>> now an interview from book tvs recent visit to the hoover institution on the campus of stanford university. thomas sowell sat down to talk about his latest book, five in which he looks at the ways intellectuals have influence and cannot rates over the past century. this is part of book tvs college series. >> now joining us on what tv is dr. thomas sowell i stanford university. dr. sowell, your most recent, "intellectuals and race," how do you define intellectual? >> guest: it is someone whose work is ideas, whose validation

is through peer consensus, rather than any particular established procedure. in other words, congress would not be intellectuals by with his sons a mathematician or engineer but if you're deconstructionists, the only test is that they're either deconstructionists like which are doing. >> it doesn't matter what popular opinion says? >> guest: now. >> host: why not? >> guest: because solo career and self-esteem comes from peers. some take great pride. >> host: are you an intellectual? >> guest: i suppose you'd have to say that. from my work and ideas, people like them i don't like them is the way it is. >> host: you talk about intellectuals clustering together as a whole.

what do you mean by that? >> guest: is what someone called the herd of independent minds. they tend to believe pretty much the same thing. they may change as a group for one or the other. during the first world war, intellectuals on the leprechaun home for the first world war. after they saw the carnage, they all became pacifists again as they heard right afterwards remained passive this. >> host: had intellectuals cluster when it comes to raise? >> guest: early and mid-20th century,, they'll clustered time to believe that genes determine everything. that raises were inferior, some superior and that means the people on the left, john maynard keynes who is one of the founders of the cambridge society, and many distinguished

of that era were absolutely dogmatic. by the end of the century, began as a group anyone who did disagree with don was regarded as a racist. >> host: dr. sowell, where intellectuals clustered in your view on race? gas co. they are still clustered at the hand of all different as a group smut speed presumptively due to the street and pay others than they really pretty impervious to have it yet. the housing situation when they discovered lakhs were turned down her a sub prime mortgage loan at a higher rate than whites come its the media decided that was racial instrumentation. if you look at the same data in the statistics for asian-americans, it undermines a

completely. for example, when blacks were turned down at a rate nearly double that of whites come at the same time, i swear turndown at a rate double of asian-americans. moreover, black-owned banks turndown blacks at a higher rate than white on pain. you find it hard to reconcile this with what they believe. there's a tendency among intellectuals to have it pre-to section. when they find numbers that seem to fit the preconceptions, they don't go any further. they have no reason to look up the database, which undermines the argument that meet. >> host: in your book "intellectuals and race" commie talk about the factor of the motion and race. how do you get rid of that or can you get rid of that factor? >> guest: you cannot do a great extent as practical

matter. one of the things i've noticed is in many countries around the world, people of different races can get along together. sometimes even a neighbors for decades and generations. and yet, when the rate demagogue comes along, they turn against each other and be at each other's throats. this is happening in the. this happened in sri lanka appeared as happened in nigeria but the whole list of countries. so it's not a wholly spontaneous thing. many years ago there was this out the civic and one of the less memorable song was one think you've got to be taught to hate. intellectuals have taught people to hate people are often themselves. >> host: who are some demagogues who fear? >> guest: they're different in different countries. i think in sri lanka was one of the most examples.

sri lanka was held at midcentury as the model of a country where people of different races got along wonderfully and they did. the educated members of these two different groups lived in the same neighborhood. they have different religions. these would attend holiday services. the other's houses of worship and so on was fine until we came along and decided he wanted to be prime minister and he then turned the signaling and these people have never had a race riot in the entire example of the 21st century began to have riot, which then escalated the outright civil war. they went on for decades with unspeakable atrocity and more people were killed in this little country than the americans last turn the entire vietnam war. it's a scary example about how things may look upon the surface

and yet when the right demagogue comes along in the right circumstances, people can be turned against each other but hey. >> host: interview, have there been demagogues in america? >> guest: yes, it's one of the most lucrative occupations. someone once asked me if i ever try to convert people to my views and i said i'm sure it he makes 10 times what they make. had do you commits and introduces income by? >> host: what is the race industry you talk about? >> guest: there's so many of them. the naacp once played a very important role. one goal is once they've achieved the goal they don't say all right, folks, we'll have a going out of us. the eeoc there to prevent

discrimination. but as discrimination declines, they have to expand the definition so that now if you don't want to hire people in prison, they think that's discrimination. >> host: you write in "intellectuals and race" at the kind of society to which that can lead when you talk about the race industry, and other if one in which a newborn baby enters the world supplied with prepackaged grievances against other babies born the same day. >> host: >> guest: yes, yes. this idea can redress history, which we've seen in this countries around the world had when they first launched up first launched czechoslovakia after the first world war was to redress the injustices of the 17th century. nobody from the 17th century was alive at the end of the first world war. they shy to take this out by

having policies and so on and set in motion the chain of events in which czechs and germans are both worse off than ever before about perfect as a tragedy, trying to undo what happened to the people who are long dead. >> host: do we have policies in this country to formed the same way? >> guest: one of the sad thing is we talk in this country as if slavery was an unique to the united states of blacks and whites is one of the oldest institutions among human ears. they go as far back as recorded history in every part of the road. politicians in the races

themselves to the same reason they simply didn't have the resource is to go to another continent and take people from another continent and moved them someplace else. this is that happen in the united states and the western hemisphere. much of the past college age have to be a legacy of slavery. the irony is the great job. most black kids came up with two parents under slavery itself after generations thereafter. most black children grew up in two parent homes. it's only when you started with the great society so-called that you see the family that has survived all of us all the time now began to disintegrate. >> host: five, dr. thomas sowell, there's other evidence that the black subculture has a

negative effect on intellectual achievement. in other words, brighter black students do not perform as well in settings where there's many other black students around them contrary to the theory that what is needed in educational and to tuitions is the larger critical mass. >> host: there's many studies that would show that. it's not just my opinion of the whole thing. one of the studies they did many years ago was a various indian academic situation. over the words from 1892 to 1954, some like i forget the number now, 34 i think it was graduates at dunbar high school went to amherst college. very few at any given time. it is not very critical path they are. three quarters of these kids graduated and more than one quarter were phi beta kappa is.

so clearly you don't need a political dodge, which is a good educational about her own and the absence of people who would distract you from what the real purpose of the colleges. >> host: is there an import relationship between race and mental capacity? >> guest: if you mean by potential, then who knows because you can't measure potential current and i suspect for the next hundred years or so probably. what you can recognize the measure is capacity developed capability. imagine the sats or something like that. potentially you cannot. >> host: when it comes to race, how does that play into the measurements we have today?

>> guest: i'm not sure what you mean by that. >> host: is there correlation between i.q. and what we were able to measure today and race? >> guest: sure. there always has been around the race. they have the same i.q. and probably for similar reasons that the isolated culture. people from isolated cultures tend not to have the same achievement of cultures that have a larger culture universe that you draw upon. so the data are good for measuring what is likely to happen with a given person at a given time under gibbons circumstances with the ultimate potential at the time at the moment of conception, no one has come close to anything like that. >> host: where did this book come from?

>> guest: is a much larger study called intellectual society, which i wrote. >> host: why did you break up for race? >> guest: my original assistant urged me to bring us out of what was to begin with. we realized eventually she was right. >> host: what about asian-americans who often seem to as the group performed better in school than other groups, why is that? >> guest: the 14 letter word we can't use this work. i remember when i was teaching at ucla in the research library as looked around, almost everybody i saw was asian-american. had looked in vain for many black students. so the following week when i go

to class and find asian-americans better prepared, there's no mystery to it. they work. >> host: do you teach us to have her? >> guest: i have not taught here at stanford. when i first came here i thought perhaps i might want to sinnott seminars and things that i never that chance. >> host: do you miss teaching at all? >> guest: yes and no. teaching us it is today, no. teaching us that was when i started in 1962 at a college in new jersey, i really loved this. when i taught my last class at the end of the week, we were looking forward to the next class the following monday. over the years, the academic world change drastically and now when i can't hoover institution, which is no teaching i thought this is it. there are many people out there who may well i wanted to teach

what they can nation of teaching at many universities became dutch that it was not worth it. >> host: what is one of those conditions had changed? >> guest: the attitude of the students. the students, faculty and it evisceration, which does not leave much else. the students really began to be like a constitutional right. students would come at the beginning of the class and sam are graduating senior. i said you believe in predestination. they thought it was my responsibility to seek a graduated. i never took that view. >> host: dr. thomas sowell is here about tv. we're at stanford university. hoover institution talking about his most recent book, "intellectuals and race." how many books have you written?

i think it's about 25. >> guest: it may well be. >> host: as the milk and rose friedman fellow of public policy at the hoover institution, what is it that you do? >> guest: the opposing attorney says it says here you are a senior fellow. just what does a senior fellow do? said a senior fellow has no duty and the judge that i would mind having not. >> host: you suspended thinking? >> guest: i once wrote it's nothing but alien ideas. >> host: dr. sowell come when you about cost justice, what do you mean by that? >> guest: i guess with some people mean by social justice, which is injustice and a

national opportunity to have the same life. but i call a cosmic justice because no society will do that or has ever done not. so which are asking for is for the life chances to be defamed. when you think of the different this, it's virtually impossible. some kids may be raised as families of the same economic level. one set of attitude towards education and the other will not. the one family that doesn't have that same attitude may be a fine fellow. he may be bright, all of that. there's almost no way he could have the same chance. >> host: articles like economic equality or economic opportunity racial equality, are those good goals for a nation?

>> guest: if you mean by equality, equality of opportunity, yes. if you mean any belief you look at the same end result, the answer is no. what those kinds of polls do is stare society apart, often taking worse off than they would have been otherwise. affirmative action in academia, for example, takes minority segments and mismatches them. for all, when i was a court now, the average black student at that time scored a 75th percentile on the sats. the average white student liberal arts scored at the 99th percentile. half the black students on academic probation. in other words, you have most of the colleges in this country but they were sent to colleges where they were virtually guaranteed

not to make it. >> host: posta are there any affirmative actions you think are worthwhile? >> guest: no. that's theseus questionable. >> host: dr. sowell, i've already forgot the answer. are you working on another book right now? >> guest: this is one of the few times in my life when i do not have another book underway. for new writing and about on that, not at the moment. >> host: you mentioned at the beginning that intellectuals in your view should have pure approval i said that's what they go by. if they get the same wrong idea, it becomes unstoppable.

>> host: do you have pure approval? >> guest: and never estimate. to be approved. >> host: why not? >> guest: i don't care. >> host: what would you like your legacy to be pushed over the years has created. >> guest: whatever is going to beach, i won't be here to know it, so it doesn't concern me that much. >> host: do like television interviews? >> guest: sometimes. i wouldn't want to put a percentage on it. >> host: à la pacino built friedman? >> guest: i was a student of his that one time. he was the reason is that the hoover institution. really assign human being. i often say if you asked me to name someone who has both genius and common sense, i would say

milton and then i would have to struggle to find another example. >> host: we've been taught and with dr. tran three at the hoover institution at stanford university. here's his most recent book, tran thi is. this is booktv on c-span 2. >> next, william b. gould sat down with booktv to discuss his book, "bargaining with baseball." professor gould talks about the history of player owner relations in a spell on his own involvement in ending the night 94, 95 each of the baseball strike and problems facing the sport today. this is about 20 minutes. >> host: on the screen is william b. gould. he is an emeritus professor of law at tampered and the author of "bargaining with baseball:

labor relations in an age of prosperous turmoil." mr. gould, why are you writing about this topic? it's really two different levels. one is someone who's played the game is a young man, as a child, followed throughout my life. i suppose passionately involved in that. principally an observer and does allow someone who has about it, teaching sports for, talking a lot about baseball and labor law and finally i suppose the role that comes up in this book in particular is my involvement as both an arbitrator during the clinton administration when we

were involved at that time and one of the greatest strikes in terms of duration and serving as a landmark for the development of a spell as a business in the entire history of the game. this season was shut down. in 90 four this season was shut down beginning in office for the first time since 1904. the world series was canceled and in the spring of 1995, my national labor relations board of which i was chairman in the 90s in the clinton intervened to obtain an injunction. once he got an injunction before then churched out of my order, and now the players returned to the field. the owners except the bad and

the parties negotiate a comprehensive and i'd dare say a good deal of prosperity. this comes from is that an observer and a player and someone involved as an arbitrator host or how will the national labor relations board had human being, what occurred at 21994? >> guest: until 1994, we had what i call really resulting principally out of a decision in an arbitrator in 1975, which created many people, many viewers throughout the country will now the man and her club

which went to the supreme court. he thoughts, but others, please make nally one before peter states in 1975. as a result of that arbitration aboard, providing for free agency for players, a series of agreements were entered into between the union and between the owners. the owners always deeply dissatisfied with what sites had done and attend gene to reverse that. they decided to take the players on in the mid-90s in the last of this 30 year war and this is what produces the substantial

stoppage. we intervene not because we have a particular view as to who is right and wrong on the substance, but whether under our jurisdiction the national labor relations sure is action and the so-called unfair labor practice arena. we found the owners have not darkening good faith. they had not followed the proper procedural rules at the bargaining table and had unilaterally put into effect their own position without burdening the words of lawyers to the point of impasse. and so, we intervene but we got a so-called injunction, which required them to resend the changes they had made and come back to the bargaining table and bargain and new. that convinced the players they will give up the strike and

convince the owners and accept them back and attempt to bargain with them. to that point, the owners had talked about replacing the players, something they had never done. they've done in football, basketball, but never had done in baseball. one of the byproducts of that would have been something not only calamitous for the game, but cal ripken's consecutive game playing streak would have been stopped. those aren't the reasons we intervene. but nonetheless, those are byproducts, which could have caused serious harm to the game. >> host: tgv the major league players association is the traditional union? >> guest: yes, we viewed it that way and most observers of

collective bargaining in baseball has viewed them that way. they are a traditional union and performs many functions in ottawa steel or electronics would not perform because what the union does is simply baseball another spores are a good minimum standards on salary. a minimum wage. as we know, the owners frequently do negotiate sometimes to their everlasting regret as is the case of the yankees now with rodriguez, amounts of money sounds, which are considerably above the minimum and as well they negotiate the pension, one of the things as well as health benefits and talk about in this book is