politics accepted me and the freedom rides where my ticket to mississippi for the summer. they are alive. >> did you incorporate the stories of other freedom riders in the book? >> yes, absolutely. .. >> i was able to identify them and talk to them as well. so it's kind of a comprehensive story of what happened that day

and the impact of that day. >> what was that like, talking to some of the crowd members? what are they like today? >> it was a very unusual situation. i think the fact that i was with white helped me to draw out their stories as well. unfortunately, some of them are still segregationists and continue to believe the races should not mix. but i think the most powerful story that i came across was the story of the person who actually took the photograph. he was a white southern photographer, and it was during the sit-in that he actually had a change of heart. he was a segregationist when he walked into that wool worths, and he was an integrationist when he walked out, because he saw the quiet dignity of the demonstrators against kind of the mob mentality of his friends and neighbors. and he realized that segregation could no longer rule.

it was a very powerful story, and that's what we end the book with. >> you also mentioned medgar evers, how much did you get into his murder and the investigation? >> well, we start the book with his story, it's called medgar's mississippi, and we kind of paint the picture of what mississippi was hike at that time and -- like at that time and what it was like for somebody like medgar to come back from the war where he had fought for freedom for his country and then not be able to experience it himself. so his story is really woven throughout. and then, of course, with his assassination, it tells the whole story of what happened and what happened to the movement after his removal from the the scene. >> thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv.

>> coming up next on booktv, "after words" with guest host ken feinberg, former special master of the september 11th victim compensation p fund. in this week urban anthropologist elizabeth greenspan and her book, "battle for ground zero: inside the political struggle to rebuild the world trade center." in it, she exposes the bitterness with which many groups stake a claim to real estate considered sacred by so many. this program is about an hour. >> host: i'm kenneth feinberg, and i have the great, distinct pleasure of chatting for a few minutes with elizabeth greenspan, anthropologist, lecturer at harvard university and the author of a very important new book, "battle for ground zero: inside the political struggle to rebuild the world trade center."

this battle is not about al-qaeda, and it's not about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, at least not directly. what it is about is a social, anthropological study of the various political, social and other pressures that went into the final decisions surrounding the site at the world trade center. why, when, what the problems were. elizabeth greenspan, welcome to "after words." >> guest: thank you. great to be here. >> host: let me start off by asking you what motivated you to publish this book, to write it and take the time to do the research? what were the underlying reasons that you decided to focus on the struggle to reconstruct the world trade center? >> guest: in the fall of 2011, i was a graduate student in philadelphia studying urban

studies and anthropology. so i was interested in cities. and i had become, was becoming very interested in how cities reconstructed themselves after wars and violence and destruction. i was thinking about a project in berlin, actually, and studying what the city had done in the 'to 90s after the wall -- in the '90s after the wall came down. there were fascinating things they were doing to mark the wall and different momentses in history. and i was putting together an independent study with a professor that fall, and then 9/11 happened. it's incredibly powerful event. it was clear that so many things were going to be changing from that moment on, you know, u.s. policy domestically, foreign policy. but right away, within weeks, everyone starts asking what do we rebuild? how do we capture the feelings that we're having right now as a country in space? what kind of architecture would we imagine here, you know?

and so debates started playing out in op-ed pages and in newspapers, on tv about the space and how we could possibly put something here to mark this. and so i started reading about this in the papers, and i thought i couldn't possibly just continue forward with my graduate plan when the things i'm interested in and the questions i'm interested in are now playing out right here, you know, in new york city. >> host: now, how much of the early research that you did and the early effort that youen gauged in -- you engaged in in trying to fashion sort of the thesis of "battle for ground zero," how much of this was your evaluation of political pressures, economic pressures, pressures -- emotional human nature? >> guest: i mean, it was all of those things. i think that's what was so interesting and why this place so important, because it concentrates, you know, one 16-acre piece of land. you have political pressures,

people running for office, you have politicians involved who care about this place and need to make something happen there. you have people who are leasing the buildings who have billions of dollars at stake, you know, in rebuilding commercial space. then you have new yorkers who live around the area, you have family members who have lost loved ones, you know, nearly 3,000 people were killed. and then you have americans and people from around the world who saw what happened, and they also feel connected. and so you have so many different interests all coming together who all want, you know, to me it really felt like a question of ownership a lot of the time. the key question was who owns this piece of land. and there were lots of ways you could answer that question. there was the legal answer which is, well, the developer who owns the lease and the port authority, they owned the land. but for a lot of people, that was a completely inadequate answer because they thought, well, americans own this piece of land. this is a place of american

patriotism now. this is a place where this horrible tragedy happened, we have to commemorate it. >> host: and what -- in your title you talk about the battle for ground zero. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: what were the major conflicting forces that were adversarial to each other that gave rise to your metaphor, the battle for ground zero? >> guest: yeah. well, there are two main -- the main tension is this one between the public sphere where you have -- but many groups of people within that public sphere from architects to new yorkers to victims' family members to tourists, you know, all coming together. the masses on the street who want a say, who are turning out at public hearings to voice their concerns. and then you have the private side. you have the developer who owns the land, you have the port authority, i mean, the developer who owns the lease, and then you have the port authority that is a kind of quasi-public/private institution in new york that

owns the land. and they're very invested in -- they believe in building a memorial, but they also want to make sure that all of the office space that was destroyed was rebuilt, which is ten million square feet of office space which is quite a bit. and so almost every conflict at some level is a clash between these public and private forces trying to figure out what the balance is, you know? because everyone believes there should be some sort of mixture between a public and private voice. >> host: how much of a role in the battle did the families themselves who saw the land and the world trade center area as almost sacred land, how much -- aside from the developers, the insurance companies, the politicians -- >> guest: right. >> host: -- the number crunchers. >> guest: right. >> host: how much of the battle involved this psychological aversion to doing anything with the property other than

declaring it some sort of holy land? >> guest: right. yeah, families, many families thought of it as a burial ground because people were killed there. and something that's important to think of is they weren't just killed there, but there were just over a thousand people who were never found. so it was the way in which they were killed as well. it's a pretty shocking kind of violence where people were just literally decimated. >> host: incinerated. >> guest: incinerated, you know? and so for those families that weren't able to have a body or any kind of fragment of bone to bury, this place is where they think of their loved one as laying. and so it's a burial ground and many thought -- especially early on in the first years of 9/11 -- that nothing should happen to it, just as you said. many new yorkers and many americans didn't necessarily share that point of view because a lot of people wanted something, for instance, to kind of rise on the skyline again, to fill in the hole in the sky that the twin towers used to fill.

and so there was a sense that we should, um, treat this land carefully, and we should, we should commemorate, but we shouldn't, i think -- there wasn't a consensus that there should be just a park, for instance, or just open space. but a lot of families worked very hard to make sure that some portion of land was put aside for a very substantial memorial. and it was hard. i mean, you know, in this kind of give and take and this kind of, i mean, a democratic process people have to make compromises, and that was a big one for many families, that they knew that something would be built there and that it would be be p developed when they wanted nothing. >> host: now, in most battles that we study in history, there are winners and losers, there are heroes and villains. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: in your book who do you focus on at the end of the day that turn out to be the heroes

in resolving this battle, and who do you in one way or another focus on as, as not enemies, but as those who, um, were obstacles? >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: to a successful getting to yes -- >> guest: right. >> host: -- on the resolution of the battle? >> guest: it's a hard question. this process was so long and so dysfunctional that there's almost no hero because everyone once they entered in was kind of tarnished at some point. i think some people believe, um, that mayor bloomberg is something of a hero, although there are many people who disagree with that. [laughter] but he came in later in the process. for a while, um, you know, governor pataki was really running things, but then he left in 2006, and that opened up some room for the mayor to get involved. he became the chairman of the 9/11 foundation, and he also

helped to bring the port authority and larry silverstein, the developer, together to start making some compromises. so a lot of -- i talked to a lot of people who thought that without bloomberg this would still, the battle would still be going on, that he head some key -- helped some other people make some key compromises and key decisions. but i've talked to just as many people who continue to be furious with the kinds of, um, agenda that they saw, you know? the city and the mayor's office having. so he's certainly one person. chris ward, who took over the port authority later on in twist, is another that kind of helped -- you know, right around 2010 is when things started to move forward. >> host: now, that's nine years -- >> guest: nine years later. >> host: -- after the attacks. >> guest: yeah. >> host: why a nine-year war of attrition in your book? >> guest: yeah. >> host: as to actually implementing a plan?

>> guest: i mean, i think that's the question. part of it was a debate, sometimes there were families' groups who protested. there was a big debate over the museum that was supposed to be at ground zero called the international freedom center that the lower manhattan b development corporation had picked, and a small group of families -- many disagreed with them, but a small group mobilized and got this museum defeated. and so that takes time. but a lot of the battles were actually between larry silverstein and the port authority, these two partners, this lick/private partnership -- public/private partnership. because this was kind of an unprecedented situation, there was no guidelines on how they were supposed to work together when their property was destroyed in such historic fashion. so they fought. they brought this their lawyers, they had arbitration, and it took years. >> host: let's focus on two battles -- >> guest: okay. >> host: -- all part of the

overall war. glrg sure. >> host: you've mentioned, discussed in the book, you mentioned one of them today. and explain to our viewers what the battle entailed and the sides that were involved. take, for example, the very reasonable, it seemed, ideas for the international museum. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: what was then genesis of that idea? what was its strengths? and why did it founder? what was there about a well intentioned, noble idea in a sense of an international museum at a, at the site, why did it ultimately fail? >> guest: the idea -- initially, it was called the freedom center. then they made it the international freedom center. the idea stemmed, it was -- actually another developer in new york who happened to know, he'd been in new york for a long time, he's been involved in politics, and he thought this was -- >> host: who's this? >> guest: um, bernstein. >> host: oh, tom bernstein.

mentioned in the book. yes, very, very well-intentioned -- >> guest: yes. >> host: very sound public citizen. >> guest: yeah. >> host: i know tom. >> guest: yeah. he had this idea pretty early on after 9/11, and he's sort of talking about it with people, and as he says in the book in an interview, it was still a somewhat vague idea. it was dedicated to a big concept, freedom. but he wanted to talk about freedom historically, you know, struggles for freedom over time in the different parts of the world including in the united states where there was a struggle for freedom here. and he wanted to talk about, you know, hot spots. that was one of the parts of the museum, hot spots and battles for freedom and struggles for human rights, you know, a plane. and i think it was somewhat unclear, but he wanted to have public intellectuals and professors involved, and he had signed up anne marie slaughter, so he was getting important, you know, well established people onboard. but there was always a push in

the rebuilding effort to kind of have things be moving forward very quickly. and so they put together a set of plans, um, that in hindsight some who were involved told me that it was taos. they really -- too fast. they really weren't ready to be putting together -- >> host: there was still too much emotionalism in the air? >> guest: yeah. and i think they just weren't certain exactly what it would be, you know? and they talked at the end of the museum there was going to be a public service area where they were going to be inviting people to sign up to volunteer for human rights efforts in different parts of the world. again, well intentioned, but what does that really mean? what exactly does that look like? people didn't know. the aspen institute was going to be involved in helping set up programming, so there were lots of partners. exactly what the program would be, what the exhibits would look like, that was still left to be decided. and there was still time. but the lndc and others wanted to see blue prints. so they released these prints to

the times, they wrote a big story. and it was clear that, okay, this sounds interesting, but it's not quite sure what it's going to be. >> host: you make it sound as if the idea ultimately foundered over its absence of clarity or just timing in life as everything, and it came along at a time before what, the emotionalism of world trade center and the attacks had settled or what? >> guest: well, it came -- so 9/11 -- one important part of it is that 9/11 wasn't specifically addressed for the most part in the museum. it was going to be mentioned up front, but it really wasn't a museum about 9/11, and that ends up being a big reason people start protesting against the museum. but i think timing, they also have been a part of it. and i do think the lack of clarity. it sounded abstract, and freedom's a big idea, and what exactly does that have to do with 9/11? you have to make an intellectual case for it, and that's hard to do in these quick little blueprints that they're publishing out and putting online and people are reading.

and so people -- so a couple people found out about this. one was deborah burlingame who's a board member on the foundation. and she started asking questions, you know? what is this freedom center and what will it be? and she had two primary, um, problems with the museum. and the first was that it didn't appear to have anything to do with 9/11 which to her was very important. her brother was a pilot on the plane that crashed in the pentagon. and the second, she looked, was that she believed the number of people who were involved were kind of progressive liberals of a certain bent who had been critical of the bush administration. and she thought they were going to be bringing their politics into this hue seem is and using it -- museum and using it as a place to advance their political causes. and so from both ends she's very salvely put a grassroots

organization together that just went out and successfully defeated this hue seem. but the it was a huge, i mean, this it was this incredible controversy and chaos for a number of months in the summer of 2005 that got op-ed pages involved, i mean, it got really nasty. >> host: now, to what extent when you have a debate that gets really nasty -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- and is played out in "the new york times," in the "wall street journal," to what extent is it inevitable that when you have that much, that degree of controversy it may take a while, but sooner or later the idea is dead. the mere controversy itself on an idea that was noble and well intentioned guarantees, ultimately, its failure even if it's going to take a while to kill it. >> guest: yeah, i mean, i think that's a good point. i think when it comes to this place, 9/11, that's definitely been the pattern. people don't, you know, and the leaders in charge, they want things to move forward.

they want rebuilding to go. so any controversy -- >> host: with consensus, though, if possible. >> guest: right. anything that looks like it's going to be a problem, it's gone. and that's what happened here, you know? at first people were onboard with it. pataki was supportive, giuliani was, at least on paper, supportive. and then what happens is burlingame's group gets to hillary clinton. and this is, and, you know, everyone's planning on running for president all in this group. this is very, you know, politics is a big part of this. they convince her in rather happenstance effort to say that she's against the museum. they write a press release, they publicize that hillary clinton is against this, giuliani becomes against it, pataki becomes against it. it's like boom, boom, boom. so that's it. you're right in some sense, as soon as it becomes a controversy like that and politically it's not sustainable, it's gone. but you do have to look at something like the debate over the islamic center which is another major controversy at

ground zero that was following in the same footsteps. you had people getting really emotional, lots of protests on the streets, op-ed pages, the blogosphere -- >> host: but a different result. >> guest: but a different result. it stayed. and certain politicians said it should be moved, but others called for it to stay, one of whom was mayor bloomberg who said this would be a mistake. is and so they kind of rode out the controversy, yeah. >> host: now, let's take another example of a battle that falls within your overall battle for ground zero. we're talking with elizabeth greenspan, the author of a important new book, "battle for ground zero: inside the political struggle to rebuild the world trade center." paul grave mchill land -- palgrave macmillan is the publisher. let's focus on another battle which to some was more existential but very, very real, and that is the architectural plans. >> guest: yes.

>> host: and the competition -- >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: -- the result and, sure enough, a very polarizing battle. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: over what exactly architecturally should be done with this important piece of land in lower manhattan. what was that all about? >> guest: okay. so this was one of the first. um, early on, you know, we said, okay, we have this 16-acre piece of land, we have to put something on it or maybe not. i mean, it was just an open-ended what do we do with it, right? and everyone wanted a say in that. so very quickly leaders promised a public process to receive public input, to generate a master plan. at the same time that that was going on, however, like i said before, you had larry silverstein, the developer who owned the lease to the office space, you had pataki who was running the port authority, and they really believed in the importance of the commercial space that was destroyed. they wanted to make sure that lower manhattan remained an

international financial hub. and they believed that in order for it to remain that reputation, they had to rebuild all of this commercial space. that was very, a very controversial point early on when a lot of people thought about the land as a burial ground. and even those who didn't lose loved ones weren't sure or that this should be dropped like a regular new york's of real estate, you know? -- new york piece of real estate, you know? and so the leaders went ahead and decided we will rebuild the office space really without any -- there was no discussion, no public debate. that, later that summer, summer of 2002, there's a huge public hearing called listening to the city. 5,000 people turn out into the javits center in new york to help decide what the world trade center will be. i mean, it was really amazing to see -- >> host: democracy in action. >> guest: right. supposedly democracy in the action, right? what nobody knew was that pataki and silverstein, they had made a

lot of decisions already. they had made a decision this would be a pretty heavily commercial piece of land that would also have a memorial and a train station. but still a lot of commercial real estate. so they laid out, they gave all of us at the hearing, 5,000 of us, these plans that they had already kind of worked on, and we were supposed to pick one of the five. but they were all very similar because they all had this same program of commercial space for the memorial. and people rejected them outright. they said these are terrible, there's too much office space. they said the developer, larry silverstein, has too much power over the rebuilding effort because of his lease, and so we need to start over. like, this can't be a regular rebuilding effort, this can't be a regular piece of land. we need something monumental, you know? they want, people wanted to see something really exciting and innovative. something that had never been done before. they wanted something symbolic, you know? they wanted maybe a tall skyscraper to fill in the

skyline, but they didn't want just regular old office buildings. so this presented a problem to those in charge because silverstein had a lease that entitled limb to re-- him to rebuild all the spaces that he wanted. and yet the people, the public was calling for that lease to be broken and for it not to define this land. and so what they did was they opened up an international design competition, as you said. they had architects from around the world making these plans with really fantastical buildings. but they didn't change the requirements. those pre-existing points that they'd decided on like ten million square feet of office space. that remained intact. they carried that over into the competition. but now looking at them with this amazing architecture from lord norman foster it doesn't look so bad. [laughter] suddenly, you know, they can put

an interesting spin on it. so it was in the fine print. if you read the fine print, you saw what was going on, but people kind of forgot that what they had rejected was actually, for the most part, remained intact. in this design competition. um, and so that was how they resolved that conflict, and that's how daniel -- [inaudible] became the master planner for the world trade center site. he won that competition with his, particularly with his building that had the kind of echoed the statue of liberty. that was the corner piece of his design. and so, but the catch there was he was never going to be the architect because he was being the master planner. it was this very confusing technical distinction between master plan that maps space and architects who design buildings. and that was also part of the kind of slipperiness, i think, of that moment when the public wanted something that the people in charge knew they could not

deliver. >> host: how did that battle, one of your many battles you discuss in your book -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- how did that battle ultimately get resolved? >> guest: it got resolved when -- i mean, it took years. but larry silverstein, who owned the lease, could hire whichever architects he wanted. he had already done so. he'd hired his architect. so daniel wins the master plan competition, david childs comes in who's silverstein's architect, and the two of them try to work together because daniel wants to design this. he believes he's entitled to by virtue of his winning design. and so for about six months, i think, in there they're each designing their own building, even though one will be built. and then finally they renegotiate their terms, and david childs is the main architect, daniel is kind of an adviser on the role. but there, too, it's very ugly and nasty. people are wringing lawyers to meetings -- bringing lawyers to

meetings, they're not speaking to one another. >> host: you raise here at interview, but you also raise frequently in the book either explicitly or implicitly this distinction between substantive disagreement -- good faith or otherwise -- and process. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: and one thing i find very, very interesting in your book that i discovered myself in the design and administration of the 9/11 victim compensation fund is the importance of process. >> guest: yeah. >> host: not substance. substance important disturb. >> guest: when you say substance, what do you mean? >> host: what i mean is what do the plans look like, or is the fix already in when you arrive at the javits center? or will there be an international museum? well, substantively it might be a good idea the way they roll it out procedurally is guaranteed to fail. >> guest: okay.

>> host: and one thing that comes through loud and clear both in the book and today in our discussion is the, um, the failure of policymakers; architects, planners, politicians, museum designers, owners of the property, elected officials. how often the battle or battles that you discuss lie -- are the result of a tail your of transparency -- failure of transparency, of openness, of procedural due process, of outreach, of inclusion. talk a little bit about the lessons you learned in your anthropological research and in researching the book, talk a little bit about how decision makers shoot themselves in the foot over and over and over again by failing to focus on how

you're going to spin your proposal and how you're going to try and reach out to vested interests; economic, social, political. in an effort to get them onboard. >> guest: yeah. i mean, i think you're exactly right, and i think that question of transparency is really important. and i think here in the book and while this was unfolding, you know, after 2001 there was an understanding among elected officials that the needed to be a public process. i mean, if you listen to what they were saying, they were using those terms all along. but at the same time, they were making their own decisions that they were not sharing with the public. and people get that, you know? each if you don't know -- even if you don't know exactly what's going on, you know that behind closed doors your elected officials or leaders involved in this are making some decisions they're not letting you in on. so when you go to these public

hearings and this town hall called listening to the city and everyone's acting as though your vote counts and you have -- we are going to determine everything that happens here when, in fact, many decisions have already been made, you know, people start to feel manipulated. and i think that that's where it goes wrong. and so if you're going, if those in charge, for instance, really believed that some decisions couldn't be made by the public because they were too important or larry silverstein has the lease, and that's just it. we stop there because the lease entitles him to certain things that we don't want to discuss, i think you have to say that. you have to tell people, and you have to kind of trust the plunge to be able -- the public to be able to take in that information and respond and know that there's going to be -- i think they, i think here people wanted it to be the streamlined, you know, this kind of very neat democratic process. well, we tell you when to come, when to vote, where to share your ideas, and then we will move forward rather than having the messy, all-in kind of free

exchange of ideas that would have probably taken more time but would have -- but may not have taken as much time as it ultimately took here, you know? >> host: is it, to you reach a conclusion in your book -- >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: -- is this failure at process -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- at transparency, is this arrogance? is it ignorance? or is it something else altogether? >> guest: i think -- >> host: that's a great question. [laughter] >> guest: that's a good question. everyone i talked to i came away thinking they -- while everyone had their own motives and and agendas, everyone also was trying to do the right thing. but there were so many pressures that, and they were trying to kind of, you know, they're trying to make too many people happy. and ask so you try, you start to cheat a little bit around the edges because -- and you think you can get away with it. so i think there's some

arrogance because you think, well, if we have a public process and we tell everyone that the public and we make them think that it's public, everyone will kind of jump onboard with that, and it will be truly public rather than it being actually something more in between, some of it was privately made, decisions were privately made, and some were made openly, you know? rather than being a combination. i think you have to be -- you have to really lay it out there that this is what we're empowering you to decide on and be involved in, and this is what we're saying experts have to decide. >> host: do you think there was a mistake, a fundamental mistake at the outset that, again, i learned this from my 9/11 experience, was there a fundamental mistake at the outset in expecting that the apparent democratic process of reaching out to interest groups, the public, etc., was there a

mistake at the outset in expecting that you could ever make people -- the word you use, quote happy, unquote -- or would everybody have been much were br off if they had braced themselves for the reality that this is going to be very emotional, you will please nobody at the end of the day. >> guest: right. >> host: and you better go forward with that expectation rather than an effort to try and make people happy? >> guest: yes. i think so. i think we have when we talk about democratic process, sometimes we have a romanticness to it, you know? that everyone will vote or share their points of view, but it will somehow happen in this kind of pleasant, organized way when, in fact, when you look at what that really is like, it's horribly messy and angry and bitter. and a lot of people are left feeling like they've been -- not been heard and listened to. and they may not have been.

i mean, it's, you know, it's something i think you constantly attiring to achieve -- aspiring to achieve, it's not something you actually achieve. and so i think after 9/11 especially there was such a feeling of coming together, community, you know, that many leaders in new york and around the country wanted to build be on in good faith. i think they wanted to carry that into a rebuilding process here. and i think for a very short period of time people were willing to go along with that, but then it became clear that, in a sense, nothing changed, right? everyone -- there were lots of different interest groups. they all had things they needed and wanted. and no one really wanted to give anything up, and it was going to take a lot of hard, angry, bitter battles to get with it figured out. >> host: but it seems to me that in the book the group of the various interest groups, the group that policymakers thought could be dealt with in a

reasonable, successful way -- the families -- that there was a miscalculation there. >> guest: yeah. >> host: that policymakers should have understood from the get go, as i understood in implementing the 9/11 fund, do not expect families who have lost loved ones in a traumatic horror, don't expect reasonableness. don't expect contemplative response. expect very emotional, parochial concern about, about validation of memory. or am i overplaying that? and that the families, like anybody else, could have been dealt with on a more reasonable level? >> guest: i think, i think there are certain individuals that fit that profile, but there are others that don't. i talked to a lot of family members, some of whom, you know -- and i'm sure you met

them as well -- really became activists after 9/11. they started their own groups. you know, they became, they became public -- >> host: i remember the new jersey girls. >> guest: yeah. and deborah burlingame who i mentioned before. they're public figures. so they really have a cause that they're advancing. and i kind of -- i interviewed them as though i was interviewing anyone else, you know, what angle are you approaching this from, and they were coming from a place of loss, but it had clearly become something more and different for them. it had become political. there are other family members who never entered the public arena. i mean, and you saw them as well. they were simply grieving for a loved one. they didn't really want to get involved with any of the messiness, but they did feel like they wanted someone to reason to them, or they wanted -- you know, they didn't want to be cheated out of something either. and so i think for them it was harder to know how to go forward. i talked to a group in philadelphia. they were a philadelphia families' group, so they were,

you know, not in the new york hubbub of it all. and i found them to be incredibly con them lative and reflective. -- contemplative and reflective. i mean, this was a couple of years later. of you know, at moments they were very angry, they did not like what was going on, and they shared that emotion very freely. but they could also talk about how they would imagine their feelings would change over time. right now it feels like a very personal place to them, but 20 years from now maybe it won't, and maybe that's how it should be, you know? so i think there was an awareness. >> host: we're here talking with and learning from elizabeth greenspan, an anthropologist, a lecturer at harvard university and the author of a fascinating new book, "battle for ground zero: inside the political struggle to rebuild the world trade center." palgrave macmillan. elizabeth, a couple of other related questions.

you mentioned that you spoke to some philadelphia family members, etc. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: to what extent as an anthropologisting as well as a student -- anthropologist as well as a student of the world trade center observer, to what extent is this battle for ground zero new york, a new york battle? >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: or to put it another way, to what extent are the battle lines drawn because of the characteristics and the political environment and the social environment that is new york city? or to what extent do you glean from the battle here more universal lessons? or is this really a parochial -- fascinating, but a parochial battle for the hearts and minds of new yorkers? >> guest: i mean, it's about new york insofar as the constraints on the land were very new york and that it was a piece of land

in one of the most expensive areas of the city in the financial district. i mean, i know that you could imagine if this happened in other places, there might have been more freedom to think about how this land could be used. but beyond certain commercial or noncommercial uses. but here there were restrictions. this was one of the most valuable pieces of land in the world. but because it is one of the most valuable pieces of land in the world, i think it does offer some more universal lessons about how we decide who the land belongs to. i mean, battles over land happen, they're one of the most universal things that we fight over in countries, you know, i mean, i can -- i i was thinking often it's a much different situation, but, you know, the israeli/palestinian conflict over land. you just have very fundamental beliefs about what the land is. you know, it's very emotionally, religiously they think of the land very differently.

and it's a question of who it belongs to. it's that question of ownership again. and i think you saw that, again, with slightly different groups and characters here playing out groups trying to claim the land and make it their own so they could treat it -- >> host: do you find that there is something unique about argumentative, polarizing new yorkers? not necessarily negative, very effective arcticlatively in their views, in expressing themselves, in willing to engage in sacrifice in order to promote their objectives, to what extent is there, is the new york city environment in the context in which this unfolded unique to new york or, again, no, there may be a little bit of a different mindset among palestinians and israelis, but the fact of the matter is the

battle lines can be drawn similarly this be other contexts or not really? >> guest: well, i think in new york, i mean, i think one of the things even -- there have been great protests about this place, you know? that continue to this day. and i think there may p continue to be protests, very emotionally-charged protests. there hasn't been violence, you know? no one, despite the strong feelings and despite the multiple groups and the different politics of people that you're bringing together, there has not yet been violence. and i think we can overlook that because we don't think of public protests as erupting in violence in this country. but if you pay attention to what's happening around the world, we're seeing that happen more and more. so i think it's to our credit that we can have charged public debate where people come out on the street, but it doesn't go further than that. people will yell nasty things and say terrible things which, you know, i was in the midst of it in new york particularly over the islamic center. i mean, that was the most

charged, the most recent controversy. there was a big police presence, and everyone followed those rules. i mean, there were some charged moments, looked like it could erupt in violence, people could start fighting, but it doesn't. and i think that does, i think new york gets some credit for that. because it is a city that prides itself on being open, of embracing people of different backgrounds and different points of view and having them together in this mix. that's what a lot of people who love new york city, they love that, right? you have immigrants from all over the world living there, and you have just incredible mixing going on. hopefully, we want to keep that going in new york. we don't want people to start quartering off into their different groups, because we lose something. and so that's why public spaces like the public space that they now have at ground zero with the memorial plaza so important. because, hopefully, it can continue that tradition. >> host: is, is as we sit here today, um, reflecting on the

battle for ground zero, is the battle over? has the battle been resolved? i notice the new new york skyline with the power majestically -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- standing there at the head of the front, front and center of the skyline. is the battle largely over and are we now, um, writing in your fabulous book with a little bit of already a historical perspective, or is the final skirmish yet to be fought? >> guest: the battle is partly over. i do think the battle of what the land will become is over. the buildings are not yet completed. one world trade center, as you mentioned, it's topped out, so it's now the tall itself building in the certain -- tallest building in the westernn

hemisphere. the museum will open next year -- >> host: stop right there. you did say the original idea of a human rights museum was defeated. >> guest: right. >> host: what museum? we've got the tower topped out, as you say. now there's a museum, a me memorial -- >> guest: there's a memorial. >> host: fill be us in. >> guest: okay. there's the memorial pools that are the footprints of the twin towers with the names around them of all of the victims, and there's the freedom tower, now called one world trade center, and then there's an underground museum that's under the footprints. and that will be dedicated to 9/11. so it kind of, this some ways what the international freedom center that was kicked off, it wasn't going to focus very much on 9/11. this museum will focus exclusively -- >> host: i did, i think, an oral history for that museum commenting on the 9/11 victim compensation fund. >> guest: ing okay, yeah.

so they'll have a large room dedicated to the events of the day, and then there are pieces that focus on recovery efforts, and there are pieces that focus a butt on the aftermath. so that is in -- that's being put together right now. a lot of artifacts that were saved from the site, the twisted steel and the rushed fire trucks and things like that. and a lot of the iconic pieces that we've seen will all be be in that museum. >> host: okay. so you've got the tower -- >> guest: got the tower. >> host: you've got the memorial site. you've got the underground museum. the memorial site's with the waterfall. >> guest: right. >> host: now, is there anything else that will comprise the entire -- >> guest: well, you have, i mean, one world trade center is the iconic skyscraper, but actually there's a plan to have four more sky scrapers -- >> host: not yet being built? >> guest: so they're in the process. again, world trade four, larry silverstein's building, is opening this fall. but then there are two others that he is looking to get tenants for right now and that they're building, they're doing the underground work for.

i spoke to him, and he thought that they would be completed in 2017. but everyone thinks that silverstein is the most optimistic -- [laughter] with his buildings. so 2017 perhaps we'll see the construction on the commercial build beings. >> host: well, you mentioned these various or sites, these various buildings, these various iconic structure, memorial, etc., why isn't the battle over, and what skirmishes, as you say, are yet to be fought? >> guest: so, right. the problem over the land is fixed. everything thousand just needs to be finished. but i think what i've learned in doing this book is that the question of 9/11 itself and the trauma of that event remains unresolved. and there was a belief that if we once and if we repair this land and we rebuild it, that that would also allow us to move forward in a certain way from 9/11. and i think that's parking lotly true. i -- partly true. i do think rebuilding this space is very important and were it to remain a hole for another decade

or two, that would be incredibly detrimental to the american collective psyche. but just because we've repaired it doesn't mean that suddenly, you know, it doesn't mean 9/11 didn't happen. it doesn't mean that -- it doesn't mean the trauma from that event that we've been struggling to make sense of, i think, for the past decade is suddenly resolved either. and so i think the battles that we will continue to see are the ones that have to do much more of the questions of meaning and politics around 9/11. and, you know, we won't -- you know, it's hard to know what they'll be, but i think they will continue to come up, because i think this event so, is still so powerful to so many people. >> host: and will that manifest itself in what goes in the buildings or what is the message from the buildings, or will that simply be a external battle over how the world trade center site ought to be, um, spun or -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- or approached of

looked upon? >> guest: yeah. i think kind of what it means, you know, i get that question of meaning will always change and how people use the lammed, you know? does it become integrated into the neighborhood, the public space, do people use it? you know, the museum space or do they add different programming to it over time? what kind of questions are they really howed to explore in the museum -- allowed to explore in the museum and at the memorial? i think those will be the spaces where we can see continued conflict perhaps. >> host: um, have the major players, the generals and the foot soldiers in the battles that you've talked about in your book, have they moved on, or are those players -- obviously, mayor bloomberg and pataki, they've moved on or are moving on. >> guest: sure. >> host: but are there still private citizen players who won't let go -- >> guest: sure. >> host: who are determined to live and die -- >> guest: sure. >> host: -- on the mantle of this fight? >> guest: yes, absolutely.

i mean, i think there are, there are downtown residents, and there are victims' family members who with have created groups, you know, they have nonprofits, and they are completely -- and they follow the nudes like, you know -- the news, you know, on this. and they will be doing that, i think, for years and years. they will watch everything that happens, every new piece that emerges, and they will have something to say about it, and they may not like it. >> host: and what does that say about the human nature element of these people who won't let go, who are determined to focus their day-to-day living on an ongoing battle for ground zero, what does that say about human nature and the desire of some people whether it's memory or myth or self-gratification or closure, a word that i hear a lot is and i'm not sure what it means -- >> guest: right. >> host: but what does that say about human nature and the human

condition in terms of not letting go? >> guest: yeah. you know, i hesitate to judge -- >> host: motivation. >> guest: yeah, motivation and also to weigh in on you should be ready to move on, or you should be ready to, quote, let go. what's wrong with you? i mean, i think that there's an impulse there for a lot of people who look at those who are continuing to fight and kind of see something wrong, and i don't think that that's fair because, you know, it's just, it's an incredibly difficult situation. i mean, and to have lived through not just losing a loved one, everyone can understand that's difficult, but 9/11 has its own mythology already. and it's very political. so for people who have been in the midst of that for so long, it has become a way of life. >> host: i mean, what i find fascinating about 9/11 -- i mean, thousands of variations on 9/11 -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: what i found fascinating during my administration of the 9/11 fund, and you probably saw this, there

are a group of victims who lost loved ones, families -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: who grieve in private. they want no public role -- >> guest: right. >> host: they're not publicly interested in the battle you discuss. >> guest: right, right. >> host: in the book. on the anniversary date, they take a slow boat to china. they really have no interest this lighting candles or reading names. >> right. >> host: and then there's a group, well intention anded, i'm not critical, who want to light the candles, who want to participate. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: it's an interesting take on how human beings grieve or react to tragedy. >> guest: yeah. very differently. and i think there has to be space for that. there can't just be, like, one path. this group in philadelphia that i spent time with them, most of them -- not all of them, but most of them were like the first group you mentioned. they have their own memorials in philly. they go up to ground zero once a year maybe. but that's all. they do things with their

community and friends in philadelphia, and it stays very private and very personal. whereas, and they kind of, you know, they're aware of the other things going on, but that's not what they want. >> host: yeah. now, we only have a few minutes left and, of course, we've got to focus in the last few minutes, lessons learned. >> guest: yeah. >> host: lessons learned from these battles. now, the book talks not only about the battles fought and the underlying reasons for those battles, but the book does offer some interesting, an interesting recipe or agenda items for the next time. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: and what lessons do we learn about these battles for ground zero that may stand the public and policymakers in good stead the next time? >> guest: uh-huh. i think be be more transparent and truly transparent. not just to seem transparent, but to actually be transparent. and trust the public with more. i actually think that they, people need to know -- they can

know more about what's going on behind the scenes rather than less. but tell them where you're drawing those lines. where -- what is the space where really experts need to make decisions, historians and architects, that they need to be protected to pick a winning design, for instance. and then what will the public be involved in. i think we have to be very clear in drawing those boundaries and let everybody know. allow this to take time. that's the other thing. i think there was always a push here to get this done, done, done. and every time the deadline was missed, you know? and they were always pushed back. and so if it had given, we had truly given this, say, seven years instead of trying to make it happen in four or five, it might actually have happened in that amount of time instead of now still going on at 12 years out. those are the two most important. and i think, also, really be prepared for people to disagree and allow -- and give people space to voice their differences of opinion and have that be okay. as much as possible in the to

have d you know, what i see now, what seems to be happening in public discourse is people say, they run back and they write on their laptop and call that person a name and try and discredit them, you know, from the things that they hear that are offensive to them. whereas we should embrace, i mean, we really should be able to 'em race that exchange of different -- embrace that exchange of different opinion much more than we are right now. >> host: now, you focus, and this is very useful, you focus on the element of time. >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: now, in the world trade center context was the necessity of as you point out give it time, is that because of the complexities of the issues and the feed for a full, transparent, truly transparent lick vetting of the issues -- public vetting of the issues, or -- and maybe it's not exclusive -- or is the importance of time to give

victims and their families an opportunity for the emotionalism of the or horror to dissipate and diminish somewhat so that reasonable decisions can be made? is it more, look, don't -- for procedural due process reasons, don't push. give people a full and fair opportunity to vet the issues and debate the issues. or is the importance of time, and it's not just that, it's that you want to give people a chance to heal somewhat. >> guest: uh-huh. i think, yeah, i think it's both. and one thing we can forget with new york is there are victims' families who were affected, but a lot of others who were involved in this, the port authority and architects, they were also very closely connected to what happened downtown on 9/11. there were a lot of -- i mean, the port authority, the own or of the land lost, i think, 75

employees were killed. so i think probably everyone can benefit from some distance, not just those who lost family. >> host: do you think that the lessons learned about process, transparency, opportunity to be heard, timing, do you think that those are universals that would, that the united states, the palestinians, the israelis would be well to read your book? be besides it's a great read, but are these lessons either domestic lessons or new york lessons or what? >> guest: i think these are, i mean, i think that they are domestic lessons in part for americans because this is the way that we go about solving these kinds of problems. so i think in boston, you know, after the boston bombings at the marathon, um, they're now facing similar questions. what -- how do we commemorate this, what do we put here. and be i think there's already starting to be different pressures. there were businesses involved,

there are those who lost limbs. i mean, you ran the victims' compensation fund there as well, so you know the different groups involved. and i think this fall they're going to be putting something together to figure out how to go forward. so i would say this would be -- you'd want to avoid some of the mistakes that would happen there. >> host: elizabeth greenspan, "battle for ground zero: inside the political struggle to rebuild world trade center." palgrave macmillan. elizabeth, when can we expect this book to be available -- >> guest: it's on the book shelves august 20th. >> host: august 20th. very, very good. an extraordinary book, a fascinating read, lessons for all of us. i want to thank you for joining us for "after words." >> guest: thank you so much. ..