are primary academic issues but these aren't abstract issues. they are education issues. they are policy issues. they are political issues and we do need to be thinking about what's our plan for dramatically improving education in this country. so i hope we can go from some of these big ideas to where do we think this takes us. maybe start to talk about our their incremental changes that we can make on the path to transformation. what ought to come next? so i'm excited for the conversation today. i really am honored to be up there with these folks and so

glad for the aspen institute for sponsoring this discussion. let's dive in. bob, i think you're going to kick us off. >> thanks very much for organizing and hosting this event. i also want to thank your colleague who's done a lot of behind the scenes work. a little over 20 years ago, a judge in kentucky did the state an enormous favor by not only claiming its funding system unconstitutional but basically said the whole system from the ground that needs to be we imagine and re-create. it's an unusual opportunity, total 11 the field, and exciting the legislature which in turn hired a set of experts to come in and help redesign the state education system from the ground. at that point we really didn't know a lot about how other systems that routinely get high-performance were organized. a set of ideas that were cobbled together from kentucky that became the framework for much of what other states did, including

my own state, massachusetts, were really drawing from what we know from high-performance organizations in other sectors. our team which consisted of ben, the deputy long time, deputy minister in ontario, adam, a researcher from wisconsin and i, all three of us have had over our careers a fair amount of interest in looking at other education systems around the world. then and i in particular have done a fair amount of work for oecd. adam as a researcher has studied other systems as well. so our experiment was to say imagine a judge now in another state basically declaring the current system unconstitutional and saying redesign the system from the bottom of. what would happen if you tried to design a state system? not by imagining what works but by looking across a set of consistently high performing or rapidly approving, improving education systems around the

world. looking for those common elements that are in place and actually trying to see to what degree could you redesign a u.s. state system. i think states are the right unit of analysis for a bunch of reasons. one is that very often when you talk about finland or singapore, even ontario, people will say how can you compare these small places, some which are homogeneous but others obviously not. how can you compare them with the u.s.? i think the way to think about that comparison is at the state level. so what are some of the core principles, if you will, that seemed to undergird those systems that have not only had routinely high-performance but actually produce more equitable outcomes than the u.s. does. i won't run through, we have a list of seven. i would just mention three or four of them. fundamentally finland is most important is the systems really pay a lot of attention to recruiting, developing, retaining, supporting teachers. they focus for some really creating a highly talented

teaching core. they pay a lot of attention, and a thoughtful deliberative way to the recruitment and preparation and support of school leaders. they pay a lot of attention to creating funding systems that do not rely on the local tax bases, but operate on the premise that you need to create not only equitable funny but you then need to make sure that those schools and districts serving the highest proportion of high needs kids get disproportionate resources in order to level the playing field. they pay a lot of attention to the building support systems for students, trying to catch the early before they fall behind to try to make sure that all kids move along. typically through a common curriculum, at least up through the middle of high school. and then most of these systems, and this is an issue in which i've been spending a lot of my own time these days, most of the systems from roughly the middle of high school on do not operate on the premise that all you people are going to go on to university or to a four year college. but they acknowledge and build

systems to support most of european countries at least, the majority of young people to combine work and learning through the last year's of high school and will be the equivalent in the u.s. in the first year or two of a community college to make sure that osha and people come out with skills and credentials that will get them started in the labor market. they don't close off opportunities to further learning but they acknowledge the fact that a majority of those kids i aged 16 or so want to be a more adult settings and want to be in a situation with a working and learning simultaneously. so those are some of the key ideas at least that we saw as principles. i would just make a couple of comments on two of those features because i think in some ways they're the most critical. on the teachers side, finland is a place we tend to pay a lot of attention to, but what you need to know about finland is they made a very deliberate decision to kind of close down the

relatively ineffective teacher education institutions, move teacher training into their highest state at university and raise the bar for entry. by raising the bar for entry, they in a way did for the whole system what tsa has done in a sense of making wanted to commit to teaching, making this a more elite competitive process. so they recruit only from the top quartile of high school grudges to have a very demanding and challenging process for selecting teachers, and consequently they have been able to design a system that is built much one confidence that teachers have, to be able to function so there's much, much less emphasis on the kind of top down accountability. on the school to work side, will make a quick observation. and that is that these systems have managed to actually great social partnerships which bring employers, educators, union representatives and governmental representatives together to redesign these systems that

really do support a majority of the young people to i can complete the academic education, do it in any kind of a floodway and get launched on careers. i think i'll stop because i've got one minute spent a terrific. thanks, bob. kerry. >> okay. well, paul and i decided that we could focus on competition, and how we think the american education system takes a much greater advantage of what competition has to offer. whenever people talk about choice of competition it seems like it gets -- entrance of the free market, but i think this is really the wrong way to think about it. think about the economy. the economy that we have is not a free market. it's not even close to a free

market. we have a system in which we rely upon the market to be sort of an engine of efficiency. and it's good we do because markets are really powerful mechanisms. but they also produce problems. if we just left the market alone, we would have problems of monopoly and price fixing and deceptive practices and all sorts of other things. and as a result we have a framework of rules that constrain and guide the way the market works. and that's the key role of the government. so what we have is a mixed system, and throughout the developed world countries have mixed systems of government and markets. and so, you know, you would have it on one end of attention, a free market on the other and, basically we are all in between somewhere. and what we are doing is we are

finding a mix of government and market that seems to work well. this model does work well for the economy. and what we're saying is we should think of education that way. it so happens, if you go back like 100 years, our education system was essentially created are the progressives around the turn of the century, and good for them. what they did was they created a big bureaucratic education system which was a huge improvement over what they were fighting against. but they took no advantage of choice of competition which is sort of understandable for the time. but basically now what has inherited that system and what we have is a purely governmental system, and we are sort of camped out at one end of the continuum. what we need to do, i think, if we're going to have a system that is dynamic and has the right incentives, and gives people lots of options is to

move toward the center. and so, sort of the odd thing is that the system that we have now, that everybody knows about, everybody who is familiar with it is institutionally extreme. is way at one end of the continuum. and what we should do is not move to a free market which is just like move to the center somewhere. and take more advantage of choice and competition. that's what our paper is about. so what we suggest is a way of doing this. and one way, there are other ways to do it, is to just leave the current system in place. and then introduce a lot more charter schools, have vouchers for disadvantaged kids, allow for school charters and hybrids and so one can't have all sorts of new rules for online learning. but in general the role of the state would be, it would run its

own schools as it does now traditions, but it would also create frameworks that would constrain the way charter schools and vouchers and so one works. so for example, charter schools, i think we should just take all the dealings off, encourage the proliferation of charter, but then there would be rules. right? that would cover their admissions. they would be at its. they would have to meet certain standards, and i think much more rigorously than now that charter school would be shut down so they would be basic rules, but within those rules they would be, like, thousands of charter schools. and the same thing with vouchers. except vouchers, have to test their kids and if they don't do a good job, then they get kicked out of the voucher program. so basically you have a choice system, it is not the wild west. it's a regulated system just the way the economy is regulated.

and so the bottom line for us is that what you would do then is force the regular districts, schools to compete with all these charter schools and private schools, and then let them do what they want. if they want to have collective bargaining, good. then have to compete with the other schools. that don't have them. so if they have restricted contracts or if they have other ways of organizing, that they think works well, fine. then people don't have to go there. they're holding things up. efficient of all kinds of other alternatives. and we make no presumption from the outset of what the best way is to run a school. the schools will decide that. and the system was just if all of overtime, and who knows how many kids will wind up in the district schools, how many kids will end up in charter or private schools? families will make their own choices. and so on. so there is no one best system but what you want to do is to create a framework that

encourages effective performed effective -- to give anyone the right stick terrific. and helen come if you'd be the last of the authors, and then andy will bring it home for us. >> so, the professors in the audience. we focus really on poverty. so we looked at the reform coupled with the disappointed data so far and we realize what we need is a much broader solution that looks beyond the classroom. issues that are facing high poverty, students of color. [inaudible] it is something that working. the results are not there. if we are cities that the achievement gap, we really need to look at more comprehensive solutions. and, of course, we are well aware of that we talk about nonschool factors. there's always skepticism around

addressing solutions for poverty because of the high financial and local cost. we know that some folks -- [inaudible] but from our standpoint we only focus those standardized testing as the yardstick about how our children are doing. and if we see social factors not related, and we also see unnecessary add-ons we're just going to continue -- [inaudible] high dropout rates. you know, our premise is we have students are coming into our schools whose basic needs are not being addressed, in terms of mental health, home stress and others. can't really expect them to be motivated. equally so, to be fair to her teachers, and other areas to

where all the house, to be the social worker and physicians and guidance counselors. and that's not a system that really supports teachers or students. so what we see is if we focus in a conference a solution, [inaudible] by providing intervention and prevention and community services. so we can see that students will be able to get the learning support, both inside and outside and also teachers will be left to do their business of teaching, and not wearing all the other half. so really, our question is how do we -- [inaudible] to really support our students, high poverty students whatever solution is to look at an integrated year-round interagency approach, where we really complement the federal, state and local initiatives, no

longer look across the spectrum. so it's not early childhood -- [inaudible], and it is utilizing all the available resources. and our solution -- [inaudible] happening across the country. we see this come and the impetus is usually pretty much the same. equity of educational opportunities, customized learning and direction, and college readiness and preparedness for students. so several of the examples and state levels, ready by 21 initiative -- [inaudible]. we see districts like the cincinnati improving center focusing on districtwide initiatives. we see this at community levels.

[inaudible] we see this has to be levels. for example, there's a case mentioned program called city connect in boston. that connects to the community spirit and we also see organizations at the center. stanford, the user data archives does work using data, and focusing to support any and all the stakeholders. we also understand that there have been past challenges associated with the integration. rigid funding guidelines come in ability or lack of success, willingness to change -- [inaudible] so we are aware that those challenges exist. however, we are also hopeful because we're seeing signs that this time it could be different. and part is because there's growing evidence that these services make a difference. 15 years ago most of the data

and these evaluations were not available. and that we are seeing this. we actually do produce quality services support and we can see improvement on the school. secondly, we're seeing -- [inaudible]. and we are seeing that ted is playing a central role and we're seeing a more integrated services and data sharing across a variety of stakeholders. so we feel that at this point we can start to use the data -- [inaudible] that are quantifiable, near-term and linked to the schools. of course, we realize that our existing issues around the vertical and aligns with federal, state. there are still issues at the institutional level. and within the horizontal dividing lines around programs.

we feel like the integrator approach is really the only way to be really serious and to address this issue. >> terrific. thank you, helen. and the, what do you make of all this? >> thanks for having me. so i should say two things. let's welcome a good part of my work and public policy is to have around to check. and the other thing i was involved in the project so i went up to boston with my colleagues, and is a great project, a perfect chance to step back and had this conversation about if you're just about moving the achievement curve, a substantial deviation, what we would have to do and what would that look like. it was a terrific conversation. i guess i would summarize the project, it's kind of like the boston red sox. some wins but a lot of disarray. and a lack of clarity about

exactly what comes next. >> ouch spent it would be glib to say like he wished to tickle a bit of each one, but you do. and i think when you think about them come and people recognize their ideas themselves in each one, in a way it's a depressing conversation and how dysfunctional our education to be. there's good ideas from the three panelists. there's going to be good ideas from the next three. a couple very specific comments on that and then three ideas at the end, my job to bring together. on the international there's a lot to learn. and i think we can give short shift to the. there's also, and this is not a commentary, a debate in general. this is a very thoughtful chapter but in general there is an enormous causation fallacy that goes around international. whether it's choicer national standards, they seize on that and ignore all these contextual factors your my colleague at

time has what i think an important book come out, international comparison to unpack that, how the debate is driven by at least a point of view rather than thoughtful -- i think this chapter is thoughtful and what we can learn. but there's a couple things we have to keep in mind. first of all culture matters. we sort of say we have difficulty. but these are huge issues. this idea of we have a culture that is about second chances for kids. that's integral to who we are. this idea all the european systems, they're a little less than that, that's a big deal when you look at how even finland right now is sort of the place. in the education debate when kids -- is a sorting mechanism in what we do here. maybe efficiency means we should do that but that's not our culture right now. i think you have to respect those cultural issues. we have a stronger sense of opened. i do think you can look at the date and so we're anywhere living up to our aspirations. let it is an aspiration.

that's a strong and more important part our culture and political culture at her educational culture than it is in many european countries. and third, big issue, the design of the system. federalism is one piece. highly decentralized the number of points. you see that. right now we're having a national political debate where one party can't stop talk about the national education crisis, but refuses to pose any issues to address. the other party talks about the crisis, wants to propose issues but has to tiptoe around them. and that in a nutshell is the 2012 education debate. and so we can soda under estimate as we think about these things, how much that matters. on the next model, i'm sympathetic to. i worked on the chapter. i was too busy with another projt to put the time in to be an honest co-author. but this is the model i most sympathetic with. one, i think there's promise. second, i things going to happen.

if you want to look at the future, i think school choice, it's like a gay marriage. if you look at the point on gay marriage, tell me somebody's agent are the over 30 or under 30. you can tell with a really good pop about what they think about gay marriage. right now people are against gay marriage without consequence, but over time is going to happen. the demographics are very clued icann school choice is the same way. it is going to happen. does not want the politics in education, demographic politics but across a range of american institutions. it's going to happen. i think the question there in terms of this issue of the future is not an if question but how question and how to make it equitable. the big issue in bed in this, and as part of it i should say that i disagree with. i think terry is more bullish on technology that i. i'm certainly not a luddite. my daughter on the ipad2 spelling but i think there's a lot of spacing, technology, what it will do. overstates the classroom

capacity and also the destruction it will cost politically. but in general i think the key question you have asked about this, we really talk about headlong -- head-on, how much unevenness of quality are we going to be willing to tolerate in order to foster excellent and foster these goals of customization and so forth. we rarely talk about that head on. we've to run. it's a really fundamental question. we should just talk about directly, a terrific short story, some of you may know the sort of the short story from the early '70s. it gets to this question of how much inequality should you tolerate in order to have excellent and goodness. for some we shouldn't talk about it. we should just get this question head-on because it's where we're going on school but it's where record with federal policy. there's important trade off. it underpins a lot of what we're arguing. i think that's fundamentally if you want to question about the future, that is the question, a systems question. so finally on poverty, i think

it's a strawman in the debate. i was on a panel a few years ago, and we were asked why dystopic talk about poverty in education? and i thought to myself, are you kidding me? i think that's all we talked about frequently. and i think it's a strawman that people think poverty doesn't matter because it's a school thought. where the disagreement really is around two things. first of all, how much it matters, and how we should consider in terms of education policy. and then i think second is a question of sequencing. is a question of sort of how to sequence public policy intervention and so forth. this compelling proof points right now that all equal schools can do substantial better than they do. so lifting our aspirations in terms of what we expect and accountability, what we expect policy is a sound thing to do. there's also compelling evidence that heating these issues zero to five, good prenatal care, particularly for women and poverty, good early childhood

education, high quality really prepares kids for schools, that these things matter. but in education we say let's do both. and that's generally a cabinet that when people say let's do both what they are saying is let's do my thing. and when you look around, harlem children's zone, is very compelling. sort of it it seems everybody now what matters most when you dig into data, schools. they are the predicate. we're not going to have sort of the transmission happening in a linear fashion. these things happen through the political process. so becomes a question i'm going to wait to address the issues we have with schools so we can address the issues with with poverty, or are we going to do whatever we can. i think of sequencing issue is enormous. ..

i think these things are going to happen on a more -- have been on a more microlevel and third, this point on immigration in general as you can see general integration social service and so forth rubbing state-by-state communities you can see that happening in different models as it doesn't have to be its own silo. thanks for having me. >> thanks, and did you have any questions for the panelist? >> i guess i do. i think this question is appropriate with the aspen institute where they have this idea and it's not their idea but

the executive conference where you have to balance these things like efficiency and quality and so forth you have to balance those in decision making policies, so you know in the abstract it's easy to say it is a strong man, but in practice how should we think about this question this sort of trade-off between efficiency and quality in terms of how we think about schooling? hammill if you are a policymaker how should you be thinking about that? >> i will see why it has to be a trade-off. i think the current system is horribly and equitable. that is the baseline. and what we want to do is move towards a system where money follows the child and where kids with various kinds of special needs get a lot more money than other kids. they have more money in them, and that can be adjusted. so, equity becomes a fundamental

part of the framework to try to make the system work the way the we want it to work so this would provide a huge boost to equity and give disadvantaged families many more options. we have 14,000 of per applicants in charter schools. why people want more choices, they want out of the schools they are in that are not serving them and this is something else like providing them with that with a huge boost to social equity coming and what we want to do is make that happen on a large scale. and it happens through a framework that is intended to make it happen. >> there are other countries and do your this a lot. the competitors say please, keep

doing what you're doing. more choice. keep it decentralized. they love it. if you look at these other countries that outperform us right now the choice isn't a big part of their system. >> well, you know, i think the international comparisons really just lead to a big mystery. why is anyone outperforming us, and the only honest answer is nobody knows. you are just getting at and say look the culture is huge, and it is huge. like compare the japanese and americans may want to study all the time and their mothers are driving them to study all the time and a lot of them get out of school in the afternoon and go to the private school and their whole culture is completely different. what is it about the way the schools are organized that make them better than ours?

i don't know that the schools are better than ours. we don't know that. it's very difficult to know about the school systems that make them better than ours and it's impossible to know that they are better than ours. we just don't know. >> two things. one we tend to use culture as a bit of a cop-out yes of course there are cultural differences and when you look at the way the very impressive systems operate all over central and northern europe they are deeply imbedded in the culture and there's a long tradition, etc., etc.. but the challenge of doing international work is to try to kind of separate out to the degree that you can. what is the product of culture and what is the project of the deliberate policy decisions? we had the experience of working

on ontario and finland, chapter four and a book that actually arne duncan commissioned because he said i'm tired of simply every four years getting results from people saying we are in the middle of an attack. would be helpful is if someone would take a close look at the systems that have not only been continuously strong performers, but the reason we're interested in finland is and a tight performance. it's the fact that it's a system in which the social class is the least productive of educational outcomes where the narrow school and between school variants of any country. ontario is a much more relevant comparison for us. you can't use the culture argument, the very effective way to talk about another north american state. 5,000 schools, highly diverse, the largest proportion of immigrants than we do, yet it has a level of consistency across its 5,000 schools that we would be the envy. now are there other factors?

yes. there's the social equity factor that least countries including canada have much stronger safety net. no one tolerates the degree of inequality that we tolerate with 20 tarincot 25% of our kids growing up in poverty. that's a significant factor. but there aren't lessons that we can learn about the development and support of teachers, for example, i think is just silly and i think that the asian countries are tougher. i agree, they are the culture of factors much stronger. many european countries and especially for canadian provinces, yes we should be taking a look and figured out are there some things we can learn? the american exceptional was some argument we are so different -- the argument and you raised, andy, we might aspire to social mobility but if you look around internationally, we have now fallen well behind other countries that we think are the embodiment of the class system. there is more economic mobility in england if you are born in

the bottom class than those in the u.s.. we can say we want to be the country of infinite second chances. well, more than half of our kids arrive at age 25 without a college degree and credentials to function in this economy. we can say that's terrific they will get it between 25 and 50 may be but meanwhile they are losing a generation of young people because we are not willing to take a look at how other systems organize themselves and focus equal attention on those not going on to universities and with the deutsch to those going on. cynics may question that falls on that and we will turn it over to the audience i want to stick with you talking about we shouldn't ignore these other examples and the exception, you know, i had the privilege of going to finland this summer, and i found that i was looking for a very discreet listen to clean and bring back in the doubt and i found actually that the cultural distinctions were

quite significant, so it was a very challenging trip for me but you talked about the availability to attract the teachers from the very top and they're much more selective of who goes to college just to begin with the university and college and community college system. it's after you get into college which means you are in the top third of your high school graduating class that the then they get very selective about who can go in the future class and it's a very virtuous cycle they had a little turnover and people stay for their whole career. there is a very high social status. so my question if that is what they've got right and we haven't got yet, but practically can policy makers do to elevate that, but can the legislative people do that's not attractive in a different way than it is right now in the u.s.. i leave that open to anybody but bob, if you would start off.

>> a couple things. i do think this issue of actually trying to raise standards and be much more selective even at the front end about who can get into the teacher preparation program letter does the university or not is a piece of the strategy. i do think that making in our context and this is a kind of big context difference because in most other countries because they control entrance and have really high entrance standards once you are in, you are in. there isn't a question of having to pass through the years and then qualify for tenure. i actually think they are not taking the process seriously here. it has huge consequences. linked to that not paying any attention to the performance around the tenure decision or are not the differentiation is a

big factor. i don't mean to minimize the challenge of trying to figure out how to actually make teaching -- give teaching the kind of status in the society that it has in other countries. part of that really is cultural. but again an example from singapore or canada and they are doing the ontario study we asked about teacher preparation and we have a lot of confidence in the teacher preparation institutions. but guess what? we have a bit of a leak because ontario so close to michigan we have people cross over the border to the teacher education and the lowest standards in the u.s. programs and then come back and teach, not a great commentary on the system. >> the of the peace -- and i think that's right what we are

trying to do right now the country's the ululate themselves out of the batt pipeline where we don't pay attention to that and try to impose the valuation system on the back end of its associated we should be more serious. i think the of the point we don't talk about the starkly we need to stop treating teachers liked dmv teachers. that jars people when you say that that is how we treat teachers come and in little ways and a big ways. in some of that look there is a function of teaching you have the custody of children in front of you so you don't have something you can't just take off and come in late one morning. there are things there but we do a terrible job of sorting having schools that out and have the workplace adapt to what it is the professionals want to read a degree of flexibility in the custodial constraints and mobility, not having a profession, the ability to take on different things and these haven't been an anti-union, the union's we talk about for the

letters for a generation. but it's really hard to move up to be with the kids. when it does happen it is a sort of fun to the table halftime still classified as a teacher in this kind of stuff. we need to get more serious about that. and a series at giving teachers flexibility. teachers are frustrated, there aren't many teachers in the room today i'm sure because they are in front of their class is. you have to have a system people can come and go like other professions that this idea people have to be in school the entire week and on saturdays of things the rest of us to during the week it is an antiquated notion that we pay very little attention to that side of the equation and that is a big reason when you talk to a lot it can be very constraining profession. i think that is every bit as much as the other factors and one reason that people don't go into it or they don't stay. we need to be able to have a frank conversation about that. >> that's great. one more question and giving back to the trees and provider,

multiple providers. the concept there is to benefits that ought to come from that model that it doesn't feel like we are getting. so i'm curious if you have a concrete suggestion how the policy can move us there you mentioned one is that we don't actually keep the far end of the bargain of closing down the performing charter schools. how can the policy be smarter and more effective? the second one is there is a concept that competition ought to drive changes and make the incumbent monopoly to transform itself and people in d.c. where you've got now a pretty healthy choice market and is a toledo and in a high of, i'm sorry, dayton. it doesn't feel like we are getting the benefits that is pushing on the system to change. maybe you disagree.

so there are other ways the policy can actually make those, give us more of the benefits of those kind of multiple provider markets. >> and they set the criteria. the original idea is to get the charter for five years it doesn't have been. you can certainly write them in such a way that either incumbents authorized to shut the schools down if they don't meet certain criteria or there should be another agency of the state or whatever that shut them down. we can make this happen it's just so far they haven't and they should. the second one is very interesting. competition doesn't always work

to produce. let me put it this way. districts and firms don't always respond to the incentives. they are there for them to inform and produce better products. some of them don't respond well to those incentives. out there in the private market place a lot of them go out of business and this is fantastic. >> the problem in the public sector came around and said we are so bad we need more money. so that is the sort of way that it works and kids are in the classrooms learning nothing so this is a very bad system. in a competitive system that is serious, you wouldn't necessarily expect that washington, d.c., the district schools are going to respond to

the incentives but if you have enough traces out there, you can build a system that is inclined to words people bailing out of these schools because they had so many other alternatives and the bad schools that don't respond to the incentives will go down and that's what you want. also i think there should be criteria for the regular public schools so that they get shut down or transformed. you have to expect not all schools are going to respond to the incentives. many schools will respond to them but if they don't respond to them they should go down. >> i don't disagree with the sort of academic promise. it seems like a system that demands politicians to show back down consistently, so i just worry about that. >> this is just a vision. [laughter] >> let's take some questions or comments and please identify who you are and where you're from in

your organizational affiliation if there is one and then share your thoughts or questions. yes? >> i'm going to be broad and bold and paraphrase and say also talk to the moderator. a question for all of you. i think i kind of take offense to the idea people that take poverty seriously and think kids that are in poverty have really high levels and are copping out and saying that we need to address those and this is corrected to all of you at the table. i also wonder where you are getting that data to say that the schools matter more. low-income kids already more than a year behind. every year the amount of time they lose accumulates up to

another full year by the time they reach fifth grade. the gap in the lowest income kids are around one to two years. it's pretty hard to argue they are mostly responsible for this or fixing schools alone will do the trick. i don't think we are copping out. i think what we are saying is it is a cop-out to say that we can't address the other things even if we address everything in schools. even if we address everything that happened in the classroom we have teachers they would be in kindergarten the year before. so, i'm wondering how it is a cop-out to address those things or if it doesn't just make effective cuts. >> fi will say one other point. taking poverty seriously, everyone takes poverty seriously. find a person who doesn't take it seriously. the disagreement is about what it means for policy and how we should approach it for policy.

when you go to a place like harlem and see that democracy pratt, one of the best schools up their they don't do a lot of the other services. they get better results. kids that got the services and who didn't are in the same household the school seem to matter more. no one is saying these other things don't matter. i'm certainly not saying we shouldn't do them. i all for the better integration. it's a lot to learn and it's probably going to happen in the microlevel rather than the macropolicy frame like it might in other countries and parliamentary systems and so forth. but there is an issue of sequencing. the question people have to ask on all sides is if all else is equal what should we be expecting from schools now? you can come down on various places and say as i do for myself we should expect a lot more and we should be doing all these other things because that is what is going to get us

there. the policy political breakdown comes around this question of all else equal what should we be doing? because of the way that we make the policy arne duncan can go after them all you want but not the secretary of hhs. he's not the secretary of hu. he's the secretary of education and it's to focus on this piece and i think what we are assuming just because you focus on this piece you are somehow not sympathetic to the other piece is just a misreading of the debate and it leaves a lot of this function we have in the education conversation if you will. not hitting the questions head-on and ascribing the various motives. >> you talked about experimenting and more and more trying to make sure there's that coordination.

if they are promising and whether you think there's organization for the federal policy. could we do more than the secretary of hhs and hud and whoever else can improve kids' lives? can we make that more coordinated? >> i want to address briefly one that comes to mind is the learning centers and what they've done is put data from the center because that is the time that we say they are not going up. that's what we see as part of the problem but we are not seeing the child behind us to read a lot of the problems that integrate service are addressing in the last summer programs and after-school programs and health care. they are looking not just in terms of the test scores, they

are looking at the grade, attendance, whether they are applying for college and getting apprentice ships, the package of what it means to be ready. oftentimes we say this course are not as we want them to be so the social services don't matter but there are all these different data that shows up that says they do matter in the long run and we are so focused oftentimes of looking short-term at test scores that we forget and we are actively preparing children not just to pass their test next year but to be able in the case report system with a broad set of skills so that is the first point. second, in terms of the coordination, we see the challenging work because we are still working but by 21 there's the initiative maryland and many other states they are pushing the conversation were the agencies are coming together not just to talk at the table but

utilize the resources and start talking to each other through the easiest way to share the data and the sense of awareness because we are still of the plight people have no idea what the other side is doing or bringing to the table and what resources are available and we need to start even at the federal level. i was talking from an official let the department of education working right now to coordinate across the agency and while they see them so important to their work and serving the same children, so just from the different perspectives, but often times they feel pressure from the legislature and policies that they need to show in the particular silo to look at what all of the margin incomprehensibly and while near-term and long-term affects can have those conversations are

internally happening. the conversations, are there. but again part of this change in the chapter is how we move the practice to do things differently about how to structure policies to start communicating across the agencies. >> can we get a microphone up here and do another question and ask about the panel and have more time for questions and comments. >> i would say in general but we do try to pay quite a bit of attention to the political dynamic which is included in the analysis that i agree with much

of it. a mixed system is where we are and it's what the mix is with the premise is that we are going to get highly redistributed system i think is a political question and it's problematic. we address it primarily by looking at two things. one is a data initio but i want to emphasize what aspect of it which is we are not only interested in the chapter and comprehensive view of what the government does but also how we assess what works and doesn't work and right now many of the systems are definitely education historic we have in themselves siloed so they are in education were within public health or within social services are believe that this is a belief and it's an empirical question is that many of the benefits of action in one sector, say education, many of the benefits

can show up on the climb a ladder with the social welfare latter or the social tolerance measurement. what we are optimistic about is the potential for the measurement systems that work much higher here than they used to be. we've got the the systems and education thatve been dramatically improved the and we are moving towards integrating those in a way that will make us make smarter choices. some favored social interventions don't pay off. but we think that is one positive sign. then the other and then i will stop is on the political dimension. it's true arne duncan is in charge of education, but barack obama is in charge of well-being in the country. and that is true in general.

the president's, congress, governors and legislatures the general purpose institutions that ultimately make decisions and trade off across these areas. education historically has been dealt with much more as a issue spcific at local level where the school districts have been making the key decisions. we think that is changing. not dramatically. it's not going to go away the schools in specific are becoming less important. the last example in general, state legislatures and councils, governors are more involved. we think the political dynamics are changing for the sense of the venues will change would encourage the multi issue coalitions and encourage politicians to build a multi issue collision's where education will be part of the approach. >> perfect. thank you. let's get one more question on the table and then we will come

back around for this. >> if everybody cared about poverty we wouldn't have a national scandal of one in every four american children growing up in. if everybody cared about poverty, we wouldn't have 30 years of worsening child poverty hasn't income inequality created the problem. it needs to be created forcefully because i think quite frankly what people do is a rhetorical gesture towards poverty without ever actually talking about specific programs that need to address it and in finland they have a rate of childhood poverty which is one-fifth of what the united states doesn't and they have that right because they have a serious social welfare state, serious social welfare network

and before we talk about moving more away from that and more towards giving a greater role to the market in the society, we need to seriously address what is clearly one, not the only but one very important component of life and limb outperformed the united states on educational measures. >> when i came back they should probably move to finland because it is quite a different social contact that they have created. i don't actually -- >> we talk about people in the education debate and the comments made clear in the general society this is a huge problem and how we think about it and talk about it but in education there's a great deal of attention to poverty and there has been this morning and i think it's on all sides of the debate. there's a lot more common ground above the poverty than you would know from the rhetoric. >> a very quick last word.

>> two points. i'm basically an agreement but what is interesting about finland is in addition to this very strong social safety net, by law every school has a kind of council that brings together psychologists, community people because they are a part of the broad administrative unit that cuts across the social agencies. second, every school as a well-trained specialists whose job it is to work closely with regular classroom teachers and intervene early to catch kids who start to fall behind. by the end of the elementary school they've had some help and support from this specialist teacher so there is no stigma attached. it is simply a strategy for making sure. there still is intensive concentration on trying to provide support the presidential

debate is the almost exclusive focus on who can do the most for the middle class. there is this very large lower class a few well and needs to be attended to and supported. >> let's get the second panel of here and hopefully you will have comments but i want to make sure we have time. we will have a very quick transition. if you would come up and join us. >> we will have more from the aspen institute forum on education reform in just a couple of minutes. we want to let you know about something coming up in about an hour on c-span2. we will go live to the brookings institution for remarks from the former united nations secretary

what is the house met dinner and how did it come about? >> the dinner is the most famous place a presidential candidate shows up every four years, and they show up democrats and republicans. it is a memorial dinner that is the thing if anyone has heard of

at this point in time that is where you probably heard about l. smith unless you hang around these hallowed halls in general it's probably his most lasting public policy where his name gets up and it's held every year not just every four years you've prominent figure coming in and it's a memorial dinner, a tholic charity dinner and it's a place where people can get together and try to assess the legacy of l. smith and presidential candidates always especially try to track good jokes about each other. >> they show up together most times the nominees show up together. we want to show you some of the past al smith dinners. >> might i ask if you would com up here because either the president of the united states or i are without a seat and i have no intention of standing. [laughter]

>> i must say i've traveled a circuit for many years and i've not quite understood the logistics of things like this and how the absence of one individual can cause three of us not to have seats. >> i'm glad to see you tonight. you have said many things in the campaign that you want to give america back to the little guy. mr. vice president, i am that man. estimate as i looked out at the time is, i realized i haven't seen so many people since i went to the come as you are party in sunni bob port. >> mr. molosovich has stepped down. it's one last name for me to remember.

[applause] you know what this world really needs? it needs more world leaders named l. smith. >> it's an honor to share with a defendant of the great l. smith, and your great grandfather was my favorite kind of governor, the kind that ran for president in of lost. [laughter] >> i have to be honest with you i love these debates. these things are great and i think it's fair to say the president still doesn't have an agenda for a second term. don't you think that it's time for him to finally put together

a vision of what he would do the next four years if he were elected? she has to come up with that over the weekend because there is only one debate left monday. >> let's recap what we learned last night. the tax plan doesn't add up. the jobs plan doesn't create jobs. the deficit reduction plan ads to the deficit to beat everybody here has heard of the new deal? you've heard of the fair deal, you've heard of the square deal. mitt romney is trying to sell you a sketchy deal and we are not buying it.

we have more now from the aspen institute forum on education reform, panelists during the stock discussed teachers roles in the classroom, abandoning the conventional notions such as tenure and narrowing the scope of collective bargaining. this is just under an hour >> we will start in the graduate school of education back from the american enterprise institute and also from the harvard graduate school of education and then we will sympathize and bring us into the q&a series. >> great. very glad to be here and particularly looking forward to the q&a.

this is drawn at the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching but i am going to say to the kind of builds on what we did but it isn't quite what we say in the book so they are not responsible. i might say for better or worse. so, i was like really? five minutes to discuss the problems and the solutions so think of trailers for a movie style. if i had to put it point, i would say that it's sort of the problem is the field professionals asian-american teaching -- of american teaching. how the work would be done, training people in that knowledge and then certify people gives you guarantee that the people working in the field are equipped with that knowledge in the u.s. we don't have such a

system are not teaching. we have some of the elements and pieces developed in a variety of moments across the 20th century but we don't have anything but for fully resembles. the consequence of that is doing policy thoughts. the consequences are wide and consistency from school to school and plus room to plus room within the school in terms of the level of skill and expertise and practicing teachers. those teachers do not learn how to teach in the teacher preparation program they learn how to teach on the job and with the benefit of their own with of the hall with their colleagues. we have a knowledge of preparing expertise among teachers and then the result of that is what you expect in the system which is what some people have figured out and other people so we decided to put a member on that

and give measures of teaching looking at 3,000 classrooms across the country's so that's about 20% of teachers teach what they call kind of ambitious objection which is one in five and that is relatively consistent. that doesn't mean that other questions or orderly it just means if they are trying to push kids towards critical thinking about one-fifth of the teachers can do that now and that's because of this kind of missing system. the other consequence is the respect point. so, he said it's like being gay dmv clerk. that isn't very flattering. perhaps that may be pushing it one step too far but schooling is organized within a kind of bureaucratic hierarchy where you have states, districts, schools, at the bottom of the long implementation chain you talk to the teachers they say the reform came along but in a few years

the people will have changed out and we are just trying to wait it out and that's not what you want. you want a situation where people are in control and think of themselves as knowledgeable active people who can sort of shape that environment so that's the result of organizing in the bureaucracy when we organize as opposed to the organizing as a full-fledged protection. policymakers lookout at the landscape essey 40 to 50% of kids dropping out of high school and see results etc we are not just going to let those people continue to do what we are doing that is irresponsible. these are generation of kids whose lives are being compromised so then they seek to regulate control and external accountability etc., etc.. teachers resist the external mandates and measure the value added test scores and we get a depressing cycle of resistance

between the policy makers and practitioners which is full of this trust and not full of improved practice. you might add one piece on top of the story. in my second half i will say something more positive. those are your five minutes. teachers growing up in the system saw themselves as underpaid with weak levels of power and organized themselves very largely into the industrial union which addressed -- you think teachers are paid a bad now you should have seen before they were unionized, but the consequence of that is it calcifies the labour management to fight rather than associations which emboldens policy makers to say we should act on this cycle. you might say that we kind of a tract of our talented people in

the teaching and the international comparisons develop relevant now in the nonexistent training and then send them into schools that have high levels of poverty and segregation with a weakened welfarea a it is reasonable predictable in the settings we seek to hold them accountable trying to do on the back end what we should have done on the front end. i think what we want is the inverse system where the goal of the system as of coal is to support kind of talented practitioners on the front line and attack debate to attract more people and get stronger welfare support than what engender more public support, more money, etc.. and so specifically the pipeline talked about some of these things, retention, training.

the human capital is good. i would like to see something like the teaching hospital moment where overtime teachers come in with very close to provisions that allow the responsibility that devolves over probably three years to the point that they've moved from kind of professional to fully in charge of classrooms. then at that point equivalent to the ban which is demonstrating their devotee to do things they would move from the provisional status if we continue to have the tenure in the reform to pass that. they did say when he proposed this idea 25 years ago they would commit if they had the right type of exam only you couldn't be a member if you hadn't had the exam. to last points to lead the development pipeline is also broken and people like me develop knowledge mostly for each other that knowledge and theory was supposed to be passed to the policymakers and

practice. but pipeline doesn't work for the same reason as it previously was and we need to create the intermediary institutions that would develop practical knowledge. and if we did all of this, the result would be a kind of higher in powered profession which would be able to kind of the counterbalance the political apparatus. >> great to be with all of you today. i will talk a bit about a couple of ideas that we address in the chapter in the book as my colleague is currently working with the d.c. city schools. also for those of you that are smarter about recruiting and looking for doctoral programs in the coming year so be advised. we suggested -- would we talk about is pretty straightforward.

we say we spend a lot of time to the argument about how to fix schools and improve teacher quality that we tend to take the schools and teachers as given quantities. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand institutions built for one set of purposes may or may not do well equally later on. we passed the first compulsory education laws in 1647. it took until 1970 to get 90% of the students to show up at school each day. it took 350 years to get 90% of kids to show up at school. we spent generations trying to build institutions that would be able to transport kids from their home to a building where we could put them in front of the teacher and the central thrust as the expansion and the common school era in the 1830's and 40's and much of the reform

effort in the 1800's was about trying to make sure that we got these of american catholic immigrants from southern and eastern europe and ireland into schools where we could get teachers to meet the bible if that is all you are asking the teacher you don't need a particularly high bar in terms of skill or recommend or expertise. mostly what you want is cheap labor so what we did in the 1800's as the teaching force and in 181090% of the teachers were men. this is something that the tenants did what they were getting college education are making their way out west. in order to get the kind of cheap labor that the job referred to what we did is redefined the appropriate sphere of women's work. by the end of the 1800's, 70% of american teachers were women. they were low-paid. so what happened as much of the

teacher reform movement on the first half of the 20th century was about trying to get basic protection and some for teachers so we got things like the pay scale so we would no longer gristly discriminate on gender and so the teachers could no longer be fired simply because they got pregnant all of which made a good deal of sense at one time to read what we suggest is that this is probably not a model that is well-suited to tapping the expertise of the available teachers in the 21st century much less the control that we are educating every child in their full potential so what we said just for instance is that if you go to any elementary school, charter, district, doesn't matter coming and you ask that principal to show you what their best teacher is doing at any given time and their worst reading teacher and that you dollars to doughnuts bayerische teaching 90 minutes a

day and teaching math 60 minutes a day commemorating kids on the bus, taking the term on the cafeteria. this is exactly if you go to the local hospital and you've got, you know, a loved one on the operating table and 90 minutes into the operation of the start peeling off and you say what's up and she says i did my 90 minutes of surgery. don't worry am going to file for awhile and may be trimmed hedges you say that is a crazy and ludicrous way. the same thing we talk about colleagues that are good that coaching their peers and get offering feedback. colleagues are particularly good at mentoring the youth. we ask every teacher more or less the same proportion as they feel fit. this is a crazy and effective way. what we suggest is rather than figure out how to get the good teachers come the question is how we figured out how to use teachers and the roles they will be the most effective at the same logic i won't go into it

here i will spare it it applies when we think about school designed and tap into tutoring and a professional in the community who want to teach it might not want to quit their job and become teachers come the organizations liked tutor.com are seldom falls into the cadiz on a partial basis. i would suggest it's not. we can only think of one technological innovation in the last half century that is profoundly systematically changed the way they go about their work. it's generally called the book. if you recall when the printing press was invented it was reviled up particularly by the religious educators and tell me if this sounds familiar who worry students left to their own devices were not one to read things, that the flooding of the

classroom away from making sure the instructors were telling kids the right thing goes to all kind of difficulties about the religious life guidelines. today, five centuries later, we decided that the books were a central part of the experience because it allows teachers to offload once they deliver some of the information dumping that they were once responsible so that students can go ahead and get that and spend classroom time doing something different whether the use the tools widely is the question. this is part of what is funny about the conversation. the academy is an opportunity to do any more engaging fashion. final thoughts on this. one, there's any number of barriers to this. of those of us that think and talk this way are frequently getting accused by our friends in classrooms and schools and in the unions of being antiteacher because in order to start to rethink the teacher job it means we need to abandon the notions

of the pay scale and conventional notions of what a full-time teacher needs and abandon the notions and we need to narrow the scope across the bargaining because it makes it difficult to do these things. this is often regarded as making one hostile to teachers. i think that's a problem. on the other hand, many folks that think of themselves as reformers i think are recreating some of the same difficulties they think they are solving so if you look at today's teacher evaluation systems, they have the notion a teacher is going to own a 28 or 38 kids from hundred 80 days so that we can generate a value added math. as you start to do the rocket ship over a hybrid model or schools or just make smart use of how professionals and teaching those assumptions that teacher rm and unbiased assessment of the value-added will be increasingly difficult but history suggests that rather

than bend the policies what's going to happen is we are granted and the practice to fit within the policies. andy who was on the first panel and his colleagues said to me a couple weeks ago wrote a terrific paper exploring how the policy makers create room to make sure we don't get stuck. what this means to me is whether it comes to the institution of higher education, whether it comes to the state policy makers or the funders we need to get much more creative about what we regard as ways to solve the problems and make sure we are not in a straight jacket of just better schools and teaching the to fixing teacher quality. >> the general drift is less to more radical. quick biographical note i jumped out of the policy game effectively about ten years ago,

and over time ditched the policy course in the master's program and focused 11 or 12 years all of my attention on what i thought was developing and endorsing underwriting and building an infrastructure for the professional edition of teaching and the diagnostic practices of the school improvement and that could be codified and it's still a huge part of my practice. so my occupational disability is over the past say eight years something like between 1800 to 2,000 classrooms, and something like 450 to 500 schools in the six states and three countries.

this experience has had radicalizing effect on me because i do not believe in the institutional structure of public schooling any more. the work i continue to do in the schools and i take it seriously for the dying institution. so that, for me is the subtext of what i am about to say. one of the most powerful books i've read in my life has been the metaphor we live by and i just want to give you the two metaphors that structure the peace we root for the volume and lead to my analysis. first is this idea of what i think is actually quite sophisticated that has dominated

the policy discourse and leads to this idea like smith and jennifer in kentuckians on would call this nested hierarchy which is the levels of government and each has comparative the advantage and some function to perform, and the organizing principal within the hierarchy is this idea of coherence and it's something that is deeply affected my practice with schools. the project i ron currently this the most clinical of the practices is called the internal practice which is helping schools develop a culture that's focused on the structure. there are big forces with which ten years from now everybody in this room will be saying we knew

this was happening and we will be taking it for granted. no one is really talking about this. one is the world is moving in its organizational form, this kind of hierarchical model to a model of networks basically. so the central organizing principal for society and learning, forget about schooling for the time being. for learning is and the network relationships. it's not going to be hierarchy. right now with the race to the top we have 1 foot on the brake and 1 foot on the accelerator. both full speed driving coherence down into the organization at a time when the entire world is shifting to another organizational model. if you haven't seen the talk, you should get on line and look at it because this is a person

who's actually described what the world will look like as existence proves. the footnote i would like to put in is one of the things we say in the chapter is the future is now. everything i'm about to say has a scale which should be persuasive to american educators. so the idea that the central organizing principal for the networking is community. he starts in the premise that in most learning settings with high proportion of disadvantaged kids there are not enough teachers to do the work that is necessary so we have to invent a model that underwrites the teaching function basically. i am also working on a program in mexico in the schools in mexico that will now be up to about 6,000 schools to operate

in the networking. so, here is an implication for the argument that we make in the peace coming and i want to say that i am more radical on this set of issues than nicoe authors -- co-authors. inevitably, learning is alive and well in society. the means for access to learning will be more flexible and more responsive to individual demand however disorganized. how it is organized is going to be up for grabs. it will not accommodate well to the hierarchy model and the longer that we stay with the domestic hierarchy model, the worse the association between learning and schooling will be. ..

in which public school organization are trying to accommodate to the digital age are totally dysfunctional, and these institutions will die as a a consequence of that. finally, just an argument about neuroscience, i know i'm actually taking a neuro biology course at berkeley online, and i

look back on my classroom observations and i think this is an institution that once the findings of neurobiology leak in the broader society can't survive. the public classroom and the public school in this country is designed point for point to be exactly the opposite of what we're learning about human how human beings develop cognitively. that is going to be the next big challenge. so there are two big design problems for the future. one is how do we handle issues of access when learning starts to migrate from schooling. -- part of the way we think about learning and what consequences does it have for the way we design learning environments and i refuse to call them schools.

>> all right. pretty straightforward [laughter] heather, just wrap it up. >> what chapters did i read? [laughter] no, i mean, so i'm not sure i'm going to live up to the bell here, i'm going to try to add something substantive to the conversation. as i read these chapters and other chapters -- [inaudible] come back -- [inaudible] and the conversation earlier about poverty. so i have a bunch of people who will be excited in my organization to work in the future schools or learning organizations, et. cetera. i think that is sort of what we need to think about harkening back to andy's comment about the cutoff of 30, that what we have learned our twenty years there are a bunch of young people who are compelled by a mission and

soon they'll be professional doing a lot of different things to build on the strengths and to be continuous learnings. so there are a people out there who look at unbundled work that want to lead and feel comfortable with fluidivity as well as the new technology of learning or cure rating the was in. that's what i see young people doing. but, you know, conventional wisdom and the bureaucracy this is something we live under right now, said to us that more time and more money to quote spike lee is -- and we have got to step away from that and be thinking about how we measure what's important to us, so assessments, that are both qualitative and quantity quantitative. as we see more. i think those things are

important. i'm going try to tell a little ante-dote about our experience at teach for america or maybe just my experience at teach for america whether you're a supporter, i hear many people telling us that of course the ts aers have role in the school and the sector. if you are a -- [inaudible] you think that the tfa solve all the problems and -- [inaudible] in to the promise land. if you have a detractor, you feel like of course the tfaers can be, i think, what andy said cuss codial work workers for awhile. if they manage to stick around and stick it out. we can reward them. i think one of the things that was so appealing to me in the chapter is that as opposed -- [inaudible] thinking about length and

purely, you know, existence or endurance we think about what peoples' talents we can easily identify and put them in. when they master something, we let them try the next best thing for them that will support them. connected to chapter -- and tony's this focus on learning community -- networking community i think it is really important. our organization what it looks like i think we have criticized by this sometimes. we have first and second program year teachers. we ask them for a two-year commitment. i hate to say this public all the time. we are relatively agnostic whether they teach beyond the two years. at 22, which is the mode for them, we think that's okay. when they finish their two years, we know something about them. they have continued to support their development as classroom

teachers. and we pluck those most successful instructors out of the classroom to support their colleagues and their first and second year. what we do is when we're plucking them out and they work for us as an ocean we are capturing everything they learn about becoming better instructor and better managers of students. and about leadership and understanding of the school organization, and then sometimes we put them back in psychological. they leave school, sometimes they work for us and helping develop more training curriculum or speaking on panels like this. so we're constantly trying to learn how to do the work better. the enterprise i think the most successful schools like that, when i was working in boston, i remember that people would point out the principals who were most successful because they broke all the rules, they never asked permission. they restructured whaptd what

happened in the school. they were the good principals and they often rehashed or i'm sorry repurposed their talent in the building without telling anybody not according to the system. all these things seem to resonate. and then i think one other -- and then, you know, eel mor take us to the future of learning. and i think, this again harkins back to do we have assessments that give us confidence that if there's more variation in learning, we can capture it and create safety nets inside the schooling organization -- i want to try not to say school all the time. [inaudible] so we can ensure kids are moving farred in the ways we want to. i'm going jump a little bit just to talk about the poverty issue. and i would say that i'm very nervous that people are going to start calling me so-called or

want to be reformer. you know, people want to reform the system and they take different tax and we're all trying to move in that direction. what we're arguing about is whether or not we can be meet the challenge of being far more imaginative about what is it that we're trying to get done. the barrier between not just k-12 to 16 but 0 to 1st. in the earlier conversation thrfs a lot of question about can arnie duncan be the secretary of education not health and services. what we're finding more and more in early childhood we like to see so many more of the barriers, the visions between just knocked down. and that i think, i think is the opportunity for innovation and choice. if we're going to do this we need to ensure that we have class diversity in the student

population and we need to be trying out some of the great ideas so poor kids are served but middle class parents see that work as something they also want them . >> and do you have any questions for the panelists? if you do i'll be happy for you to ask. >> sure. one big question i have, i think it's probably for rick, and also the hen knick chapter, if or -- i'm sorry -- if we see more variation and learned when things are bundled. how do we address the concern of concentrative poverty where a structure or a building or a location for delivering services is central too getting to those populations. i think that question is one that worries me. >> yeah, that's completely fair question. so this comes up a lot when we

talk about all my learning for instance. that to my mind, some of the most effective schools working with, you know, high poverty kids are effective not necessarily because they are terrific, but because they have got the -- committed to the work, they are wrapping these kids with long school days and long school years and they are create agriculture where the kids can succeed. i have no idea how you replicate through online delivery. it can give you lots of extra opportunities for kids to practice, for kids to get high quality instruction, for kids to, you know, cultivate working memories what different children need to my mind, and i think for me, you know, i'm one of the few people in the town who has concerned about the achievement cap focuses of the education conversation because i think we tend talk about schools which are good at driving up reading and math levels for high needs

kids. i'm not sure that's what we need more of our other children who also i think are entitled to have it. the answer there is we need to make sure that we figure out what is going to work for different children and what they need is the traditional school place they have a sense of order, they have strong and caring adult, they have a long day to keep them safe and inengaged. two thoughts on that, one, think about unbundled not the teachers doing the teachers job. how do we get each kid as much terrific teaching and create much learning as possible. using adults in the community in different ways. even if they don't want to quit the job and found teachers. woodrow wilson foundation -- would like to do teaching. schools for instance offering a one model how do you do. second point, look some of this i would argue the dick was

saying it's not necessarily about kids desire as much as a prediction. we are in a labor market that have been moved. fifty years ago, the average college graduate was going to have a handful of jobs by the retired. today the average college graduate is going to have close to a half dozen jobs by the age of 30. it's not whether we like it or not. if -- same job in to the 20 and 40st. we are fighting uphill similarly in the 1950s 55% of one college graduates went in to teaching. we had a lot of talent rushing in to the door. today the figure is closer to 15 prptd. it's not just that we are suggesting it would be a any ofty way to go. it's partly that the hold model may have made sense in a different labor market. we need to figure out how do we make it work for kids.

>> i think the unbundling conversation and the kind of enceil -- fit together nicely. that if you look at the charters schools they call the teachers at night. they learn through the teachers. it's difficult to be on call 16 hours a day. but if you create a model which is get paid less and live in the building -- that they talk about sort of creating an educational system with lots of different roles and in rick's chapter the model is a hospital with lots of different roles and i think there's a nice way to fit together. there's one quick tie i think a lot of the troubles with the approachizing teacher

and you go to your therapist and they sort out the love life. if '02 a child of a divorce your teacher is going to help with you with everything. [laughter] everything and anything. if we can imagine a world where these sort of extra not extra but the whether we sort of joint and bounded accountability among different actors each having different roles, might make the job of teaching more possible then if teachers could seed more they could gain for status and respect. >> i'm having spent a lot of time in classrooms deeply suspicious that the idea that the highly developed bureaucracy is looking out for the interest of poor kids. i think there's almost no evidence of that. and i just think that we need to open the fact that coherence and

hierarchy have a shadow, and that shadow is paternalism and immediate of course mediocrity. we need to own that, basically. we tolerate variations and equality of teaching practice in the buildings of the name of job secure security and institutional stability that i think the first panel established, we do not tolerate other countries don't tolerate, basically. i'm reminding watching the chicago teacher strike of the african proverb when the elephants fight, only the grass suffers. not a single thing to do with it. it had had to with the

institutional interest of elected officials, unions, and advocacy groups in the community. each of whom who were able to wrap themselves in the interest of children not a single thing is going do change in chicago classrooms as a consequence fundamentally as a consequence of that argument. what i'd like to stipulate is i can rail about that. i see evidence of it in classrooms all the time. the biggest consequence of there are two ways to get ho kerns one is to bring the skills and knowledge level of teachers to the standard the other is standard down to. we have succeeded beyond our wildest expectations that bringing the standard down to the base level of quality in the teaching force.

what i'd like to say is regardless how you feel about that, it's not going last. people won't stand for it. and there, a variety of ways in which people wills cape for this. last time i checked there are over 100,000 kids in florida enrolled in high school taking online courses. why would they want to do that? get the hell out. high school is the second or third most dysfunctional institution in american society. all right. we're doing kids a favor when we talk about the high school dropout rate frankly spending time in high school classrooms is a miracle to me the kids stay at all. right. so what do we have is a dysfunctional institution is going to have operate in a world in which it's totally out of alignment with the emerging demands of the labor market. it's completely, we will

discover, out of alignment with the science about how people learn, and it's a clotted and locked in set of institutional interests that find it impossible to move. so i gate little suspicious when people think about the many different ways we can make this elephant dance, basically. >> so some provocative thoughts there. the strikes me the challenge of getting we do so little to model actually the kind of work that we want students doing all the way up in to the system. and i just in a sense in some ways don't know how we can get out of the way of some of the work each of you describing. i want to draw in the folks that are with us and ask there are questions, comments, again, please identify yourself.

>> thank you. it's good to kind of see some of the harvard people back, i guess. [laughter] [inaudible] for over forty years now, i have been an inner city teacher in cleveland, ohio for six years started charter school in oakland, california, and have been with the private school for 35 years and just retired. and there is a similarity in all of those, and i -- you've talked about this, but to get down to a what really happens, we need supportive teachers who know what the hell they're doing. and they need to be great teachers. they need to understand not only kids but they need to understand parents. and principals need to

understand teachers and they need to understand and help parents. when i taught in the cleveland inner city schools we did all the parent teacher conferences at the parents' home. that was in a tough area in cleveland. we had after school programs for parents to learn sewing, cooking, finances, and so forth, and teachers, i don't know how to -- as being a principal, we need to get the best teachers if possible, and if they're not good to get rid of them. and that's hard to do. it's easier to do in nonpublic schools than public schools. i don't know what else to say. and we need to keep getting those great teachers and getting principals who understand those teachers and could make the school a great school where it's

truly a community where we respect each other, we respect kids, and we do the darnest we can do that. thank you. >> thank you for your comment. anyone . >> i want to say we're moving to an environment in which whether you choose to have a teacher in an organization called school mediate your relationship to learning will be a choice. and how do you choose to mediate that will become a choice in society at large. we're watching now this program in small rural schools in mexico that's not mediated by any kind of professional teachers. it's a tutorial model. none of the teachers are trained teachers. they are blowing the doors off

the national test. we're watching it develop as a community-based social movement, basically. this is a group of people who deliberately chosen not to have the learning of their kids mediated by what we think of as a teacher in at classroom in a school. that will increasingly become available to a lot of people in society. one of the experiments we're going to be running in the next twenty five years is how that's going to shake out. so, rick, i want to draw you in. it strikes me that when you look at the lessons from the highest performing schools and you talk about the principals that know their students, family, and community and do some of the things that heather talked about changing all the you mentioned changing up roles. being adaptive in some ways some of the policy we're setting in place you mentioned sort of going in the exact opposite destruction. i worry they'll accelerate or

perpetuate their inability to adapt to the high performing orbs. i'm curious if you have idea about policy or get out of the way or spark the con decisions that might learn from high performing organization and make them more likely at scale. >> yeah, i think one the places we get stretch we have a profound -- we're profoundly by humility as to what policy can do or can't do. hay t can make people do things. it can't make them do the things women. and -- well and when we think about where policy is useful, for instance, for me, one of the great successes no chld left behind, i have enormous concerns. one of the things it did effective i wa require we assess children regularly and get the results. pocy is good at the kind of thick. it is very clear whether or not you areoing it or not. as soon as you actually get to all of the stuff of that, what

define whether kids aredo we proficient. what the assessment. that iswhere pots gets slippery. what do you about the schools that aren't succeeding. just by way of prologue, while asking the question, there are schools that don't need to do a darn thing of what i'm talking about, and i think are serving their kids fairly well and the family is fie satisfied. i have no desire in forces people to coovers. the schools are effective they have managed on a up with iewf basis to create much of what i was talk abouting. they some kinds of the the kids because these are districts that have a huge track record of being talented educators they have managed of themselves to create the conditions where you can do the stuff that he's talking about. high quality instruction women. the trouble it goes back fort

years, when we see the things that characterize effective schools it turns out to be harder than we like it to be. to make them travel to other settings, and the reason it's hard to make them travel is we can't export the families, as much as we -- [inaudible] we can't get those kinds of teachers and other settings. so it's not so much that they are suggesting is a new model that ought to be mandated by policy. what we do today only works in some places where some kids that have the greens in place. and we're talking about how do we start to make those ingredients widely available by making better resource of the use and talent. what policy can do on this is one policy can make it easier to use those ingredients. if you are a engineer, i have a friend she graduated m.i.t. twentd years ago. she quit her job as a full time engineer. he consults and works

freelance. if you are a educator in most systems and you make that choice, we don't know what to do with you any longer. we have created roll definitions that are hostile total end, that are make it difficult for use to retain people. policy can help there. it can help us think differently about pension portability and access to health care, help us think differently about job description, contracts, rules, who is eligible for title i funds. the policy can also do i refer to andy and sara's paper just a moment ago. what policy can do is make sure as we are creating default norms how we're going to hold school accountable we take great care to build in sliding doors people who are coming up with smarter solutions and people who want to get outside of the traditional institution are not hemmed in. i think wehavedo a horrific job on that piece of it in the last ten years. >> okay. thank you.

let's take one last question or comment. >> hi. my name is [inaudible] former university professor. my question is for professor elmore, i found your comments enmously eocative and i agree with almost everything you said. i am a little used about the notion of the separation between school a arning. that i understand the disintegrated impulse behind your tinking, and amentely sympathize with that emotion and that impulse. the part that would -- presumely follow that, the integrated impulse behind your tnking is not so clays to me. for example, the things -- the example thaty gave about

stentsfleeing teachers to spend endless hours on online courses. is to me no solution. to a national problem. that csh so this is an open-ended question to you. how would you then reintegrate the approach to learning, not school -- learning so that example things like culture are transmitted, for example, -- so that students students are guided toward aspects of the past, for example. things that the nation values that culture values, and that students would know nothing about. >> we will live the program at this point. there are a couple of minutes left. you can see it in the entirety go to the c-span website and duoto c-span according and look for the videoibrary.

we are going live to the brookings institution kofi annan is here to discuss the life and efforts and protecting human rights inspect is live coverage. >> goodafnoon. it is my great pleasure welcome you here this afternoon for wh i going to be a particularlymeningful event. we are particularly honored there wobe so many members of the diplomatic corp. based here in washington as well as other distinguished visitors. the event comes under the banner of a series run by ouroreign policy program here at brookings. called statesmen's forum. i don't i have to persuade any of you that are special guests today cough any -- kofi annan is one of the most em eminent, accomplished statesmen of our time. he was the seventh secretary

general of the united nations. the first to come from sub-saharan africa, and very significantly the first to rise up through the ranks of the united nations organization. along with the institution that he joined fifty years ago, he won and the u.n. won the 2001 noble peace prize. the occasion for his visit here to washington and the brookings today is the publication of his book, which 'm hppy to say is on sale for any of you interested in picking up a cop after the program. the title of the book is " interventions; a life and war and peace." i'm going to make a couple of comments on the title, and that let kofi tell you about the

contents of the book. "intervention" is a piece of diplomatic jargon for the right that officials and ambassadors have to speak up when they have a mind to do so in the course of formal meetings. it's something of a pun, because it refers to kofi's conviction that the united nations is, i'm here quoting from the book, an agent of intervention and every sphere of human activity including, of course, when the international community intervenes to stop carnage and may ham around the world and especially when exercising international's community responsibility to protect, a concept that kofi articulated and championed. now finally, there's the subtitle of the book, which has

a -- ring. war and peace. kofi has devoted the life that he's writing about in this book to preserving peace whenever and whenever possible. and when force has been necessary as it was in the bull kins in the 1990est he has been equally committed to restoring peace as quickly as possible. the program is going to proceed this way. kofi is going to offer about twenty minutes of opening remarks. and e i will get the conversation with those of you in the room going and then turn the proceedings over to you so you'll have a chance to put questions to him. this event is getting live coverage, so those of you on itter n tweet using the hashtag fpannan. so kofi, welcome to washington. welcome to brookings, and

welcome to the digital age. [applause] [applause] thank you. when you started, i was worried that you were going to use the issue phrase a man who doesn't need an introduction. i've had a bitter experience and when i stepped down as secretary general, my wife and i decided after ten years we were tired and needed to take a bit of a break. we boar borrowed a friends' house in italy. it was adjacent to the forest. you could walk out of the house and go to the mountainings and walk without going to the village. and we were determined that we will have no radio, television, or newspapers. after six weeks of this, i became very bored. [laughter] i told my wife, let's go to the

village and see if we can gate paper. we barely intend to shop. i saw five men in the corner staring at one of them. one broke off and made straight for me. i tend not nod and say oh my gosh, we have six weeks to go and we're blowing our cover. by then the fellow was on top of me, and he put his hand out and said morgan freeman. [laughter] [laughter] may i have an autograph? [laughter] so i said sure. [laughter] so i signed freeman -- [laughter] he was happy app and we kept our anonymity. but on a more serious note, i'm happy to be here with you this afternoon. and often people ask me why did you decide to write a book, and

i said i have been fortunate to be working for the united nations that perhaps one of the most crucial times in our history, and i lived through many difficult and exciting events. and i i felt it should be good for me to write and share my experience and leave some lessons behind. i tried to do an honest book, i have tried to do an honest book, and i have also -- i have also decided if i was going to write this book, i should do it in a way that the average person will also understand, and the u.n. -- as most of you know is an organization that has many stories. weapon can't tell our stories. not even the successful ones. it's not very good and not very easy to tell the story of the

u.n. and it's difficult because of the way we sometimes describe the u.n. the u.n. is all of us, your government and mine. when we tend describe the u.n. as they and it, it really creates a barrier and an al by to -- for inaction of governments. anyway, for me this whole international adventure started in the gulf coast when i was a boy and the struggle for independence began. i came of age when the struggle of ghana's independence at the time. and it was the first -- [inaudible] young men growing up and seeing rapid changes around you where suddenly you have a kenyan prime minister, you have a ken began police, ken ken yen head of the

military. you grow up believing that change is possible even very fundamental and radical change is possible. i must say that experience marked me throughout my life. but i have always felt we shouldn't accept things because it is done this way or the way we did it. we should challenge and question. why are we doing it this way. why can't we change. i think that lesson served me well. from there, i came the foundation citizenship to -- scholarship to study in minnesota. one of the coldest places i had ever been. [laughter] and of course, for a tropical child happened to put on liers and layers of clothing to stay warm, that was -- but i tell my young friends that was one piece of -- one item i said i will never use.

the ear muffs. i thought they were inelegant. i said i would never wear them until one morning i went to get something to eat and almost felt like losing my ears. the next day i went to find the biggest pair. elegant or not. i walked away with a important lesson pop you don't walk in to a situation and behave as if you know better than the natives. you have to listen to them. that lesson has stayed with me. i can tell you that. we became independent in 1957, and of course, we all created speck stations for of a exap all -- all of us as young people felt we were going get education and helped develop our continue innocent and make a difference. of course, it didn't go the way we had expected. ghana and malaysia became independent the same year.

began ghana in march and malaysia august, '57 when you look at the two countries we are -- at the time of independence we had almost the same amount of national reserves, economic [inaudible] almost at par. but today they per per-capita-income of malaysia is thirteen or fourteen times of ghana. my question is leadership. we went through the series of -- [inaudible] in fact the -- took place in ghana. we went through series of governments and each government comes in and begins afresh. they brush aside what the overs have done and begin and really set us back very, very badly. i have moved away from the culture which was essential for the continent we had an

advantage. now we are returning to the culture. today we are very good at growing what we don't eat, cocoa, coffee, and flower and import what we eat. we are trying to reverse that and ensure that at least we can feed ourselves. but of course, from minnesota i went i joined the world health portion the budget office fifty years ago. i said true indicater. and at that time i said i was going do two years and go home. two years has become fifty years almost. i had also decided in the meantime i could go home for two years, had constant battle with a leaders of the military charge. so i left again. when i left, went back toot u.n., i decided that the u.n. may be is going to be my home, and later and also convinced

myself that i could serve my nation by serving the international community well. so the u.n. became my home. and of course, i worked for the organization in various locations, and i see many people here colleagues who worked with me in the middle east, some in egypt andth yoap yew and other parts. but -- [inaudible] may i have a -- [inaudible] i went through various cannots and 1992 i took over, i joined the department of peace keeping. it was a crucial time. a time when the cold war had ended -- in '89 there was sudden

excitement in the u.n. and the security counsel with the sense of optimism that we can finally take all the decisions we have not been able to take because of the cold war. and when you look at the u.n.'s record from that period on, peace keeping exploded. you could get decisions on peace keeping. apart from the end of the cold war, my predecessor was asked to do a report for the counsel, and that report opened the door if for the u.n. to become active in internal civil war situation. the counsel approved it. i don't think we the had time nor the will to look at the implication of the switch. it is one thing to crb ceasefire agreement between two countries with organized army and another thing to get caught in a civil

war situation whether in somalia, congo, or elsewhere. it's required that different type of mind set, different type of resources, different type of trained soldier and the possibility that you will face conflict and you may have to flight. and there will be greater risks which also meant not only should we accept there will be greater risk but explain to the population this peace keeping is not risk 0 free. and we -- each time there was a number of casualties, governments pulled out their troops, the first encounter wasesome somalia, when the u.s.a. plane was shot down and the soldiers dropped through the streets. the u.s. withdraw the troops and everyone else followed. particularly those from the western countries.

and this, of course, was happening in 1993, 1994 at the time when we were confronted with rwanda, i covered that very completely in the book the crisis of somalia and the difficulties we faced in rwanda we were not in a position to help the rewanda people at the time of need. i'm not sure we could have stopped everything. we could have been able to do a bit more. there were 800,000 people got killed. of course, there was bosnia, where we lived through the night where -- [inaudible] 8,000 people were marched out and killed. and all of this really, fur me, was a personal journal. gore any. having to go through rwanda, boss bosnia and somalia. what would a international community do to ensure we stop

such strategy. we don't accept it without reaction. and then came closet kosovo -- [inaudible] on the crisis. the question of use of force to protect the people came up, the counsel didn't have to approve it because the countries that were prepared to go in knew if they went to the counsel, it may be vetoed. in the way after the action, there was a vote, an indirect vote, which given twelve votes, if i recall which indicated there was a -- [inaudible] and i was challenged as secretary general how can you support use of the force without a security counsel approval? and i made it clear that there are times when exceptions, there are times when you have to put force of the service and peace

kosovo was one of those. there was no way the international community could have sat back knowing what [inaudible] had done in bosnia and sit back and allow them to repeat in kosovo. what justification would we have had? i've also had the opportunity of becoming quite involved in the middle east peace search for peace in the middle east and for a long time, the secretary general had been not been engaged in peace in the middle east between the israelis and the palestinians. we managed when i was there to become engaraged engaged with the creation of the -- and working with the government in the government in iran and working on that with me. we managed to get the u.n. involved and i hoped that with the creation of the corp. debt and concentrated action and

[inaudible] we would have been able to move the process forward. we came up with a road map and the ambassador in israel -- we tried everything but it didn't work out the way it was meant to work out. we had struggle and i was shocked a few weeks ago when [inaudible] was in agree knee have a, the two-state solution is dead and we should have one-state solution which of course, has always been on -- [inaudible] coming from somebody like him it was striking. we also worked with the lebanon and israel for the withdrawal of the israeli troops from lebanon, whichic was a courageous move by prime minister -- [inaudible] israel political sphere. i think it was a bold decision,

and they withdraw and i satisfied that israel had withdrawn from lebanon, and the other issue in the middle east where i came involved is hezbollah fight and israel. it was a israeli -- ais a met -- blank blng for israel it was a heavy price to pay because if the best organizing and the most respected in the region in the minds of the ordinary people cannot defeat hezbollah, where is the strength? at the time, of course, in the confrontation we knew for hezbollah survivor was victory. if they survived they felt they had won. but that confrontation had less of a side effect in the region

suddenly hezbollah had become very popular. i'm not saying it is popular today. at the time it was very popular because of that confrontation. i don't want to go in to too much. in the book i deal with the need of people who are working on peace to meet all leaders including dictators and -- they ask you how can you meet with so and so. how do you make a difference. how do you get people to change their minds? how do you push them if you don't talk to them? you know, we will all want to talk to friendly people, but there are other ones doing the killing. if you want to stopping killing, you have to talk to those who are responsible for those kinds of behavior. let me say a word about some of the social issues where the ub has also been involved and intervened whether on the

humanitarian crisis after a disaster like the tsunami or the case hiv/aids where the u.n. had to intervene to try and save lives. , and not only the topic of global fund to fight hiv/aids, malaria, tour berk low sis, the first check of $200 million came from president george bush here in washington. he later on came up with his own program putting out $5 billion a year to fight the disease. but that was a first time the world had come together to focus on the disease of that kind, and i recall not only pushing governments money, but getting the pharmacies to play the parts. and had a meeting in amsterdam with seven large farm pharmaceutical companies urging them to reduce the prices so the

poor can afford it. if they have medication that can save lives but the poor cannot have it, it was going to be difficult to defend the intellectual property. at the time, they had taken mandela to court in south africa because mandela threatened to use license -- and produce generics for the people. i said i'm not a public relation expert, you have to be a real genius to sue mandela in african court. if you win, you lose, and lose and lose. take it now and pull it back and try to settle it privately. it was done. in the end they dropped the cost of medication quite drastically. at that time it was about 15,000 per year. it was now $150 per person.

and the medication that protect mother to child transmission, they gave that medication away for free. we are going to have a conversation. let me conclude by saying the book deals with a -- of intervention. [inaudible] who worked on that are here in the room. nay came up with six clusters of threats that should be of concern to all of us. this including economic and social threats, poverty and sexual diseases, and the environment, and the environment. interstate conflict, and intrastate conflict. it dealt with nuclear biological weapons. terrorism and internationally organized crime. these are all issues that u.n. intervenes in, there are issues

that affect all of us. and this intervention is something that we should be prepared to play our role. that is one point. the other point i would want to make is that international community has a crucial role to play in build and help the societies based on the rule of law. healthy societies in my judgment rely on three pillars; peace and security, sustainable development, respectful rule of law, and human rights,. and the third is the most important. if you do not develop a rule of law in human rights, you are building on sand. in fact this is what you notice in africa. i'm sure three years ago if i had asked those of you in this room what you think of tunisia, i would have received the

answer, great place. great tourist destination, very stable, secure, and economically they are doing well. we will not talk about that pillar. it's a lack of the third pillar that lead to the arab spring that we are seeing. so it is extremely important that when we are assessing governments we don't focus on security and equipment develop. we look at the essential third pillar. the other lesson that we came away with is sovereignty should not be used as a shield behind which governments brutalize their own people or refuse to protect them. this is where the responsibility to -- protect came in. the responsibility to protect places responsibility on both sides. responsibility on the government -- the government concerned. and on those of us outside the

country because we can no longer see the internal affairs. some issues are so shameful we cannot sit back. we're compelled to react. i'm not talking of only military intervention. there could be on economic, political, and other measures. use of force is a last resort. and i think we have to -- as we look forward, i think we need to think of the individuals in the nation, we have tended to look at sovereignty as a national, something that belongs to the government and we don't stress the responsibility of other people and they are responsibility to the people. if you bring in the consent of the individual, you're looking at completely different situation.

but let me leave you with an african proverb. you cannot bend the wind. so bend the -- and we are all going to have to be part of the effort to improve our world. and we need to be part of changes we want the world to be. we cannot sit back. i'll give my conversation with my god friend. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] [inaudible] kofi, thank you so much for

getting us of to a terrific short and very shortly we'll give our friends a chance to interact with you. i'm sure that during the course of the conversation we'll want to come back to your final comments about responsibility to protect, the limits of sovereignty and the responsibility of both parties in the context of the very, very tough mission, one of many tough and thankless missions you took on even after you left the position of secretary general in syria. before we get to that, i've noticed that early in your book, and then reintegrated throughout it, was an emphasis on the significance that the u.n. charter speaks in the voice of the peoples', not the nations but the peoples of the world. and that resonates, i think, with your comments here and the stress that you put on

development. looking ahead to 2015, what would your advice be to your excess or excess successor -- who has been made the executive secretary of the effort to the high level panel that's going to look at diswoment goals on how to be more effective in bringing the resources of the international community to bear on the neediest and those who need health care? >> thanks for that question. i know, there is lots of discussion going on about sustainability development and this panel co-chaired by three heads of state. i believe that the development goals are structured identifies the basic needs of individuals of the poorest in our society, and challenges governments to

try and work with society to fulfill these needs. the needs are so basic in a primary education to reduce the number of people who are starving, clean water, these are so basic that every government has to try and beat. many governments around the world have made progress. indian why, china, brazil, in particular have lifted millions of people out of poverty, and in fact both brazil and china made the development goal part of the development and somaticically move toward. i believe by 2015, some countries have not actually -- there will be many who will not have obtained that goal. we should challenge them to persevere, to persevere to provide these basic needs for their people.

those who have achieved them should be challenged to aim higher. let's take education, if you have universal primary education, you may want to begin to look up secondary education. you may begin to want to look at trade schools, and move the people forward. there were discussions about perhaps focusing on two of the goals, let's say education and health. which was very difficult because if you focus on health or education, you will be asked about clean water about mortality, and so i think the base that we have should be maintained. when we were putting together this, there were lots of issues e couldn't include. one of the discussions i had was my colleagues should we include migration? because we saw it as an issue which was going to become quite

crucial, we couldn't include it. there may be possibility of filling in some gaps. you can fill in gaps and issue which were perhaps not highlighted enough with the -- the question of the climate change and other things, but i think the basic requirements that we have identified we should encourage governments to meet. has been a theme you have said over the years. particularly in recent years, as you travel around is if your sense there is a growing constituency for making climate change and the med gracious anded a adaptation to it more of a priority..

but i have seen some surprise reactions and evidence of some people that you wouldn't expect to be worried about climate change. i was an east africa two weeks ago, and i had been in a moly 18

months earlier one because we work on this alliance of the green revolution in africa and we went to look at a project and there was a farmer telling us i switched crops. i am now using this because the rains do not come as my mother or grandfather told me. they are too short. if i get this variety i will lose all of my crops. i'm using this banana because it requires less water in the changes in the climate i am safer with this one. so underground the farmers are telling us and doing what is required, but we and the citizens in the other political parliament and others are not pushing as hard as we should to be given to give them the

support and their adaptation techniques and resilience they need to be able to move forward but nothing is happening under ground. >> i'm going to permit myself one more question but then i'm going to hope hands will go up around the room and we will be able to bring all of you in on the conversation. this is a question about what's happening in europe, and specifically not just the year goes on but the european project and the reason that i've been thinking about it in the context of reading your book is that europe has been arguably more progress than any other region in the world, and advancing the cause of transnational governments while continuing to respect the sovereignty of states that is in some trouble now. but for the effect it will have on the cause that you've devoted

your life to. >> i pray and hope that europe survives, and my instinct is that it will survive, but it is worrying in the sense that even though the commission is many decades-old, the concept that sometimes a collective interest is in the national interest hasn't been thoroughly of salt because when i look at the way they started with greece, i think it was a problem of greece, not a problem for europe, and they were not disciplined enough and others were trying very hard then it became political and was treated as a peripheral issue, but in

the periphery as an incredible ability to dominate the center if you ignore the periphery. the periphery dominates the center and we have seen it now in europe. if they had accepted from the beginning that we are in this together we are in a common food and approach that we i think europe would have been ahead of the turf because they didn't. they have taken a lot of moves but it's always behind the curb. i recall the press conference in brussels they were complaining about all sorts of things and what had happened and reminding them that there are many regions which would love to have your problems. in fact europe is a wonderful example.

along the european lines which was not realistic they started with six countries and objectively and in much better condition, 54 now that would have begun to form, but the dream is there. we see it in latin america. so if you're up talks in those terms if it were to fail it would be a real disaster for the way we manage this world of ours, and in that respect i know that some people have wondered why the nobel committee give the prize to the european union, but i supported that the european union has made such a contribution and managed to bring europe together after the devastating war and the last

century and constructed a union and created a project which makes the war in europe unthinkable so encouraging them to stay the course, not to let fall apart and cheering them on, so it is a good choice. >> ambassador strong enough norway is here and i'm sure he will report that back to tawes maldon. >> questions? the director of the foreign policy program. >> thank you, secretary general, for your leadership in the united nations and statesmanship and honoring us with your presence here today to launch the book. i wonder if you could ask about syria because here is a case of

the international community seemingly unable to support the principal of responsibility to protect some 30,000 syrians have died already and the number is going up and looks like no hope any time soon. and you made a firsthand effort to travel the international community in this regard. what can you tell us about the lessons of that experience and what is the hope of change? >> thank you for that question. i think the situation is a very complex one. one of those who believes that military intervention may take the problem worse and one of those who believes that further

militarization could get the situation worse. we are almost into a sectarian war which can stretch beyond the region and we are seeing that conflict that has spread beyond the region. and i have set in the past that syria, unlike libya will not implode, that is likely to explode beyond the borders. we often focus on the shia and the sunnis and the minority from the christians to the jews who are also caught in the middle, and part from these groups that is a movement that started as a grassroots partisan movement. but those peaceful political voices demanded democracy today

squeezed out. we are focused on the military. my own view is we should have pursued the online on the 30th of june where the foreign ministers can together, the foreign ministers of the permanent five, secretary of state clinton was a lover of war with the foreign ministers of kuwait and iraq and secretary-general of the u.n. and the arab league. we agree the way forward is a political settlement and political transition. and that transition meant the government was for the secretary power. that implies the government in the past has to go out. and they went on to say that you need to maintain the security forces by keeping the top leadership so that they can ensure security and also contain

and protect the weapons, the chemical and biological stockpile and the institutions should work and each group interest would be looked after. in other words, you are telling them this is the alternative. it's not going to be the winner takes all. and even if they don't go, they will not take hold in the situation. neither side will give up unless you have them and give them an alternative of the sort. and i had hoped that when they return to new york they would focus on the substance, the substance of the political settlement and for the first time all of them in russia and that when they go back to new york the focus on the referenced chapter seven with the russians and the chinese have told us in new york they wouldn't accept.

so in the process we drop the substance and we are convinced sooner or later they will have to go back to this. let me also add that on this responsibility to protect the international community will not be a will to intervene in every situation and they will be accused of double standards. but my answer to that and every situation does not mean you shouldn't intervene where you can and do it to make a difference. there are situations where the use of force would make the situation much worse. that we should look up and say not even close to that force, but i think some governments have made the calculation the fastest way to end the conflict in syria is to arm one side or the other to have a victory over the other side.

it isn't going to happen. they are only going to get more people for what. in the and they need to look at the political settlement. >> with your answer to martin's the fifth question for just a second you know the russian leadership. you know that the russians have concerned that once again their support for the chapter 7 solution would come back to haunt them and the region but at the same time they are paying a considerable price in the arab world where they have diplomatic equities and interest. d.c. their position changing over time? >> i hope everybody is extremely concerned at the moment because it is getting worse and it will get worse. i did discuss this the russian leadership in putting with putin and going to discuss this issue

he shared with me the concerns. i tried in geneva to push for the arms embargo and raise a question on chapter seven with them. that maintained that they were deceived in libya, they didn't stop the libyan operation. the abstained instead hoping that we would go in and help the people come protect the people, but that solution was transformed so quickly into the regime change that what i am referring to would be the slippery slope and they would find themselves with a libya situation. second, he believed the what happens in syria would impact on russia and its neighborhood. that they would have the islamic problem.

he argues it's very lucky to distance with to oceans on either side and it's not as opposed as russia is and nobody has been able to tell them what happens when al-assad leaves. they also believe they grow at around which pushes them to dig his heels in and that is just not going to happen. the conversation i had with him was not going to have been the the to happen and the key question is what happens when he leaves. this is when they become important. let me for the article covers this same. for argument sake let's assume everybody agrees with the political settlement and a

transition and for the purpose of the year to go through the political transition. the key question here becomes at what point does assad leave? they argue that with him and place, you will not be able to make any changes or go through. for them assad must go up front. the russians would want assad to go but may be on the point you establish the entered on the government with the full executive authority to be able to ensure that everything stays in place even when you move him out. when you tell the iranian is, they tell me including the level five spoke to the foreign minister, the national security adviser and the president they have the same message when i pushed them that we have said he

may have to go but they should be allowed to decide through the elections even if it is organized on the u.n. authority one shlaes phrase they gave is that democracy is a solution. then they tell you what what is good for syria is good for bahrain and they let it hang and i am sure they will mention other countries which will have to go through the same thing. so they're looking at it from their own. so within that one year period, the difference i see is at what point does he lead? so for those that want assad to lead up front, one year is too

long. for those that want a mechanism in place so things don't collapse let him go up front. it's not realistic. and when people are that close it would seem to me it is to find a way of working together and pushing things forward. honestly on the security council comes together and fines unef deanne degrees on the common approach. the of common interest in the region but the way that everybody is going to lose whatever interest they have is going to go for everybody and they will pay the biggest price. they are the ones we should all be crying for so we will see what happens. they will probably go back and i would want to see a situation where the u.s. and russia come

together to the explore what could be the solution and work with the others to pull them in and find a way for it to happen without them. into syria just as it happened in libya, and in libya and in a country like mali also calls to mind the experience that you and we had in the balkans during the height of that war. >> this gentleman here and then there in that order. >> it is an honor for me to be here. i am a student at georgetown law

the 1.2 million refugees and 2.5 year right now in mexico we have been -- we have seen people in the last five years still leaving a country we have 10 million people in poverty and we have illegal refugees that live here in the united states. so what your position, the moral obligation of the government towards the citizens be to the war on drugs that has been going for the last five years, and i would like to remember the council of the u.n. on security for the repression which means it generates more violence so what would be your stand in the war on drugs than mexico faces?

>> i have a feeling she is going to need a good lawyer. [laughter] i know that the drug issue is a big one in mexico and its becoming a big issue globally. last year there was a global commission on drugs headed by a former president of brazil. i was on that commission and the main point in the report was to recommend the decriminalization, not to the legalization because of the way the lobby is applied. we have applied them for decades it has the prison filled with lots of people who sometimes come out destroyed for half an ounce of whatever and that we should have education, health

issues, rather than brutal reaction. it's also the responsibility on the side of the -- we often focus on the supply side, but there's also the demand side. they have to work together. i know mexico has consent about the gun shops along side the border of the u.s. and the free flow of arms that goes into mexico to fuel the war. at the same time when you look at the result of the efforts, most people would tell you that it hasn't worked. it has gotten a lot of people killed. there is a need for change in policy, but it has to start with a debate and discussion because there are very strong emotions on either side. the global commission report which was shared by cardoza but i was the one that was attacked

by the drug saying that we are trying to lift the distribute the drugs freely, so we have to start with the debate and i think the whole approach has to be reviewed. i was worried that you were going to say we should go and intervene in mexico. that's why i said you are going to be a good lawyer. [laughter] >> hello, i am in the public law and policy group. my question is regarding the stability to protect something in your book and its regarding what to say about libya and syria. i was wondering if you have any comments in establishing the

mandate for i know your position and syria is not but when you have to intervene so that nato has enough flexibility to combat but also has a strict standard to prevent like what happened with gadhafi. >> let me stressed a responsibility to protect. it's not just military with me give you an example i lived through is the example where after the elections and 1300 people were killed, 650,000 are protested and the three or four neighboring countries will are

at a standstill eastern congo. they all rely on the infrastructure so things can to a standstill and the price is shorter and this is put through the two tribes that were facing a mubiru -- rwanda and the life of president nelson mandela to see what we can do to stop the killing. we managed to get them to agree to a four coalition government and agree on all list of reforms including the new constitution to pass that referendum in 2010. during that period the cooperation with the

international community was incredible. the european union, the african union and of the u.n. as we all worked hand in glove just to give you an example even when the u.s. government decided to put sanctions on individuals who are disrupting the process who are playing the role without telling me the name, checking the time and right. they said the right time to be counterproductive. was that sort of cooperation. and they told these individuals it's not just for you, it's for all of your children studying in the states and your wife that is out shopping and not releasing the list was even more powerful.

all the means sometimes better put some pressure, but on the question of syria, when you talk of nato flexibility, that presupposes the council the coalition led by nato to go and do what you suggested they would do. but i am not sure that is likely scenario to happen that often. given the history that we just discussed. but i think even in the situations where you do not have the military option where you cannot use force one has to beget other things which are viable because really today some of the countries in the region would want to see intervention.

they also know the intervention wouldn't take place without nato. they want nato to come in and if they are not willing to go in, shouldn't we be looking at other options as to how we help to get the situation under control to create the impression that help is coming and encourages people, and many more people get killed. >> yes, sir, right here. >> mr. secretary-general, i'm the chief of law student at sais and want to ask about libya again. recently they launched a report showing in detail the report called the death of a dictator how there were dozens of loyalists that were executed and i was wondering how the

international community can encourage the current government to prosecute but him and watch described correctly as war crimes. >> i think the situation on the ground in libya is very difficult. we are trying to establish institutions. gadhafi didn't run the most space institution based regime. it was scratched in many ways. so we already have this debate going on whether they should be tried in libya or who of icc and it is likely to get a fair trial. at the same time you can't take everybody you have to have local capacity to deal with these kinds of impunity, and it's going to take time. i don't have a clear answer for your question. they can encourage them and the

systems to be able to deal with these but it does take time. but they have seized the situation particularly in the case of some other prominent ones and not sure what is said if he will be on this and we face the situation in kenya where you have institutions, but there were thousands or hundreds involved in the displacement of the 650,000 we've been present for five years set up in the local tribunal to deal with all those that are not and let me say on libya again it's

important because the attempt to mediate in syria and to give assad more time to kill people. i've never had a honestly don't even try. don't give the people hope. let them go on and kill each other and this is propagated by those that are seeking intervention who wanted to use force to settle the situation. i'm sure they are in the same number who replaced me, but the problem is not a mediator. its protagonist who will refuse to stop the problem as those that are fueling the war by sending weapons on either side. they have over one year to

result this before i got in. i have never had this nonsense before. >> before we go to other questions i would like to stay with that region of the world for entirely understandable reasons we've been getting questions including one by me at the beginning. but the two most violent and disturbing situations. but there's a phenomena that swept all across the world. we keep giving it a different names. the arab awakening. how do you assess that general phenomena and is there some good news there as we have been very focused on? >> one has to look country by country and its regional impact,

and that regional impact can even spread beyond the arab region and they say they can direct my not? we have similar problems. when it comes to the outcome and the result it will differ from country to country. to -- tunisia getting it right egypt has challenges. it's a big country. it has a part on top of the political problems they are going to be seen as economic problems. these are countries that have lived on into the tourists have stopped coming. investments are not going in. so if you are not careful you will get in a situation where

you will have not just political problems but economic and social which makes it messy and the leaders will take over immediately and get challenged what have you done for us? why are we still in this situation and you are also dealing with the newly acquired freedom and new sense of independence and democracy. i always go back to the comment who as a young boy went through india and he says people in democracies do not stop. they will get rid of you. they know how to challenge the leaders and this is something that we need to bear in mind as we see developments in the region. what is also interested me so far is the most organized and

cohesive force appears to be the islamic brotherhood. and when he have this sort of situation, the organized always win the day. they've done well when he chipped and in tunisia. i wouldn't be surprised if they do well in syria. this sometimes gives the impression to people that you have a hegemony of allied believe they should be a bit more lax. muslims and islamists for becoming prominent in politics and they don't want to see catholics and poverty. >> you are dreaming but how can we work with them and you can be

islamic. all these movements have taken placen but not against the monarchies how long will that hold triet will determine that direction i think that is something we need to watch out for. >> david? >> crucial episodes and the issue that you are in and its

candid and honest and informative what but you don't do yourself justice in this latest in this book. i would put it in a phrase when we were working together during the tenure as we work closely together and you started to speak about a culture of prevention what happened since you began your intervention there is a long way to go thinking of the long-term potential contribution. it's exceedingly important and i wish you'd say something to this audience as many of the people here have not heard it is a very well kept secret to divert as much of your time and energy to

try to create the prevention if not today or tomorrow in ten or 20 years. >> the first half of the content will be a blurb on the paperback version. you have diluted quite a lot on this issue. unfortunately there is so much that has gone on and so much that has been done to make some choices we have a 10,000 page book and i don't like to read long books and intellect it on anybody but david is right the culture of prevention this is truly important, and if we can prevent the crisis before they explode, we are way ahead and of

the game to get the organization governments and institutions around the world to focus on prevention where are we going to get the troops and the money to intervene? it would be much better approach which is good. so the gap will be filled. it's very important as early yesterday i was talking to somebody about diplomacy. and i say that a lot of investors here saying that we tend to focus on the military as the only group that defends us and yet diplomacy should be seen as a first line of defense, a first line of trying to met the

problem and the bug and attempt to diffuse but we don't want to invest in at but often don't want to give it to the preventive action. >> i'm from sais. i'm indonesian, so -- >> are you also a lawyer? >> i'm studying international relations and first you elaborate in the books and

continue happening and help to be resolved in the world. and i also suspect whether you have taken the need for the u.n. to be informed in terms of the decision making process and with the members how will you see it affecting the conflict in the world? >> by the way, i would have answered this question even if i were secretary-general. [laughter] i believe the council and u.s. should be reformed and i have made that clear. the financial institutions in washington and the security council should be reformed. as the secretary-general i propose the creation of about five to six additional seats not

with vetoes because it is indefensible that they don't have a single permanency in the world's population doesn't have a seat. they don't have a single seed or japan for that matter. on top of that and put in the country which are becoming quite powerful and influential, and i think we need to reform the council for other regions. it's fair in terms of representation in the democracy. if it is not done the council was going to come under stress and pressure. the sort of collaboration you may get into district where some will begin to challenge.

the structure reflects the realities of 1945. the world has changed and we have to adapt. people ask why didn't you take away the features? it's not going to happen. you need the agreement of the country in the veto. >> that is now going to happen. but reform is essential and will,. maybe sooner than we think because there will be pressure. >> usa in your book at one point that the institution is catching up with the new configuration of power in the world and is at a

turning point comparable to the one that occurred in the standing. >> i believe in that because of what we have seen around the world, not just so much of what is happening in the middle east but also the emergence in the civil society and the private sector and people to people context has changed quite a lot of the way that we used to do business, and i think that we should be asking ourselves what should we be doing, but structures to we need, what adjustments to the need? i don't think we are asking that enough but we need to take up this challenge. >> a lady in the back. can you get a microphone to her?

>> [inaudible] macedonia was denied the constitutional means by its neighbor, greece and it's going on for 20 years now. as the general secretary you didn't find a solution. what do you think now is the solution that is possible? >> well, the countries have been discussed for a while and i think he's one of the longest special envoys talking to you and at one point it looked to see if you had an agreement that's filled apartment

macedonia seems ready to accept any compromise that has the word macedonia but i'm not sure that increase is ready for that. the discussions are going on and there are other priorities in the region and other challenges in the region. i cannot say because i'm not that close to it but this issue has dragged on for so long, and hopefully one will find a way out. >> this gentleman right here. >> i wanted to take you to africa and the opening remarks

the united nations could have done more to address the genocide in rwanda, maybe not the topic but little bit more, and given the historical lessons that we have got that we have seen the conflict merge from rwanda to eastern congo and now we see the islands as an experience working in intervention and as a former u.n. secretary-general. what are your thoughts on perhaps replicating the success we have seen in kenya to hopefully bring peace in the region? think you. >> i think it is quite different and it's not going to be that easy to replicate what happened in kenya. first of all, you have a

situation that if i may put it this way that effective government is under control, and it is extremely difficult to get the international community to send in the size of the force required to tame the region and pacify that region. i hear people talk about the u.n. of the 17,000 troops in congo. you know and i know that given the fact of the country which is almost the size of western europe, 17,000 if it is nothing when the bush party sent in troops to somalia and remember the size to help with the humanitarian assistance there were thousands.

in fact when you add all of the support from all of the other troops from other countries it was close to 900,000. and we saw even the difficulties we've run into no one is granted if us troops anywhere near that number to then pacify congo and the neighbors to work together in a sustained effort to. we need a mediator who will sit with them and really work very hard with them and their other pressures and perhaps on himself to do the right thing, with the replication is not possible. >> yes, right there. do you have one? >> first i would like to say it

is nice to be here. i am a scholar and i have a question to the u.n. troops which our action will now and what is your perspective over that and what is the future of the u.n. to place? >> i know that there are lots of people who believe that the dutch soldiers should be held accountable. for those of you that are not familiar the case, it is a location found in bosnia but the u.n. declared safe haven. it declared a safe haven with all of the resources to protect

it as a safe haven. i was involved in the peacekeeping operations at the time when they started talking of the safe havens i asked one of my generals to do a report for us and indicate what it entails. the report was enlightening and said if you are going to create a safe haven that has to enlarge itself about every 36 square damages to allow the people to live a normal life and for it to be beyond the third said they cannot shoot and to get. and they went further to say that to require 34,600 troops the council which and the mandate and set a goal for the light assumption of 7,600 troops

that had been required and so the u.n. should use its presence to dissuade the attacks. the first was so well behaved that when they see the blue helmets they would shoot. so we went in whitely and faced the situation. it's for the government to go the dutch eventually decided to go in the and we know what happened. the operation was armed and the commanders didn't have the capacity to stop the fed coming

and was probably right. do you blame the soldiers are put in that situation now? who couldn't help? you want to blame those who are unprepared and unequipped. i don't know. i'm asking the question and if indeed we manage to get those made accountable and responsible and taken to court what happens tomorrow and there is another that the government will send troops, which government what dispose his men and women to be held accountable because they want to help and couldn't fulfill the mandate 100%. there are lots of questions

about. i noticed this and the question but i am raising other questions for you and the lawyers that are going to consider this. >> i'm going to give the last question to this lady that's very patient over here. >> good afternoon everyone. - sherry mcfarland with the national intelligence university. i have really enjoyed the discussion today regarding your book. i just wanted to get your perspective on the popular consultation process. there are many in the community - that might contribute to the unraveling of the fragile peace that's already been put in place by the communists have peace process, the popular consultation that might contribute to that. >> the peace process where? >> in sudan. >> i really don't know how to

win answer that because in some situations the consultations can be very helpful. in others it opens up a can of worms, particularly where you have situations where people are buying for power or for influence who and believe that they lose. they lose a popular consultation to combat the support for themselves and become more divisive but if they are set properly and have a good moderator working with the group with specific questions and issues we want to deal with.

when we organize the lawyer and who led the discussion that led to the formation of the government for full cost and so if you have that sort of approach it could work otherwise it could be quite messy. >> i'm going to make a final comment that i hope reflect some , look first a housekeeping point. after we thank kofi for being with us let me s-corp hinault. those that seek invitations to the reception afterwards will be gathering in the room nearby.

my final comment is this and it came to me while listening to kofi's end of the conversation. 67 years ago when the united asians was created and the position of secretary general was created, it was no accident, and it happened for reasons that have come up in this conversation but not very much power was actually invested in the position of secretary general and the united nations. kofi was many things but he was not the ceo of the world and that in their lives on the other things the jealous guarding of the power of the superpowers since then and the secretary-general's that have been successful from a couple have been successful by virtue of their human beings dedication to the values of the

institutions and their ability to convey those values to persuade and to explain and to articulate and to personify the best things about the institutions. so anyway a paraphrase what often said about the president of the united states, the successful secretary general of the united nations speaks calmly but carries a division. [laughter] i think all of us have had a reminder of what is the good news and that is when an individual like this gives us the position of the secretary general of the united nations he does not give up those gifts and strengths, and kofi, we thank you for bringing those to this audience. [applause]