american are circling us even as we speak in an american space ship and a russian rocket. we haven't heard a lot about them having a big fight in very close quarters. the other thing where we really understand each other is music. russians love our music and we love there's. in fact i can tell you all over the united states except alaska and hawaii, many americans because the nutcracker has become as much an american custom as santa claus many americans really think tchaikovsky is american. i have been confronted with that quite often with all those hockey players, why should tchaikovsky be american but that is how some things have been adopted.

our popular musical comedies, music that is russian. it is a part of us as well and it would be to me, i still believe culture, we got to work harder than ever. that is hard. we can talk a little bit about how to start that again because we do things now have been changed very badly. one of them is trust. as far as i can see there is now no trust in the united states and vice versa. no trust. that becomes very difficult because as you said and i told president reagan, without trust there is no talk. there is nothing. that, i consider very, very serious and i do not know right now how we can fix and although i know we have to try. we really have to try. and i am very distressed at the

demonization of president putin, frankly as henry kissinger said demonization of vladimir putin is not a policy. it is an alibi for a policy. why is our press demonizing absolutely everything? i followed this very carefully. one thing, here is one thing americans don't know and they aren't being told in their newspapers or anywhere else. as a historian i consider it very important. in the last 20 years, russia has become, according to independent poll taken by europe reported in the christian science monitor has become the country with the most people believe in god. 82%. two thirds are now calling themselves orthodox. that is pretty spectacular in 20 years to do is that especially

since everything is about how slow the russians are. for some reason they were not slow about this and it has changed society enormously. the young who are i think the majority, a young country and they need to remember is that. we forget that i think. it is a young country so now this young country large majority believe in god. more than italy, morning:more than anywhere. what does this mean in the long run? one, long ago, i don't believe history repeats itself adducing sometimes it is the spiral. wonka go russia was the last bastion of the west against the east. that happened. i am not saying it is going to happen again but i am saying for me this tectonics shift in

russian thinking is important and we have not heard or discussed it, would love to have a discussion of people's ideas what this could potentially mean for society. and 4 russians, what they think it could mean. now religion is taught in every school in russia. this is not true in the united states. we are becoming more and more secular. they for some reason perhaps because they suffered. i don't know. i find it extremely interesting. what was important to president reagan, my story is totally improbable. i can't tell you, nobody could have written it. i really was a private citizen. i was always a private citizen. you have to read my book because it is a long story.

the reason i entered the oval office was because the soviet union took away my visa. i was really mad, i love russia, we became very close friends but i admired their courage, their survival, their humor, their generosity and you know what happens. i fell in love with them. all from. they were wonderful and i was very happy and it is all i wanted to do. my life was not easy and i was happy. so when i came back the russians say to me talk all you want but don't write so i didn't write. i didn't do anything. my visa was taken away any way. at that point i said this time that is too much. if that is what you are going to do to your friends were you going to do to your enemies?

so i came to washington all on my own. everything i did was on my own nickel. and i didn't have a lot of nichols. i came down, didn't know anybody and all these things happened absolutely marvelous. i met a kuwaiti at a cocktail party, she was the president of the democratic women's club. we were in the middle of talk. i thought no detente without a human face. no russians could come here, nobody could marry anybody, i thought that was awful. and so i decided to talk. that was my first public speech in washington, no detente without ice human face. that was not very popular. i can tell you that. they did not like it at all and i went to the image may i tell you i am suisse and i am gurneys and the burmese are reputed to

be very perseverance and stubborn. i went to see henry kissinger and he said to me explain their policy, how great it was, fabulous. i said the policy of detente may be wonderful but the russian proverb says wolf kenna is well fed wolf does not become a lamb. he said no, he said something i will never forget. he said while we are building our trade, your friends and all others in the soviet union will have to take the mound, that system to administer. he used the word in the old executive office building outraged me. in my heart. i continued to, fast forward, because i told you everything is very low but none of this happened quickly. i kept fighting for my visa. i went everywhere, the state

department, senators wrote to the state department and said can you help this woman? my idea was always the same. for the united states and the soviet union and russia today, increased exchange and knowledge was a key. that wasn't popular. it wasn't the idea. i always felt people to people is what counts. and so there i was, preaching a little bit about that. nobody listened and the state department, the head of the soviet -- it would be inappropriate for us at this time and then said you are the single american citizen who knows the most soviet citizens personally. as if this were bad. nothing worked. i without to give up. i was told in russia and got a

message, there i was, forbidden forever. nobody knew why. i asked why, they said only westerners ask for reasons. then reagan consent and tries to get live the setback. rate was elected and of course the soviet union began to take a little more attention and decided that perhaps this should be a little more talking back and forth and they invited a u.s. colonel, i had another -- i knew west point very well and those gentlemen went up the ladder and unleashed heavy colonels and found the generals. this was the only one who was interested in my problem.

how stupid, i was so selfish ala wanted to do was get back. any way if you can't imagine the people responsible for my getting back to the soviet union were united states colonel, army, and i took him back and he told me he had deposited on the desk of the institute seven copies of the fiber and they said interesting woman. to you know this woman? yes. we would like to talk to. what a coincidence, she would like to talk to you too but she has no visa. he came home, called me up and said call so and so. that so and so was the translator of stalin who happened to like america very much and who happened to be a

very intelligent man. between the two of them they got me back to the soviet union except, accept it was just after hours. the temperature was so cold you can't imagine. at that point i decided something happen, ronald reagan, not bureaucrats. i had seen a few of them. not bureaucrats. my children i always told them everyone is only two introductions away. so i worked on that and finally, finally the senator from maine, i kept saying, i had noticed that terrible atmosphere in moscow when i went for the first time, there was the psychosis of war. people were terrified.

children were running into bomb shelters and hiding under the desk. it was bad. i saw what a tremendous gulf there was between understanding and the other self. i tried hard. it is really bad. you got to talk, just talk. talk about something and finally he said you should talk to the national security adviser. simple as that. picked up the phone and said this is bill. i have a woman who knows a lot about russia. you ought to talk to her. so i had 20 minutes and are cute, that is what i said. i think maybe there is a way to discuss this. one thing led to another and at one point, i tried to believe, look at me now, i put my hand up

and said send me. i did not know how bad it was. had i known how bad it was, it is not considered the worst period in the entire cold war. so i got sent and that is how i met the president. he didn't read my book. he read the mall after. there i was suddenly, and just before i was to leave, i said the russians are personal people. all the president's men don't add up to the president. i must look in his eye and ask one question. i want to be able to say honestly to anyone i have seen that the president's comments came from him. i said put it on paper. there i was in the oval office and that is how i met president reagan for the first time. he asked me the first question he asked me, interesting, was

how much do they believe in communism, and i said mr. president, i can't tell you how the russians think but i can tell you many of them say they love only their chairs. we went on. the president wouldn't leave. egypt stained and stained and staying. i said mr. president, if you are elected to a second term, will policy of small steps toward better relations be policy continuing, policy of your administration and he looked at me, he had a fierce i when he wanted to end he said yes, if they want peace they can have it. i went to moscow. they were pretty hot. at the end i said the only thing we are able to talk about is mothers and culture and if we don't talk about mothers and

culture we are through. someone said there is some logic in what you say and they said yes. so then 13 months later, they talked for 13 months and there was the meeting in geneva where that was the only, so proud of that, the only agreement they signed so i continued to have deep faith in the power of people to people relations, nothing can beat it, not bureaucratic, not anything. ronald reagan was the only politician i ever met who was interested not in what the kremlin thought but what did the russians think. we made a great mistake in the united states make russian and soviet a synonym. it was not a synonym. i was able to explain to him the difference between the two. and i think the most important thing i told him which really made a huge difference in his

thinking was that the russians, nobody in washington, all of these experts and everything else had never told the president of the united states that the russians were religious and that they had the 1,000-year-old church and that despite all the persecution of their government existed and it was indeed the only marxist leninist organization allowed to exist all. this turned out to be the big difference. i told you everything is wrong but now we will stop. >> thank you. and from the russian side, a russian/foreign relations. difficult to find, everything

starts to normalize. do you know anybody in the process now? >> no. actually i got one. i got one. i protested the bureaucracy of the news thing and really got one, amazing. i was looking forward actually to going just -- before the crisis. but my husband had a terrible accident a few years ago and is an invalid and i was afraid because it is so far. i couldn't do that but i do know quite a few people around vladimir putin and i want to come to the church, i just wanted to take the pulse and i would like to do that because i do think it is good when it is someone who is not connected with government either way.

that did teach the president in rescue the can said to him mr. president, russians like to talk in proverbs and one might come in handy for you. i said to him you are an actor, you can learn it very quickly. he repeated that ended first i sit in russian and then -- he loved it. i am so delighted now. it has gone into the american lexicon without knowing at all and that is the way it was and it has become his. which is why i come back to culture is important and our challenge now is to find, if i can go on left field, do things, something nonpolitical where

both countries look good. the win/win situation. i suggested to reagan at the rodeo and he loved that. you might try it that. >> thank you. question? >> i want to open it up for questions. my question to start off is iec person to person contact, cultural connections, understanding history, understanding each other in real wages based on needing an exchange. seems like one of the keys to your dice to reagan in the second term especially. during the period in crisis when everything is so convinced, this is a crisis going on for only a few months, what is the solution in this situation?

>> i still believe it is people to people. i don't mean big picture but personal contact. it helps. i really believe in that. >> and configure questions and a few comments. i slightly disagree on not understanding russia. reagan's administration characterized the soviet union which is from my understanding there russian empire by naming it as an empire of evil and. that is a very precise description of russia. the soviet union, the russian empire, at least from those countries who were forcefully part of the soviet union and the second thing, my second comment

is you mentioned demonizing vladimir putin, that is a problem because no russian can hear your voice is from the west because it is dominated and serves the most piece of kremlin but appeasing so when we are talking right now, the larger european nation is under occupation and this occupation is continuing now. in order to understand how we shape our response we have to understand what vladimir putin wants. i don't think vladimir putin wants crimea or cares about polarizing at this stage. i don't think he even wants eastern ukraine. his main aim is to turn ukraine

into a place where western allies will turn to vladimir putin for assistance. this russian policy has never changed since peter the great. as an extension in subduing the neighbor was always part of the russian foreign policy with some minor exceptions but what we are witnessing now is a continuation of the same with one exception. unlike 2008 they changed the current world order by annexation. by annexing a huge chunk of sovereign nation. >> can i answer is that. >> i will go back to think i

said power in the discussion, that is a valid point because i want to know in his commission, reagan fighting communism which is gone or was it the united states policy, russia, soviet union, geopolitical and any which despite the enemy still exist. some voices in russia say if the united states was fighting communism and this was a global cold war why doesn't it fight china? china is a huge communist country and you have great relations with china but you are still fighting russia which is not a communist country anymore. it is not about communism anymore. the cold war was about communism, why is the cold war with the soviets in and not with

china? that was about communism, it was about something else. what was it about? that is the main question. you build your policy toward russia based on what? how you see russia as a power that challenges your nation or what? is that the superpower? russians were very offended by obama's comment of regional power. still don't understand how. side kind of silly. so what was it about? what is the basis of american foreign policy, if you have a chance to talk to him now? >> first of all it is nice to see you, mr. ambassador. i could take you apart in history. i will not do so but i expected

from you the fiery response of georgia and i do respect it. i do respect it bought myself i feel things are not the same way that you see them and i think that it is not very constructive for what is going to happen now. i look at this question of ukraine at the moment, ukraine is intertwined in many ways, culturally, historically, etc. with russia since the ninth century, the cradle of slavic said civilization. it is a complicated place. it is not so simple. in every way, not even like your countries that has an identification, it is that nation with a culture, a religion.

ukraine is not unified at all. a very good comment i read was it has become a stage where the first time only 21 years ago, but it is not yet a nation because it is so fragmented in so many ways but, culturally, religiously, in all these days. ukraine has not yet been capable of finding a leader for this new state that can unify them. to meet that is the greatest problem. i don't like any, frankly, i don't think it is a policy we should be involved in. i think it is very much a question of ukrainians putting together is themselves. there are so many questions, some of them are not answered yet. when i look at things rafters and making fast comments, i say

when in doubt, hesitate. i wish we had done that. i wish we had waited. a little more patiently, to see what would happen because anybody who has had that minor, even elementary knowledge of russian history must, or should have known that to do any meddling in ukraine you had to deal with a long stick and to know you are going to rub one nerve very raw and be prepared for it. and what bothers me about all of this is what is this all about? what is it about? it does not help the united states. it does not help russia. the person it helps the least is ukraine. for i wish it had been more constructive, could have been more impartiality, that there

could have been some help internationally in helping the ukrainians themselves find a way to make peace among themselves and to go forward with all their problems. that is what i would have hoped. that did not happen and that is what is so dangerous because i think that when nationalist emotions are roused in any country in the whole world they are dangerous and can easily get out of hand. and not be controlled by anybody. they can't be stopped. that is what worries me is the most. to rest of the world -- piece is what we want. how to get peace, how to get everybody in the world want paps peace and how we get there is the problem. >> questions? >> demonizing vladimir putin is a bad thing.

conflating putin and russia is also a concern. most of what you described in your book was made possible by a a network of connections between americans and russians. you yourself and the people you connected with. that is terribly important. on page 119-120 you actually talk about the different mentality of soviet leadership and american leadership and your concern these decent americans are going to be really taken for a ride by men in the kremlin. and that resonates unfortunately. what i hear from a lot of people in the ministry of foreign affairs, the cultural realm, is

a lot of concern about what is happening and i am not sure without ramping up public opinion there would have been as much support for what is going on in the ukraine. we shouldn't demonize vladimir putin, vladimir putin shouldn't say the entire ukrainian pro-democracy group of fascists. .. >> so i think you're absolutely

right, the appeal has got to be too much broader segment of russian society rather than a focus on just the leadership. >> thank you. we are all friends. when he was working in leningrad and i was -- it's a great pleasure. indeed, that's basically i guess what i'm saying, too. i am concerned about the emotional wrapping up, because then, you know, that can get out of hand. whether it's just a fight among normal people. suddenly the emotions take off and then who can stop them? who can stop them? then you can have accidents. so my feeling is there's a lot of urgency toward, you know, lowering the tone on both sides. now, what i worry about, the rule, the first rule of diplomacy is leave an opening to

talk. leave an opening. if anything, the swiss will teacher, that's it, leave an opening. i don't see an opening. and then combined with this lack of trust. once you lost trust it's very hard to get it back. i sort was very sorry because reagan and gorbachev had come such a long way. they really had and they were both hoping it would continue. i've often thought that reagan was spared by god, that he didn't see the deterioration. guess i know this is an absolute fact that reagan's one hope was to get rid of all nuclear weapons. and also it was gorbachev. and it's a tragedy that they missed by so little, and that we now have that still hanging over us so we must never forget. i'm not a peacenik at all. i'm not saying that putin is just an angel, no. in fact, i was very worried when

i saw the emotional tone of his speech. those words, we have been humiliated, you know, we have been betrayed, are very hard words in russia. i was sad for the. there's nothing calling about that. in fact, public support in russia. nobody seems be listening to what the russian people are saying, by the way. we hear an awful lot about what putin is saying. i was with an american diplomat, ambassador, very wise man who said he was very struck by how little we actually listened to what putin said. whatever he says. but i'm not talking but in general, i'm talking about that speech. i agree he is dead on. here's our idea. who's got an idea of what we could do? i mean, i've been given up on the higher levels. what can we do just to lower the

tension? you are right, the press is terrible, really terrible. they are making, not making it better, right? put it that way. what can we do without making excuses for people's bad behavior? forget that for the moment. let's try, i think, what positive steps can we do? does anybody have any idea? >> maybe our georgian -- [inaudible] >> they have a very different view on ukraine and ukraine being a nation and a proud nation. we are a strong identity. so putin was describing emotionally i guess to either president obama or bush that is not really a country, but a geography reference. that's how he looks at this country.

first, putin said years ago that -- [inaudible] the whole western world, nato and eu, business as usual in a months time. so i think that what should be done first of all, i come from a generation where i remember very well president reagan's address after the soviet union invaded poland in 1983. it was reagan's address, reagan's christmas advice where he stood as a true leader of the free world. i think if someone said, unfortunately, we may find how relevant it sounds even today. second, i think, and i don't have any prescription. if putin doesn't -- ukraine is not the last place where he is going to stop. how he's going to pay full

price, it's a whole different subject of discussion. >> one phrase of ronald reagan that you perhaps did not know, what he always said, it is better to protect people than to avenge them. that was very unpopular is position. as far as empire of evil was concerned, he was right, absolutely. i met him after that, but was was good about reagan was his mind is open. i think that is very important, even if one has very strong and even correct feelings, you've got to keep -- that's what he did do. and for me, that was the attribute of an actor. you know what? people said he was a second rate actor. my foot. you know, an actor does not look for mirror images. and actor looks for motives and emotions in order to get into somebody's skin who was very

different. that is he wanted from me. he wanted to know about russian people, not about russian leaders. it wouldn't be a bad idea now for all of us. i'm not talking about just, yeah, i think, i think if i might say you have a completely hostile attitude and not very constructive. let's think about constructive. we are thinking about the people of the world. we're not thinking about your country or our country. we are thinking about the attentional affects on the whole world. and that is worth a little constructive thoughts and even if i may say, a little humility and a little, as i may say, love. after all, humility is in short supply among politicians. reagan was modest. that was one thing. he was a man of deep faith, and he believed that it was better to protect than a bench. not the people in his initiation

-- a lot of people in his administration felt very carefully but i think honesty is the beginning of wisdom, and the other. i think we should all be a little modest about what's been happening and our respective countries and how little we know, no matter how high. constructively, ladies, come on out. what do you think is constructive? >> well, first, my name is leanne. i'm an independent writer researcher, and in terms of something constructive, there are many opportunities for the united states and russia to work together as superpowers. because i recognize, yes, russia views itself and that was correctly, given his history and a small but of its history, uses itself as a superpower. so cooperation in space right now we're using the soyuz ticket to the international space

station as americans because we were tired -- we retired all of our rockets. we can work together in the eradication of international drug trade which was something that a no hillary clinton and sergey lavrov were working on early in obama's first term. we could work together on power, water, infrastructure for underdeveloped regions of our own country. in the united states we need nuclear power. we need water, 100 sense of the state of california is in some form of drought. that's a problem that we could solve if we weren't so busy with the hypocrisy, the wards, the foreign adventures -- the wars. i did have a question for you about how you do handle this hypocrisy. because saying oh, the russians

acted first, or the united states acted first. because you have to even the past 20 years of the eu and nato, we are accusing russia of intervening into the former soviet union. what was the european union doing for 20 years? i mean, we have to somehow overcome the hypocrisy, but -- >> i happen to like and respect men very much for all that you can do and all that we can't do. but there's some things that women can do a little better. i found in my long history that men often think in terms like locking horse. it's always very important to win. somebody has got to win over the other one, or settle scores with the other one. whereas women, anyone who has been a mother knows very well that if you're going to have

peace in the family, compromise is necessary. compromise takes humility. compromise is not easy. men, i find often in the united states, that the word compromise seems to connote weakness. it is not weakness, it's a strength and it takes a lot harder to find a compromise. now, the compromise means somehow, going to the person, whoever, putin, maybe obama, i don't know, whoever, and somehow having a real sense of where the person is coming from. maybe it's coming from bad things. find out how a sure enough, maybe. maybe there are huge misunderstandings from the basic level. but the important thing is to try and find some common ground

for speaking of the rest of the world, which is important and i think that is the responsibility of both mr. putin and mr. obama right now more than any of the rest of us because i don't think we can do much. i'm also thinking of, out of the box. i'm trying to think of things that would capture the popular imagination, things we could do that would really help to change stereotypes. those stereotypes grew up in early 20th century, they are still there. i have a list of them. one of them is, anything to do this about any country if you wanted to. it is said that there russians love the wit. the russians are, i love this, apathetic and love the wit. you know, all these kinds of things would be called racist if they were both about anybody

else. every country can be accused of one thing or another. >> let me been put together -- >> we should fight. >> you kind of approach the same question from two different sites, and that's what i am dealing with also. in this country i see, actually not only here in the world, i see a bunch of books and articles written about putin's russia. you know, i kind of disagree with this concept of putin, situation and russia became something different under putin. i just, well but again, i can be wrong but i just finished my book where i tried to pose putin is very russian. it's not like putin's russia. russia is putin. he is a unique russian leader,

you like him or hate him? russia could not have anybody else. that's the major question. when you do with mr. putin you are dealing with russia or are you dealing with a symbol you have to change? when putin talked to obama, and you keep telling me obama doesn't -- obama doing wrong thing. putin represents russia as i see. he is kind of, catching public mood, very successfully. you're dealing with a political enemy. so who's going to win? of course rush is going to win because it's like putin is very much adequate for the country. again, do you like the country or not? represents 85% of popular to, i can't believe it. you know, now. unfortunately. but if you're dealing with russia, not with putin's russia,

it's a different picture. so how you build policy with russia is a long story. it comes from like -- [inaudible] a thousand years state history just a second. i understand the concern of post-soviet space, and small countries around russia. rush is just russia and putin represents russia. russia will go back to its historic roots. you know, for many years i was advocate for russian democracy and then i realized russian democracy very much based on health democratic belligerents. they are is no system. russians never wanted the system. they very much wanted a leader. so you have to deal with the country. your book, you know, you have to do with the country, not with the leader.

that's what i don't understand this notion of obama should be over putin. i think it's wrong. you have to d deal with the country. you have to know the country. but anyway, i will stop myself. >> go ahead with your analysis. >> go ahead. [inaudible] >> i worry -- spent sorry, could we take a second really fast? we realize we would over time so anyone who has to leave, please feel free to do so. thank you for it your time. you know, if you have any final questions please disappeared everyone else who wants to stay -- [inaudible] >> park in cleveland mostly. people would like to stay but have to park. go ahead. spent actually i want to ask about the role of the public

opinion in this. do you think that the americans on foreign policy, to the government or does the public have a say in things like this? i mean, there was a recent blockbuster by america's latest discussed in america about you know, the unlikely, that it's unlikely for an american to be able to put ukraine on the map, right? they found less americans were likely there will to show ukraine on the map and only 16% -- more were likely to support active american action in that country, including military action. but in general, americans did not want military intervention,

and especially the more educated americans did not want a military intervention abroad. do you think the public does say here are does the public opinion have a monopoly on foreign policy speak as i did hear what you said about societies in america who were for war? where was that? in what place in america where these? >> do you think the american public opinion has a say in this -- >> i think the american public opinion does have a say but a fort lee american public opinion doesn't know very much. they do not get two sides. they don't get to sites in the press. there are gray areas in our country where there is no newspaper, just television to you take a look at television and you see how much you learned there. i know because i've lectured in 48 states, and i know that the russian people, i mean the

american people, are terribly interested in russia. they don't, and when there was a time, a good time when there were all those exhibitions when the museums, places like jackson, mississippi, and st. petersburg, florida and all these places, they were jammed by everybody. they wanted to see. so i think myself the public opinion are very well turned to russia. but, unfortunately, there are huge, huge ignorance about the history, sort about the history, especially since there's very little russian history taught in our country. and you think it's a huge country there, and there are only maybe two centers weather is russian studies. one, the east, and the other california. what about the rest? so it's hard to talk about all american public opinion.

my experience has been that in the large, americans are very interested, well disposed toward the russian people. and that they are fascinated by russia itself. it is fascinating. but any other side exists. i bet it exists in russia, too. i can't help but think so. and much of it is based entirely on americans not knowing anything. i like to be hopeful about it but a know there's a lot to be done if we're ever going to change this. i've been talking about this for several days, what can we do to change? one of the things we have to do is get rid of stereotypes that are left over from the cold war. they are just there and they seem to be part of the language. they shouldn't be part of the language. they are gone now, whether you like it or don't like it, you are right. rush is now, again, russia. all of her past and everything else plays.

so what is it to become? how is it to become? it is still not absolutely clear. it's a huge transition. so if we're going to try and do something, we sure have to get rid of wrong thinking. witches, things that are not true can get rid of those and really tried. on to say, i look at your lovely young faces and i think you are the key. you are the key, both in russia and the united states. and i hope that you're going to come up with some wiser ways of behaving than some of your adults have. >> well, i am usually optimist optimistic, for this down. let's thank you, our guest, for very personal, very interesting, very warm presentation. [applause] i hope you will be back. >> i would love to.

>> i want to hear more about stereotypes. >> i have a list. i have a list. i can give you. i've been keeping a list for years. >> okay, thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> tonight on c-span2 its booktv in prime time with a focus on navy seals.

booktv all this week in prime time here on c-span2. >> tonight on c-span we'll bring you speeches and discussions from the fifth annual women in the world summit, including a pop singer's leading protests in ukraine, a conversation with hillary clinton and firsthand stories of bombings and chemical attacks in syria. here's a preview. >> that day we were placed, me and my cousin, were preparing some activities for the kids. we were working with them. we heard on the internet that chemical attacks hit the center. and then after an hour we heard a similar attack hit my town. we were hearing the missiles, you know, the bombing all the night but we didn't recognize that these bombings this night

is different from any other night before it's carrying gas, sarin gas. so after half an hour we started feeling dizzy. we plugged our noses. our eyes were running, so we just recognized that there's something different in the air. and we rushed to the other room and we wake up with all the family members and the kids. we tried to help them to put some kind of scars on their noses. and then we decided -- were your throat and eyes burning at this point speak with yes. our noses were running. we couldn't see well, and we find -- [inaudible] but we didn't imagine that it would be worse. and we decided to go to the

hospital to help. because we used to be nurses at that hospital. so we rushed to the hospital and tried to help. on our way, usually took us five minutes to get there but because of the heavy bombing and shelling, it took us 20 minutes. i remain when we arrived in that neighborhood, i saw dozens of women and men and children. i just remember myself screaming and yelling out and sang o god, o god. i was so shocked. i didn't imagine to see that. >> watch all of our coverage from this year's women in the world summit tonight at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> turning to send his come president obama and vice

president joe biden are traveling to oakdale pennsylvania. the 202 or ag committee college 202 or ag committee college with the president will pitch a new job training brand, -- training plan. remarks scheduled for 345 eastern live online at c-span.org. and the new york times reporting that former new york mayor michael bloomberg plans to launch a new $50 million gun control effort to combat the influence of the national rifle association. according to the story, rather than relying heavily on television ad campaign, mr. bloomberg will put a large portion of his resources into the often unseen field operations that have been effected for groups like the nra. women and mothers in particular will be the focus of the organizing and outreach. the strategy will focus not on sweeping federal restrictions to ban certain weapons that instead was seek to expand the background check system for gun buyers, focus on state -- both

at the state and national level. that again reported by "the new york times." >> next remark some social historian, professor and president of the andrew mellon foundation, or louis. he spoke earlier this year at the annual harry c. howard lecture at the end of the universe on the topic of flat to be, the humanities and higher education. from february, this is just over one hour. >> as historian you always wonder whether not you want to really play with mythology. is something i think the republicans about a story that always is wrapped in some degree of truth, and it gets to be told and retold in different ways and in some ways it is a mythology that combines committees, helps individuals to get into a space

that is not really their own space but they get to claim some part of that space by actually understanding the myth. why that color, why that structure, why, whatever. so i will only correct one part of the mythology. i didn't go to the bathroom. [laughter] but it was a case where i was taken by surprise. actually the better part of the story i went to brazil. and my colleagues, we were looking for a new president and i missed a meeting. and literally i was in brazil and they came back from that meeting and went into what i thought was a committee meeting and it was committee of the halls and i was asked them to leave the room. then was invited back in and was told by my colleagues that they had decided in my absence that perhaps i should consider a new opportunity that i had been considering two minutes before. anyway, i'm delighted to be here at vanderbilt to be the

president of the andrew w. mellon foundation, to be in rooms why not go everywhere and it's really a beautiful thing, you know, i had a mellon fellowship at one point last year, even before i became president of the foundation is giving a talk at the supreme court for black history month and for the neh. after the end of the talk, walking through the quarter and sort of looking bear reminding myself of where i am and realize i wish my mother was aliv like e able to say, i'm in the court and i got to talk, and it's about something else there but i thought walking out the door, several people walked up and they all started to reminisce how the mellon fellowship is some critical space in their lives, made it possible for them to finish their dissertations, the graduate course of work and to be faculty members all over the united states. ..

>> but mostly i want to thank all of you for creating a context and a venue for this conversation. so let me start with sentence

number one. let's return to the proposition and ask why philanthropy should care about the state of the humanities at all. in each age we face really insurmountable challenges. what is required choices to be made, resources be allocated and areas to be ignored. this is more the case in the united states which is really seen an explosion in the number of registered philanthropies for philanthropic organizations, as well as a concomitant rethinking what it means to be philanthropic. according to the foundation center, there are 81,777 foundations and charitable or positions registered in the united states at this time. gates, ford, robert wood johnson and rockefeller, and they can demand billions of dollars in assets. but there are also quite a few with little more, that are little more than a charitable arm of a family enterprise, and

the assets number in the thousands rather than billions. think about that constellation, 81,777, small ones, large ones. there are also then a handful of older foundations led by carnegie that he been dispensing grants and agendas for more than a century. others that have emerged in the last decade with articulated visions about purpose, intent and scope. and if carnegie symbolize the perpetuity foundation, foundations whose board missions and goals changed over the decades, but whose work endured generation after generation after generation, among the more subtle changes that have really given birth in the last two years is the creation of a number of sunset foundations. the sunset foundations symbolized i gates or atlantic

philanthropies which is about to cease operations in a few months, they are designed to close before the death of a benefactor or any specified number of years after his or her death. i do know how many of you know that the gates foundation has said it will go out of business 20 years after the death of bill and melinda. think of the application at a time when they have their $60 billion roughly when you combine the gates fortune and that of warren buffett. inventing of what it means then at the end to realize the sunset and how that may shake your agenda during the next 30 plus years. you said 30 plus years because if you look at the actuarial tables a look at bill and try to figure out both income and age, 30 years is a pretty good number. whether perpetuity -- the range of human needs wanted to support seems endless.

homelessness, economic inequality and poverty, health care disparity, global health issues, war and social instability. tyranny and political persecution. and with headlines proclaim this the age of science, technology, engineering and math, or medicine, stem, one may rightly ask why spend 1 penny on furthering the humanities? or state or more bluntly, what's the case for investing in humanities at this particular point in time? i think the answer lies in understanding and articulating the role the u.n. is play in educating citizens for a complex interconnected world. too often where captured by headlines such as the one in "the new york times" on november 4, 2013, entitled interface and the humanities, colleges worried. lead with a focus on -- noting

45%, i'm quoting, 44% of the faculty in the stanford main undergraduate division are in humanities but only 15% of the students. there's a worry and a panic. we are told efforts by means of admissions and faculty at stanford and princeton among others to recruit students just for the humanities. third in the article is the assertion that a near 7% of college graduates majoring in the humanities. down from a high of 14% in the 1970s. a member those numbers. i'm going to come back to them in a few minutes. my travels around the nation and across the world, craft a common story and for humans to have a better command of the facts. locally, nationally and internationally. so i which is my first sense on those seeking to develop an evidence-based narrative about

and for the humanities. in a nod towards making such a case, the american academy of arts and sciences offered the following in a recent report, the heart of the matter published last summer. i'm quoting, we live in a world characterized by change and, therefore, a world depend upon the humanities and social sciences. how do we understand and manage change if we have no notion of the past? how do understand ourselves if we have no notion of a society, culture, or world different from the one in which we live? a fully balanced curriculum including the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences provide opportunity for integrative thinking and imagination, for creativity and discovery, and for good citizenship. the humanities and social sciences are not merely elected, nor are they elitist. they go beyond the immediate and instrumental to help us

understand the past and the future. they are necessary and they require support in challenging times as well as in times of prosperity. they are critical to our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, as described by the nation's founders, and they are the heart of the matter. that's the introduction to this report from the national academy. but what steps are necessary, therefore, to insinuate the humanities into a dialogue about a nation, any nation? for answers to that question let's turn to the humanities themselves. perhaps the place to begin is with america. that will be familiar to humanists. what is the story we seek to tell? here i borrowed from the idea of a narrative offered by -- they conclude in the near to the special a significant narrative,

it's more than a system of interconnected facts. instead there's a storyline down by events that lead to some notable action of consequence. take, for instance, the story of a demand for greater and greater attention to stem. in 1997-1999 the reference was not the stm, stem but to smith. science and mathematics engineering and technology, in testimony before the house science committee, the national science foundation director neil lane began his comments on july 23, 1997, by saying, mr. chairman, appreciate the opportunity to appear today together with secretary riley to discuss the role of the federal government insights mathematic engineering and technology, and a long history of working with the department of education to sustain and improve our country's educational system.

more than a decade later, mark said, the professor to held at virginia tech right in the technology teacher would know this. in the 1990s national science foundation began using s.m.e.t. a shorthand for science, mathematics engineering at the delta. when a program officer complained that s.m.e.t. sound too much like smut. the s.t.e.m. acronym was born. [laughter] as recent as 2003, relatively few knew what it meant. so standards goes on to know, many that you asked us if s.t.e.m. education budget program is beginning to envision have something to do with s.t.e.m. cell research. that was still very much the same case in the fall of 2005 when we the technology education program, faculty at virginia tech launched our s.t.e.m. education graduate program and then he would go on but when americans learn the world was

flat, they quickly grew to believe china and india were on course to bypass america in a global economy by outstanding us, and sunday began to flow towards all things s.t.e.m. now nearly everyone is somewhat fully with the s.t.e.m. acronym. sanders account is about narratives and the construction of a story about the need to invest in s.t.e.m. he gives credit to tom friedman. i would argue that it was not just friedman who made them aware, made all of us aware, federal policy in the united states shifted. the national academy said it has, sound the alarm in a series of publications, most notably rising above the gathering storm, and perhaps, the pace of technological change exemplified by digital technology redefined urgency. for those of us were born in the

'40s and '50s and '60s, we think of a decade as lasting roughly 25 years. [laughter] in the new digital age, generations are defined in terms of 18 months. so if a typical undergraduate finishes college in four years, she is already 2.67 technological generation. that sense of exhilaration became a part of a narrative which pushed s.t.e.m. into the national vocabulary with different meanings and implications for all of us. so is the lesson to be copied? the answer is yes. beginning with the basics. what do we know about ourselves and humanities? that me ask you a question. how many of you know anything about the humanities indicators project sponsored by the american academy of arts and sciences? three out of about 60, okay. now, the project is an attempt

on the part of the american academy begin to collate and come up with an authoritative data set on a whole range of issues related to the world of the humanities, academic committees, public humanities, publications, job placement, career choices, the ways in which students major in, what fields, et cetera. i use the word authoritative because there's a lot of data sets out there but coming up with one you can trust is what norm bradford are used to the national opinion research center in chicago, took on the project of creating the humanities indicators project. ..

somewhere between eight to 12% of college graduates in the united states. while you can become enamored with the roller coaster effect of the curve, it is clear that

except for the period in the mid 1960s from about 1973 to the present, notwithstanding the scale of the data set, eight to 12% of the total is what you see. and since 1987, the numbers between 1987-2010 was closer to 10 to 12%. and so some peace is beginning to command details began to actually shape not only importance of understanding the terrain i think is very, very important. so what's the take away? a significant percentage of american undergraduates have chosen to make a particular skills of the humanities were a long time. why they do is a very complicated question, but it's not driven by market imperatives alone. that sense of stability notwithstanding the alarms on the daily by individual acts of individual institutions is important i think.

part of that story america -- the narrative starts with a crisis and alarm. we all know from research humans make much better decisions when they're not caught in a flight decision. we should remember when we begin to assemble other elements of america that in some places not a story about crisis and alarms, it's a story about dynamic change over a long period of time that we begin to understand that. and how to begin to place that in context. what else can we glean from communities indicators project that may help us craft our knowledge? we can begin to see that humanities represent a range of intellectual areas and have experienced growth of one kind or of another over the years. in fact the late 1990s through the mid-2000, the number of academic jobs grew by 20,000 in

humanities nationwide. now, more than most clusters, there's really been real job growth. what we need to know is what percent of those were lectures, what percent were contingent labor. this is the future work of the humanities indicators project. but what we take away from this is that colleges and universities have always been places where there's new innovations and there is a way in which the fields of humanity have played a role in those institutions i any particular kd of way for some kind. on the valley of the amenities i draw your attention to a recently published book by a british literary scholar and critic, the book is entitled the valley of the humanities. small reminds us that the argument for the humanities should resist the obvious traps. she sees no utility in opposing

the committees to the signs of a social sciences. i agree. she argues that knowledge, creation and sharing requires a multiplicity of approaches. no one skill is more intrinsically valuable than another. rather, alone or in combination they offer another way of unraveling the mystery of the human condition. she concludes that the humanities have public value for about five reasons. let me take them off. one, they do a distinctive kind of work, preserve and extend distinctive kinds of understanding. and business a distinctive relation to the idea of knowledge being indestructible from human subjectivity. very important piece. number two, to -- they were useful to society. three, the humanities make a

vital contribution to individual happiness and to the happiness of large groups ask some people may debate that one but i think it's fair. fourth, the humanities can make a vital contribution to the maintenance of the health of a democracy through the ability to actually make sure people ask questions. and know how to interrogate the evidence before them. and then five, she concludes, none of these arguments is sufficient without a supporting claim that the value of the obvious and cultural practices, the communities study, and the kind of scholarship they cultivate have value for their own sake. that they are good in themselves. it's not just because it's utilitarian. they are good in their own way. professor smallest claims this will know about the debate in the uk and the u.s. but crafting a compared of melted will produce a need to be as

concerned with what humanities will become as much as what they have been. so let me go then to the next period, which is the first since would be spent on evidence-based narrative. as we ponder the future, we have to expect that humanities will continue to demonstrate a vibrant and dynamic tension between continuity and change. long-standing disciplines such as literature and history and philosophy remain ever important to humanistic scholarship and discovery. for nearly a court of the century, humanists have also embraced an aspect of interdisciplinary scholarships, thomas special subsidies psycho analytic studies and those perspectives have found themselves entering comparative literature. historians of medicine have worked with literary scholars to craft the medical humanities.

historians and cultural and apologists have fashioned the conjoined field of history and anthropology. and at the same time many of us in this room have participated in animating gender studies, women's studies, sexuality studies, african-american and ethnic studies as well as the contemporary incarnation of american studies. i cited these examples to remind us of the creativity that exploded the last three decades in areas of the humanities. you question, new questions, new approaches, and new ways of knowing as well as new things that we came to know. that is the legacy of the interdisciplinary agency of humanities-based fields or reinvigorating much in the academies. we sort of think through and we can talk about this hopefully later. but as i stand before you i can imagine the even more radical term the bar of fraser my good friend, robin kelley.

i proposed a continued investment in the humanity's is warranted because there are new questions to answer and new methods to be developed that link previous knowledge and new tools and methods. two summers ago, a "wall street journal" reporter asked, how many articles on shakespeare do we need? after all, and some of you may have actually seen this, she explicitly questioned the utility of mining gold materials, retracing well-traveled paths. my report today would be as many as creative minds can produce, assuming that the either add to the base of what we know was that advance a new way of understanding the genius of the human imagination. so let me turn to the example of adding to the basic understanding of the genius of the human imagination to i want

to illustrate with two examples. first one comes from a day's -- excuse the emirate reference at vanderbilt. several years ago i noted novelist tom rushdie decided to deposit his personal papers at emory. if you go online you will find a collection including manuscripts, letters, personal documents, miscellany and, of course, his computing. at the moment of receipt, the colleaguecolleagues at the emirr discovered that at least one of the computers had been killed by a cola product. [laughter] for emory, the irony was not missed. [laughter] given his long ties to coca-co coca-cola. and the story was mythmaking that, of course, it was coke that killed it and maybe some days it was pepsi and not coke. anyway, salmon thought everything on his computers have been lost for ever. it wasn't.

technicians were able to recover essentially every keystroke, word, deletion, et cetera. this suggests the next generation of literary scholars will have an advantage, unknown, unknown heretofore. now only will they be able to probe the literary genius that enabled salman rushdie produce the book, but aspects of creativity as well. think of it. we can trace when he composed, how he changed things. we can match it to the notes in his address. we can go back and actually create simulations to forget what may have been going on in the brain as he's actually typing and weak typing. but that kind of new possibility, using new tools and methods also suggests that other things will have to change. new kinds of teams will have to be created.

one may involve illiterate scholar with computer science, neuroscientists and method david experts. -- data xers. the take away here is that what we see in the future, we think about investing, is that the solitary individual scholar working alone will be part of one world and will be of the world, too, where new kinds of collaborations and new laboratories will be created because there are new questions and new ways of knowing what it is to be known. we will have to do a course with the prestige culture and the academy and who gets credit and that we do with it and how we think about who should be sitting next to whom and which offices in consideration. but all that is solvable. real question, how do we harness the imagination to begin to actually think about new questions and methods? that's one example. the rushdie example also calls to mind the ways in which technology may also that a conjugal side of the equation as

well. this is also part of the innovation we can imagine supporting with the second penny. much has been printed in the last months. i'm like a number of industry know don't have your own opinion about their values, utilities and the longevity. i mean, for one, i deleted that they're going to replace the man anytime soon. i say that and i'm willing to bet more than any on that one. after all, to date only about 10% of those who initially enrolled at any point. ..

develop sure between harvard and mit. he hasn't read any of the literature on how students learn and there were 500 of us in that room that day and i daresay most of us have never read any of the literature on how students learn. so, as we look to the future, one of the questions i think we have to ask is can that be tolerated going forward? how do students learn and how do i learn what they learned in the literature in the psychology learning outcomes and education? i think we will be on the table and have to be on the table at

all major universities and colleges in the near term. more important, once they begin to the graduate seminars so the next faculty has been sometimes studied pedagogical approaches and here he is as a scholar and an apprentice. isn't that really what it means to read the novel or the chapter before you come to class? but being perceived as receptive to change, asking questions about the new way of learning is a critical part of what we would imagine would be the future for the american how your education. and if the foundation would invest it would be on innovation and the economy us in the areas of research and pedagogy and

continue to ascontinued to ask w do we make sure that we are looking to the future and understanding the relationship to the past. number three, i would spend the third on support of expanding the public display of the humanities. on this point i think the two views continue to shape the world. attendance at the museums and all of public humanities suggest the broad public continues to take interest in what is produced inside of the academy. academy. now it may very buy age and year but there is a demand, and all the more so in the world is flat. let me offer two examples here. last euros to 150th anniversary of the signing of the emancipation proclamation. abraham lincoln and the slave african-americans with a u.s.

government. now that anniversary was celebrated by placing the copy of the document on the display in the national archives in washington, d.c.. thousands of lines for the pathway into and around the national archives. and they did so presumably because the documents still. keep meaning. now, the study of history is about the past to be sure, but it can also be about the connection between the past and the present. in this example the presentation serves as a yardstick by immediately get to measure how far we have come in 150 years. suddenly that is what some people said. the fact that anyone showed up perhaps is even more surprising. the public viewing of the document of 150 years? but the fact that thousands showed up is a way to acknowledge and is a reminder

that what happens when the humanities through history reach the public and we make the documents accessible to the broad world. so when it is done in the higher level to remind us in certain kind of ways of our shared test needs and our intertwined history. in addition, such moments tell another story. and here i take the guidance from an engineering friend of mine that offered the following one-day as we were talking. in the digital age with compressive time and space, the need to understand one another is greater than ever. for all of the cause to increase and stem alone a study of the science and engineering absent in the appreciation of style and color, form and local sensibility, language and culture means we could find ourselves building products no one wants, starting a war for

the wrong reasons and asking partial questions and receiving incomplete answers. and yet, remaining positive about why things are not working. in the end, my friend and i had this conversation and he said to me in the end 9/11 happened despite the sophistication. by the ancient tools over the ideological divide which most of us don't understand because they have more to do with religion than science. so we nee need the humanities because they enable us to understand it of the world that we claim. in conclusion, they use of one's precious pennies requires an

articulation of the first principles. one should start with a sense of the narrative for the story for the humanity. investment windfalls because the case is clear and the humanities being supported attempts to prove the need for continuity and change. and finally, the investment promises to explode or explore the aspects of the human condition and the human experience. and in the process, to help sustain the diverse education. so the andrew w. mellon foundation is drawn to the belief that through the forms of reservation representation and expression as old as art and ancient lyrics and new as graphic novels into digital music, the humankind has developed the means to the clerical report and transmit understandings of the agency committed me become a history

and design. much of the work has fallen to the disciplines claim by the humanities and the arts in tandem with the sciences and social sciences the humanities and the arts deep in our understanding of the human condition and the human experience and how it fosters the institutions and societies. they aim to promote the well-being of the humanities and the arts by supporting the leading institutions of the education into the culture for the achievement and work to the future. so our 3 cents in the foundation, we support the humanities. we support them because they are critical in the efforts to fully educate. we support them because they help generate new knowledge that is key to our understanding of the past and present and prepare

us for interrogating in the future. and we do so in some ways because it tells us about the world as we can imagine and the one that we want to create. we live in the age of the human genome. let's pause on that for a second. but how do we understand the age where absent a critical understanding of the historical constructed social artifice? what does it mean to actually understand and talk about the human genome asked you cannot steto cannotstep back and talk e creation as the present and the term race. the humanities and the signs and the dialogue leads to a better understanding of the human condition and human experience. 3 cents. think about it if you have three pennies and you invested in the humanities, what would you invest in?

i was told there was an error window for me to move. >> the last question that i brought back, he's sitting on a foundation, the president of the foundation can shape the direction of the future by telling me the right thing, how much do you want to spend?

>> i would do more to make sure that we invest in a truly global understanding of the past and present around the world and get away from that which is seen more important in the hierarchy of the topics that we have on the disciplines. we don't cover africa here for example, as we should. and so, i have had students -- i had one sitting next to me actually an undergraduate student that wants to go to graduate school. i had one who is now working in the white house actually come and for four years i had her in the history department and african history come to me to complain she couldn't do african history because there was only one historian to do it now. i happen to be one.

here we have the largest continuity in the world, and one that impacts all of the atlantic and all of the americas but we don't investigate it. we still sit within our narrow boundaries. so we go back and buy collaboration with professors and really do with the interdisciplinary is and maybe even talk beyond the interdisciplinary to something called the scenario so we began to work with each other outside of these boundaries that were formed at the end of the 19th century and really have a conversation. we don't really have conversations like we should. but i'm talking about actual face-to-face engagement.

and i don't know how to do that. that's your job. [laughter] >> i am no longer the professor anyway. you raise an interesting question. i decided one day that i could try something on a more radical side and see how many times i get to beat him down before they decided that this is a good idea. i walked into the room and imagine a white board. you could read the education in the united states for the next 25 to 30 years and we started to get rid of all of the partners and come up with a new kind of structure. what would you do? it generated that point how do we organize the point and the example on the ground is it was the second or the third most in the sciences was in the

intersection of biology, psychology, and anthropology. it was a nature that had not existed ten years before. it was a major where there was no core founding. yet it was the very popular among the students and somehow the intellectual intersection who created the enthusiasm from the bottom. what does it mean? so i ask these questions now why are we committed to those 18th century configurations? i'm not going to go on the organizations in the societies in the early 20th centuries in the systems they are that help to perpetuate them come and that's part of it and having come up with the age i was in that program and i don't know

how to evaluate you because you are a historian in the department and in the 1980s we don't do what to do with you and how to assess. i said i met berkley with a lot of smart people. [laughter] so i figured all of these smart people could see the answer to that question. it is not one that you could answer. so, the answer is probably how willing and comfortable are we thinking about how students should learn and how we should actually organize the institution to enhance the possibility from learning and event on the other side and how do we organize in such a way that we can do the other business in the institution. so it isn't an either or. we have to figure out both. those are the kind of questions the foundation can help. but i also realize 4300

institutions of higher learning in the united states. and we only support a few of them. and so, i don't imagine that we can come up with it -- we should come up with an answer from our end. we should engage each other campuses and try to come up with an answer. there are -- we have gotten out -- i'm wondering how we as the humanities can work as a part of the priority at the top of the humanities under that going back to -- [laughter] what i didn't say in this and i said in some other talks, the idea of stem as an organizing principle for "medicinal and american creation of our. it was directed.

i was in the uk two days ago and an officer in the other place, there to the organizations around stem. there is a global going back to stephanie's question going back to the needs of investing and in part driven by three things. one, at a particular moment in the world, after the arctic crash of 2008 and 2009 where everything is viewed as having an instrumental value. and so, we are trying to figure out if an education where to prepare one for a series of opportunity over a lifetime or that we are a producer of individuals who are going into the first job and june, july and august and there is a deep philosophical debate underway both in washington and elsewhere as to whether or not we train or

educate. and i hear the well-meaning folks in this administration and others that complete training and education and that is the challenge for us. i think part of the answer to the question is that part of it is where i started. the control of the narrative in some ways into beginning to understand what the conditions are on the ground up in the institutions across the spectral institution and higher institution etc.. number two is not to say either or. clearly we are training young people because they want to go out and have a job and maybe they spend thousands of dollars to receive the education at vanderbilt and they assume there is a return on that investment. and i think it's not good for the humanists to say i am not about my students getting jobs. i'm here to educate them for the

education. the two different private schools in the united states or the last seven years. i want them off my payroll at some point. and this goes back to the narrative of how we talk and recognizes the engagement in the broader public. so you realize part of the budget for the national and on it for the humanities, the national endowment for the arts and about $154 million in this year's budget. the budget for the national institute for health is in the teens and the billions command of the budget for the national science foundation is about $9 billion in that range. you realize in the order of magnitude or is nmagnitude is nf any major college or university in the united states that would

say to me that is to hire five humanisthumanists are the one ce they don't bring in just looking at the startup costs alone and trying to sort that out. part of the job as we are not going to win the battle in washington. i've not been to washington. i talked to folks on the ground level here. it's the space between the public and the universities where i think that we begin to continue to educate and we are humanists and become engaged in their communities to explain the ways in which the emancipation proclamation example is one and there are the local versions in a story learning and teaching. think about something as fundamental as this that we already know by the fourth grade which kate is most likely to drop out of high school there

are tests verified over and over again you think of something again many of those kids enter elementary school with a thousand or 2,000 were deficit in their vocabulary because of circumstances beyond their control. so this comes back. think of the projects that the humanities could actually work on here and thinking of the communities that risk in the shadows of the campus on language acquisition and working with colleagues across the campus in many different fields to begin to introduce them to new ways to talk about. with the master early learning. a great opportunity for the elevation here that i wouldn't start in washington, so that

part i think is the on either one of our lifetime. and part of it is at the ground level and the graduate level. there isn't a taxi cab driver in new york city who doesn't like to talk about history. and often times at the history channel. the young lady here and then i will go back. >> not only creating and examining the knowledge and making those connections, but seeing the connections to speak of the space between the public and the university and the amount of intellectuals that are willing to do such things than yobutthen you speak of the thinu might have an event here and there and everywhere and we lament about how nothing is

going right and how things aren't really -- they are and how they are supposed to be that there is not now the force behind that anymore. there needs to be continuous flow and push to connect those barriers. throughout all of the schools and in between and the humanities because personally for me i started at vanderbilt and i was there in my freshman year. at first i found a difficulty within my class at vanderbilt. no class could prepare me for this. now i'm actually majoring in the society and african-american

diaspora and i love every minute of it. that's also not a plug. and i like the fact that i'm getting almost to the activity of the liberal arts education. >> [inaudible] >> okay. and i see exactly what you're talking about and how the connection between the sciences and the communities create a better base for you to think about the future and about the past. we also need to think about that and push those connections or we will still be sitting in the same seats and talking about how we should have done this and lamenting about how things should be. >> is expecting how complex this is about when i reference to the 4300 institutions in the united states you notice yo you havingo be sitting in one of the most perfect spaces in the overall ecosystem. with that privilege comes the

responsibility because vanderbilt and the private research universities in the united states account for about 90% in that group of about 5% of the public institutions. they train in a good number of those that go to medical school and who graduate from medical school and that phd's and the research universities, etc. so there is a disproportionate effect and in terms of the total numbers, the effect is huge and the question becomes at least from where i sit how do you regulate and control and think about even what i refer to as the tension between continuity and change because in your freshman year my guess is he came in and discovered what

james scott referred to as the hidden transcripts and there were ways in which sometimes the faculty would say things to you and there was a message conveyed and you didn't necessarily know they were conveying the message that you were interpreting the message nonetheless. ..

i went across the courtyard to my colleague who is the chair of women's studies and we made it back that we're going to change this. we both looked at each other and said how long do you think it will take us to change it? we said 10 years. so we stayed at it for 10 years. in 10 years it changed. but it took 10 years, dedicated action on my part and add the te part and others to keep pushing at this. whooshing. part of it is the rare student who is here for 10 years and your parents or someone else is there, know, get out of here. [laughter] here's the challenge.

what are the institutions and poor decisions that go along with the individual to ensure that they can be executed? because in my 15 years, 10 years of service at that time, 10 years you'll be somewhere else. you were looking back an element or the session will be calling asking for a donation, and you will give. [laughter] and you may be coming to dinner here are some thinking. trying to get how to change the organization and what's the time horizon? where i see most people fail is a didn't appreciate the time it was going to take to get an or decision changed. and not enough people stay the course long enough. so as you ask these questions, work with your friends.

the way to do also is to make sure that as you leave, there's something behind you who is taking it up to make sure. 10 years is only, entering classes as you spread over time, but you need an approach to ask what does it mean to reclaim that space? those are public and questions about something you're asking. as i was listening and i go yes, some of it will happen and sometimes we will reach out to be commended, sometimes we won't. sometimes we will change inside but faculty come and go. students graduate, and the institution is celebrating 100 plus years. that changes happen. i grew up in virginia and we can both talk about the virginia we grew up in an is not quite the same virginia now. in our lifetimes we can see that change. you have to be sober about the times that it takes to actually create the change that you want.

>> we have time for a few questions. >> there was a hand here and enhance there. i will take the boat and i will answer them in one integrated question. >> utah recently -- they fall and a larger landscape but the characteristics seem unprecedented. i think one of the things some of us to get excited about is our on campus students and environments can do to state in global dialog as part of their education. it just strikes me there must be roles for humanity disciplines in understanding those dialogues, understanding the cultural implications all those dialogs. even guiding those dialogs. comments? >> there was a question, i saw someone's hand. yes. >> i'm short so i will stand a. this might be so my own ignorancbu